Patton Oswalt seems to have had exceptionally good time wandering downtown Savannah — and tweeting about it along the way. With over two million Twitter followers, Oswalt gets responses to tweets immediately, and in large numbers. You can click on through any of the embedded tweets below to see his profile, of course.

Anne Rice relies heavily on Facebook — her tweets are automatically sent when she posts to her page, which you can also visit by clicking through the embedded media below.

Savannah is the southern version of Twin Peaks. Beautiful. Good coffee. Great pie. But there's a brooding twilight underneath it all.

— Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) February 14, 2015

OH at the bar here at Paccis: "Savannah is Clean New Orleans." I, um…agree?

— Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) February 14, 2015

Only @pattonoswalt could get by with a heroin & a weed joke in a Lutheran Church in Savannah. #SavannahBookFestival pic.twitter.com/LIf5tN9E4d

— David (@RockNRollCPA) February 15, 2015

@pattonoswalt pic.twitter.com/9nYPY9wOT6

— jenny hawkes (@jenny5537) February 14, 2015

Welcome to Savannah, @tavissmiley! Thank you for joining us at the #Savannah Book Festival today! pic.twitter.com/4Och4ZksYp

— Visit Savannah (@VisitSavannah) February 14, 2015

Loving @SavBookFest #Savannah, my #Aretha #Respect talk sandwiched between @JohnWDean and @pattonoswalt.

— David Ritz (@davidritz) February 14, 2015

We are in Savannah….I've already glimpsed magnificent old Southern homes, glorious oak trees and Spanish Moss!… http://t.co/2BWqEmuvI2

— Anne Rice (@AnneRiceAuthor) February 13, 2015

Whoever suggested the Sentient Bean on Park? Thank you. #SavannahBookFestival pic.twitter.com/NRvCji17dT

— Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) February 13, 2015

Settled on Pacci. The Tuscan white bean soup is heavenly & the wine list is solid. #SavannahBookFestival pic.twitter.com/562I2GcSUb

— Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) February 14, 2015

I already posted some thoughts and a lot of pics of Al Gore’s rather remarkable appearance at Trinity United Methodist Church.

I was especially taken by the visuals of two author talks I attended in the downstairs sculpture gallery at the Telfair Academy. I’ll add that the authors down there maybe needed a bit more light on them — most of the light was concentrated as it usually is on the art.

So here are a couple of not-as-clear-as-they-should-be shots of Susanna Sonnenberg, author of She Matters: A Life in Friendships, and J.R. Moehringer, author of the new novel Sutton, about the life of legendary bank robber Willie Sutton.

I love the juxtaposition of the authors with the dying Gaul sculpture and the various paintings behind them, especially the beautiful Gari Melchers work acquired just last year.

And the crowd shot is of Edith Stanley, the news researcher who assisted Moehringer on his Pulitzer Prize winning series in the L.A. Times about Gee’s Bend. I caught the crowd’s reaction at the moment when Stanley mentioned that the L.A. Times editors, in giving her some background on the writer, alerted her that Moehringer was a “hunk”. A nice moment, and pretty clear evidence of the fun and levity of many of the presentations.

And there’s a shot here of Griff and Cheryl Day, who had a crowd of about 100 to listen to them talk about their bakery Back in the Day and their recent Back in the Day Bakery Cookbook.

That observation probably comes as little surprise to either Gore’s supporters or detractors.

The former Vice President and immensely powerful cultural figure spoke for about an hour Saturday morning at the Savannah Book Festival. Gore’s talk at Trinity United Methodist Church was broadcast live via C-SPAN’s Book TV, but I’m not sure viewers would have gotten the full effect of the activist and author’s well-honed public presence. The 64-year old Gore — a solid, fairly nimble guy — spent most of the hour standing on one side or the other of the pulpit — gesticulating, pointing, waving, using his posture and hands to emphasize his words. After a gracious and short introduction by Savannah’s Howard Morrison, Gore talked his way through the main points in his new book The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change. Along the way, he told stories from his early days in politics, told a few jokes (one of the biggest laughs came when he said he considered using the name Blood & Gore for an investment company that he founded with David Blood), and ultimately expressed passionate confidence in America’s future.

If you had been watching C-SPAN without the sound, you would likely have been wondering how the network ended up broadcasting a long sermon by a southern Baptist preacher.

