Chris Bohjalian's Blog - Posts Tagged "cots"
Vermont pageant contestant walks the talk for homelessness
Someday a Vermonter is going to be crowned Miss America. And someday Paris Hilton is going to be governor of California, Lindsay Lohan is going to play Lady Macbeth, and Snooki Polizzi is going to be paid more than Toni Morrison to speak at Rutgers.
Okay, my bad on the snarky sarcasm. This spring Rutgers did pay Snooki more than they paid the 1993 Nobel laureate in literature. But you get my point.
“Vermont is definitely seen as an underdog in the Miss America competition,” Nydelis Ortiz told me. “No Vermonter has ever made the top 15. But I think it’s refreshing that we have opinions.” Ortiz, 21, would know. She was Miss Vermont USA 2010 in Donald Trump’s pageant. Now she will be competing in June to be Miss Vermont and represent our illustrious state in the Miss America competition in January 2012 in Las Vegas. (Trump’s pageant is separate from Miss America. The Miss America Organization is the world’s largest provider of scholarship assistance to young women.)
Ortiz is not your typical pageant contestant: No big scary pageant hair, no big scary pageant mom hovering, and she has a mind more interested in books than bathing suits. She graduated at the age of 20 from Castleton State College, plays the violin, and works as an accounting technician with the Department of Homeland Security in Williston, Vermont. Her immediate post-pageant goal is the Peace Corps; her longer term goal is an MBA and to work in international business. She lives with her family in Essex.
But what really separates her from so many other cookie-cutter contenders for the crown is this: When she was six years old, Burlington’s Committee on Temporary Shelter kept her and her mother and brother from winding up homeless. The three of them had just journeyed to the Green Mountains from San Juan, Puerto Rico, hoping to build a better life here. They landed in Burlington in July, but Ortiz still couldn’t get over how cold it was compared to Puerto Rico. Not long before they arrived, however, her mother had had a stroke and couldn’t work.
“COTS helped us to get back on our feet,” Ortiz recalls. “There was an affordable housing program that helped us find a place to live, the social worker found afterschool programs for my brother and me, and when my mother started to recover, they found her a part-time job – and then a full-time one.” (Ortiz’s mother eventually would make a full recovery and now works with Nydelis at Homeland Security.)
“I’m part of an outreach program where I work, and this winter when I was dropping off food at the [Chittenden] Emergency Food Shelf, it all came back to me that I had gone there as a little girl to get food,” she said.
Ortiz has not forgotten COTS. Two weeks from today, May 1, she will be participating in the three-mile COTS Walk in Burlington for the second time in her life, this time with other Miss Vermont contenders she is rounding up. “Everyone deserves a home,” she said firmly, and has made educating people about homelessness her personal pageant platform.
The goal of the COTS Walk this year is to raise $175,000, and the need is greater than ever. In addition to all of the homeless women and men COTS served in 2010, last year 111 families depended upon a COTS shelter. COTS helped another 450 families – each in some way reminiscent of the Ortiz family – remain in their homes.
Clearly the face of poverty is changing. And perhaps one way to open people’s eyes to how easy it is to wind up at the food shelf or the shelter is with a beauty queen from Vermont who has flirted with homelessness.
* * *
There is plenty of time to join Ortiz and easily 1,500 other Vermonters on the May 1 COTS Walk. To sign up and start recruiting pledges, simply visit www.cotsonline.org or call 540-3084, ext. 204.
(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on April 17, 2011. Chris's next novel, a ghost story called THE NIGHT STRANGERS, arrives on October 4, 2011.)
Okay, my bad on the snarky sarcasm. This spring Rutgers did pay Snooki more than they paid the 1993 Nobel laureate in literature. But you get my point.
“Vermont is definitely seen as an underdog in the Miss America competition,” Nydelis Ortiz told me. “No Vermonter has ever made the top 15. But I think it’s refreshing that we have opinions.” Ortiz, 21, would know. She was Miss Vermont USA 2010 in Donald Trump’s pageant. Now she will be competing in June to be Miss Vermont and represent our illustrious state in the Miss America competition in January 2012 in Las Vegas. (Trump’s pageant is separate from Miss America. The Miss America Organization is the world’s largest provider of scholarship assistance to young women.)
