Thought that it'd be a worthwhile activity, and a chance to get outside. But Saturday morning started a little late, and then Stacy had a special hour-long show for the pledge drive. So it was noon by the time I headed out, the site was further away than I thought, and it was around 12:30 by the time I got there. It was easy to find, with the crowds of people walking out of the riverbed and back to their cars.
Turns out there was a big turnout in the morning — who would have guessed, something on Santa Fe that started on time? — and so they were pretty well wrapped up. There was one last crew headed out to finish up, so I joined in on that.
There were a couple of big augers doing the tough work of making the holes, so the team's work was really just to put in a bundle of cottonwood clippings and then bury them back up. With around a dozen people and two pieces of heavy equipment, we were done within a half-hour or so.
Left me with the afternoon free, and more than enough time for us to make it to book launch for a new biography of Bill Mauldin. Just learned about that Friday morning, and thought it'd be worth checking out — I've long admired Mauldin's cartooning, his ability to convey so much in a single panel.
Todd DePastino is the author of Bill Mauldin: A Life Up Front and the editor of Willie and Joe: The WWII Years. The event was a small, informal one; there was apparently another event Thursday that I completely missed, a big presentation of some sort. So this one was more just Q&A and anecdotes — including the story of pitching the biography, and how he couldn't generate any interest among the 30-something editors who'd never heard of Mauldin, and only got the book going when his 60-something agent found a 70-something editor for it. There were also plenty of tales from Mauldin's life (that I'm assuming are covered in the book) — and some from several of Mauldin's relatives in the audience.
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