Doing the proud mother thing

Last Friday was the graduation for Class 35 of the Applied Communication Program, Camosun College. The ceremony was perhaps a bit different from the ruck and run, being a variety show of presentations of each graduate's final project, with a pair of MoCs providing the clunky in-jokes usually reserved for yearbook captions.
I admit to some anticipation of what they would say about the Beloved Child. "Every class has one, the egghead, the know-it-all even the teachers turn to, and Class 35 had Chris Shier..."
Aaawww... I'm so proud.

About 20 projects were covered, each with a few minutes of clips, or web-pages, or photo-montage or video. The range was impressive: documentaries on topics from disability accessibility to geocaching to culture shock from the immigrant's viewpoint to Victoria's juggling community; a recruitment program for volunteer firefighters; a 'compilation album' that was actually a mockumentary; books including a children's book illustrated with collage and silhouette, a 156 page satirical comic book, and a photography book on Japanese gardens in Victoria; a catalogue for a local luthier; radio segments for BC's 150th, and surprisingly, only one webcomic.
Considering how difficult it can be to write a synopsis or two-paragraph blurb for one's novel, I have much sympathy for the students turning their months of work into a couple of minutes of visuals and voiceover. They did well.
Chris and his classmate Laila put together an art magazine and website called Shopworn, with interviews and overviews of artists on south Vancouver Island. Due to some glitch, their promo picture (a rather snazzy one of the two of them each holding a copy of the magazine in front of their faces, one cover and one inside spread, showing a 360 panorama of the studio featured) remained on the screen between each of the remaining presentations. More air time, well done!

The last time we'd been in that room, a rather charming one with plastered decorations of faces and pillars, was for an Eric Bogle concert, possibly before Chris was born. It also had a balcony, where we sat, because one doesn't often have the chance, nowadays.
The other time-passy moment was looking at Chris in his suit, and Mark in his suit (I was allowed to get away with narrow-wale corduroy trousers and a silk shirt) and noticing how much alike they looked, except for hair, because Chris has my hair, which is brown and thick (this may make up for him having my temper and teeth, I don't know).

Refreshments afterwards, and Mark, Zoe and I somehow reached the liquid refreshments before everyone else, perhaps because we went through the nearest door, and had our wine and beer while most attendees were struggling through the corridor where the food was laid out.
After some struggling on our part, we found the room where the portfolios were laid out. Unlike the rather nicely done arrangement of presentations, this was rather a muddle. The table was in the computer room, and was tucked into one corner, without much room to manoeuvre around it. The portfolios were laid out in 3 rows, so that even if the viewers circled the table, some would be inaccessible. I ended up pulling 4 or 5 out of the middle and putting them on nearby desks.
Oh, and why do people have this impulse to close a portfolio after looking at it, so that no one else coming along can tell what's in it? I've seen this in other displays, and it's maddening, because one opens the portfolios or binders or books to enticing pages to draw people over, and as soon as someone's been drawn over, he tidily closes them all into blank forbiddingness. It's not as if people looking at displays are tidy in any other discernible way.
But I rant. Stopping now.

The child has graduated. Tomorrow we're leaving for 2 weeks in England. That's where things are at present.

Potlatch part three

The rest of the workshop, with a break for Thai food.
The post-disaster story was structurally sound, so comments were mostly about surface detail, using more sensory detail and more nuts-and-bolts (rivets?) to bring the bleak and barely-subsistence level existence across to the reader. A point that had only occurred to me on the 3d reading was whether the nomads wandering the Polluted wore any clothes, since they didn't appear to have time or resources for either weaving or tanning skins (plus the ecology seemed to be humans and insects, no birds or other mammals, so no skins except human, which I think are pretty fragile). If they had no clothes or cloth, then the clothed man and the cloth-bundled baby represented a substantial boost in personal wealth, because cloth is damned useful if you're a gatherer. That came up in discussion, as did the social structure of the small nomadic groups, based on lions and/or baboons. Nobody else mentioned the setting as being overexposed, or overdone, so the story must have been strong enough to carry it.
The ambiguous ending line was added after previous workshop crits said the ending was too harsh without it, but one of the Potlatch critiquers was sure it meant they had died anyway. I wasn't sure, but I'm okay with uncertainty and ambiguity, so didn't feel the need to decide for myself.

