Write on for posterity

At an event honoring Woody Guthrie's time with the nascent
power agency (from left) BPA librarian Kay Silver, archivist Libby Burke, and author Greg Vandy gathered earlier this month to talk songs and history.

Books rule, and so does music. Together, they make an unbeatable combination. Now add in a Woody Guthrie angle, and it's darn near irresistible. While I make some headway on publication of my Chinese-bookbinding book, I applaud others for making it to press.

So it was on the occasion of what would have been Woody Guthrie's 104th birthday, and the 75-year anniversary of his productive stint with the Bonneville Power Administration, that author Greg Vandy explained how Guthrie came to be an "information consultant" for the U.S. government for a month. Guthrie toured hard, he wrote like crazy, and he smelled bad. But boy—what an assignment, and how he aced it.

Next time I face a big deadline, I will think about Guthrie, songsmithing to support his family of five, and knocking out 26 songs in 30 days.