I was repeatedly struck by the choices Gore has made. He’s an immensely wealthy man — with an estimated net worth of $300 million — and could obviously be doing plenty of other things with his time than writing books, crusading against climate change, and addressing an audience of 500 or so in Savannah, Georgia.

I took a lot of notes. In this post I’ll briefly touch on each of the six drivers of global change that Gore discussed.

I didn’t know quite what to expect from the talk, but I came away very impressed with Gore’s ability to synthesize various trends and to articulate a broader vision in clear, precise language.

Driver #1: Earth Inc.

Here Gore is talking about our still-new “interconnected global economy”. He noted correctly that jobs are not returning in this recovery as quickly as they used to after recessions — and he also correctly noted that we saw the same pattern after the 2001 recession. The data suggest not only outsourcing, but also fundamental changes in productivity because of technology. Gore calls this “robosourcing”. It’s a real phenomenon, and not one we should lightly ignore. With so many more tasks capable of being done via automation, where will the jobs be?

Driver #2: The Emergence of the Global Mind

There’s no particularly great insight in saying that the interconnectedness of knowledge is transforming our lives, but Gore brought a number of useful nuances and distinctions to the table. He noted that we’re not just seeing “instantaneous connections” of thoughts and feelings between people, but also between people and the technology itself.

He emphasized the use of cookies to track online behavior.

While noting that most of the activity with cookies is benign, Gore also used the phrase “stalker economy”.

Driver #3: Power in the Balance

Gore believes that the U.S. is the only nation capable of providing world leadership — and he’s probably right in that. China lacks the moral authority to do so despite its huge size. Gore noted that China will have the world’s largest economy soon, but he didn’t state something really obvious and important: with about 4 times the population of the U.S., China should have the world’s largest economy.

Gore then pivoted a bit: “Our democracy has been hacked.” He made no mention of the history of the Supreme Court decision in 2000 that made George W. Bush president, but focused on “big money” in politics. The crowd was quite passionate in their appreciation of this part of his talk, but I thought it was one of the weakest sections, relying heavily on boiler-plate political rhetoric.

“We’ve got good people up there that are now trapped in a bad system,” Gore said. He talked about reversing Citizens United and focused heavily on the role of TV advertising and the anonymity afforded massive political advertising campaigns.

But the 2012 election cycle showed that while organizations can spend endless amounts on TV ads, voters aren’t so easily swayed. Gore’s emphasis on TV largely ignored his earlier points about interconnectedness; it all felt, well, so 20th century.

At the end of this section, Gore did note the power of individual bloggers and other promising developments for democracy, but he did not give these adequate weight.

Driver #4: Outgrowth

The world is adding about a billion new people every 13 to 14 years. This has created increasing strain on natural resources. This was a strong and provocative part of the talk.

“Growth has become the holy grail,” Gore said as he launched into an interesting discussion of what we mean by “growth”. He noted the failings of many measures of growth. GDP, for example, leaves out a number of crucial “externalities” — including negative ones like the costs of pollution and of income disparity, as well as positive ones like the long-term economic impacts of investments in education, medicine, and the arts.

He noted that the six heirs of the Walton family have a combined net worth greater than the combined wealth of the poorest 100 million Americans.

Driver #5: The Reinvention of Life and Death

Here Gore is talking about the “revolution” in biology, genetics, and various forms of molecular manipulation. He specifically mentioned 3-D printing.

“We’re now in charge of evolution,” he said. He noted that new technologies would bring “blessings” but said that we had not yet acquired the necessary wisdom to handle all of this new knowledge.

Driver #6: The Edge

Gore finished by focusing on the “climate crisis”. Many of Gore’s detractors simply refuse to accept that the climate is changing and that human activity plays a role. There are legitimate scientists with a wide range of views on this subject, but the consensus has been growing. I don’t know how so many online commentators turned themselves into climate experts, but in a matter of years or a few decades we’ll likely be at a point when climate change cannot be denied.

Gore said that we treat our atmosphere like “an open sewer” and pointed to media failings: we can read ample coverage of a stranded cruise ship and plenty of details about Dorner’s rampage, but we don’t get enough news about the issues that matter the most. Gore noted that no questions at any of the presidential debates were asked about climate change.

