Even more nice people...!

My young man at City Hall in College Station (not to be confused with my young man at the book shop) put me in touch with a woman called Patricia who is involved in various local historic preservation committees.  We met up for a coffee yesterday afternoon at a place called Sweet Eugene's.  I'd never heard of it and approached with no real idea what to expect.  Turned out to be a delightful coffee shop with an eccentric collection of assorted chairs and tables, a dark and cosy interior and a relaxed atmosphere - evidenced by the number of tables occupied by young people on their laptops with no evidence of consumption of refreshments in front of them.  

Over coffee Patricia and I shared interests and life stories and discovered a lot about each other in a short space of time!  She used to work on the space programme in Houston and knew all the moon landing astronauts, has lived in Greece and Turkey and now finds herself in College Station by default.  She described herself as moving over to the 'left' as she grew older and now she's involved in a number of political, historical and philosophical activities.  

Patricia was very sympathetic when I described my trials with the decades worth of microfilm  and suggested another volunteering opportunity, did a bit of phoning,  and this morning I went to the Carnegie Historic Center and met Anne who is in charge of Oral History projects.   She has asked me to work on material they have on a school for Mexican Americans which has now disappeared since integration.    But before we went into too much detail Anne whisked me off to a talk she was going to by a writer who was reading from her new book at the Brazos Valley African American Museum.  It's very salutary to go round the museum and see the indignities to which black people were subjected in Texas up until quite recent times.    Schools were not desegregated until 1966.  The writer Tayari Jones gave a spirited reading of the first chapter of her new novel and answered questions.  She had a great sense of humour!  I bought a copy of 'Silver Swallow', which she signed. 

The contacts list in my phone is gradually expanding!