Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

Right now I am grumpy and worried about where a few of my files have gone; it's one of those recursive things where I have to find something to tell me what piece of the Time Machine backups might contain the files I actually need. But that will blend into lots of other memories of minor computer issues, and I want to remember hanging out with people.

Prologue was a small pre-Worldcon relaxacon in Renton, Washington; conveniently, a bus that starts two blocks from my home stops near the con hotel, so cattitude and I decided to save money and enjoy sleeping in our own beds and such by commuting. Friday was, well, wet and messy (steady rain mixed with thunderstorms, leading to lots of traffic problems), and we got soaked walking from the bus to the hotel, but Mary Kay Kare lent me dry socks, which helped a lot.

We had dinner Friday with Mary Kay; Nina Horvath, the TAFF delegate; and Jeff and Liz Copeland, who it turns out also live in Bellevue (though not in our neighborhood). Both the conversation and the food was good; I wouldn't go out of my way for Lemongrass Grill, but it was better than the con program/local guide led me to expect. Since Nina is from Austria, I donated some euros that have been sitting in my dresser for a dozen years to TAFF, because at some point it feels silly to hang onto cash because "I might go back sometime." If I do visit the eurozone again, I'll almost certainly want more than 15 euros in cash.

Saturday I woke up early and worked out, and then we took it easy for a bit before going to the Farmers' Market. So we now have plenty of blueberries again, and some carrots and peaches. I also got a chocolate orange cupcake, because I'd thought about one buying two weeks earlier and then got pie instead. We took the bus to Renton after lunch, and got there around 2:00. Cattitude spotted a blackberry patch next to the sidewalk, once it wasn't pouring rain, so we could actually see, and stepping aside to gather a few berries didn't seem absurd.

We talked about a bunch of things, including the sort of catching up with old acquaintances that involves a few-sentence summary of the last n years of my and their lives; complications of working freelance; the role of odor in bee-flower coevolution; durian; and even a bit about the Hugos. I was wondering, today, whether the durian-flavored candy in the con suite was intended to be eaten, or only as a conversation starter. Cattitude went to one program item, Charlie Stross's reading, but the only programming that appealed to me was at 11 a.m. Sunday. The "old acquaintance" bit included a few variations on "I think we met at the Vegas Corflu" [more than two decades ago] and "I recognize your name from print [i.e., fanzines]."

On Saturday, Jane Hawkins was making fudge on a hotplate in the con suite, and wanted someone to guard it while she went outside "to smoke some tobacco." Welcome to Washington: I'm not sure whether that was admitting to her vices, or reassuring me that it would be fine for her to come back and deal with extremely hot liquid. (My task wasn't to stir, it was to make sure that nobody touched the fudge, for safety reasons.)

Cattitude and I had dinner with Sandra Bond and Aileen Foreman; Aileen has been living in the Seattle area for the last few months, but is moving [back] to Las Vegas right after Sasquan, and we hadn't touched base until now. that, again, was a good if not spectacular meal: a "roadhouse" with lots of pork and beef on the menu, but the crabcakes sounded good, and were. I was glad of the chance to eat with Sandra, on top of having her visit us for a bit on Thursday.

By the time we left to catch the next-to-last bus home, I was fading. On our way to the bus, I decided that it had been fun, but I'd had enough for one weekend. (I had hoped to get more useful things done today, but so it goes.)

Summary: a lot of time hanging out in the con suite chatting with people, some of whom I'd met before.

I'm just back from Farthing Party, papersky's small science fiction convention/large party in Montreal. cattitude and I had a wonderful time, and I think julian_tiger is in the process of forgiving us.

( long con/travel write-up, in no particular order )

cattitude and I spent a week in Montreal, ending with the Farthing Party; adrian_turtle joined us Wednesday evening. ( touristy stuff here )

The three of us had dinner Thursday night with mrissa (who I've been getting to know mostly via email, though Adrian and I met her briefly in May) and her partner timprov. We went to an all-you-can-eat "Asian fusion" place, which was decent east Asian food (it mostly felt Chinese, but there were Vietnamese-style summer rolls and Thai noodles). That was where I discovered that there is cooked spinach I'm willing, even happy, to eat, because it doesn't have the slimy texture spinach usually gets when cooked. They called it crispy spinach. It's light, a bit sweet, looks like bright green folded paper, and has a texture somewhat akin to nori. We talked at length there, and then a while at Suite 88, after which we all decided it was time to go back to our rooms, maybe read a bit, and fall over.

