15 Comments on “View From a Hotel Window 3/25/17: Nashville”

1. Austin, and BookPeople, at 3pm (yes, another afternoon event). Please come see me!

   Plan to!

2. John, thanks so much for a really fun event today in Nashville. It was great to meet you. Safe travels for the rest of the tour!

3. Opryland Hotel was fun – had a computer convention there in the ~late80s. I totally do not remember who shot off the bottle rockets inside the atrium.

4. I’ve been there many times and stayed there once. It’s a great place to just wander around.

5. still on track with the alternating “Parking lot. Not a parking lot. Parking lot. Not” theme of the tour views :)
   Just wish one of these events was within 1000 miles

6. Enjoyed your talk/visit to Parnassus Books…So, when you are on book tour, does the publisher foot the bill for everything? Do they handle all the booking? Hotel, travel, meals? Curious as I hope someday to finish my book and go on a book tour!

7. Glad to finally see an event in person, John. Thanks for coming.

   (Next time, get ’em to spring for hockey tickets when the team is in town; it’s an​ experience even if everybody’s head stays on.)

8. Ñot a parking lot in sight-alhough you could probably hide a dinosaur or two in all that foliage.

9. Insomnia has me awake with plans to attend the BookPeople event in 11 hours or so. You’ll be right next door to Whole Foods headquarters store, and just a few blocks from the HOPE Outdoor Gallery.

10. Hope you get a chance to take note of my 90-year-old aunt Clara who works the tour booking desk at the Opryland Hotel (very gregarious, snow-white hair). She and my dad were raised in a family of 9 kids in the Missouri Bootheel. Although very poor as children, all did big things as adults. I asked her how grandma & grandpa pulled that off in the midst of the Great Depression, and she said that her mom had three rules she preached over and over:

    1) Put everything you’ve got into getting the best education you can get, and then some; that way if things fall apart you’ll always have that on your side, because no one can ever take your education away from you;
    2) You are lucky to have a father who gave you a last name that has never been dishonored – never, ever do anything to bring shame to the family name;
    3) If anyone in the family ever falls on hard times, you open your home and take them in for as long as it takes, no questions asked, no recompense requested.

11. Nice place. I got a job there once. Not working there. I went to visit my sister who was there for a conference, and we were going to have dinner. She ended up having dinner with Bill Cosby instead, and I ate with her co-workers (strangers to me). They offered me a job. Years later I did work there for a couple of weeks, for their parent company up the hill, and one of those weeks I stayed at the hotel.

12. Have stayed there. As cool as the atrium was, I can’t say I cared for it. I felt like you could have plopped the thing down in the middle of Kansas and had the same exact experience. Was a $20 bus trip to anywhere where I felt like I could experience Nashville (or get a meal that wasn’t overpriced). One of my friends at the same conference dubbed it “the biodome.” But I’m more a fan of oddball local hotels in itty-bitty towns, so it was more just not my cup of tea than a bad place to stay.

13. I hope you were careful, it’s a jungle in there.

14. I stayed there sometime in the late Seventies, when it was pretty new. There was no atrium then. I don’t remember much (hey, I was a kid), except that it was really big, and that, judging from his tray, the guy across the hall from us appeared to be eating hamburgers for breakfast.

15. Had a great time at the Parnassus event! Thanks for coming to Nashville :)