boxofdelights

I got tea and a holiday card from krait. Thank you krait!

I have another panel to propose:

Why We Gather

In The Art of Gathering Priya Parker says that the first step in convening people meaningfully is committing to a bold, sharp purpose. As we recreate and recommit to WisCon, let's talk about that. What is WisCon's purpose? What is your purpose in coming to WisCon? How will you know whether you succeeded in your purpose?

What elements of WisCon serve which purposes? Parker says that rules and traditions -- like our Code of Conduct, and our blue tape for accessibility -- help create a temporary alternative world. The pandemic has made it riskier to share space with each other. What purposes do the Gathering, the Con Suite, Sign Out, Workshops, and so on serve, and how can we fulfill those purposes safely?

All comments are welcome.

ETA: The panel suggestion form has a max of 500 characters. I cut my other panel description down, but I'm really not happy with it:

Villain redemption or reconciliation?

Kinitra Brooks says that being confronted with America's history of slavery, genocide, and colonialism makes villain redemption stories very appealing. Afrofuturist stories are more likely to take a path of truth and reconciliation: You have to acknowledge the whole truth of what you did, and listen to hard truths about the effects on other people. Let's talk about speculative fiction that grapples with the problems in the villain redemption arc!

• What are you reading?

The City in the Middle of the Night, by Charlie Jane Anders.

• What did you recently finish reading?

Crosstalk, by Connie Willis. Peak Connie Willis.

• What do you think you’ll read next?

The Bird King, by G. Willow Wilson.

• What are you watching?

Nothing.


Had a good Wiscon. Kids' Program went well, because I had many many helps, including yarn donated by lydy and brought by kalmn for Learn To Knit. Got to room with jesse_the_k. Got to eat meals and talk with oursin and lcohen. Still very tired.


Did not get a weed abatement notice from the city yet, though my yard is even more overgrown than usual.

Eight months into this twelve-week remodel, I am finally home in my own house again!

I'm going to Wiscon in a few weeks. I have a reservation at the Concourse. Anybody want to room with me? Got one!

I need to write a letter for WisCon’s Communications to send out, to promote Kids’ Programs. I’ve got to ask for three things:

1. People to be on the Kids’ Programs team. This is the hard one, because basically I’m saying, This is too much work! It is too demanding, physically and emotionally, and takes up all the daytime hours, and leaves you too tired the rest of the time to enjoy any of the things you go to WisCon for, and the only reward you get is the feeling of having made WisCon a better place... that you are too tired to enjoy. Plus you get to be on ConCom, if you want. But if I can con three people into sharing the load with me, it’ll be great! We’d each be responsible for three timeslots and one quarter of the clean-up, which is a reasonable amount of work. And that reward doesn’t get smaller when you divide it up.

2. People to run one Kids’ Program activity. This is the fun part, which really is going to be great, and self-sustaining if I can just push hard enough to get it off the ground.

WisCon is full of people who have learned how to do a few cool things! Some of you would enjoy the opportunity to teach one of those things to an interested group of kids. Kids’ Programs can offer you an hour and fifteen minutes, a small group of kids (6-11 years old), an adult assistant, and whatever materials our small budget can cover. Sign up for Panel Programming, in the Kids’ Programs track, and send email to kidsprograms@wiscon.net with questions or a description of what you’d like to do.

3. People to assist at one Kids’ Program activity. In this role, you have to be flexible. You might be assisting with materials for a craft activity, or building Legos or jigsaw puzzles with the kids who don’t want to do the main activity, or firmly redirecting the energies of a kid who doesn’t want to do the main activity and is trying to have a swordfight in that space instead.

Mostly you just have to be there, because the rules say that there have to be at least two adults in the room, and the second adult cannot always be me, because that is not sustainable, because I am not willing to take a plane trip and rent a hotel room and give up most of the things I enjoy about WisCon in order to make Kids’ Programs work again.


I am well enough to write this but not well enough to write it without massive quantities of self-pity. Help?

