What's Going on at Boswell This Week? Sarah Vowell and Jodee Blanco and Green Energy Summit and UWM Spring Writers Festival.

So last year at the end of March, Jason said to Amie, I am taking this month off next year because I don't want to be around when Daniel starts panicking about meeting these numbers.

I don't know exactly how much more difficult I am going to be; I'm always panicking about the numbers. That said, I've made a pretty good attempt to keep busy this month. And now I'm panicking about how we'll get everything done.

On Tuesday, March 6, 7 pm, we'll be at Greenfield High School Performing Arts Center, selling books at Jodee Blanco's public appearance for Please Stop Laughting at Me, and her new Please Stop Laughing at Me Journal. Blanco has been very active in anti-bullying programs. Here's a nice article about Blanco from USA Today that was published when her last book was published.

On Wednesday, March 7 and Thursday, March 8 (it runs through Friday, March 9, but you'll see below that we can't attend that day), we'll be at the Green Energy Summit at the Frontier Airlines Center. Tickets for this show (among the speakers is Ed Begley, Jr.) are $50 but students are free. You still have to have a ticket. Visit this website for more information.

We've got about 50 tickets left to Sarah Vowell, which means we should be sold out just about when the publicity hits. I don't want one of our regular blog readers to tell me afterwards they waited too long to buy tickets to our event in support of the paperback of Unfamiliar Fishes (note, this link is to the book, not tickets) on Friday, March 9, 7 pm, at Boswell.

Buy your ticket right now (and by right now, I mean Monday, March 5. This offer does not stand on March 8).  I've been slowly learning how to program our front page and upcoming events page of our website so I've got it on the list to update it when we sell out.

Friday, March 9 is also the start of the UWM Spring Writers Festival. I'm not sure if you are able to get tickets, which include three days of speakers, workshops, panels, and networking. Friday night's keynote is Ayad Akhtar, acclaimed author of American Dervish, and once again (remember back to our rescheduled event when I had to be out of town on his very successful snow day replacement), and Saturday's keynotes are Margot Peters and Cy Tymoly.

I don't know if they are full or not, but if you're interested in registering, it's never too late to try (unless it's marked "too late to try.")

Sunday's event (Sunday, March 11, 12:30 pm) is special in that we've arranged with Anne at UWM to allow separate ticketing ($15) to the Sunday lunch to hear Ben Ryder Howe, author of My Korean Deli, one of my favorite memoirs of 2011, now in paperback. I wasn't sure if I had written a blog post on it, but it was one of my summer reading picks during last year's NPR recap.

It's the story of a staffer at the Paris Review who is convinced by his mother-in-law that that the family can run a deli, much as they did in South Korea in years past. She's put in the time too, with stints clerking all over the country. So they open the store, but just about everything goes wrong. And Howe, in the style of George Plimpton, becomes a professional amateur, but instead of playing football or boxing, he's a professional amateur entrepreneur.

Is it possible I never did a complete blog post on this book? If not, I have a good idea for one.

Oh, and Sunday afternoon we load in books for the restaurant show, starting on Monday. Tickets are $25 in advance or $35 at the door. The keynote address is Duff Goldman of The Ace of Cakes fame, Monday, March 12, 10 am.