Syndicated advice columnist Amy Dickinson, of Ask Amy fame, gave a talk this evening at Freeville United Methodist Church, raising over $200 in donations for the church.
Dickinson reprised several pieces she'd done for National Public Radio, including one on the secrets (or not secrets) of the Freeville chicken barbecue, one on Vacation Bible School, another on the strange days when trucks, even trucks towing houses, were diverted down Main Street in Freeville, and one on the closing of the Ithaca Woolworth's. She and her daughter Emily created video and showed pictures to go along with the stories, which played to a full room of people. (For encores she played pieces on a Krispy Kreme in Las Vegas and a massive Unification Church wedding in Washington.)
She also took questions, mostly about the ins and outs of being an advice columnist. Producing a daily column means sorting through an immense pile of mail (both postal and electronic), and choosing the questions to answer is half the battle. She had two questions about fake letters. First Dickinson said that there's more than enough in the world that fake letters aren't necessary, then talked about the challenges of keeping out the occasional fake letter. I liked her approach to applying for the job, in which she took a few hours to answer the test questions rather than agonizing over them for the permitted week.
Sadly, I don't have a picture of the occasion. After all my other pictures today, I left the storage card for the camera at home!
Posted by simon at August 27, 2005 8:48 PM in Freeville , churches