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Slow Reveal  Early this year, we decided to replace the balance of our single-pane windows with multi-pane, finishing a process we started a couple of years ago. To help pay for them, we reviewed the hotel prices in Montreal for the upcoming World Science Fiction Convention and decided to skip Worldcon this year. This is an application of the Alice Trillin rule that any expenditure you skip has increased your wealth. However, the corollary, not explicated by Calvin Trillin, is that the real world will immediately find a way for you to have to make an equivalent or larger purchase. In our case, it was a new furnace, as the old one died while Seattle was still in the late throes of a cold winter. The company that sold it to us and installed it only took three visits and one accidental duplicate credit card charge before all was well and truly installed. Then we decided that the cushions on our couch (one of these interesting models made of a hardwood frame on which cushions and armrests fit but are not permanently attached) were too worn and deteriorating to bear. So we ordered new ones. They cost somewhat less than we expected, and our most recent car servicing was free. So the refrigerator began to die. The new one arrives on Tuesday. I can hardly wait for the next chapter. Current music: Haydn Symphony #7. We spent a long weekend in Denver and environs earlier this month visiting my sister and brother-in-law, finally using the tickets we bought last summer. (We'd intended to visit them and attend Worldcon, but cancelled when my mom became so ill that I couldn't risk being away.) Debbie took us to such sights as the Denver Art Museum and the 16th Street Mall. We shared the light rail into downtown with a train full of baseball fans headed to the Rockies' home opener. During the weekend, she and bro-in-law Bob drove us into the mountains to visit beautiful Breckenridge, where Suzle and I both found ourselves rather done in by the 9,000+ foot altitude. Another day we braved increasingly heavy rain to see Dinosaur Ridge and Red Rocks Park. The dinosaurs had left many tracks in mud that turned to stone; circular depressions marked the spots from which a few souvenir hunters had removed individual tracks. Back in Seattle, we attended an Open House at the Henry Gallery last night, much enjoying the drawings and animated videos of William Kentridge. We were intrigued also by the video installations of Ann Lislegaard, because they were inspired in some way by the works of Samuel R. Delany, Ursula K. Le Guin, and J.G. Ballard (the Le Guin video does include the ghostly outline of a woman with "Left Hand" printed on one arm and "of Darkness" printed on the other.) Go to www.henryart.org for more information. Afterward, we walked to the Shalimar for dinner; as we finished, Suzle, facing the street, commented that there seemed to be police car or fire truck lights nearby. We emerged from the restaurant, and found some of each, along with other emergency vehicles. There was quite a crowd gathering, and more police cars every minute. We crossed University Way and managed to squeeze through the crowd to our car, parked two blocks south. Later that night, on the 11 PM news, we finally found out there'd been a shooting quite close to the restaurant. Pat Virzi of Texas generously offered Suzle free printing of her TAFF trip report, and the copies have arrived. So if you want to support the Trans Atlantic Fan Fund, and incidentally read all about the 2005 World Science Fiction Convention in Glasgow, and our adventures there and subsequent travels through Britain, just send us $7 for Jerry's Suzle's 2005 TAFF Trip Report. (Drop me an email if you need our address.) Checks can be made out to Suzanne Tompkins. Current music: Alban Berg. The Science Fiction Museum offered its members a chance to watch the final episode of Battlestar Galactica in its JPL Auditorium. The opportunity was free, so we reserved two tickets and showed up on their doorstep at 7 pm, along with quite a nice crowd of others. I'll say very little about the plot, but there could be an inadvertant spoiler in here somewhere; take heed. They showed the SciFi Channel feed complete with commercials and station identifications, starting at 8 pm with the rerun of last week's episode. At 9 pm, the SFM Membership head gave away an infinite number of posters, a few figurines and ship models, and a Cylon toaster. (Fram a distance, it looked like a curved, retro toaster, nothing more.) Then the two-hour final episode ran. The experience was the usual movie house thrill of big noises, characters ten feet tall (it's not that big a theater), people laughing at lines that may not have been intended to be funny and cheering as unpleasant characters or Centurions were shot. I generally enjoyed the experience, though as the show went on, I became a bit uneasy as the large dose of religion overwhelmed the sciencefictional elements. I know religion has been a thread of the show's plot throughout its run, but I think the program went completely off the mysticism scales in the end. It also ultimately came down on the side of "love" and "spirit" - against reason and science. I don't think these things should automatically be opposed, but the filmmakers seem to. Their final point, that we are on the brink of creating our own Cylons? I think it's both false and facile wisdom. Judging from the ads for a new series, Caprica, and one for what appeared to be a stand-alone BSG movie, the SciFi Channel (not yet the Syfy Channel) will milk the franchise for all the dairy product it will yield. I have been energized, though now I'm tired, by the Seattle Corflu, now over. With luck, work, and the cooperation of many technological devices and developments, Suzle and I will proceed, over the course of the next month, to: 1) Slightly revise and reprint Jerry's Suzle's 2005 TAFF Trip Report. We printed 25 copies on our inkjet printer, finishing the night before Corflu. Most are gone (one is being held for Robert Lichtman). Pat Virzi has offered to print out the second edition. We'll send copies to the various fan organizations that contribute money to TAFF when a new report is finished, and a bundle to Fishlifter Enterprises to sell in the UK - unless Bug wants us to send them direct to her. (Suzle will contact you to confirm.) 2) Complete Littlebrook #7, in progress far too long. (I tried to edit the letter column while helping Suzle with the TAFF report, and found there was no time to complete both by Corflu.) 3) Finish our taxes. 4) Read all the fanzines we received at the convention, as well as ones that arrived a few days before or just after. 