Ortiz is not your typical pageant contestant: No big scary pageant hair, no big scary pageant mom hovering, and she has a mind more interested in books than bathing suits. She graduated at the age of 20 from Castleton State College, plays the violin, and works as an accounting technician with the Department of Homeland Security in Williston, Vermont. Her immediate post-pageant goal is the Peace Corps; her longer term goal is an MBA and to work in international business. She lives with her family in Essex.
But what really separates her from so many other cookie-cutter contenders for the crown is this: When she was six years old, Burlington’s Committee on Temporary Shelter kept her and her mother and brother from winding up homeless. The three of them had just journeyed to the Green Mountains from San Juan, Puerto Rico, hoping to build a better life here. They landed in Burlington in July, but Ortiz still couldn’t get over how cold it was compared to Puerto Rico. Not long before they arrived, however, her mother had had a stroke and couldn’t work.
“COTS helped us to get back on our feet,” Ortiz recalls. “There was an affordable housing program that helped us find a place to live, the social worker found afterschool programs for my brother and me, and when my mother started to recover, they found her a part-time job – and then a full-time one.” (Ortiz’s mother eventually would make a full recovery and now works with Nydelis at Homeland Security.)
“I’m part of an outreach program where I work, and this winter when I was dropping off food at the [Chittenden] Emergency Food Shelf, it all came back to me that I had gone there as a little girl to get food,” she said.
Ortiz has not forgotten COTS. Two weeks from today, May 1, she will be participating in the three-mile COTS Walk in Burlington for the second time in her life, this time with other Miss Vermont contenders she is rounding up. “Everyone deserves a home,” she said firmly, and has made educating people about homelessness her personal pageant platform.
The goal of the COTS Walk this year is to raise $175,000, and the need is greater than ever. In addition to all of the homeless women and men COTS served in 2010, last year 111 families depended upon a COTS shelter. COTS helped another 450 families – each in some way reminiscent of the Ortiz family – remain in their homes.
Clearly the face of poverty is changing. And perhaps one way to open people’s eyes to how easy it is to wind up at the food shelf or the shelter is with a beauty queen from Vermont who has flirted with homelessness.
* * *
There is plenty of time to join Ortiz and easily 1,500 other Vermonters on the May 1 COTS Walk. To sign up and start recruiting pledges, simply visit www.cotsonline.org or call 540-3084, ext. 204.
(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on April 17, 2011. Chris's next novel, a ghost story called THE NIGHT STRANGERS, arrives on October 4, 2011.)
Co-Hosts for COTS: Seth and Whoopi and Billy better watch out
It was two weeks ago tonight that many millions of us watched Kristen Chenoweth ask movie stars on the Oscar red carpet, “Who are you wearing?” I’ve always found the phrasing of that question a little creepy – a little too “Silence of the Lambs,” if you get my drift. Then we got to watch Seth MacFarlane open his first gig as Oscar host by singing “We saw your boobs” – also creepy, but mostly because of what it says about us, not him.
I am rehashing a two-week-old news story, the 85th Academy Awards, because a week from Wednesday night, March 20, I am co-hosting a gala right here in Vermont with my great friend, Stephen Kiernan. It’s the 30th anniversary gala and fundraiser for Burlington’s Committee on Temporary Shelter at the waterfront Hilton, and I was watching MacFarlane carefully so that Kiernan and I would know how to gracefully move the evening along. You know, how to hit that perfect vibe between Billy Crystal and Michelle Obama. (Incidentally, after watching the First Lady dancing with Fallon and presenting the Oscar for Best Picture, I want our current FLOTUS to be our next POTUS.)
Here is what I took away from the night.
It will be important to remind people of the spectacularly important work that COTS does – both sheltering the homeless in our midst and preventing thousands of others from losing their homes. Between 2008 and 2012, the worst of the recent recession, COTS helped over 1,300 Vermont households – and 1,383 children – remain in their homes. There are a lot of reasons why I’m a big fan of COTS, but right there are 1,300 of them.
