We had Rose Styron come and speak at the Harvard College Human Rights Advocates general meeting last night, and I was bowled over by the stories she told us. This tiny, sweet, grandmotherly woman who looks so unassuming is one of the most amazing people I have ever met. And I got to six next to her!  Ahhhh!!!!

Highlights of the evening:

1. “I first met my good friend Gabriel Garcia Marquez when I was sent to retrieve the manuscripts Pablo Neruda had supposedly buried in concrete at this intersection…”

2. “We got an invitation to visit Cuba with our neighbors the Millers…” (of Arthur Miller fame)

3. “I was a good friend of Leonard Bernstein’s wife.”

4. “Teddy Kennedy insisted that I tell Henry Kissinger about my work [in Chile]…  Kissinger stuck out his hand, and I refused to shake it. There are pictures of me hunched over, refusing to shake his hand—that’s my claim to fame.”

5. “Our good friend the novelist Philip Roth..”

6. “We sat down, and the first thing Fidel Castro wanted to talk about was whether we believed life existed on another planet.”

7. “So there I sat, with Garcia Marquez doodling flowers in his notebook on one side and with Mr. Castro on my other side, talking about the life cycle of the (some endangered bird).”

8. BUT she’s not only baller because she can name drop like crazy and legitimately knows these people, and has amazing secret spy-work stories to tell, but because she has done so much AMAZING work with Amnesty International and PEN, the U.S. branch of the world’s oldest international literary and human rights organization. She’s also on the board of a number of other human rights NGOs.