Shambhala Publications

I went to a downtown Boston hotel yesterday afternoon to meet Kendra Crossen Burroughs, who has been with the Shambhala Publications for twenty years and was the Shambhala editor for recent Chogyam Trungpa publishing projects, including THE COLLECTED WORKS OF CHOGYAM TRUNGPA and THE SANITY WE ARE BORN WITH. I've worked with Kendra for many years but had never met her. We have exchanged hundreds of e-mails and many phone calls. Kendra lives some distance from Boston and had come to down last weekend to attend an anniversary party for her and Jonathan Green, a Vice President at Shambhala who is responsible for foreign rights sales and the contracts for Chogyam Trungpa's books -- as well as for many other authors. Kendra was dressed in an elegant black silk top and pants with a beautiful fresh water pearl necklace. A small, intense and radiant person: I was delighted to meet her at last. After chatting for about a half hour, we were picked up at the hotel by Shambhala's managing editor, I believe, Dave O'Neal and we drove from Boston to the Decordova Museum in Lincoln, Mass., for the celebratory dinner and toasts. It was a great setting for a party. I saw many old friends and colleagues and met many new employees and significant others of Shambhala folks. The bar featured ginger martinis -- I had only one! Dinner was delicious and I was happy to be seated at Kendra's table, where I could also talk with Jonathan and his wife, Sam and Hazel Bercholz, and the president of Shambhala, Peter Turner, and his wife. Conversation ranged from publishing plans, how we all met, the early days at Shambhala, to finding your family history in Cape Breton Nova Scotia. Peter Turner had arranged for color brochures featuring the many accomplishments of Kendra and Jonathan to be printed and placed at each seat. I felt so grateful to these people and to the company as a whole for the longstanding commitment to publishing quality books, including those of Chogyam Trungpa. After a night of muted revelry, toasts and the presentation of gifts, we dispersed. This morning I'm at Shambhala Pubs using a vacant desk here to post my blog. Soon to have coffee and discuss future projects with Kendra. This afternoon, I hop a plane to Denver for the next leg of the tour.