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Traveling: Bookings

Heather Rose Jones — Wed, 23 Aug 2017 08:28:10 +0000

Wednesday, August 23, 2017 - 01:28

Tuesday was the whirlwind walking tour of Dublin day. I started off with the campus tour of Trinity College Dublin (where I'm staying), which gave background on the main buildings and history of the college. The repeating theme of the tour was, "And this building was designed in [date] by [name] and then the college built it and never paid him for his designs." (Ok, so maybe it only happened for two or three of the main buildings.) The tour ended up in the Old Library which houses the several early medieval gospel books, including the Book of Kells. There's a vast an fascinating set of displays on the history, production, purpose, etc. of these early books before you get to the small room where the Kells and Durrow gospels are displayed (also one other I didn't note the name of?). Even though people were let into the room in small groups, there was no traffic control and you could easily spend half an hour there without getting close enough to see them unless you were willing to be very pushy. So I saw the books (what can I say, I'm pushy). Impressive, but other than being able to see the three-dimensionality of some of the inks and paints, you get a much better idea of the artistry from any half-decent facsimile.

The tour then leads to the "Long Room" which houses the library's older books (as well as a display of the so-called Brian Boru harp). See picture above. They have a peculiar shelving system, based on a combination of date of acquisition and shelving books in decreasing size as you go up the cases. Which, I suppose, makes sense because I'd hate to be teetering on top of a tall ladder reaching over my head to lift down a folio-sized book.

I met Liz Bourke at noon at the Campanille and after luch at her favorite soup place, we set out on a meandering tour through the most interesting Georgian and (much fewer) medieval parts of Dublin. I highly recommend Liz as a tour guide! Very knowledgeable. We hit most of the better known churches (including her favorite, Saint Audoen's, which is the oldest continuously-used church in Dublin -- see picture), Dublin castle, the old parliament building (now a bank), then a walk up the river past the Guinness plant to see Kilmainham Hospital (now an art gallery) and its formal gardens. Then back to central Dublin for a fish & chips dinner and dawdling over cider at a pub until it was time for the play: Carl Capek's "R.U.R." at the Peacock Stage (part of the Abbey Theatre complex) about which I will have more to say in a review.

Today (Wednesday...it is Wednesday, right? the days are merging together) is scheduled for the archaeology museum and recovering a bit from yesterday's walking. I've been talked into see the Viking-centered Dublinia Museum tomorrow, about which I'd had questions as it advertising made it sound a bit school-group oriented.

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Traveling: In Training

Heather Rose Jones — Tue, 22 Aug 2017 08:17:39 +0000

Tuesday, August 22, 2017 - 01:17

Back in '99 when I was taking enough trains around Europe that it was worth it to have a rail pass, I was regularly gobsmacked at how (at least on the Continent) they ran to-the-minute per the published schedule. Yesterday, pretty much every train I was on was delayed...which was a good thing because otherwise I would have missed a couple of connections. In one case, I ran up and over an overpass (carrying a heavy suitcase) to a train already standing at the correct platform, barely glanced at the monitor and only confirmed it was the correct train when I was on board (and had managed to catch my breath). Which brings up another observation: the British rail system must be hell on people with physical disabilities. I can't count the number of occasions where I couldn't see any obvious option for getting from point A to point B that didn't involve stairs. (Even on the spiral ramp up to the pedestrian bridge to the Durham station, the ramp had periodic steps. Not quite enough to daunt the roll-away, but certainly enough to preclude wheelchair use.) I'm still spry enough that I can break out the backpack straps on my suitcase and hike up to my 3rd floor walk-up room here at Trinity College (see picture) but I can feel the bones aching on occasion and it makes me ponder.

But on the up side, I saw lots of lovely train-side scenery yesterday, cutting accross the Pennines and then traveling along the northern edge of Wales, across the Menai Strait, and on to Holyhead where I took the ferry to Dublin. I took a bunch of "atmosphere" notes on the trip for when I return some day to my 10th century historic romance that involves Dublin and Vikings.