Before the con, I'd been looking forward to spending more time with mrissa, and had no idea what I'd think of Timprov. I knew he was a decent person, but that didn't guarantee we'd connect. I had a very good time talking with both of them, that evening and later in the con, about all sorts of stuff: it's good to deepen a friendship, and it's good to make a new friend.

Bees are soft. I learned that Friday afternoon, from jonsinger, who explained how to stroke one gently while it's on a flower.

papersky's pre-con post on Friday afternoon activities included "Or, well, other options." At brunch, I was waxing enthusiastic about my, Cattitude, and Adrian's outing to the Jardin Botanique the day before. gerisullivan and Davey expressed interest, so I offered to take a group. (The groups she and rysmiel were leading were to Ile Ste Helene and the Musee des Beaux Arts, which I've also been to a few times, so it wasn't a sacrifice: nor a financial one, as I'd bought a yearly membership this spring.) It wound up being us, Jon Singer, Cally, and zorinth as my co-guide. (I was more or less in charge, but he knows his way around the garden better than I do.) We spent more time in the Alpine Garden, which I'd truncated on Thursday because we were tired by then. I'm getting fonder and fonder of the Alpine Garden, at every season. We sniffed lots of roses, of course, and other flowers; wandered through the First Nations Garden (I think that was Davey's suggestion); and looked at the lanterns in the Chinese Garden. The lanterns are a special exhibit for autumn. The exhibit officially began that evening, though some of it was there the day before: lots of paper lanterns in different colors and illustrations, some lit even in the day, plus a paper model of a dragon boat and similar follies floating on the pond. We liked it. On the way out of the Jardin Botanique, we stopped in the Aquatic Garden, where a lotus that had been almost open the day before was open enough to smell clearly when we edged onto the barrier between two pools and leaned over. I'm not good at describing smells, and lotus doesn't remind me of another flower: sweet, and deep, but not especially strong, nor cloying. There were many good things about that visit, but it might have been worth it just for that. Taking my beloveds there on Thursday, and time with just them, had been delightful; this was again delightful, in a slightly different key.

My favorite panel was--again--the Sunday morning "joy of reading" one, eight or ten people each reading short pieces they liked, or excerpts from longer works. Rysmiel did a piece of Peter Fleming that I'd heard them read before; pnh gave us the bit about "The Tragedy of Leonid Brezhnev, Prince of Muscovy" from Ken Macleod's Newton's Wake; rushthatspeaks did two of Italo Calvino's invisible cities; I think it was TNH did a piece of Mike Ford's The Last Hot Time; and James Macdonald read a short story about a writer whose characters demand better stories to be in. I don't recall the rest offhand, but it was all good.

Conversely, I don't think "A Good Read" came together as well as the version last year had; the panelists said they had been rushed in their preparations, and it showed in that I don't think anyone had had time to read, let alone read and digest, all four books. Weirdly, the asterisk panel at the other end of the con also didn't work as well as usual. Cattitude suggested later that the problem may have been too much familiarity with each other: that panel works in part by having an audience prepared to say "what's that?" a lot. [It's worked very well at Minicon, where it started, as well as at last year's Farthing Party.] Mostly what we got was some cool stuff about book restoration and preservation, from Rush, and more than I expected about comics.

The panel on "A Different Magic" was partly from the writer's point of view: ways to make magic new and interesting rather than just another technology or "be careful what you asked for" story. The panelists also talked about writing magicians/wizards/what-have-you who weren't from the very familiar mold of either trained-as-such or specific creative professions. Fantasy is full of magically talented people whose other jobs or previous life is as musicians and writers; there aren't a pot of painters or actors, and where are the magically-talented architects, choreographers, and jewelers? Where is the really creative bureaucrat or taxi driver? (That last was my contribution, with notes on the potential magical or practical value of always knowing the landscape around you, and how to get places in the fastest possible way. james_nicoll came up with an example of one in a story he'd read.)

