Gloria Steinem passed on September 2 at her home in New York. She was 92. I sat next to her once, for six hours.

No photo of the day exists. I had an AI make one. More on that below.

In 1993 I worked in General Books at the University Co-op on the Drag in Austin, and I ran the book signings. Douglas Coupland came through that year. So did Gloria Steinem. Same job. Very different crowd.

Her book was Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem. The paperback, $11.95. The Co-op price sticker on the back still says 01/13/93.

The setup was simple. She sat at a table. I sat next to her. I opened every book to the title page and slid it over. She signed it. I opened the next one. We did that for six hours.

The line of women and their daughters snaked through the whole store. Past the registers, past the magazine wall, back through fiction and around again. Mothers who had been reading her for twenty years. Daughters who were about to start.

At the end she signed mine. "To Joe Janisheck." That's what I went by back then. It took me a few more years to figure out it was fine to be an adult with a little kid's name.

It wasn't my first time at a table like that. Two years earlier, at a Waldenbooks in El Paso, Molly Ivins held court for four hours and then sat and talked with me for 45 minutes once the line thinned out. She signed my book too. Two of the sharpest women in America, and the job put me in the chair next to both of them.

The photo that doesn't exist

Not a single picture of that day is online. I didn't have a camera with me. If anything survives, it's in the Daily Texan archives, and I haven't found it yet.

So I did what you do in 2026. I gave an AI the details and had it make one. The table, the stack of books, me opening the next copy. It's not a photo of the event. It's a photo of my memory of it. The AI also stocked the shelves behind us with books from 2024, which is a fair reminder that it wasn't there either.

What I do have are real photos of the General Books floor from 1993, taken on different days. A couple of coworkers, the customer service desk, the magazine wall, the fiction shelves. That's where the line ran.

General Books at the University Co-op, 1993. Different days, same floor.

There is always one true inner voice. Trust it.

That line is on the back of the book. She spent sixty years saying it to anyone who would listen. One day in 1993, a store full of them lined up in Austin to say thank you in person. I got to hand her the books.

Rest in peace, Ms. Steinem.