If you ever plan to visit Dublin in the summer and want easy access to everything downtown (and you have good knees) I can highly recommend taking advantage of the Trinity College on-campus accommodations. (I found them through Hotels.com) It's a dorm style room (there are a few with en suite facilities, which I got) and comes with a complimentary continental breakfast at The Buttery (full breakfast available if you pay more). And now I'm going to walk out of my room, across the quad, and take a campus tour that ends up putting me in front of the Book of Kells. But more on that in tomorrow's post.

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Traveling: Visions

Heather Rose Jones — Sun, 20 Aug 2017 09:57:18 +0000

Sunday, August 20, 2017 - 02:57

Just a quick note this time. Yesterday we did a little more wandering around Durham. Checked out the stalls in the Old Market Hall looking for gifts, but didn't see anything that really grabbed me. Went off to look at Sara & Joel's new house that they're gradually getting fixed up for moving in and had serious Old House Envy. (18th century beams! 0.5 meter thick back wall (now an interior wall of the house)! Cute postage-stamp back garden with sheds!) Had lunch and a pint in the pub right around the corner from the new (old) house.

Spent the afternoon resting up for the jaunt to York today, plus doing a bunch of exporting, formatting, and annotating of my files from the Great Welsh Name Database which I'm handing over to Sara for use in the DMNES project (Dictionary of Medieval Names from European Sources). This is, to some extent, an acknowledgement that I'm unlikely to do more work on the database in the near future. But I've always meant to ask if she wanted the data to use and this was a chance to talk about how the current files are structured and what some of the analytic data was trying to do.

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Traveling: Crossings

Heather Rose Jones — Fri, 18 Aug 2017 14:42:42 +0000

Friday, August 18, 2017 - 07:42

Thursday was both leisurely and taken up entirely by travel. After a lazy breakfast, I could the train from Deventer at 11am. Local to Schiphol, then the Thalys to Brussels, the Eurostar to London, one train up to York, then a change for the last leg to Durham. The changes all had plenty of time to find my platform, but never really enough time to stop and look around or do more than grab something to eat later on the train. At King's Cross Station I didn't feel like there was enough time to go slip through the door at platform 9-3/4 (which would have totally screwed up my travel plans, in any event), and yet somehow today I found myself within the walls of Hogwarts in any case:

Which is, of course, actually the cloister of Durham Cathedral. Today I got a walking tour all over the cathedral, castle/university, and city center, including a few locations (like the Senior Commons Room) that came courtey of being hosted by university faculty. Central Durham is another great example of integrating older buildings with a vibrant thriving town center. One fellow passing by who heard me being given a tourist lecture told us about how great it was that the shops and buildings were occupied and open now, and that when he was younger so many of the old buildings were boarded up. When you hear people talking about the world going downhill, I think it's important to take note of all the success stories you see of urban revivial and the ability to have the best of both the past and the present. Like the way that so much of the Bailey area in Durham is a living part of the university.

We adjourned for late lunch in a cafe as my feet were beginning to flag. Keeping up with the energy of someone as young as Gwen it quite an undertaking! But the city is full of lovely walks, with wild blackberries and plums for the picking, and people lazily rowing past in boats, and the cobbled streets full of tourists and shoppers. We have a pencilled-in plan to all go to York on Sunday, since my interest was a good excuse for the whole family to do some sightseeing. Tomorrow may be a bit more leisurely.

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Traveling: Passages

Heather Rose Jones — Thu, 17 Aug 2017 07:17:19 +0000

Thursday, August 17, 2017 - 00:17

Wednesday was another ambling around Deventer day. Irina and I went off to various shops to pick up so specialty cheese and wurst to take to Sara & Co. on my next stop. (Also some cheese for me to take home, once I'd verified that their packaging technique would pass customs.) Then just more wandering with tour guide: tracing the old city walls (both the earthwork built against the Vikings and the medieval stone wall that can still be seen in fragments and lasted into the early 17th century (IIRC). Met the rest of the household at De Rode Kater (The Red Cat) for lunch, which was also where Irina and I returned for dinner. We also enjoyed a long pleasant evening on the rooftop patio, watching the bat go after insects and discussing books and philosophy and whatnot.