"Writing for All Ages" and "Making Real Things and Making Things Real" were also largely from the writer's viewpoint (rather than primarily from the reader's, though of course all the panelists do read the stuff). "Fantasy of Manners" mostly left me with the feeling that there is no agreement on what the term includes, or the characteristics of the subgenre; pameladean mouthed an eloquently silent "What?!" when someone suggested her novel Tam Lin as an example.

I found Sunday's programming more appealing than Saturday's (from descriptions ahead of time), but a person still needs to eat. It turned out that james_nicoll felt similarly, so we carried him off to a nearby cafe; all I really remember of the conversation was the US-Canadian bit of the Napoleonic wars, and James noting that yes, the Americans had burned York (Ontario, now Toronto) in that war, but so had the Canadians.

"Kings, Seventh Sons, and the Lamentable Absence of Millers' Daughters" was about the politics of fantasy--specifically, the long-standing question of whether,and in what ways, all those fantasy monarchies and lords are inherently undemocratic. I don't have notes, unfortunately, so can't really say much beyond that it went well, and that I was reminded of, but didn't try to interject, Le Guin's idea that the kings in fairy tales are genuinely good and, in those stories, fit for rule in ways that real kings are not. (Her specific example was Gwydion son of Don. Le Guin is also the woman who described a character as "one born, for once, king of the right country.")

Saturday night I mostly spent in outside-the-party room conversation: more good time with Mrissa and Timprov. Adrian and M'ris were both having problems with the lighting and other physical atmosphere in the party room, so we, and a changing group of other people, talked in the hall outside and listened to the music from a distance. There was a good discussion of relationships of various sorts. Adrian noted that the things that are needed to maintain and nurture a long-distance relationship are somewhat different from those needed for a live-together or other local relationship. gerisullivan said that she hadn't really thought of that, and it made sense and would probably be useful to her. At the same time, some of what's less obvious, or less necessary, can still be useful: I'm not going to shop with Adrian, or Q, as often as with Cattitude, of course, but I'm glad to have done things like buy groceries together, and to know where their grocery stores are. That conversation also included Davey and Pamela, and I think dd_b for a bit. I did go into the party room long enough to see James get the Singer bowl, and look at it under UV light.

I got to taste both mangosteens and green Darjeeling at the Sunday night "Survivors' Tea Party." I ate probably about 3/4 of a mangosteen in the course of a couple of hours; I'd happily have had more, but it seemed unkind, since there were fewer mangosteens than people, and I wasn't the only person who liked them. I had stopped after two sections, but it eventually became clear that they weren't being gobbled up, so I took more, as well as doing the peeling so others could try them. As Singer had mentioned earlier in the weekend, green Darjeelings taste quite different from the black Darjeeling I'm used to. I like them, and should find one I like to keep here. (For the most part, I strongly prefer black tea, but it will keep me up at night.) Also some good chocolate, because chocolate is good, but it was a kind I already knew and liked, the Cote d'Or Noir de Noir that Singer introduced me to four years ago in Montreal.

I completely forgot to mention that I got to meet boxofdelights; this was not only her first Wiscon, it was her first sf con. We may have spoiled her for other things. I also didn't mention the various people who I said hello to, but little more because they were so busy, people who belong at Wiscon but don't get there very often, like thesideshow and Stu Shiffman, and bibliofile, who I kept meaning to catch up with and didn't.

I did buy a few books: Air, by Geoff Ryman (planned), Stable Strategies and Others, by Eileen Gunn, Incredible Good Fortune, poetry by Ursula Le Guin, and Uncle Boris in the Yukon, by Daniel Pinkwater. When I got home, it turned out we have a copy of that already, that cattitude had picked up, read, and dropped in a corner. adrian_turtle, if you still want this, you can claim it the next time we're in the same city.

sdn handed me a galley of the revised Tough Guide to Fantasyland, by Diane Duane Diana Wynne Jones, which is currently in Arlington because Cattitude and I have the first edition and Adrian doesn't. And everyone got a copy of Paul Park's A Princess of Roumania. With all that, I spent the weekend talking and reading a bit more of Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children.