As Gore built to his powerful conclusion, he talked about “the world we are handing off to our children and grandchildren,” he invoked Aristotle’s belief that the end of a thing defines its nature, and he passionately said that “we as human beings have the capacity to rise to great challenges.”

I especially appreciated Gore’s invocation of this passage from Lincoln’s December 1862 message to Congress: “The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise — with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.”

And here’s a collection of photos of the many moods of Al Gore, public speaker (click for even larger versions):

The 6th annual festival — scheduled for Feb. 14-17 — includes special appearances by Dave Barry, Bobby Deen, James Patterson, Gregg Allman, and David Baldacci. But perhaps most impressive about the long weekend is the lineup of presentations on Saturday at six venues clustered around Telfair Square. Click here for the full schedule.

The author appearances at Trinity United Methodist Church, for example, kick off with NBC host and correspondent Hoda Kotb at 9 a.m. and Al Gore at 10:15 a.m. I’ve heard some moaning and groaning about Gore’s appearance, but, really, how many times does a freakin’ former Vice President show up to give a free talk? And the many who don’t want to hear Gore discuss his new book The Future have five other options at that time, including Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award winner Isabel Wilkerson.

For the last couple of days, I’ve been vaguely plotting my course for Saturday’s festival, and I’m compelled to add that the SBF website needs to be more user friendly. For those trying to plan ahead, it’s cumbersome to jump from the detailed schedule to the author pages. A festival of this scale and ambition should have more options for online navigation.

Among the authors I’d particularly like to see and hear:

• Novelist T.C. Boyle. His comic writing is simply tremendous, and I can’t imagine that he wouldn’t be interesting to hear in person. (1:30 p.m. in the Telfair rotunda)
• Leonard Pitts, Jr. He’s a longtime columnist for the Miami Herald and is interesting on every subject. But I’ll get to hear him on Friday at Armstrong, so I might see someone else during that time slot. (Neises Auditorium at the Jepson at 4)
• Paula McClain‘s The Paris Wife is about Ernest Hemingway and his wife Hadley. (Neises Auditorium at 11:30)
• Colm Tóibín has twice been on the short list for the Booker Prize. (Telfair rotunda at 9 a.m.)
• Savannah resident and SCAD prof Kevin McCarey will talk about Islands Under Fire: the Improbable Quest to Save the Corals of Puerto Rico. (Jepson boardroom at 11:30)
• Gary Wills will talk about Why Priests? A Failed Tradition. (Trinity UMC at 4)

And there are obviously some overlaps even in that relatively short list from the 34 authors appearing during the day on Saturday. That group includes a fascinating mixof locals too: Griff & Cheryl Day, Jane Fishman, Jim Morekis, Mark Murphy, and Kimberly Ergul and Holley Jaakkola.

So it’s going to be a day of trade-offs and really tough choices. And, honestly, I need more time to study the lineup.

In its ongoing evolution, the SBF has made a couple of choices that I hope will one day be reconsidered. There are no poets in this year’s big lineup, and I wish there was still a way for some local literary organizations to have a clear presence.

The SBF has already gotten some great coverage and is sure to get lots more.

The extensive Savannah Morning News coverage can be found here.

C-SPAN’s Book TV will be on hand.

Connect Savannah has already published an interview with Al Gore and an interview with Gregg Allman. Connect editor Jim Morekis has also used his weekly column for some very entertaining Shameless self-promotion.

The big festival day on Saturday is free, and tickets for special events can be purchased online.

Again, this is just the 6th SBF. This would be an impressive lineup for an event that had been established decades ago.

To a list that already includes celebrity authors James Patterson, David Baldacci, T.C. Boyle, Dave Barry, Jeff Kinney, Bobby Deen and Gregg Allman, we can add another name — Al Gore.

The former vice president and Nobel Peace Prize winner will speak at the 2013 Savannah Book Festival on Feb. 16 at the Trinity United Methodist Church in Telfair Square, organizers announced today.

The most remarkable thing about this addition is that Gore won’t be doing a special appearance — he’ll fill the 10:15 a.m. slot at Trinity on Saturday, February 16th, as similar sessions with other authors are conducted at nearby venues.

Random House will publish Gore’s new book The Future at the end of this month.

There’s much more in Linda Sickler’s piece in the SMN today.