Today will be another travel day: local train back to Schiphol, Thalys high-speed rail to Brussels, Eurostar to London, the local train to Durham. The schedule is such that I actually go past to York and then backtrack to Durham. I'm idly wondering if there might be a day-trip to York possible, but I'm sticking to my plan of people-over-places so it will be as it falls out. Given that schedule, I don't anticipate (I hope!) having anything exciting to post about tomorrow.

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Traveling: Deventer NL

Heather Rose Jones — Wed, 16 Aug 2017 08:25:32 +0000

Wednesday, August 16, 2017 - 01:25

When I thought about what I wanted to do to extend my trip a little (because it seems silly to fly all the way to Europe and not do a bit of extra traveling), I decided that rather than focus on museums and castles and whatnot, I wanted to spend the time visiting people--especially people that I've known for quite some time and had never met in person. I met Irina way back during Usenet days on rec.arts.sf.composition, so that would be about 20 years ago or so. She's been a beta reader for a number of my stories and books, but up until last week we'd never been in the same time and place. So she was on the short-list of people I wanted to visit and here I am in Deventer, Netherlands.

Mind you, if I'd known that I'd get to stay in a building with a 12th century basement, I'd have been even more certain I wanted to visit! The picture above is the view from my (4th floor) bedroom. The basement and ground floor belong to the Russian Orthodox church that Irina belongs to, and she and her husband own the upper stories. The upper parts of the house are mostly 18-19th century with a few bits of older wall, but here's what the basement looks like:

Other than relaxing and chatting, I'm gotten to spend a lot of time wandering around with a personal tour of many of the older parts of the town. Deventer is a great example of integrating older buildings and newer construction into modern commercial and residential functions. Much of the older part of town has cobbled streets and restricted automobile access (though many bicycles!) so it has a slight feel of an extended pedestrian mall. Here's a random example--just an ordinary neighborhood.

I've been taking lots of notes and pictures relevant to early 19th century vernacular architecture and town layout. (I wonder why?) There will be more pictures and descriptions on facebook. And now, I'm going to go shopping for cheese...

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Worldcon Trip - Downwinding

Heather Rose Jones — Mon, 14 Aug 2017 07:50:44 +0000

Tuesday, August 15, 2017 - 00:00

I'm drafting this up while sitting in the Helsinki airport Monday morning but don't plan to post it until Tuesday (to avoid bumping the week's LHMP entry off the front page). But then, I don't figure much of interest will happen for the rest of the day except travel and convention recovery. Sunday morning, having no panels of interest until 11am, I stopped by the WSFS business meeting and helped skate through the remaining agenda items (mostly various housekeeping votes) in record time. The panel I wanted to attend was "Moving Beyond Orientalism in SFF" which was a good solid introduction to "why orientalism is bad". After that, I moved into the realm of "I'm too tired to do much except wander around vaguely." I did finally bump into Tero (whose wedding to my late friend Judy was the occasion of my previous trip to Finland) -- he'd been cosplaying most of the event, so I think I can be forgiven not saying hi earlier!

The panel on "using history for worldbuilding" that I was moderator for went smoothly, except that we had one mic for five people so we punted and begged anyone with hearing impairments to move to the front. I sincerely apologize for this divergence from policy, but try to pass a single mic around during a panel discussion does great damage to the discussion flow. Passing a single mic also would have made it more difficult to try to do turn-taking management--at which I was not as good as I aim for. I hadn't quite expected the conversation dominance to come from the direction it did and wasn't prepared to manage the reins in the way that was needed. (Folks: even very very nice, knowledgeable, entertaining panelists need to self-monitor for hogging the speaking time.)

