Toot, Toot

   My Grandma Eastman lived in little Anna, Illinois, one of those places where still today many people don’t bother to lock their doors.  And certainly 40 years ago, there were fewer reasons to worry about whether that dead bolt and chain were in their places.

   So when we would come to visit, we often just opened the front door and walked in, calling to Grandma as we went.  Sometimes she was in the kitchen or in the basement doing laundry, but most often, she was out back in her little garden where she celebrated the better part of many of her days.

   Wherever she was, when she heard us calling, she would respond “Toot, toot.”  And she would keep repeating it as she got nearer, just like a little train announcing its arrival.

    Well, it’s not just little grandmothers and choo-choo trains that go “toot, toot.”  In a recent professional development session at a writer’s conference I attended, Susan Kraus, a writer from Lawrence, Kansas, chastised and challenged all of us to toot our own horns more often.

   Well here I go.

   At the writer’s conference I was at in Rapid City, I won a third place award in magazine writing for an article I did for Points North Magazine from our trip to Alaska.  The name of the story was “The Great Silent Places” and it’s on my website.

   I didn’t go to the spring meeting of the Midwest Travel Writers Association that was held in Amarillo, Texas.  Nothing against Amarillo – I understand they have an abundance of Dr. Pepper in Amarillo.  It’s just that I’ve been traveling quite a bit and every writer has to spend some serious butt time in front of the computer or it’s not called work and nobody writes you a paycheck.

   The spring meeting is when MTWA, the oldest professional travel writers’ organization in the country, recognizes outstanding achievement among its members.  The awards are called Mark Twain awards, after one of the world’s first and best travel writers, who, of course, was from right here in Missouri.

    Well,  I’m just a little embarrassed to tell you the details, but in summary…

… you’re reading a blog from the Mark Twain Travel Writer of the Year.

 

toot, toot.