The best friends story got strong crit on two grounds: the resolution happening offstage, and the science being handwavium. Fortunately, one of the instructors was knowledgeable about biology and came up with some potential fixes to make the deadly planet believable if still hand-wavy. A longish letter at the end of the story was unanimously scrapped; it was another response to previous workshop crits, but created more problems than it solved, or rather, intensified the existing problem of major story elements happening offstage.
I was a bit pleased to learn that the story had originally been envisioned from the mother's pov (the author being a young mother, imagining facing a terrible choice about her child's future) because I'd seen what I thought were traces of that pov.

Afterwards there was some general chat about Clarion, both instructors having been at Clarion and Potlatch having long-held ties with Clarion West. I ended up in Hospitality chatting about Viable Paradise, though I'd just missed the semi-scheduled Viable Paradise discussion.

So that was the programmed thing that I did at Potlatch. Other things that happened:
Lynn and Tony have a bird-feeder that attempts to be squirrel-proof. Sitting and reading Friday morning, I watched a squirrel perform rhythmic gymnastics while hanging under the feeder, buckteeth scraping at the remainder of the seed-lump behind the bars. Eventually I opened the door and spoke to it, since gesticulating through the window wasn't effective. As Lynn and I left the house the next morning, grey squirrels frisked merrily about on the roadway. A bald eagle skidded out of the sky, scraped across the tarmac, and climbed again, limp grey fur hanging from its talons. We cheered.
Bart was shop-monkey for Elise Matthesen, a position that has DESTINY hanging over it (go, Avocado!) and oversaw the earring haiku challenge. He was inducted into the mysteries of naming earrings via the (bonsai?) Recombinant Title Generator, and enthusiastically promoted haiku during his tenure.
Not having pierced ears, I resisted this for a time, and then overcompensated by writing two tanka (because tanka come in pairs and so do earrings) for the title 'Tiger Waltz'. I won't quote them here, because theoretically they may be part of the haiku challenge chapbook someday. I thought they weren't bad, though they took me ages.
Elise told us one of the secrets of selling jewelry at conventions. But I can't tell you, because it's a secret. She also recited one of her performance poems, a sly and funny piece about tanks and babies and other penis-substitutes, and told us about the time Maya Angelou crashed her birthday party.
Evan discovered the rarity of M-size t-shirts at conventions. He and I helped sort and stack the Potlatch shirts, and there was only one M, which was already spoken for. Fortunately the L wasn't too big on him. We lingered in the Dealers' room, learned about the difficulties of small independent bookshops, and got some amazing deals on books (though not without a melancholy tinge).
Also melancholy and amazing was the stack of books on a table beside Registration, the remaining library of late fan Anita Rowland: Georgette Heyer and Jane Austen, Robertson Davies, craft and comic books, a diversity that said I'd missed the chance to know an interesting person, and could only make do with her gift of books.
Seattle doesn't have Powells, but is still thick with dangerous bookshops. I fell among bad companions (Mac, Medievalist, and others) and was led astray into Twice-Sold Tales, where I found a copy of The Lisle Letters (the abridged version, not the multi-volume complete edition) for only $10 and full of tasty Elizabethan prose and domestic detail, oh, and politickal manoeuvres. And Medievalist gave me a book--the Huntington Library's book on the Ellesmere Canterbury Tales. It's lovely, with full-colour repros of the pilgrim portrait pages and, most book-geekily delightful, of the endpapers (endparchments?) stained and mended and tattered.
All available VPers and sympathisers in the hotel bar made a pact to be at least halfway through a current or new work by the time VPXII arrived. This was sworn in chocolate, so it must be binding.
What else? Friday night there was a quest for bubble tea. It was achieved, but I didn't partake, because bubble tea falls, for me, just in the wrong part of the solid-viscous-liquid range. I rather like tomato juice if I don't think about it, but. So I had a barley tea, pleasant though a bit earnest, and regretted not having the hot ginger milk, because, ginger! I had that the next day and it was good.