I hung around for the closing ceremonies, mostly because I needed the psychological closure. (I dislike it when the con just sort of dribbles down to a stop.) Then dashed off to drop stuff at my hotel and join Phiala and Thorvaldr for a nice dinner at a restaurant that specialized in traditional Finnish food. I had the pike-perch with wild mushroom sauce, but we traded around bites, so I also got some sauted reindeer and pan-fried herring.

And then it was a matter of setting my alarm early enough to get to the airport for an 8am flight. Except that the flight was overbooked and they were asking for volunteers to get bumped. I volunteered, despite it meaning changing planes in Copenhagen and not getting in to Schiphol until 2pm. I'd actually considered that flight when originally making my reservations, but opted for the early non-stop instead. Honestly, if I'd had the choice between the 200-Euro compensation and sleeping later, I would have picked sleeping later! But I volunteered, in part, because I could. So here I am, having time to finally watch the YouTube video of the con's opening ceremonies and then type this up for later posting.

Postscript: Arriving in Schiphol, it turned out my luggage was lagging behind somewhere. It had to happen at least once on the trip. It will be delivered sometime this morning (Tuesday) so no harm, no foul. Tomorrow I will blog about Irina & Boudewijn's lovely house with pictures of the view from my bedroom window.

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Worldcon Trip - Engagement

Heather Rose Jones — Sun, 13 Aug 2017 06:33:48 +0000

Saturday, August 12, 2017 - 23:33

Two days at once! I had the podcast blog to post yesterday, so here you get caught up on both Friday and Saturday at the con. I've fallen in with a regular breakfast group at the hotel (some of them even came to my historic fantasy panel, though maybe they would have anyway), so that initial sense of disconnection is falling away. The first Friday panel I wanted to attend was at noon so I spent the first couple hours of the day participating in the business meeting. I have nothing but admiration for folks who dedicate much of their worldcon mornings to the business meetings--I spent a fair amount of time there last year to support various of the Hugo nomination reform initiatives, but it's hard to choose it over other programming. As it was, this time, I had to choose between staying long enough to be there to support ratification of the new YA book award, or leaving in time to get in line for the "Female Friendship in Fiction" panel. I stayed (and we ratified) and then found the panel had maxed out, so I hung around to slip in when someone else left. A good panel, though it's hard to sit on your hands when panelists are bemoaning how hard it is to find books that feature friendships between women and you want to stand up and wave your own books around. (I was good. I just subtweeted about it.)

I hung around after the panel to introduce myself to one of the panelists (Navah Wolfe) whom I know from a social media space and who will be on the same flight to Amsterdam tomorrow morning. I wanted to introduce myself to Amal El-Mohtar who was also on the panel and who I've interacted with on Twitter occasionally (and who did the introduction for my Podcastle story), but she was deep in conversation with some other folks and I had to run to my signing. I probably won't get another shot at this con because her short story "Seasons of Glass and Iron" won a Hugo and I imagine she's being overwhelmed by people who want to talk to her.

Anyway, I'd primed the pump sufficiently for my signing session that several friends came to hang out and keep me company, but I also had half a dozen people come by either with books to sign (wow!) or interested in taking one of the "Mazarinette and the Musketeer" chapbooks that I'd brought so I'd have something to sign. So a group of us adjourned to lunch afterward. I figured a sizeable lunch was in order since my later panel rolled directly into the Hugo Award ceremony slot and there's be no time then.

That later panel provides today's photo: ALien Language in Science Fiction featuring (from left to right in the picture) Lawrence M. Schoen (involved with the Klingon Language Institute), David J. Peterson (alien language consultant to Hollywood, including for Game of Thrones, and incidentally a student of mine back in my grad school days which gives us content for some amusing banter on panels--a great guy), Stephen W. Potts (author of academic and critical writing on SFF), me, and Cora Buhlert (German translator and writer of SFF). It was a longer panel slot than most, which gave us scope for a lot of interesting discussion about just how alien a language can be before it takes over the plot, how to handle the question of translation in portraying multi-species linguistic interactions, and some of the dynamics of interacting with television and movie producers as a language consultant. There was a general sense that Hollywood is becoming more interested in and more willing to take languages seriously in portraying SFF-nal societies, though there's always the pressure not to drive away audience attention.

