After landing back in Chicago on Saturday evening, it was a mad rush to get home and pack in preparation for the trip to Bologna, Italy for my book release. My wife decided to come along on this trip, and we thought we might make a small vacation of it.We boarded our plane Sunday evening so that we could arrive Monday night. The book presentation was scheduled for Tuesday evening, so we would get an entire day to ourselves before I had to go talk.

During the day on Tuesday, we enjoyed the city, as well as took a number of naps. When I was here in June working, the jet lag wasn’t quite as bad, because there was somewhere I had to be and work that had to be done. This time around, however, there were not nearly as many requirements, and found it harder to get up and going in the morning.

The presentation of the book was Tuesday night. The venue was the central public library (appropriate for a book presentation, I guess). I arrived early to speak with the translator for a bit and tell her what I would be talking about. The interviewers consisted of the woman that I worked on the project with and an art critic. The book turned out quite well, and although there were some battles fought over certain aspects of it, I am proud of how it turned out and hopeful it will lead to other opportunities in the near future.

The audience consisted of maybe 100-150 people, and we talked for an hour about how the project came to be, how it changed over the course of the three months we worked on it, and the themes that ended up being tied together.

After the interview, it was over to a small square where there was a public exhibit of some of the images from the book. The images are being displayed outside, so that passers-by can “run into” them somewhat accidentally. The presentation of the images is nice, and the few times I passed by them, there were people looking.

That’s all from Bologna, we leave for Venice tomorrow.

Ciao ;)