I bought one earring, a garnet stud made by Laurie Edison, for Cattitude. Adrian gave me a pair of earrings made from Scrabble tiles, which we'd discussed earlier, but we didn't get to the shop the last time I was in Arlington. I ogled a gorgeous necklace/crown made by elisem, "In the Tongue of the Beholder", but even if I liked chokers, it's too short for me. I briefly thought about asking to borrow it to wear as a crown to the fancy dress party on Sunday, but the silk salwar kameez is gold-patterned, and the necklace is in the silver I generally prefer.

I talked to lots of cool people about interesting things, introduced adrian_turtle to many of my friends so they could see how cool she is, got too little sleep, occasionally felt disconnected from things, but mostly had a good time.

I arrived Thursday, a clever plan to avoid missing half of Friday. Perhaps too clever, since there wasn't much morning or afternoon programming (just the Gathering in the afternoon), and Thursday through Monday is a long convention.

Part of feeling disconnected was, paradoxically, because there were so many people there (over a thousand, significantly larger than the usual Wiscon). Lots of my friends had made lunch and dinner plans well in advance; I tried to do so as well, but with less organization and less success. Not only that, but most of my pre-planning was for breakfasts, meaning 8:30 wakeup calls for 9:00 dates with brisingamen and peake on Friday, wild_irises on Sunday, and Donya and Allen (WANOLJ) on Monday. Brisingamen, Peake, and I have run into each other so often at Michelangelo's that it made sense to make it a plan this year. oursin's journal for that day says that she had tea and a sticky bun with me, and we were then joined by them, but I'm fairly sure the three of us rendezvous'd in the hotel lobby, and in fact I spent some time during the con regretting not having gotten to sit down with Oursin (every time I ran into her, she already had plans). If I completely forgot a deep and meaningful conversation, I'm sorry. I do remember Brian Attebury coming over after a bit, and them talking about sf criticism.

When I asked wild_irises if she was free for a meal with me and Adrian, she said yes, observing that she always likes to meet people who make her friends happy. The three of us had a nice long conversation, and then Laurie Marks and her wife Deb walked past (Michelangelo's is like that), Wild Irises introduced us, and within 60 seconds Deb and Adrian were geeking happily about hand tools. In my weekend role as Adrian's secretary (scribe as well as social secretary) I made a note of Deb's contact information, and gave her both mine and Adrian's.

I tend to aim for meal groups of four to six at cons; there were more fours than sixes this time, some threes, and Sunday night Adrian and I had a quiet dinner by ourselves after I admitted to feeling somewhat overwhelmed. Thursday night was six plus a baby: Janet and Matt, their infant daughter Alice, two British friends of theirs, bookzombie and pennski his partner Penny (not on LJ AFAIK), and one person I cannot call to mind. We went to a French restaurant that someone remembered from the year before: good food and good conversation. We got back to the con a bit after ten, and I found the OddCon party uninhabitable (the OddCon people are very fond of flashing lights, which hurt my brain), and the con suite close to empty, so I went to bed early. That would have been useful, if I'd gotten to sleep reasonably quickly. It was a strange bed, and (as Adrian pointed out after she arrived on Friday) I'm not used to sleeping alone, even in my own bed.

Friday the two of us had dinner with kate_schaefer and Glenn Hackney, who are good company. Kate said that my love life was complicated; I immediately disagreed, because for the most part it doesn't seem so, unless scheduling counts as inherently complicated. It took me a long time to get Kate to admit that cattitude is real, but I don't think she'll be claiming I made up Adrian.

One aspect of spending the weekend saying "This is my girlfriend Adrian isn't she cool?!" was that I was talking about polyamory more than usual, and with friends who aren't themselves poly (rather than relationship-geeking with poly friends). Lenore asked about how my relationships work. I told her that if she wanted a more useful answer than "very well" I would need a more specific question. She clarified, and I told her a bit about my/our relationship structure (though not in great detail). rdkeir said that he didn't think he could be polyamorous, because one relationship is difficult enough, and mentioned that there are probably people who assume that a close friend whom he visits moderately often is his girlfriend. I told him that, from what he's posted, and told me in the past, it seems closer to a brotherly than a romantic relationship. I noted also that it might be easier for me to read it that way, because I expect people to be straightforward about such things; someone whose paradigm is cheating quasi-monogamy might assume he's doing that.