I travelled to and from Seattle on the Clipper, taking advantage of a half-price coupon from the previous year, when storms delayed the sailing for a few hours and forced a long and roundabout route sheltering between islands. This return sailing was only a little rough, and passengers were encouraged to stay in their seats and wait for the staff to come to them, not go trotting about fetching themselves tea and other hot drinks.
An unexpected pleasure was the chance to just sit and read, first on the Clipper coming over, because the nearest sockets weren't the right kind for my laptop, and later on Friday morning, while Tony napped, because it was too early to show up for the convention.
I finished reading The Wizard Hunters, by Martha Wells, and was just knocked over by the worldbuilding and the tidy way it was laid in. I finally read Deep Secret, by Diane Wynne Jones, a book that had taken some time for me to get into, because I didn't get on with the first narrator. Oh, and finished Across the Wall, by Garth Nix. That must be the most concentrated bout of reading I've done for some time.
Last time I was over for Potlatch, Lynn had to lend me a dufflebag to hold the books and fabric I'd bought. So this year I brought it back empty. But then I bought books, and took books from the giveaway table. So she had to lend me the dufflebag again, because I had more books than would fit into the Potlatch totebag (Cthulhu memorial con bag). Apparently I have no self-control.
Fortunately, I discovered that Elise also likes odd notebooks, so I can cull my collection and send them to her, hurrah! I just found a great lenticular cover with spiders on it.

Potlatch, working on the workshop

So yes, the workshop. The Isabella suite was pretty flash, with an impressive view of the skyline, slightly truncated from the wide-angle view available from Hospitality. The bathroom was all gleaming oddly-angled surfaces, sort of what you might imagine from the Better Homes & Gardens special R'lyeh issue.

The other students: a trim-bearded man who took the sofa and hunched forward intently. He reminded me of Randy, who wrote the talking cats story for the VCon workshop, but it might have only been that they were each the only bearded participants. Pale, with a slightly hooked nose, like an attentive but short-sighted hawk. He'd written the walled city story.
A dark-haired young woman in casual clothes, with a rumpled but assured air. She'd written the island story. I'd tried to envision the author, and guessed at someone either quite young or older than me (nothing like hedging the bets, is there?).
A nicely-dressed young woman with shorter hair, about the length that many young mothers cut theirs. She turned out to have a two-year old daughter, and I could see her having quick reflexes and a sudden turn of speed when needed.
The instructors: Mary Rosenblum arrived first. A sparely built woman with the square-cut hair that makes me think of silent-movie actresses. Sat compact and elegant on one of the small chairs, leaning in. Suzy McKee Charnas settled back on the couch, almost the sort of merging that Cory Doctorow achieved, but quite definitely awake and attentive. Short pale-blonde hair, blunt features.

Some muddling about beforehand, placing an order for Thai food, which required a group decision on a)type of food, b)specific restaurant, c)menu items and backup choices, d)collection of money. The menu was later discovered to be a couple of years out of date and the money insufficient, but the resourceful person who went for it managed to return with appropriate food anyways.