Another lesson from the Academy Awards? Neither Kiernan nor I should try and rock a pair of Jack Nicholson shades. Only Nicholson can get away with wearing sunglasses at night. And, along those lines, we shouldn’t ask anyone what they’re wearing – unless they’re Bjork and they’re wearing that swan. Besides, this isn’t a black tie affair. Attire is everyday business. If someone shows up dressed like Charlize Theron or Kristen Stewart, we’ll simply ask if they’re in the right spot. (On the other hand, if someone shows up with Kristen Stewart’s hair, we will also ask if she needs a comb. Bella had serious bed-head on Oscar night.)
Kiernan is an award-winning journalist whose first novel arrives this summer and the former editorial page editor of this very paper. He has the heavy lifting at the gala, because he’s giving the keynote address. I merely have to sing, “We saw your boobs.” I’m kidding, of course. We’re bringing in a children’s choir for that little ditty. I merely have to repress my inner curmudgeon and say clever things like, “Thank you all for coming. Drive home safe – and be thankful you actually have homes. Not everyone does.”
See how easy that was? Both clever and true.
Incidentally, there will be an auction with some terrific items. Among them? The chance to be a character in my 2014 novel – which is set in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom and in downtown Burlington. But, as the old New York State lottery ads reminded us, you have to be in it to win it, and to be in it you have to be at the COTS gala. So, please join Kiernan and me. It’s a great cause and I promise I won’t say anything that Seth MacFarlane did on Oscar night.
I will say things that are much, much worse.
* * *
IF YOU GO
What: The COTS 30th Anniversary Gala
When: Wednesday, March 20. Cocktails at 5, dinner and auction at 6:30
Where: The Hilton, 60 Battery Street
How much: $130 per person
Visit www.cotsonline.org or call (802) 540-3084 (ext. 207) to reserve your seat
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press. Chris’s new novel, “The Light in the Ruins,” arrives on July 9.)
I am rehashing a two-week-old news story, the 85th Academy Awards, because a week from Wednesday night, March 20, I am co-hosting a gala right here in Vermont with my great friend, Stephen Kiernan. It’s the 30th anniversary gala and fundraiser for Burlington’s Committee on Temporary Shelter at the waterfront Hilton, and I was watching MacFarlane carefully so that Kiernan and I would know how to gracefully move the evening along. You know, how to hit that perfect vibe between Billy Crystal and Michelle Obama. (Incidentally, after watching the First Lady dancing with Fallon and presenting the Oscar for Best Picture, I want our current FLOTUS to be our next POTUS.)
Here is what I took away from the night.
It will be important to remind people of the spectacularly important work that COTS does – both sheltering the homeless in our midst and preventing thousands of others from losing their homes. Between 2008 and 2012, the worst of the recent recession, COTS helped over 1,300 Vermont households – and 1,383 children – remain in their homes. There are a lot of reasons why I’m a big fan of COTS, but right there are 1,300 of them.
Another lesson from the Academy Awards? Neither Kiernan nor I should try and rock a pair of Jack Nicholson shades. Only Nicholson can get away with wearing sunglasses at night. And, along those lines, we shouldn’t ask anyone what they’re wearing – unless they’re Bjork and they’re wearing that swan. Besides, this isn’t a black tie affair. Attire is everyday business. If someone shows up dressed like Charlize Theron or Kristen Stewart, we’ll simply ask if they’re in the right spot. (On the other hand, if someone shows up with Kristen Stewart’s hair, we will also ask if she needs a comb. Bella had serious bed-head on Oscar night.)
Kiernan is an award-winning journalist whose first novel arrives this summer and the former editorial page editor of this very paper. He has the heavy lifting at the gala, because he’s giving the keynote address. I merely have to sing, “We saw your boobs.” I’m kidding, of course. We’re bringing in a children’s choir for that little ditty. I merely have to repress my inner curmudgeon and say clever things like, “Thank you all for coming. Drive home safe – and be thankful you actually have homes. Not everyone does.”
See how easy that was? Both clever and true.
Incidentally, there will be an auction with some terrific items. Among them? The chance to be a character in my 2014 novel – which is set in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom and in downtown Burlington. But, as the old New York State lottery ads reminded us, you have to be in it to win it, and to be in it you have to be at the COTS gala. So, please join Kiernan and me. It’s a great cause and I promise I won’t say anything that Seth MacFarlane did on Oscar night.
I will say things that are much, much worse.
