Planes, Trains, and Automobiles
Dashing through the snow...
Well, that was epic! Bad as the snow was in Toronto last weekend — the most snow ever recorded in a 24 hour period— the effects were worse elsewhere. And where there’s a will there’s a way. Mostly.
I was slotted to go to Detroit on Monday, to prelude the Detroit Opera Company’s March production of The Handmaid’s Tale Opera, but naturally the plane was cancelled (along with every other plane, I’m guessing). Luckily, Todd Doughty, Penguin Random publicist and star of many an earlier adventure — who is not called Doughty for nothing — had come to Toronto to Help the Aged (me). His other nickname is “Phone Thumbs,” so he worked his magic and got us on a train to Windsor, then through the tunnel by car to Detroit. That’s us below, wading down the street on our way to our Toronto pickup.
Miraculously, we made it on time — even to the reception at the splendiferous Detroit Athletic Club — and then I spent a riotous hour onstage in the gorgeous 1922 Detroit Opera House, stuffed full of 1200 people, with my old pal, talented director Sam White, of Shakespeare in Detroit and the Stratford (Ontario) Shakespeare Festival. (“Margaret! You made me snort!”)
The next day we were supposed to go to Cambridge, Mass., but guess what — our plane was cancelled. What a shock. Nothing daunted, Todd activated his wizardly phone thumbs, and after hitting many blank walls, managed to secure the last two seats on a plane to Albany, N.Y. But what to do then? Our event began at 7.. trains would not do. I invoked the help of sprites by dancing widdershins, skyclad, in the airport — actually I did nothing — but Todd sprang into furious action and talked Music Express into sending a driver from Boston to pick us up, there not being one in Albany. Up for any adventure, we set out, eating cheeseburgers in the car and trying not to get any cheese on it. (The Life of Relentless Glamour.)
Miraculously, we made it in time for our Harvard Bookstore event in First Parish Church — right beside the Old Burying Ground, which has a cameo in The Handmaid’s Tale. We even managed to sign 300+ copies of Book of Lives beforehand. Here I am with NRR’s Here and Now host, Robin Young, beguiling the multitudes by answering Robin’s questions about why I have such dark and vengeful impulses. (It’s the horoscope. I struggle.) (Ann Patchett was supposed to do the intro but was bogged down in Nashville’s Snowmageddon. I hope they’ve got the power back by now…)
Todd was so heroic I bestowed a medal upon him:
And Jane Clarke in our office at the Toronto end, who was up before dawn fielding the cancellations and rebookings and cancellations and rebookings, also got a medal:
The virtuous shall all get medals, eventually. (So shall the unvirtuous, but that’s another story.)