Mostly, I was enjoying showing off Adrian to Wiscon and to the people who've been reading me burble about her for the past year, and Wiscon to Adrian. Partway through the weekend it occurred to me that, even if I were going to more cons, I'd picked the right con for the purpose, because Wiscon is definitely queer-friendly. At another con, I'd still expect my friends to be cool about it—someone who has a problem with same-sex relationships, or for that matter bisexuality, wouldn't be my friend—but the con as a whole might be less so, and we'd probably stand out more as a same-sex couple. (My friends are poly-friendly, whether or not they're poly themselves, but I only had one partner with me, so I don't know for sure whether we'll get weird looks if I manage to get Adrian and Cattitude, or one (or both) of them and Q, to the same Wiscon with me.)

I spent quite a bit of time hanging out in front of elisem's table in the dealer's room, both to talk to her and because she attracted other interesting people. Sunday afternoon I was chatting with Emma Bull, and someone (I don't remember whether it was Emma) started to reintroduce me to Will Shetterly, but I smiled and said "I haven't seen you since you were running for governor." We proceeded to happily talk about trains, people, and other stuff for a while, including him expressing surprise when I mentioned that zorinth is now taller than I am. I was vaguely disconcerted to see both Will and Emma with short hair, but that was less startling than nnaloh, who has shaved half her head while keeping the dreadlocks on the rest. Nalo still looks good, but different enough that I blurted out "you shaved half your head" instead of "hello" on Friday afternoon. I suspect she's been getting that a lot.

Adrian and I had made a date with Elise for tea, Saturday afternoon. We went into the dealer's room to collect her, and she apologetically explained that she was cancelling all her social plans for the weekend, because of family stuff that had just come up. She then asked if we'd like to show up early to help her set up for the Haiku Earring Party, and a chance to talk. We accepted, of course. We sat in her room and talked while she finished her dinner, including about some of the family stuff. A few other friends showed up a bit later, and we all went up to the sixth floor to set up for the party. Elise hadn't had time to make enough earrings even for a typical Wiscon, so I and several other people made earrings as the party started. I'm not skilled with the pliers yet, so I got to have fun selecting and arranging beads, and other people bent the wires to make them into earrings. Meanwhile, Elise sat at the head of the table and gave people titles. I think that went a little slower than usual, because she was titling earrings she hadn't made herself or seen before. I didn't select a pair and write a haiku this year; it didn't seem to fit with having been one of the earring-makers. On Sunday, I found Elise, thanked her, and asked if she knew how much fun I'd had, and she told me that yes, she could see it at the time (I was sitting right next to her as she named earrings).

We didn't get tickets to the Dessert Salon. I never do: it seems not really worth the money (partly because the hotel doesn't really grok hot water for tea), and since they always sell out, I assume there are people who want to be there more than I do. Instead, Adrian and I had a quiet dinner together (I'd gotten over-stressed and needed to hide in the room for a little while, then be with just her (my other sweeties not being in Madison)), followed by a brief soak in the hot tub. We were downstairs again a little before 8:30, grabbed slices of cake that were left on the dessert buffet (the other reason I don't buy tickets: the hotel caters two desserts per ticket, and some people only want one), walked into the big ballroom, and discovered that Kate Wilhelm had already started her Guest of Honor speech. She talked about her life as a writer, always writing in many different genres, as she had read when she was growing up, with a small nearby library that sorted things only by the Dewey Decimal system (the first story she sold was "The Mile-Long Spaceship," to John Campbell, but she also wrote mysteries, westerns, romance, mainstream fiction, probably other things). Near the end, she described telling stories to her granddaughter, who at age 4 told her one evening that the ending she'd come up with was wrong, and provided a better one.