Discussion. What with the gathering of people and the selecting of food, time had passed and events needed to speed up. When the who wants to go first business began, I threw myself into the breach ("close the wall up with our English dead", and all that) and offered to be victim #1. After that we went around the circle, with the critiques running first to the left, fleeing ahead of the story, one might say.
Now, I was pretty much expecting the worst. I'd read the critique guidelines, and early on they specify that omniscient is a questionable choice of pov. This would be the pov I'd written in. Also, "Climbing Boys" does not have 'a person in a place with a problem', well, it does, but he's not the protagonist, or even sympathetic, and the closest to a protagonist is the dead guy who shows up at the end, and the closest to a sympathetic character is the retarded and exploited child who barely has any lines. Oh, and the two characters who begin the story aren't the ones followed through the story.
It's not that I'm trying to be difficult or edgy or anything else on the auctorial insanity checklist. It's just how the story worked out. And that's after fixing the attempt to make it an sf story (though I still insist the key concept is sfnal rather than fantastic). The other stories submitted were much more in the classic mould, though the island story was a difficult critique because much of it was unclear--vivid but unclear in story terms.
Anyway. Surprisingly, the comments were largely positive. Some found the number of ghosts confusing (easy to tell who had read a lot of ghost stories and recognised the types, by the way), and the ghost-sweeper's language needed trimming, and the two excerpts of dead Stanley's thoughts were bumps in the story-course, but thought it was funny "the funniest story I've read about ghosts and child abuse" (how's that for a blurb?). Mary Rosenblum suggested that I send it to Weird Tales--I thought she might be routinely suggesting market types, but it seemed not, that she thought it would be to Ann VanderMeer's taste. Both instructors were very positive, and started in with ideas on how the ghost sweeping business could be developed into more stories, which was kind of exciting to listen to. They also liked the social commentary aspect, and Mary caught that poor little Ned wasn't necessarily being rescued at the end, that he might be just a puppet once more, with a fresh operator. She also had a terrific solution for getting Stanley's thoughts in without a bump, the mechanism being already in the story but I hadn't seen it.
I did some private squeeing later, when I read the instructors' comments, but that's probably more than anyone wants to read here.

The island story: This had a hard-boiled noirish tone from the narration, and it wasn't until the 3d page that it was clear the narrator was a woman, and quite a young one. She was also somewhat uninvolved in the story, really serving as a narrator. I didn't mind this so much, because it was very much a ghost story, and that's a common feature of ghost stories, that the narrator witnesses the events without really taking part, but is usually changed in some deep way by witnessing them. While the narrator claimed to have been changed, it wasn't evident in the story itself just how. Odd thing was that I thought I had found the story-thread, that the Bear Society rites the old recluse claimed to have secretly learned or stolen from his Indian partner were cannibalistic, and the ghost of the murdered reporter was 'pointing at his intestines' so I was pretty sure that he'd been murdered and eaten so the recluse could gain the bear powers. When I explained what clues in the story had given me this idea, even the author hadn't thought of it. She scribbled notes down, and I muttered "but it's all there. In the words."
When I'd discussed the story with Mark, before, he'd commented that it sounded a lot like the episode of I Love a Mystery we'd listened to recently, set in the West Coast islands: "The Fear That Crept Like a Cat". Not too surprisingly, when she and I chatted in Hospitality, she said she was a huge fan of old radio, including I Love a Mystery, and remembered that series. Knowing that the story had started off as a script also explained a number of the oddnesses about it, like the descriptions without much emotional context.

to be continued, rather like a radio series.

Potlatch, late and from the outskirts

Since the Avocado has picked up the task of being entertaining about Potlatch, I can maunder with a clear conscience. Thanks, Bart!
The thing is that if you asked me to define the essential function or the engine of an sf convention, I would say 'the panels'. Clearly that isn't so for everyone. Some would say 'hospitality', or 'the dealers' room', or 'the video programming' (okay, that one is rather dated now). But for me it's always been the panels, perhaps because they match up in my mind with the lectures at a university, which are what 'university' is, back to the time when universities had no formal buildings, only lecturers.
Potlatch has one track of programming, and a track of readings, of which I attended ... none. So in that sense, I didn't attend Potlatch this year. I was in the vicinity of Potlatch, and I had a membership, but what I did was hang out with people, acquire books, and eat a lot of Japanese food.
Okay, and attended the writing workshop. That was the most directly con-related activity.