Since the panel slot ran until 7:30 (though it gets out a little earlier) and the Hugo ceremonies were scheduled to begin at 7:30, I'd lost all chance of meeting up to sit with any of my default groups. And though I scanned the bleachers for quite a while looking for a seat, I couldn't find anyone until I'd given up and went off to sit by myself and then ran into Kathryn Sullivan who I'd been chatting with in several contexts over the several previous days. So that was nice. The ceremony was very enjoyable and fortunately this year there wasn't any anxiety that the atmosphere would be hijacked by Puppy hijinx. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, don't worry about it.)

After the ceremony, I wandered around a bit looking for someone to have a spot of dinner with and found Anna Feruglio Dal Dan was of a similar mind, so I finally enjoyed a bowl of the famous Helsinki "creamy salmon soup" that all the cafes advertise, which just hit the spot. So far, I haven't done any "evening parties" as such. Due to the venue restrictions, all the bid parties and the like are in a large common space in the convention center, which means the noise levels are even worse than a hotel suite would be. And since everyone's spread out across many hotels, there isn't an obvious place to go for a bar-con. The third element is that every evening except this one I've ended up back downtown for dinner, and simply didn't feel like taking the train back to the convention center on the off chance that I might find congenial company. This has been good for my sleep, and I've been having plenty of social time otherwise, so I'm ok about it.

I finally got the hang of getting a long night's sleep Friday night, which contributed to not getting a blog written yesterday morning. (I also didn't want to bump the podcast blog off the front page while everyone back in the states was still asleep.) So I rolled into the convention center just in time to get a good seat for the "Gender and 'Realistic History'" panel, which didn't tell me anything new, but it's nice to hear other people saying the same things I rant about. A chance encounter in the hallway after that panel had me helping track down a program schedule for a local fan/press-person who was attending his first big convention. He treated me to coffee in thanks and we joined Cathering Lundoff who was also enjoying a cup right next to where we got ours, so who knows, she and I may end up in some local article. Then I stood in line to get into "Feminist and Queer Readings of Fantasy Tropes" which was enjoyable although I no longer remember anything specific that was said. After that, my brain kind of went on strike and I decided to just sit with a cup of coffee outside the Fazer Cafe (in the main cross-roads of convention center traffic) and watch people go by.

I had a dinner date set up with (pseudonym =) Praisegod Barebones and daughter, to which I'd added @jennygadget who I hadn't seen since we had lunch together in Berkeley a couple years ago when she was jobhunting. Our initial ideas about restaurants were pre-empted by a sudden violent rainstorm just as we were passing by an Indian restaurant--a fortuitous chance. It is just possible that I have developed the knack for putting together congenial dinner groups because we had just a great conversation that we stayed until closing time, talking about libraries, and schools, and books, and all sorts of things.

And so, now we're here at the last day of the con. I have one more panel to moderate this afternoon, and no doubt the pangs of watching people dash off for flights and trains. My own flight is at 8am tomorrow, and Monday is my LHMP day in any event, so expect the final wrap-up on Tuesday when I'm ensconsed in Deventer, Netherlands enjoying a visit with Irina.

(Image credit: Melanie Marttila, used with permission)

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Worldcon Trip - Empanelment

Heather Rose Jones — Fri, 11 Aug 2017 05:56:31 +0000

Thursday, August 10, 2017 - 22:56

The photo is of the Belge Cafe where I had dinner in company with a number of other denizens of the File 770 blog, once more including my first face-to-face meeting with someone I've known online since Usenet days (Anna Feruglio Dal Dan). The cafe has a "library" theme, which was part of the attraction, though the food was also excellent. But I get ahead of myself.

