Who's your daddy? Rachel's my daddy, sir!

Rachel Maddow (photo credit: S. Etelman)

 This blog post title is taken from the friend of a friend at a military school a number of years ago.  There were different squads, and the commanders of the various quads would make the plebes respond to various questions.  When seniors of the Charlie squad asked their plebes, "Who's your daddy?" the response (including a salute) had to be, "Charlie's my daddy, sir!" Since our entire audience was in thrall to Rachel Maddow on Saturday night, and she was there to discuss her book Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power, this title seemed quite appropriate.

Odyssey Staff with Rachel (photo credit: J Weissman)

Anyway, my own little bookstore, Odyssey Bookshop, played host to Rachel Maddow, in conjunction with the Five College Women's Studies Research Center, held at Chapin Auditorium on the campus of Mount Holyoke College. She performed to a sold-out audience of just over 1100 folks and she was, quite simply amazing.  I've rarely encountered a person who is so bright, so witty, and so able to engage in substantive discussion during a Q&A.  Ms. Maddow is also something of a native daughter to western Massachusetts, and most of the audience were looking upon her with a mix of pride and adoration, with not a few folks with more amorous attentions in mind.  I'm pretty sure that the audience members submitted multiple marriage proposals to her.  I won't name names, but there's at least one staff member who might be among them.

Flowers, candy, marriage proposals: All these were collected from fans on Saturday night