A Lazlo Letter

Another pretty good day, in spite of two straight lousy nights of sleep for reasons it is best not to go into here or now. When it gets to be 2 a.m. and my eyes are open, something isn't working right.

Still and all: the pounds are falling off, the work is getting done, and I have some really great people in my life. And around the time I finished writing yesterday's blog about it being a great day, I had another treat.

I got a call from a woman named Heather who works for Amazon. She had an email that I had sent "to Jeff," and she wanted me to know that they -- Jeff and Heather and Amazon -- were sending me a free Kindle. It will take a while, because they have a pre-Christmas Kindle shortage that would tickle Elmo, but they are building it, and it will come.

Heather, as you have probably already guessed by now, made my day.

I don’t often send letters to billionaire CEOs begging them to send me their products at no charge. When I sent this, I will admit that I felt a little bit like Lazlo Toth.

But as all our Mamas taught us, or should have taught us, it never hurts to ask.

Here's the email I sent to Jeff and my sole other contact at Amazon. It's already out of date, because the title and approach of the book have changed and I have come to the realization that December 15 would be, er, pushing it.

Dear Jeff Bezos and Ed Moninger,

I am hoping this email makes its way quickly to one or both of you. I promise that it is not a hustle, although it certainly qualifies as a shot in the dark.

I am in the process of writing a short but explosively positive book about the Kindle and the remarkable ways it can be used above and beyond, as well as including, its obvious elegance as a reading device. I have done considerable research and corresponded some with David Pogue at the Times on this project, but it would be enormously helpful if you could arrange to have a Kindle shipped to me as soon as possible at the address below. There, I said it without stuttering.

You may recall that in 2002 I wrote a successful and helpful book about Amazon Marketplace under my "Stephen Windwalker" pen name.

While I will cover the basics on the Kindle in this book, I also intend to highlight several ways in which it is much more than an e-book reader, such as its usefulness for activities such as basic email and web surfing functionality, from virtually anywhere. I see the Kindle as the most revolutionary and disruptive device to come along in over a decade, one that may be as likely to shutter laptop manufacturers as book chains.

Thanks to each of you for giving a moment to my email request. Just for fun, here's a link to the product detail page for the forthcoming book, which I expect will be shipping by December 15.

All best,
Steve Holt

Tuesday's Soundtrack


In 1975 I moved to Dallas to start a statewide citizen action group called Texas ACORN. I worked pretty hard at it but one or two nights per week I'd go with a pal or two among the men and women who worked on my organizing staff like Stewart Acuff, Kathy Browne, Madeline Talbot, Beth Butler, Scott Holladay and Kim Oswalt to some East Dallas honky-tonk like the Blue Note on Greenville Ave. or Willie Nelson's brand new Whiskey River club further up the same road, to let off steam and hear some good music. We went through a lot of Lone Star beer, danced a little, and closed a few places, all in good fun. We managed to work hard and play hard without ending any marriages or getting arrested for anything worse than unpaid moving violation tickets.

This song by the Silver Fox, Charlie Rich, had recently been at the top of the country charts, and still got a lot of air play. There were only a couple of house bands that tried to cover it, because it couldn't be done without a piano, and how many country bands have a piano? Funny thing is, I still cover it pretty damned well in a moving vehicle, and there's no piano in my Prius.

Wednesday Soundtrack
Can anybody play the drums?



I had already moved to Arkansas when I saw Tommy in 1975, but somehow it will always bring me back to playing pinball with Ned French, Nick Wyman and Steve Peterman in Briggs Hall in the Spring of 1971 when I should have been upstairs finishing some paper on the modern novel. Go figure.