The hotel: Hotel Deca, and it's very Art Deco indeed. You could film noir there, and probably someone has. It is a tower, and makes a good landmark for navigating. Hospitality was on the top floor, with a panoramic view obstructed only by another tower.

People I got to hang out with: Lynn and Tony were my wonderful hosts and pickup and dropoff and decompressing at the end of the day people. I was able to visit Lynn's place of work, marvelously neo-Gothic cloisters on the outside, carpets and computers on the inside. At the con, I met up with Evan at Registration, Elise in the Dealers' Room, and in rapid succession, Bart, Mac, and Lisa. When Lynn found me in the ballroom, she commented that I was with a group of 'Barbara-sized people' and while I'd hesitate to claim the dimensions in my own name, it was true that the lot of us who were standing together (almost in a row, to make it all more-so) were within a couple of inches of the same height. (Lynn's quite a bit taller than me, and her hair is longer.)
There was going out for Japanese food and Indian food and bubble tea, and there was exploring of bookshops, and there was acquiring a bagful of books, even though I'd meant to return Lynn's extra bag to her (it was full of fabric when I borrowed it last year, and this year it was full of books). I discovered that Bart and Elise and Lynn all know about technical aspects of airplanes and flight, which was entertaining to listen to. And that I should swallow my food completely before listening to Bart once he gets going, or at least be sure that someone at the table can do the Heimlich.

Writing workshop: two sessions were scheduled, because of the high number of applicants, so when I received the stories for critting, I found out that instead of L. Timmel DuChamp and Jay Lake, the instructors would be Suzy McKee Charnas and Mary Rosenblum. Which was cool, because I was already familiar with Charnas, and liked The Vampire Tapestry since reading "The Ancient Mind at Work" of the stories in Omni (a while back, obviously).
And a darned good thing there were two sessions, because I'd managed to forget any previous mention of the scheduling, and while the workshops were supposedly occurring (Friday, before the programming), I was at a local Indian restaurant (Jewel of India?) with Evan and random people met in the hospitality suite, eating really excellent food. The enjoyment was tempered, about 6:15 pm, by my finding the workshop info (at last!) in the program book, and realising that I had missed it, or rather, that it was ending in 15 minutes.
People who know me may not be surprised to discover that what I was really bothered about was the idea of the other attendees waiting for me fruitlessly, and having wasted the effort of writing crits of my story. Agghh, guilt! I tried blaming the layout of the program book, but it was a rearguard action, valiantly fought but not terribly effective.
Saturday morning, waiting in the lobby for people who had spoken vaguely of breakfast the night before, I unburdened myself to a concom member, and learned that one session (mine!) had been rescheduled, because Suzy had been either delayed or exhausted by her trip. So it would be Saturday at 10 am, in the Isabella suite.
Immense relief followed. Nobody was cursing my name and considering me unreliable and uncommitted. Whoof. There was even time for breakfast.
The stories: four in all. Mine, slightly revised since Nick's comments, was "Climbing Boys", because I figured it needed more work than Chimps, which is pretty straightforward. The others were:
"The Other City", a post-disaster wasteland setting, with wandering foragers outside a walled city of doctrinal and genetic purity, searching for the mythical city without walls, where they could live in safety. Focus on a young woman of the Polluted, and a man cast out of the walled city. Writing was quite competent and smooth and I thought it would be best marketed to literary magazines, because sf readers will have seen so much of it before. It reminded me most of the movie Glen and Randa, though I don't suppose the writer had ever seen that one.
"Best Friends Forever", where the focus is on two little girls, best friends facing separation because Earth is being evacuated. Again, solid writing, and the child's eye view pretty well handled, though it wavered, and I wasn't surprised to learn that it had originally been conceived as being from the mother's pov.
"The Old Man and the Island", a reporter follows up on an abandoned story about a mysterious and possibly deadly recluse on the northwest coast, discovering a grim tale of cannibalistic rites and stolen power. I think. This story was the most challenging, because it was assorted compelling ideas and images, tossed into a bag and shaken. When I learned that it had started life as a radio script, many things made more sense (the plot wasn't one of them, though).