Scott Custis came up to the podium long enough to apologize for the glitch that had them start the GoH speeches early, and introduce Jane Yolen. Jane also talked about her writing career, and about her much-loved husband David Stemple, who died a few months ago. She wrote poetry while he was sick, and some after his death, and read some of it to us. She also speculated on writers seeking/working with a somewhat scruffy Muse (she had a better adjective than "scruffy"), the bad-boy Imagination, and the Time Fairy. But there is no Time Fairy, if there were someone like her would have written a hundred books. [laughter, because she has]. Then she told us that while she couldn't provide a list of everything she's written without going through assorted paper or computer records, if someone mentions any of her books she'll remember where she wrote it.

Next was the presentation of the Carl Brandon and Tiptree Awards. As soon as the Carl Brandon Society board came up to the podium, huge numbers of camera flashes started going off. I fled after a minute or so. I gather I missed two good ceremonies, including the chance to see Geoff Ryman in a tiara. I do hope that none of the people who were up on stage found the flashes painful.

The panel on "The Myth of Class Mobility" included some useful discussion of what class is, and where the boundaries are: in particular, the significant overlap between the working class and that part of the middle class, including the intelligentsia, who are living on wages/salary, possibly with lower income than someone with a decent unionized factory job. Panelists provided statistics as well as anecdotes: among the latter, as evidence that there is some class mobility, Chip Delany pointed out that his grandfather had been born in slavery, and he's a tenured professor at Temple University.

The one panel I was on, "Shaping the Culture of SF/F Fandom," was a bit chaotic, as such panels generally are. People talked about inclusivity; about the expense of travel making it more difficult to get to cons (marykaykare pointed out that she's been hearing that particular complaint/doomsaying for thirty years), about whether some parts of fandom are too isolated from each other, and of course about the Internet. Someone in the audience asserted that the net was a substitute for "real" contact; I said "I beg your pardon! I met two of my partners online." [That's a slight fudge: I met two of my partners in person, but through a friend I met online, and I believe she'd met both of them online as well.] There were a lot of other panels I'd thought looked interesting, but that I didn't know the right things to volunteer to be a panelist.

The panel on "Both/And in an Either/Or World", looking for ways to encompass both sides of a variety of cultural dichotomies (including race and gender) and to claim the middle ground, included Ursula Le Guin introducing herself with "I'm the heterosexual grandmother on this panel." Aron Lichtov talked about doing presentations to college classes on transgender issues, asking the students to raise their hands if they had grandmothers or aunts who did the heavy physical work on the farm, and then saying "Grandma was a tranny" as a way of making trans people "us" to the students. I disagree with him on the specifics—I don't think women who do what is called "men's work" are necessarily or usually transgendered—but think he may be onto something useful in shaking perception. Pamela Taylor said some interesting things about being simultaneously a feminist, a Muslim, and an American. She gets pressure from people who share one of those identities to choose that one rather than the others, or at least to declare a primary loyalty, and pressure from some non-Muslim Americans who don't believe she can really be American if she's Muslim. She has a stronger sense of identity as American than I do, I think: her family has been here for 13 generations, so while we share loyalty to American ideals, she has much deeper roots on this continent than I do.

There was a disclaimer on the con web site, the pocket program, and every issue of the newsletter:

WisCon 30 is funded in part by a grant from the Wisconsin Humanities Council with funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the State of Wisconsin. The Wisconsin Humanities Council supports public programs that engage the people of Wisconsin in the exploration of human cultures, ideas and values. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this project do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Also, water is wet.

I'm very glad we got to have lunch with annafdd; that was at Kabul, the furthest I got from the hotel all weekend (my heel still not being happy). Kabul had the duck strudel on the special board, which pleased me (a fond memory from previous visits), and we all liked the cardamom iced tea. More to the point, we had plenty of time to talk, and Anna seemed more cheerful than she had at the previous Wiscon.

I missed a lot of good programming, I know. There's a note in my journal that says "All those readings, and I went to none of them." [Most if not all of the returning Guests of Honor gave readings.] I also completely spaced the Bake Sale until after it was sold out.

(This is almost certainly incomplete, but it's also already very long. I may post more later.)