5) Stay in touch with you all better, plan a trip to Winchester in the UK next year at this time for Corflu 27, visit my sister and brother-in-law in Denver, and continue to work for a living. By the way, if you're interested, we'll be glad to sell you a Jerry' Suzle's Etc. for a mere $7 postpaid. Contact us direct to reserve a copy. Most likely you'll get the second, and therefore better, if less collectible, edition. While wandering aimlessly around the Cimetiere du Pere Lachaise - I walked in through the main entrance but didn't see where the map brochures were - I happened upon a large group of European tourists. They surrounded one grave, laughing, snapping photos of one another, calling to their friends. I squeezed through the crowd, expecting to see the tomb of Oscar Wilde, or Jim Morrison, or Gertrude Stein. Instead, it was a bronze sculpture, of a recumbent nineteenth century dandy, or so he seemed. Around his head were bouquets of flowers, and more were in his top hat, which he held, open end up, in one hand. Women were touching him, and I saw one kiss his bronze lips. The writing on the tomb read, "Victor Noir," and showed a birth date in 1848. I couldn't quite see the death date. I followed the group briefly (and thanks to its guide found the graves of French actors Yves Montand and Simone Signoret). Eugene Delacroix was easier to stumble on, as his tomb was at the foot of Rue Eugene Delacroix. Many fascinating tombs, chapels, busts, scuptures of angels, Pietas, etc. housed people important in the history and culture of Paris and France - and entirely unknown to me. It wasn't until Thursday, when I was once again at work, that I had a chance to look up Victor Noir. I found this entry in Wikipedia - - and it explains not only Noir's significance in the history of French republicanism, but also how the sculptural bulge in his trousers has made him into a fertility god. Now I know why the tour group was so excited. We left the US on November 11, and returned on November 19, only a day late. Too bad our extra day wasn't spent in Paris, but in traveling from Newark, New Jersey, to Seattle. Long story. Lost in the Louvre, happening upon a fertility ritual in the Pere LaChaise Cemetiere, discussing Obama with a cafe owner in the Marais, dodging boules players near the Tour d'Eiffel - just a few of the adventures we had. Good times. Nice to be back. We've finally sent the most recent issue of Littlebrook, #6, to Bill Burns, and he has posted it to http://www.efanzines.com/. Suzle and I dropped in on Foolscap last night. Foolscap's a small sf convention in the Seattle area - this year it's in a new-to-them hotel, the Marriott in Redmond Town Center. We stayed for a few hours, having nice little chats with various friends, and dinner at Thai Ginger. We'll return today and stay overnight. The convention shares the hotel this weekend with Twilight, which was described as a conference on vampires in literature and legend. I moseyed over to their registration desk and looked through their program book. It appears from the topics to be discussed, that it's more of a life-style convention. I presume we'll have some entertaining goth stylings to watch, and some fruitful interactions with people who enjoy fantasy and sf, but with much different approaches. As if to prove this presumption, a person from my past cropped up in the bar. I know Lady S----- from my interactions with the pagan community (she has a different name in the kink community); she was there with her husband and several friends from Twilight. The friends, two women, turned out to have many connections with the sf community in Minneapolis and Wiscon (feminist sf convention held annually in Madison, Wisconsin). Suzle and I had a great conversation with them, standing in the bar, about sf cons, mutual friends and acquaintances, and the many differences between Seattle and Minneapolis. "We were told Seattle would be a lot like Minneapolis, but we've never seen so many libertarians in our life," they said. Perhaps we will run into them again this weekend. I will have to give them contact info for Vanguard. We ate lunch out yesterday. I noticed a man waiting for a table because of his teeshirt. It displayed a yellow circular device on a black background. The device had three bent prongs with a small hole in the center. "I know what that is," I told Suzle. "You set it in the center of a 45 RPM so it fit's on a record player's spindle. But what's it called?" "It's an adapter, of course," she said. This set me off on some pleasant memories. 45s (7" vinyl) were often played on little record players with fat spindles. I think they were an inch or more wide. The 45s may have been designed specifically to play on them. I had one when I was a young child, and so did friends of mine. You could stack quite a number on top, and as each 45 came to the end of the song, the tone arm swung back, the spindle dropped another record onto the turntable, and the tone arm swung forward and played the next number. This is one of the reasons it's so hard to find 45s from that era in pristine condition. We played them over and over, and the combination of the heavy tone arm and rubbing the records above and below it in the stack wore the grooves down something fierce. Record players for 33-1/3 vinyl (which could also play 78s and even 16 RPM records, though I never in my life saw one of these) had skinny metal spindles that did the same thing - you could stack multiple albums and never have to go back to the player. If you wanted to play the 45s, you had to insert the adaptor I described above. The curved and bent prongs gave the adaptor a springy ability to grip the inside edge of the fat hole. This has been your Antique Tech lesson for today. (And all from memory - no fact checking on Google.) The funeral went well; weather was warm and clear, the rabbi spoke well and wove together material from my sister and me into a good eulogy, and our friends were well represented. (I read the Kaddish, and shoveled dirt from a bucket into the grave on top of the urn, a box of highly polished red burl. Suzle was next, and alanro right after her. I lost track after that - I was a little shaky.)The memorial gathering at Northaven also went well, with more of our friends and many of Mom's from both Northaven and Northaven II - residents and staff. The picture display (selected by me and Suzle, and arranged by Suzle) brought much attention, especially the photos from the early 1940s to early 1950s. Mom in uniform, Mom in a California park, Mom in a heavy coat with big buttons, her head thrown back in a laugh. Thank you to all our friends, whether you made the big trip to Floral Hills, or showed up ready to help and comfort at Northaven, or simply kept us in your thoughts. I appreciated you all. |
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