Cleveland, population 363,984

363, 986 three days ago when Taylor Swift and I were there

Hello Citizens of Cleveland and all of you who like pizza!

I spent all week in Cleveland! It was a last-minute whim because a camp friend of mine said “I have an extra ticket to a massive Lithuanian song festival, want to go?”

Initially I was going to be practical, but then I realized I could dive in headfirst and make reasons to go — and the universe fully rewarded my brazen swim in the waters of audacity.

At the song festival - which welcomed dozens of Lithuanian choirs from all over the world—I ran into a friend from New York City who I was surprised to see.

“I’m a choir director,” she deadpanned. “This is a choir festival.” And it belatedly dawned on me that this song festival might result in some familiar sightings.

In fact? I saw my brother and his wife from Chicago plus a handful of friends who sing in that famous choir, saw my mom’s cousin from Toronto area and her daughter and son in law, saw my own cousin from Chicago who was watching the kid-choir and got to see her daughter as well, plus my Michigan cousins were in the choir - I saw one of them on the Jumbotron. It was quite the busy Sunday!

All the people across the arena are members of a single conglomerate choir. Audience was on our side of the arena. All the people on the stage are choir directors from all over the world, the torches are fire? Candles? we are not sure but they were ceremonially lit and looked pretty cool in the dark. The orchestra is center stage beneath the choir. Conductors took turns on that podium

Then I visited the Cleveland Art Museum which was having a fantastic Takashi Murakami exhibit. I will admit I didn’t much care for his work before examining it up close and hearing the story of how and why it was designed as it was - now I’m a fan!

All those creepy little dead-eyed flowers in day-glo colors…who knew the full spectrum of this guy’s talent!

have a look at this wild ride for example - 82 feet long and hyper detailed. Showing the near destruction of Japan by the recent tsunami…

The next day was my reading at the Lithuanian Club - this was amazing! Frozen in time somewhere between 1951 and 1988, the club is full of crazy memorabilia, serves excellent locally made Krupnikas, and sells Lithuanian spiky pound cakes (I bought one for my son for his birthday).

I also got visited by a New Yorker friend and another friend I had made in Prague! Lots of my Lithuanian camp friends turned up as well as the Honorary Consul General of the Republic of Lithuania - who used to date my uncle! The next day I was thrilled to have coffee with the former President of Literary Cleveland, Brandi Larsen, who is a longtime Pen Parentis associate. What a great trip..

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WRITING:

It came to my attention that people thought/think I’m “going back to my maiden name” because my last flyer said Milda Motekaitis De Voe instead of M. M. De Voe - that’s not the case. My name is complicated and my last reading (as well as my next reading - on August 7 in Chicago) are in Lithuanian venues where my maiden name is recognized. I’m not changing it - just wrote the whole thing out. You can read my guest post on The Museum of Names “Pen Names and how they can kill you” here.

I was so happy to sell some books at the Lit Club reading. (If you attended and missed out on buying one, you can still get one through this link!) Don’t forget to review it on Goodreads or Amazon if you’ve bought it! And hello and thanks to all the people who recently subscribed to this newsletter! Delighted to have you here! I posted a lot of photos on my Facebook author page - follow that if you like photos!

Last Sunday, I watched the playback of the short theater piece I wrote and I think I might work on it a little more and send it out to competitions!

Also, on behalf of Pen Parentis I was accepted to be on a New York Council on the Arts - sponsored Literary Panel in September: CAPACITY BUILDING: THE ROAD TO STRATEGIC GROWTH. (it’s just so me, haha.)

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Random Final Thoughts:

I love that this street art goes over the “edge” of the cement portion of the building - do you think it was intentional for effect so no one would be higher, or did they start the picture just a little too high?

(footnote: Cleveland has an excellent pizza place called Citizen Pie in a part of town called Old Brooklyn, hence my greeting to you this lovely morning.)

Hope you had a happy Fourth of July!