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Home of Michael Perry – Author, Humorist, Singer/Songwriter, Amateur Pig Farmer

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Archive for April, 2009

OOPS! in COOP #4

This one makes me feel bad.  My parents are very private folks.  The fact that I write about them is a big presumption on my part.  Tonight my Mom called me.  She just saw the book and noticed that the copy on the inside dust jacket flap says my parents have taken in “over 100 foster children.”  Mom says it was more like 60 or so (she quit keeping track around that number), and when I checked the text of the book on page 86 that’s exactly what I wrote (“sixty or so”).  I’m pretty sure what happened is I put 100 in as a placeholder early on and it got left in a lot of the promotional material after I changed it in the main text.  So.  For the sake of my Mom, and just in case I get called out on Oprah, let it be known this mixup is completely on me.

OOPS! in COOP #3

On page 307.  Should be Buster Keaton, not Harold Lloyd.  I found this one myself…after the book was in print, unfortunately.

OOPS! In COOP #2

A reader named Lisa has found an oops! in Coop.  On page 186 I write of my father driving east on I-94 to St. Paul, Minnesota, which is tough to do when you’re coming from Wisconsin.  Because of the way the sentence is written, I could argue that I was talking about the return trip home, but I can’t lie: In my head I was facing west and it is a plain-and-simple oops!.

Here is my policy on oops!es.

Promises Made

It’s shaping up to be a busy spring.  I’m grateful for every bit of it.  It is a deep privilege to head out around the country and meet readers one at a time.  But one must also keep the hearts of those at home.  As such I am going on record this morning to say that only a fool claims the unkown future, but before the leaves fall this autumn I will build one treehouse.  I also vow to take a certain nine-year-old girl fishing and to her first dirt-track stock car race.

Classical is Not Easy Listening

I enjoy classical music.  Especially in the early morning.  Let me be clear: I don’t know Bach from Beethoven.  This is not some fakey self-deprecating comment.  While my wife and even my children (thanks to my wife’s father…a union worker at the local tire plant who played and taught his children about classical music) can identify certain classical works upon listening to a few bars, I really can’t put a name to any part of the canon that hasn’t appeared in an airline commercial.  I suppose it is a matter of exposure and study.  In certain circumstances I enjoy it, and I guess that will have to do for now.

All that setup just to say on a recent morning I found myself alone in a hotel room, a tad over-coffeed and jittery from a freshly-discovered public criticism (nothing huge, and part of the territory, walk it off, Spanky).  Seeking peace I cued up Schubert on the laptop, but after five minutes I found the sound ominous.  Switched to Liszt, and that soothed me.