* * *
IF YOU GO
What: The COTS 30th Anniversary Gala
When: Wednesday, March 20. Cocktails at 5, dinner and auction at 6:30
Where: The Hilton, 60 Battery Street
How much: $130 per person
Visit www.cotsonline.org or call (802) 540-3084 (ext. 207) to reserve your seat
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press. Chris’s new novel, “The Light in the Ruins,” arrives on July 9.)
'Tis the season: On Tuesday I'll be dialing for dollars
There is absolutely nothing in the world I like more than calling strangers at their homes over dinner and asking for money. There is just no faster way to make friends and influence people.
And so I might be calling you on Tuesday night – especially if you live in Vermont. I will be dialing for dollars for Burlington’s Committee on Temporary Shelter – a.k.a., COTS – volunteering to pick up the phone because the group does more important work in a day than I will do in my lifetime. Also, they have really good snacks. And they’re going to give me a bell. I get to ring the bell whenever some stranger on the other end of the line agrees to make a tax-deductible contribution to the homeless shelter. I’ve volunteered to make calls for the organization three or four times in the past, so I have a pretty good sense of what will happen.
A few people will ask me to spell my name, either because telemarketers have been driving them crazy or because they have read one of my books and want to see if it really is me.
A few people will honestly – and in great detail – tell me how they are when I ask, either because telemarketers have been driving them crazy or they are really (and I mean really) lonely.
And a few people will start crying on the phone, because they have given to COTS in the past, but simply cannot afford to make a contribution this year. Maybe they have been laid off at work. Maybe someone in their family has grown ill and the cost of care has decimated their savings. Maybe they are one paycheck away from being homeless themselves. Make no mistake: It’s rough out there.
How rough? One hundred and forty schoolchildren in Chittenden County were homeless in October. Nearly a thousand people descended upon the COTS daytime shelter last year. One hundred and seventeen families stayed in one emergency shelter or another – and almost always there were more on the waiting list.
I’m not as good as some of the volunteers who will be working with me on Tuesday night, but I’ve been a big fan of COTS for many years and so I am capable of getting pretty passionate. I’ve stayed focused when people have reminded me how much I must hate it when telemarketers call me at my home, and when they’ve asked me for my phone number.
But the thing is, I’m not a robocall. You can talk to me. Likewise, I’m not going to yell at you. I’m not going to scream about socialists or the Tea Party. I’m not even going to try and sell you a calling plan for your cell phone or a crate of Omaha steaks. I am simply going to ask you to do what I do: Be thankful that I have a roof over my head tonight by helping someone who might not.
So, if you hear from me on Tuesday, be gentle. Be kind. And feel free to tell me how you really are when I ask.
* * *
The annual COTS phone-a-thon begins tomorrow night and concludes on December 11. The goal is $175 thousand to help the shelter weather the winter – a nightmare season for the homeless or those flirting with homelessness. In addition, COTS is one of the “Free Press” Giving Season charities this month, along with the Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf, the Warmth Program, and Jump (the Joint Urban Ministry Project). Trust me: Helping a family have food, shelter, and heat on Christmas morning will give you a much deeper glow than unwrapping a boxed set of “The Real Housewives of New Jersey” on Blu-ray and DVD.
Finally, if you want to call COTS before we call you, here is the number: (802) 864-7402.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on December 1, 2013. Chris’s most recent novel, “The Light in the Ruins,” was published in July.)
And so I might be calling you on Tuesday night – especially if you live in Vermont. I will be dialing for dollars for Burlington’s Committee on Temporary Shelter – a.k.a., COTS – volunteering to pick up the phone because the group does more important work in a day than I will do in my lifetime. Also, they have really good snacks. And they’re going to give me a bell. I get to ring the bell whenever some stranger on the other end of the line agrees to make a tax-deductible contribution to the homeless shelter. I’ve volunteered to make calls for the organization three or four times in the past, so I have a pretty good sense of what will happen.
A few people will ask me to spell my name, either because telemarketers have been driving them crazy or because they have read one of my books and want to see if it really is me.
A few people will honestly – and in great detail – tell me how they are when I ask, either because telemarketers have been driving them crazy or they are really (and I mean really) lonely.