I had a 10am panel (Historical Fantasy) which was the first time-slot of the day's programming. So of course I headed off to the convention center with plenty of time, not noting that the doors didn't even open until 9am. And the food vendors inside the center weren't planning to open until 10, which would have been less of an issue regarding my second cup of coffee of the day if the Green Room had been open and set up. But although it opened about five minutes before the panel started, so we panelists managed to touch base there, but coffee carafe did not yet have contents. Whimper. The panel went off well, I think (supported by some later audience feedback). It still felt a bit stiff with the "you will all take turns answering this question" format, but I can cope with a variety of styles. We basically did some stabs at definitional principles for historical fantasy, examples of what we considered success and failure, and a few additional topics.

The room was completely filled, though I don't think anyone was turned away from our particular panel. They're rearranged some of the programming space to move the more popular tracks into larger spaces for the rest of the convention and even yesterday before they'd done that, there were fewer grumbles about not being able to get into events. (Though there were always lines waiting to get in.) The waiting-on-line aspect is something I'd hate to see become a feature of worldcons--it's something I associate with media conventions and not to be imitated.

Lunch was yet another meet-up of one of my online social groups. Social media can often feel like a one-way glass window, where if I'm not constantly actively participating, it feels like I stop being real. But the face-to-face meet-ups go a long way toward making it feel more like an actual circle of friends. It's funny, there are people that I feel like I'm part of a friend-group with, where I realize that they may not actually "know" me at all, because I'm seeing them reflected off mutual friends. So it can be strange to approach someone at a con and try to remember whether this is someone I "know" or simply someone I "know of".

After lunch I dropped by to give moral support to Catherine Lundoff at her signing. The row of signing tables was basically half a dozen people looking rather lonely, and then the table where George R R Martin was going to be an hour later, which had a line of waiting people that numbered in the hundreds. See above comment about waiting on lines. The big name authors usually have significant lines for signings at Worldcon, but not usually ones that line up hours in advance. (I saw a comment that someone said they'd spent 4 hours in line for him.) Again, I hope this doesn't become a feature, and I don't know that it was necessary. But if you have a line-standing expectation, it's easy for line-standing to become necessary.

Went off to a panel on magical libraries and archives in fiction, which was entertaining, though perhaps a bit too fixed on talking about real-world library systems. I'd wanted to go to Amal El Mohtar's reading immediately after that but figured there was no point given the crowding issues, and only heard later that there were still spaces at the time I would have shown up. Ah well.

Finished off the evening with a long chatty dinner with the File 770 crowd, for which see above photo.

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Worldcon Trip - Gathering

Heather Rose Jones — Thu, 10 Aug 2017 05:17:36 +0000

Wednesday, August 9, 2017 - 22:17

I don't seem to have taken any pictures yesterday -- need to remember to do that today. The convention officially opened, though I had something else opposite the opening ceremonies so I can't report on them. There is evidently a certain amount of "victims of their own success" going on with much higher at-con membership sales than expected, so the popular events and panels are jam packed. So maybe I wouldn't have gotten in to the opening ceremonies anyway. The main "large panel" space has four breakout rooms, and originally the largest panels were going to be in a the combined A/B section, but for the one thing I attended there -- the Tea & Jeopardy podcast live interview with George R R Martin -- they'd opened up the entire A/B/C/D combined space. (Back before the convention, the podcast had arranged for podcast Patreon supporters to sign up for special reserved seating, which I did, but when I got there it was clear that any plans of that sort had gone out the window. Or at least none of the crowd control folks knew anything about it.) The convention has put out announcements that they're scrambling to arrange for more function space with the convention center, and they've had to close down one-day memberships. I've heard bits of grumbling about basically not being able to attend anything back-to-back both because of traffic flow issues and the need to queue up well in advance to get into anything. It will be interesting to see if things settle out or escalate.