More later. Dinner right now.

whooshing noise

as I pass by...
Potlatch was all kinds of fun. I skipped the panels this year, and just hung out with people. More on that later.

To all the people I owe crits or feedback: I will get back to you, really. I'm a titch tired and disorganised at the moment, but it's calming down. I think. At any rate, I'm done with the workshop crits!

Dates for the UK: we fly out April 15th, and return April 30th. The first week is tentatively roaming about, the second week based in London (day trips out of London a possibility), probably renting in Barking.
Now I just have to pick the places I want to visit, and cull them down to a number that's doable over a couple of weeks. Easy-peasy, right?

romance, and people being killed

Tomorrow I shall be across the seas and away--as far as Seattle, for Potlatch, where I'll stay with my very cool friend Lynn, and visit with other VPXers. I'm excited. I'm packed. I finally got my critiques for the writing workshop printed out.

I must share with you the best review I've ever read. After a discussion on the Scribblers thread about the plausibility of certain classic poems, including Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight, by Rose Thorpe, and The Highwayman, by Alfred Noyes, (conclusion: plausibility lacking, historically, psychologically, and physically), I found the (not entirely accurate) words to The Highwayman posted online, along with many many comments, only about a quarter of which were young people hoping to find someone else to do their homework.
A high school English class (all six of them) posted this comment about Sir Alfred's best known work: "We like the way the poem combined romance and people being killed."
What would I not do for a review like that?

big gnashy teeth

Evidently I wasn't getting enough sleep last week, or was confused by the construction (neverending construction) at UVic which moved the entrance of the library over to what was once solid glass walls. At any rate, I forgot to lock my bike helmet up with my bike (my extremely cool matte-black bike) and left it hanging on the handlebar instead.
No, it was not stolen. It was ...(Lovecraftian ellipsis)... devoured!

You must understand, o Best Beloved, that the university, like the general hospital, is beset and beleaguered by rabbits. Spotty rabbits, white rabbits, black rabbits, lops and so on. Everything but native rabbits. This is because Bleddy Irresponsible Pet Owners who probably got Cute Bunnies for Easter, let their rabbits loose at the hospital, then at the university, when they got tired of taking care of them. And they bred, like, like, okay, you know what I mean.
It's the Victoria equivalent of alligators in the sewers.
The hospital has a more difficult time with the infestation. Bunnies get into the furnace rooms and leave little bunny pellets everywhere, they undermine foundations, and so on. The administration tried to bring in a sharpshooter to reduce the numbers, but there was a huge outcry, and volunteers rounded up hundreds of rabbits so that the people who had pleaded for the bunny-lives could adopt the cute little critters and save them from a dreadful fate.
You can guess, yes? About a dozen were actually adopted. There's a great difference between getting all sentimental about the fluffy bunnies and actually being willing to do something oneself.
A later attempt to bring in a falconer was also shouted down, even though it was the natural process and all that. It seems to me that even Disney nature films let the predator do the job once in a while.

So there are many cute bunnies on campus. And students feed them, but perhaps not enough. I returned to my bike in the dusk, to find my helmet some distance from the bicycle, with its foam pads torn from the velcro and scattered all about. Deep fang-marks were torn into the styrofoam, as of flocks of miniature vampires. I imagined them squabbling over it like seagulls, one snatching it from another, a little soccer play, the victor carrying it off (or climbing into it, which might have been easier), the others grouping and plotting their next foray.
It's Watership Down out there.