WEHO

So last Sunday I attended the West Hollywood Book Fair. I was late, which I'm sure is not shocking to anyone who is acquainted with my usual Sunday routine - up at 6:00 am to meet my running group (ambitious Judy) and back to bed by 10:00 am for a well deserved nap (the better known, lazy Judy.) I enjoy my Sundays. Sometimes I nap until it's time for 60 Minutes on the tube.

On this particular Sunday I forgot that I had actually planned a social activity so I slipped right back between the sheets after my run. Thank goodness I had included others in my plans because my trusty friends began calling me at 11:00 am to see where I was. While still curled up in my 500 thread count cocoon, Ambitious Judy had a small row with Lazy Judy and it was decided that I should take a quick shower and drive to West Hollywood. After all, I could still catch the panel on humor writing in memoirs.

The book fair was about what I had expected; A sunny day in the park with various panel discussions on writing and publishing taking part under rental canopies. What I had neglected to anticipate was the West Hollywood factor. (You're probably thinking that I was shocked seeing Daddy and Daddy with the stroller, or by the booth promoting the new children's book Susie has two Mommies - even if they both look like Daddies. I'm here to tell you no, I've spent time outside of Orange County and I take no special notice of such things.)

Around 2:00 pm I needed some shade so I decided to sit under one of the rented canopies and watch a panel discussing news sources and the changing environment of reporting the news. In this discussion I learned that blogs really aren't that well read for real news and most of those citing blog readership were really referring to cruising myspace. OK, I'll agree with that. Beavis and Butthead reading myspace shouldn't count as one lost reader for the LA Times. Come on, they weren't reading the Times before myspace and unless you print news headlines on rolling papers, they're not going to read it now.

So far I'm fitting in. I'm a writer. I'm an artist. I belong here.

Next was an intelligent question from the audience asking how a reporter chooses to describe a perpetrator of politically motivated violence. I'm excited now. Clever questions from a literate audience; I'm glad to have made the drive.

The panelist goes on to describe how one man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist and that word choice is often politically motivated. Bingo - I'm nodding my head. She than gave an example of the use of the word ecoterrorist to describe people working to save the environment by drawing attention to others who are misusing the earth's resources. My nodding stops. She explains that this word - ecoterrorist - is being promoted by an anti-environmentalist in an attempt to discredit the environmentalist movement.

"Take setting fire to a lumbar yard in order to draw much needed attention to deforestation as an example," she said. "Is ecoterrorist the best way to describe those setting the fire?"

I wait and do quick check around me before nodding my head. I can't believe that I see the crowd shaking their heads no. One of the panelist jumps in and says "They're not terrorist." A few shouts of "no they're not" erupt from the crowd.

I guess I've already been brainwashed by the anti-environmentalists because I would say that burning down a business to make a political point is terrorism. I might as well stop separating my trash and reusing my grocery bags because apparently I'm a proponent of global warming because I shop at Home Depot.

Needless to say, I looked at Orange County in a new light when I returned. We may have excessive plastic surgery and drive Hummers, but we're not ecoterrorists! That's one thing we've got going for us.