That’s what it felt like at the Miami Book Fair. Tens of thousands of people, moving easily around the designated venues on the astonishing urban campus of Miami-Dade College. Notebooks, schedules and sunglasses grasped in hand, looking
John Hodgman
toward the next event. Joyce Carol Oats! Taylor Branch! John Hodgman! (John Hodgman?) Some poetry perhaps. Or the star turn – for which I had a splendid seat – Al Gore himself. The uber celebrity of the young scholastic set. (Gotta admit, I was pretty darn star struck myself.)
No frowns, no angry faces, sunshine and smiles. And then, icing on my cake – a spontaneous break dance performance on a sidewalk in front of me. Six or seven teenage boys – volunteers at the Fair with their bright yellow teeshirts – removed their badges and glasses and put down bags and ipods and phones in a pile. And to the beat of a music they pulled from the air to their ears only, began to dance and leap and walk on air. And after a few minutes a little girl, no more than four years old moved into their space and without missing a beat they surrounded her in a circle and made her their only audience. And she smiled and clapped and was soon trying to do what they were doing.
Don’t think I’ll forget that one soon.
You can have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, or democracy. But you cannot have both.
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