I’m on the road again. It’s a brutal ride in one day to Nashville, filled with trucks, billboards, country music, and this time I brought an audiobook along for fun. Inspired by our trip to see Gatsby at our newest cineplex, I’m listening to Z : a Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald, by Therese Anne Fowler. Zelda Sayre was nearly 18 years old in Montgomery, AL when she first met the author, masquerading as a soldier in 1918.
The book takes Zelda’s point of view since really all we’ve ever heard about her was that she was crazy and institutionalized. Her father was a judge in their Southern town and marrying the Northern carpetbagger, against her parents advice, seemed like a good idea at the time. And that’s where I am now, in a wi-fi free zone somewhere in TN, when she gets off the train for the first time in NYC. She’s going to meet Scott at St Patrick’s Cathedral, with a priest.
Excitement is building, I can’t wait for them to meet Pablo Picasso, the Hemingways and Gertrude Stein! And to find out if she was really mentally ill, or just another smart woman not willing to compromise or subsume her life to align it with her husband. The Flapper once told me about an aunt who stopped cleaning the house, and stopped cooking after one or two too many babies. She was sent away to an asylum, and never returned.
When I left this morning, I heard that Richmond Airport had been evacuated because of a “serious threat.” The Rocker was flying but not through this VA airport, so I just kept packing the car. Then I heard on an NPR station that Princeton University was evacuated:
“Please evacuate the campus and all university offices immediately and go home unless otherwise directed by your supervisor,” the school’s website message said. “Do not return to campus for any reason until advised otherwise.” http://edition.cnn.com/2013/06/11/us/new-jersey-princeton-evacuation/index.html?iref=allsearch
Fitzgerald attended Princeton and Joyce Carol Oates, a Princeton Prof, tweeted: “At some schools, like Princeton, there is a formal honor code. But “honor” shouldn’t be just for undergraduates.” I wonder if Fitzgerald, who just missed serving in WWI, could have imagined a world where bomb threats are called in to his alma mater. Where newspaper reporters, a nearly extinct breed who would rather risk jail than give up their sources, have no choice when their emails are hacked. Where buttons are pushed in New Mexico and people are killed in Pakistan? 
