AMIGO at the Smithsonian

Okay, it was ages ago, but at the kind invitation of our friend Konrad Ng, Director of the Pacific Asian Program of the Smithsonian, we went down to DC to show AMIGO.

 Here we are at a terrific Mexican restaurant called Oyamel with, from the right, Konrad, John and me, Robert Perkinson, and our pal Catherine Park, all the way from LA. That's Robert's book and his other project is campaigning to locate the President Obama Library in Hawaii. Seems like a good idea to me.

We never got any state money for any of our films, but I am considering this trip paid for by the government. They covered our train ride from Poughkeepsie and two nights in the lovely Washington Plaza Hotel, built in  1962 and kept amazingly intact.

Our room was tiny but the price was right and the atmosphere in the lobby and bar was international.
Nicole joined us and we visited Occupy Wall St. Washington.
They had a library

and a very tidy campsite. We dropped off some used towels and floor mats to make life there more comfortable. I can mother this movement and I am proud of how it has captured the conversation in this country and around the world.
Through AMIGO we continue to meet smart, young Filipinos (and some great older ones! like Sonny Izon with whom we had a nice but hurried dinner during the show-both interrupted by power failure at the theater in the Museum of the American Indian). Teddy Gonzalves is a professor in American Studies, which discipline is now including Empire Studies.
Here is Teddy's lovely wife, Charita.

John makes anyone look small.

I've been away

Did you miss me? I have actually had some time off-and I'll be doing more of that, just watch me-but we haven't stopped promoting AMIGO and MOMENT IN THE SUN.

I'm going to work backwards, and take you to the most recent stop on our American Lakbay/Tour: The Sixth Annual Sanibel Writers Workshop. John was the keynote speaker and also read from the Tampa chapter to a warm crowd of about 300. Speaking of warm, thank you to Tom De Marchi for the invitation-once accepted, we cooked up a mini-tour of Florida and Louisiana, follow us along. For more about the conference,  go to http://www.fgcu.edu/siwc 

 
Here's Tom with John. Florida Gulf Coast University is very lucky to have teachers as enthusiastic as Tom and his wife Karen Tolchin. Their students had to buy John's book!

Here are some getting autographs.
Here is the view, through the screen of our 2nd floor lanai, of the beach on Sanibel Island.





We fled New York after 9.5 inches of snow and 4 days without power. We deserve a view of the Gulf.