And a few people will start crying on the phone, because they have given to COTS in the past, but simply cannot afford to make a contribution this year. Maybe they have been laid off at work. Maybe someone in their family has grown ill and the cost of care has decimated their savings. Maybe they are one paycheck away from being homeless themselves. Make no mistake: It’s rough out there.
How rough? One hundred and forty schoolchildren in Chittenden County were homeless in October. Nearly a thousand people descended upon the COTS daytime shelter last year. One hundred and seventeen families stayed in one emergency shelter or another – and almost always there were more on the waiting list.
I’m not as good as some of the volunteers who will be working with me on Tuesday night, but I’ve been a big fan of COTS for many years and so I am capable of getting pretty passionate. I’ve stayed focused when people have reminded me how much I must hate it when telemarketers call me at my home, and when they’ve asked me for my phone number.
But the thing is, I’m not a robocall. You can talk to me. Likewise, I’m not going to yell at you. I’m not going to scream about socialists or the Tea Party. I’m not even going to try and sell you a calling plan for your cell phone or a crate of Omaha steaks. I am simply going to ask you to do what I do: Be thankful that I have a roof over my head tonight by helping someone who might not.
So, if you hear from me on Tuesday, be gentle. Be kind. And feel free to tell me how you really are when I ask.
* * *
The annual COTS phone-a-thon begins tomorrow night and concludes on December 11. The goal is $175 thousand to help the shelter weather the winter – a nightmare season for the homeless or those flirting with homelessness. In addition, COTS is one of the “Free Press” Giving Season charities this month, along with the Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf, the Warmth Program, and Jump (the Joint Urban Ministry Project). Trust me: Helping a family have food, shelter, and heat on Christmas morning will give you a much deeper glow than unwrapping a boxed set of “The Real Housewives of New Jersey” on Blu-ray and DVD.
Finally, if you want to call COTS before we call you, here is the number: (802) 864-7402.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on December 1, 2013. Chris’s most recent novel, “The Light in the Ruins,” was published in July.)
Want to change the world? Take a walk.
When Hannah Woodruff was in seventh grade, she and her classmates at the Crossett Brook Middle School in Duxbury, Vermont were given a rather ambitious assignment: they were each supposed to change the world. Or, at the very least, they were supposed to try. Hannah decided that her individual project would involve the homeless.
This was back in the autumn of 2006 when she was 12 years old. Now she is a 20-year-old neuroscience major at the University of Vermont, and one result of her efforts is a nine-year relationship with the Committee on Temporary Shelter that includes both her younger sister, Alice (a freshman at UVM), and her mother, Kate Finley Woodruff, a lecturer there. Over the years, the three of them have volunteered for COTS in a variety of ways, and participated in the annual COTS Walk – which is coming up on May 3.
This spring, Kate is teaching a course in community development and applied economics that she is hoping will ripple well beyond the 16 students in her class. The goal? Use a $5,000 grant from Cabot Creamery Cooperative to raise awareness of the homeless across the UVM campus. The course is called the Cabot Community Marketing Challenge. The tactics include guerrilla marketing such as “static clings” that stick to mirrors to show that anyone can be the face of homelessness, as well as more traditional efforts such as posters, bus ads, and social media.
“It costs about $800 to prevent a family from becoming homeless,” Kate said, “but as much as $10,000 to get that family back into housing. So we are focusing on prevention.”
In addition, some of her students will be walking the talk at the COTS Walk three weeks from today.
I’m a big fan of the COTS Walk. It’s not simply that it’s a very pleasant couple of miles through Burlington, Vermont and raises somewhere around $180 thousand annually for the shelter. It’s not even the great company of 1,500 other people walking with you for the same cause. It’s not even the Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream you get to savor when you finish.
It’s that you actually walk through the different COTS shelters on the journey. You see the insides of the men’s and women’s shelters, the day station, and the different family shelters. (Yes, homelessness is so extensive in the Burlington area that we have multiple family shelters.) The face of homelessness? It’s often a child. Last month, COTS launched its #172VT campaign, because it counted 172 homeless children in our community.