I didn't have any programming yesterday, and no must-do events other than the initial File770 social meetup and the Escape Artists meet-up (Escape Artists runs a series of fiction podcasts, including Podcastle.org which has bought two of my "Merchinogi" short stories.) The layout of the convention center is great for sitting down in one of the cafe areas and watching people go by (or wandering by people hanging out in the cafe areas), which is how I immediately ran into Irina Rempt (also on my list to visit after the con) and her friend Eleanor, then later once again bumped into Praisegod Barebones & The-Girl-from-Ankyra (with whom I'd had coffee the day before) at which we exchanged gifts (I brought a stack of chapbooks of "The Mazarinette and the Musketeer" for gifts), and others who are slipping my mind. Briefly bumped into Kari Sperring (whose schedule didn't work out for an after-con visit) and dropped by the Accessibility Point to wave hi to a couple friends who were staffing it.

As noted, I did got to the Tea & Jeopardy live recording, which worked very well as a stage presentation (including the singing chickens...who were simply too shy to come out from behind the curtain). Good audience participation schtick too. Then I went to a panel on "The Medieval Mind and Fantasy Literature" looking at contrasts between actual medieval history and culture, and the version that tends to show up in fantasy. (Generally good, though marred slightly by one of the panelists have a problem with taking 100 words to present a 5-word thought.)

In the mean time, thanks to the wonders of social media, I'd responded to a dinner-fishing post from Catherine Lundoff and her wife Jana with a suggestion to merge in my existing dinner plans with Sarah Goslee and husband Thorvaldr (I'm going to mix names from different spheres based on what I can remember most easily), to which Catherine had added Paul Weimer, Charlie Stross, and oh-crap-I'm-blanking-on-Charlie's-partner's-name-sorry! Dietary specifications landed us in a tiny vegan Vietnamese place where our moderate-sized party took up half the tables. Lovely conversation that wasn't all politics (though politics featured significantly), nor all about writing (though writing featured significantly), with most of us continuing on to a brew pub that it turns out was just a block away from my hotel.

This morning's hotel breakfast landed me with a group I'd seen yesterday, where I valiantly struggled to hold up my end of a discussion of current SFF television and movies. And now, in addition to writing this up, I'm reviewing my notes for my morning panel on historic fantasy (for which the moderator has sent out a somewhat over-structured outline for the discussion, but I'm sure it will go fine). Other than that, the fixed items on my schedule are three more social meet-ups (two of which conflict, so I may have to triage, since one is at the convention center and the other downtown for a loose dinner group). And beyond that, whatever programming I can squeeze myself into. See you on the flip side!

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Worldcon Trip - Reception

Heather Rose Jones — Wed, 09 Aug 2017 06:01:10 +0000

Tuesday, August 8, 2017 - 23:01

"Reception" is meant in several senses. The picture is not the official Worldcon reception at City Hall (which was a bit too washed out to make a good image)...but I get ahead of myself. One of the fascinating things about online culture, is that not only am I meeting people that I've known for years but have never seen face to face, but in some cases I'm meeting people I've known for years and realize I have no idea what their real names are. In the case of yesterday's coffee meet-up there's an objective reason for this (he's an ex-pat teaching in a country with touchy politics and doesn't want to connect his online and real life identities), but often it's just a matter of knowing someone through the nickname they use in a particular online space. That's who they are, as much as any name is "who you are". I joke that the first time I went to the medieval studies conference at Kalamazoo, between people I knew through SCA, people I knew through academia, people I knew through LiveJournal, people I knew through Usenet, and people I knew through other people talking about them, I had a vision of quite how many people I was likely to run into that I already knew...and then discovered that, due to redundancy, the actual number of discrete individuals was much smaller.

In any case, I had coffee with someone I know as Praisegod Barebones and with his daughter (just about to go off to college) who has become a charter member of the unofficial official Alpennia fan club. And because the next thing on their agenda was wandering around the farmers' market/tourist market at the harbor, we ended up spending several hours together. Checked out the interior of the Orthodox cathedral, shared a basket of billberries from the market, and then split up with they went off to do a ferry tour of several islands.