I'm going to Wiscon! And I have a co-lead, so I won't have to be in the kids' room all day. However I am going to be there or on call during the daytime programming hours, and I don't know how tired I'll be in the evenings. You will definitely get to hang out with me if you sign up for my storytelling workshop!

http://wiscon.net/2018/04/20/get-more-wiscon-sign-up-for-a-workshop/

Guest of Honor nominations for Wiscon 43 (that is, the one in 2019; the Guests of Honor at next year's Wiscon are Saladin Ahmed and Tananarive Due) are open until October 15. Blog post here: http://wiscon.net/2017/09/27/wiscon43-goh-nominations/

Anyone can nominate.
Concom chooses Guests of Honor from the nominations we receive. (This is the only perq you get for being on Concom that is not available to all volunteers.)
Send your nominations to gohnoms@wiscon.net.

Reading the Guests of Honor's work, discussing their work at Wiscon, and listening to their readings and speeches has always been one of the best parts of Wiscon for me, so I am grateful for your suggestions.

I love home. I love my dogs.

I miss everyone I saw at Wiscon, but I am so glad to be home.

Three times this Wiscon I was in the audience when the moderator opened it up for questions and there was silence. Which persisted until I stuck my hand up and asked something weird and stupid, which I probably should have though better of, but 1. it was the best I could think of at the time and 2. it was better than nothing. And it was followed by better questions after I broke the ice. The first time was A Room Of One's Own, after the GOH readings. Maybe everyone was intimidated by Kelly Sue DeConnick? She is really funny, you guys.

Amal El-Mohtar read us a story that included the lines, if I remember correctly, "You are a Great Horned Owl. You are an apex predator. You are a terrible parent." I was surprised, because Great Horneds are notoriously very nurturing parents. They'll keep on feeding their fully-fledged adult-sized offspring until it's time to start preparing for the next clutch. Amal said, "So I should change that metaphor to something about trust fund babies?"

Amal was right that they are terrible nest-builders, though, which is one reason why we get a lot of Great Horned babies at the raptor center. If the babies are uninjured and the tree is intact, we will nail up a wicker laundry basket and return the babies, and the parents are usually still hanging around looking for babies to feed. And they'll keep using the laundry basket every year because it's the best nest they've ever had.

http://account.wiscon.net/program/volunteer

The days of filling panels that need panelists are here! If you are willing to be on a panel, and confident that you're better than nothing, please go there^ and volunteer!

I always volunteer as a freelance moderator, so I always get the neediest panels, but this year is worse: two of my panels have one other panelist, which means they have exactly one person who has anything to say on the topic. I always prepare things to say, just in case, but I don't think I can prepare well enough to carry half the panel on two topics I know nothing about.

Packing for Wiscon. One carry-on, one laptop bag, one CPAP. No checked bag. Can fit a paperback in the CPAP bag.

For signing, I could take:

hardcovers:
All the Birds in the Sky, by Charlie Jane Anders
The Chaos, by Nalo Hopkinson
The New Moon's Arms, by Nalo Hopkinson
Liar, by Justine Larbalestier
Magic or Madness, by Justine Larbalestier

trade paperbacks:
A Stranger in Olondria, by Sofia Samatar
Midnight Robber, by Nalo Hopkinson
The Salt Roads, by Nalo Hopkinson
Brown Girl in the Ring, by Nalo Hopkinson
Skin Folk, by Nalo Hopkinson
Sister Mine, by Nalo Hopkinson
Elysium, by Jennifer Marie Brissett

Probably not polite to ask an author to sign more than two books.

What to bring for the book swap? Here, the problem is that most of my books are still at my husband's house, and that's where most of the books that I am ready to part with would be. I've got a duplicate copy of Karen Joy Fowler's Sister Noon -- perfect. I've got White Horse, by Alex Adams, which I thought was terrible but maybe someone else won't. If I ever want to read Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World again I know that I will always be able to find a copy. That'll do.

Someone tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Susan." I said "yes" and turned around and found myself face to face with The Person at Wiscon I Don't Want To Interact With. I thought I had girded my loins for this. I was going to continue to refuse to interact with them (yes, even when you lean out of your chair at a 45-degree angle and wave your whole arm and spread hand in front of me, I cannot see you, is it not amazing) unless they forced me to, and then I would say clearly and firmly, "I still don't want to interact with you," and not care if I got judged to be a bitch.

I think if I had seen them coming, I would have been able to pull up my big-girl loin girds and do that. But they came from behind, and suddenly there we were, less than a foot apart and in conversation already.

Ten years of refusing to interact down the drain, because now they can say, "How was I supposed to know you didn't want to interact? We had a perfectly fine conversation at Wiscon 39!"

Swearword.