{"id":1421,"date":"2011-11-21T13:45:12","date_gmt":"2011-11-21T18:45:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.old.caraghobrien.com\/book\/?p=1421"},"modified":"2011-11-21T13:45:12","modified_gmt":"2011-11-21T18:45:12","slug":"hometown-girl-at-the-red-balloon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/prized\/hometown-girl-at-the-red-balloon\/","title":{"rendered":"Hometown Girl at the Red Balloon"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_1422\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1422\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1422\" title=\"RedBalloon1\" src=\"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/RedBalloon1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"197\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-1422\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Attentive listeners at the Red Balloon, Friday, November 18, 2011<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Visiting my hometown always gives me a kaleidoscopic feeling as new experiences are superimposed over old ones, and last Friday night I added another by returning to the Red Balloon Bookshop, in St. Paul, MN, a favorite spot place I\u2019ve stopped into regularly since it opened in 1984.\u00a0 New co-owner Holly Weinkauf welcomed me with charismatic warmth and we were joined by my extended family, friends from my old neighborhood, girlhood buddies from the Visitation and SPA\/SS, college friends, a book group I know through Skyping, and their children.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-1423\" title=\"RedBalloon2\" src=\"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/RedBalloon2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"176\" \/>An unduly large percentage of attendees had already read <em>Birthmarked<\/em>, so I didn\u2019t worry about spoilers and jumped right into reading from the first chapter of <em>Prized<\/em>.\u00a0 Reading aloud is a sort of split-personality experience, because my main mind is deep into the story, far away from the present reality, while a smaller, aware side of me knows I\u2019m in a room full of people, and I need to keep my place, speak clearly, and glance up a bit when I can.\u00a0 I think I like best the brief moment at the end, when I reach the last words and stop, and a moment hovers there, like everyone\u2019s still waiting for a little more.<\/p>\n<p>Then we get on to the cake, and all is well.\u00a0 Books are about bringing people together, and I\u2019m happy to be part of such a rich community.\u00a0 Many thanks to Holly and the team at the Red Balloon.\u00a0 I had a lovely time in your bookshop and I\u2019m so grateful you had me in for a reading of <em>Prized<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Visiting my hometown always gives me a kaleidoscopic feeling as new experiences are superimposed over old ones, and last Friday night I added another by returning to the Red Balloon Bookshop, in St. Paul, MN, a favorite spot place I\u2019ve stopped into regularly since it opened in 1984.\u00a0 New co-owner Holly Weinkauf welcomed me with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[17],"class_list":["post-1421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prized","tag-prized-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1421"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1421\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1429,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1421\/revisions\/1429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}