I headed back to my room for a bit of a rest (valiently struggling to not nap), and then eventually headed off to the Worldcon reception at City Hall (evidently they did a random pick of people who were participating in programming--or at least that's what I heard, which caused a bit of a wave of consternation when people tried to figure out why some people got invited and others didn't, without knowing about the random factor). A bit of speechifying, a light buffet of cocktail food, and a lot of milling about struggling to socialize. Within two minutes I was at the point of "I recognize six people in this room and they're all in the middle of knots of friends", so I shifted gears into "walk up and introduce myself to people who are standing all by themselves and break the ice by saying that that's what I'm doing." Eventually bumped into several people I actually did already know, but cocktail parties are always about survival mode.

Expecting (accurately) that the reception wouldn't be anything resembling a real meal, I'd hoped to hook up with people planning to go off to dinner afterward, but failed to make any connections. Since I had a phone call to make I went back to my room (I thought I needed to sort out something with my ATM card, but it turned out I'd just happened to hit the one malfunctioning ATM in all Helsinki and thought it was my account that was the problem). Still needed dinner after that and made some connection attempts on social media but nothing panned out with the right timing so I ate by myself at a pasta place with some nice patio seating on the main square. I always feel like a failure when I eat by myself at conventions. I failed again at breakfast this morning despite the hotel filling up with con goers, and me wandering through the (open seating) dining room hopefully trying for eye contact. My game isn't getting off the ground so far, but half the dinners from here on are already scheduled, so that should get better.

I've packed my backpack with essential supplies (business cards, Alpennia badge ribbons, sample books, a change of shirt) since the hotel is a train stop away from the convention center. Helsinki doesn't have a single big convention space + hotel so we're scattered throughout the downtown area. I'm assuming I won't be coming back to my room until evening most nights.

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Worldcon Trip - Arrivals

Heather Rose Jones — Tue, 08 Aug 2017 05:57:30 +0000

Monday, August 7, 2017 - 22:57

This will be an irregular chronicle of My Summer Vacation, beginning in Helsinki, Finland. Seeing all sorts of online friends reporting late planes and missed connections, I have to count myself lucky at getting a non-stop flight (though we were delayed an hour taking off, so good thing I didn't have a connection to miss). I spotted several other Worldcon-bound fans in the waiting room for my flight, in some cases due to strategic use of the "Helsinki 2017" bright blue t-shirts, but in some cases because it was someone I actually knew (waves at David Peterson). The flight was wonderfully non-full, and far more comfortable than economy class typically is. (I swear that the seats reclined farther than usual, but this may be an illusion because they certainly weren't any farther apart than usual.) By a judicious use of half a sleeping pill and my audiobooks, I managed as much sleep as I normally do, which meant I woke up just about when they were serving breakfast, a couple hours out from landing.

Of course, landing was at 4pm local time. It's possible I would have done better to get less sleep on the plane and been more tired last night, but I'm not going to complain. I navigated the airport, customs, and catching the train into the city as if I knew what I were doing. The one glitch so far is that my planned roommate (Liz Bourke) called in sick, having come down with something at the conference on Byzantium in SF last week. (The tweets coming out of that conference made me a bit envious of those who attended, but one can't do everything.) I'm a bit sad, because I like using room sharing at cons as a way to get to know people I might not have spent time with before. It's always awkward offering up room space for those in last minute need because of issues around being choosy.

Anyway, after checking in at the Hotel Arthur, I went out for a long walk to get acquainted with the downtown, find something to eat (a light smoked salmon sandwith at the Kappeli cafe in the esplanade park), and generally get in enough physical activity to reset my body a little. It was one of those times where it would have been nice to bump into other fans and do some socializing, but I wasn't up to figuring out how I would manage that. Sleep was decent enough that I think I'm well on track to get through the jet lag.

The hotel has a complimentary breakfast buffet with some interesting (and occasionally cryptic) choices. I mostly settled on muesli with yogurt-like-substance and fresh mixed berries. Then took in a walk through the botanic gardens which back up on the hotel. I have a 10:30 date to meet some online friends for coffee, and after that I'll improvise. Maybe even take some time to put together notes for the panels I'm on, which I haven't had the brainspace to do yet.

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