And for Hannah Woodruff, the walk brings her back to the family shelters where she initially volunteered with her mother when she was in middle school. “I was shy at first,” she recalls. “I listened a lot. What got to me was seeing the kids there my age. A couple of times there was a girl only slightly younger than I was, and together we decorated flowerpots. They were going to take them to their apartment because they were about to move out of the shelter. That felt really good to me, especially because it was someone I could relate to.”
You can get a small taste of the power and the poignancy of moments like that on the COTS Walk. “Homelessness is not an abstract concept,” Hannah added. “It’s a real thing and involves real people. It’s important to remember that there are people behind the word.”
So how do you change the world? You decorate flowerpots in the spring with homeless kids at the local shelter. Or you bring gingerbread houses there – as well as the Skittles, the chocolates, and the peppermints so they can transform them into fairy tale mansions. Or you volunteer at the annual phone-a-thon. Or you teach a college course in how to raise the visibility of the homeless.
Or on May 3, a spring Sunday afternoon, you join your neighbors and walk the streets of Burlington on their behalf.
* * *
To register for the COTS Walk or obtain your pledge sheets, visit www.cotsonline.org and click on “COTS Walk.” Questions? Call Gillian at (802) 864-7402.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on April 12, 2015. Chris's most recent novel, "Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands," arrives in paperback next month.)
This was back in the autumn of 2006 when she was 12 years old. Now she is a 20-year-old neuroscience major at the University of Vermont, and one result of her efforts is a nine-year relationship with the Committee on Temporary Shelter that includes both her younger sister, Alice (a freshman at UVM), and her mother, Kate Finley Woodruff, a lecturer there. Over the years, the three of them have volunteered for COTS in a variety of ways, and participated in the annual COTS Walk – which is coming up on May 3.
This spring, Kate is teaching a course in community development and applied economics that she is hoping will ripple well beyond the 16 students in her class. The goal? Use a $5,000 grant from Cabot Creamery Cooperative to raise awareness of the homeless across the UVM campus. The course is called the Cabot Community Marketing Challenge. The tactics include guerrilla marketing such as “static clings” that stick to mirrors to show that anyone can be the face of homelessness, as well as more traditional efforts such as posters, bus ads, and social media.
“It costs about $800 to prevent a family from becoming homeless,” Kate said, “but as much as $10,000 to get that family back into housing. So we are focusing on prevention.”
In addition, some of her students will be walking the talk at the COTS Walk three weeks from today.
I’m a big fan of the COTS Walk. It’s not simply that it’s a very pleasant couple of miles through Burlington, Vermont and raises somewhere around $180 thousand annually for the shelter. It’s not even the great company of 1,500 other people walking with you for the same cause. It’s not even the Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream you get to savor when you finish.
It’s that you actually walk through the different COTS shelters on the journey. You see the insides of the men’s and women’s shelters, the day station, and the different family shelters. (Yes, homelessness is so extensive in the Burlington area that we have multiple family shelters.) The face of homelessness? It’s often a child. Last month, COTS launched its #172VT campaign, because it counted 172 homeless children in our community.
And for Hannah Woodruff, the walk brings her back to the family shelters where she initially volunteered with her mother when she was in middle school. “I was shy at first,” she recalls. “I listened a lot. What got to me was seeing the kids there my age. A couple of times there was a girl only slightly younger than I was, and together we decorated flowerpots. They were going to take them to their apartment because they were about to move out of the shelter. That felt really good to me, especially because it was someone I could relate to.”
You can get a small taste of the power and the poignancy of moments like that on the COTS Walk. “Homelessness is not an abstract concept,” Hannah added. “It’s a real thing and involves real people. It’s important to remember that there are people behind the word.”
So how do you change the world? You decorate flowerpots in the spring with homeless kids at the local shelter. Or you bring gingerbread houses there – as well as the Skittles, the chocolates, and the peppermints so they can transform them into fairy tale mansions. Or you volunteer at the annual phone-a-thon. Or you teach a college course in how to raise the visibility of the homeless.
Or on May 3, a spring Sunday afternoon, you join your neighbors and walk the streets of Burlington on their behalf.
* * *
To register for the COTS Walk or obtain your pledge sheets, visit www.cotsonline.org and click on “COTS Walk.” Questions? Call Gillian at (802) 864-7402.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on April 12, 2015. Chris's most recent novel, "Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands," arrives in paperback next month.)
