October 27, 2008 – Cool, sunny. It’s been three days without a camera, for the first time in a year or so. Good for me, I think. Sometimes a camera can be something to hide behind. I’m going to get it today. This is more or less the last week of the book tour, this week heading to San Antonio and then Austin for the Texas Book Festival. I’m looking forward to Texas, a larger-than-life place where they do things on a grand scale. I’m getting a tour of the LBJ Library and I’m excited about that. At the fair, someone will ask me why there are so many dog books in bookstores, and I always answer I wonder why there aren’t more, given the love of dogs and the role they play in the lives of so many millions of people.
  Dog books are not, in some circles, considered “serious,” especially in these times, but I would – do – argue that the love of dogs is quite serious, and that they play a serious role in the lives of people. To me, the world of politics and finance often seems anything but serious. But I am strange.