the week that was (Wiscon)

All right, so I'm one of those people who would like to report clearly and interestingly on cons and take panel notes and contribute to the ongoing post-panel discussions and the general discourse as it extends to the wider world. In reality I am one of those people who starts writing something up, becomes tired, stops halfway through, promises to finish the writeup later and never gets back to it. And right now I am even less likely to write anything up, because instead of collapsing at home for a while I get another weekend of travel, this one containing a funeral. (One of my nicer uncles, dammit. Expected, but.)

So some disjointed thoughts about Wiscon, in no particular order, and with no plan.

-- I wasn't going to buy any books. You can all start laughing now. I was not expecting that resolution to break on Thursday afternoon, about an hour after getting off the plane, but there was a copy of Wilanne Schneider Belden's Mind-Find in a used bookstore, which is one of the lost books of my childhood. After that I just tried to keep things within budget and to a point where I wouldn't have to actually mail anything home for lack of baggage space. I achieved both, although the latter only because nineweaving lent me some room in her luggage for the plane. *facepalm* This is the problem with my one-bag-only no-checking-luggage travel policy: it assumes I will manage not to buy books.

-- I think my panels went okay. I never know how to judge these things. The 17th-century women panel had by far the largest audience I've ever been on a panel in front of, I counted seventy before I had to stop multi-tasking and I know there were more. I remain grateful for whatever quirk of genetic or psychological makeup it is that means that public speaking is a stress reliever for me, because that panel calmed me down considerably and was very pleasant and I learned a lot. I am going to go out and read Catalina de Erauzo's autobiography, titled by its translator Lieutenant Nun-- I had not heard of her, but she seems to have had an impressively picaresque cross-dressed career in both Spain and South America as an army officer. Discussion of the book focused heavily on its violence and the perceived masculinity of her violent responses to various things; one reason I want to read the book is to see whether it as I suspect adheres to the conventions of raconteur-ish autobiography at the time, in which case I think the individual incidents ought each to be taken with a spoonful of salt, though the aggregate is probably fairly accurate. Sadly we did not get much into the Chinese women scholars, either, and I need to track down the sources on them. (The Three Wives Commentary was brought up at the end of the panel, but basically only mentioned.) I talked very very briefly about Gaelic poets, mostly Mairi nighean Alasdair Ruaidh (Mary MacLeod), but I am facing a major pronunciation barrier in discussing them.

-- When I got to the Saturday night vid party, two things became immediately obvious: one, I had gotten there just in time for the 'Hold Me Now' Princess Tutu vid, which made me instantly happy about the vid-curating, and two, the person directly to my left was P.C. Hodgell. So that was a fascinating intersection of universes. (Vid party: ♥ . I had never had a chance to go to a vid-showing which had primarily live-action vids before and it was very interesting.)

-- It was a really, really good con for talking to people. I got to spend a lot of enjoyable time with jinian and coraa and ashnistrike and Nameseeker, and slightly smaller amounts of enjoyable time with a great many other people, but it was also the kind of con where I got into good conversations randomly in the corridors. Also got to have dinner with Caroline Stevermer, which sent me into a fit of nostalgia for college.

-- I am so tired. And so profoundly in need of introvert-time, I was trying to arrange it and for one reason and another it mostly didn't, and Wiscon is a very long convention. Which is to say, if I drop off the map for the next couple of weeks, it is probably to be expected.

the week that was (Wiscon)

All right, so I'm one of those people who would like to report clearly and interestingly on cons and take panel notes and contribute to the ongoing post-panel discussions and the general discourse as it extends to the wider world. In reality I am one of those people who starts writing something up, becomes tired, stops halfway through, promises to finish the writeup later and never gets back to it. And right now I am even less likely to write anything up, because instead of collapsing at home for a while I get another weekend of travel, this one containing a funeral. (One of my nicer uncles, dammit. Expected, but.)

So some disjointed thoughts about Wiscon, in no particular order, and with no plan.

-- I wasn't going to buy any books. You can all start laughing now. I was not expecting that resolution to break on Thursday afternoon, about an hour after getting off the plane, but there was a copy of Wilanne Schneider Belden's Mind-Find in a used bookstore, which is one of the lost books of my childhood. After that I just tried to keep things within budget and to a point where I wouldn't have to actually mail anything home for lack of baggage space. I achieved both, although the latter only because nineweaving lent me some room in her luggage for the plane. *facepalm* This is the problem with my one-bag-only no-checking-luggage travel policy: it assumes I will manage not to buy books.

-- I think my panels went okay. I never know how to judge these things. The 17th-century women panel had by far the largest audience I've ever been on a panel in front of, I counted seventy before I had to stop multi-tasking and I know there were more. I remain grateful for whatever quirk of genetic or psychological makeup it is that means that public speaking is a stress reliever for me, because that panel calmed me down considerably and was very pleasant and I learned a lot. I am going to go out and read Catalina de Erauzo's autobiography, titled by its translator Lieutenant Nun-- I had not heard of her, but she seems to have had an impressively picaresque cross-dressed career in both Spain and South America as an army officer. Discussion of the book focused heavily on its violence and the perceived masculinity of her violent responses to various things; one reason I want to read the book is to see whether it as I suspect adheres to the conventions of raconteur-ish autobiography at the time, in which case I think the individual incidents ought each to be taken with a spoonful of salt, though the aggregate is probably fairly accurate. Sadly we did not get much into the Chinese women scholars, either, and I need to track down the sources on them. (The Three Wives Commentary was brought up at the end of the panel, but basically only mentioned.) I talked very very briefly about Gaelic poets, mostly Mairi nighean Alasdair Ruaidh (Mary MacLeod), but I am facing a major pronunciation barrier in discussing them.

-- When I got to the Saturday night vid party, two things became immediately obvious: one, I had gotten there just in time for the 'Hold Me Now' Princess Tutu vid, which made me instantly happy about the vid-curating, and two, the person directly to my left was P.C. Hodgell. So that was a fascinating intersection of universes. (Vid party: ♥ . I had never had a chance to go to a vid-showing which had primarily live-action vids before and it was very interesting.)

-- It was a really, really good con for talking to people. I got to spend a lot of enjoyable time with jinian and coraa and ashnistrike and Nameseeker, and slightly smaller amounts of enjoyable time with a great many other people, but it was also the kind of con where I got into good conversations randomly in the corridors. Also got to have dinner with Caroline Stevermer, which sent me into a fit of nostalgia for college.

-- I am so tired. And so profoundly in need of introvert-time, I was trying to arrange it and for one reason and another it mostly didn't, and Wiscon is a very long convention. Which is to say, if I drop off the map for the next couple of weeks, it is probably to be expected.

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