Return of the living dead
May. 9th, 2006 01:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
randy_byersSo I'm back from my trip to upstate New York and Toronto. As anticipated, I had a fricking blast at all stops and at all points in between. Funny how good, clean fun (ahem) leaves one so exhausted. Yet I have crawled to my keyboard to bring you the tale of my travels. (Well, this is after a hike to Kidd Valley for a bacon cheeseburger and then to Bottleworks for a supply of local beer. Good, clean fun, I tell you.)
My first stop was in Troy, New York, which is near Albany. I was visiting my friend, the incomparable Ron Drummond, who moved there from Seattle last year. The most common question I heard throughout my visit was variations on, "Why the hell did he move from Seattle to Troy?" But Troy is an interesting post-industrial city in its own right, and the beer at Brown's Taproom, where we met Ron's friend Kevin for dinner Wednesday night, was quite tasty. The highlight of this part of the trip, however, came the next day when we rented a car and drove into the Berkshire Hills in western Massachussetts. We drove out on Route 2, also known as the Mohawk Trail -- a winding, wooded road through the rolling hills and dells and picturesque rural towns of the Berkshires. It was a beautiful, sunny day, and the woods were doing their best to paint themselves in every possible variegation of light green.
We stopped at Williams College for a quick visit with Paul Park, who teaches there, and then we continued on to Shelburne Falls, where we met![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
crowleycrow. Shelburne Falls is the model for Blackbury Jambs in his Aegypt quartet, and he led us across the Bridge of Flowers and showed us around the town, including Nancy L. Dole's wonderful Books & Ephemera shop, where I found ancient tinted postcards of the Mohawk Trail. Once he had determined that I was not an axe murderer or otherwise unkempt, Crowley invited us back to his house, where he and Ron looked over the proofs of artwork by Peter Milton that will be used to illustrate the 25th anniversary edition of Little, Big that Ron's Incunabula Press is publishing. (I had carried the proofs with me from Seattle, where I'd received them from John D. Berry over a couple of pints of Whoville Weizenbock at the Elysian.) Crowley seemed genuinely delighted and excited by the artwork and by the prospect of this special edition of his most famous book.
After we left his house, we roared back to Troy on I-90 to metssprince for East Indian food at the Shalimar across the street from Ron's apartment. Sarah delivered stencil artwork for me to take to Corflu. I was a mule for quite a number of items with a number of destinations on this trip! It was great to meet Sarah after all these years and to hear about life in the Adirondacks. She had a lovely dog, too -- a mix of black lab and chow, with short hair, a curly tail, and a black tongue.
Next day, after breakfast across the Hudson River with Ron, I was picked up bygerisullivan for a road trip to Corflu. My geography lesson continued, as we traveled due west on I-90 across the widest part of New York to get to Toronto. I guess I've always thought Toronto was due north of New York, but I guess I was, you know, fucking wrong. Montreal, in fact, is due north of New York. Geri and I had a wonderful gabfest for most of the nine hour journey. She sure does know what's going on in a lot of different fannish communities! Reader, I now have your number. We also stopped at Niagra Falls, which I hadn't seen since I was a baby. Didn't remember a thing, oddly enough.
Then we hit the convention, and as usual the linear narrative went nonlinear. It was a small Corflu, with only 26 in attendance, but I've never had a bad time at a Corflu and that's still true. Actually, last year in San Francisco was almost too much of a good thing, with so many people I wanted to talk to that I ended up sitting in a corner anxiously trying to figure out where to start. With a much smaller crowd in Toronto, I was paradoxically able to spend quality time with more people. Yvonne Rowse and Ian Sorensen were the token Brits in attendance, and I ended up hanging out with them quite a bit, which I hadn't been able to do at either Corflu Titanium or at Interaction last year. Ian was in fine form and kept me in stitches whenever he was around. Yvonne keeps him in stitches, but that's from hitting him whenever he makes a terrible pun or rude comment, which is approximately every 30 seconds.
Friday night, I helpedasfi load and transport goods from his house, and I thereby got to see the Gestetner that went spung. It was impressive that Colin wasn't killed in the accident. Can't remember what that style of house is called, but I really like it: narrow, deep, and two stories on top of a finished basement. This trip to the Annex neighborhood was pretty much the most I saw of Toronto. Otherwise I joined several expeditions around the downtown hotel for food, including Ethiopian, Chinese, Middle Eastern, Japanese (for the convention brunch) and New York deli meals. (Do they really serve something called "peameal bacon" in NYC?) I was one of the auctioneers for the TAFF auction, joining Murray Moore and Andy Porter. That was fun, and we collected over $300 for TAFF. The fannish slideshow that night was great, with many gasps of astonishment at thirty year old photos of friends who were once thin and dark- (not to mention long-) haired. Many laughs were to be had as Mike Glicksohn barked "Next!" everytime Taral tried to show a landscape photo from one of his roadtrips. Not infrequently, this would become, "Next! Next! Next! Next! Next! Next! Next!" Mike was in great form, and the loss of a kidney did not seem to slow down his consumption of peaty single malt one whit.
Hope Leibowitz was the random guest of honor, and I took great pleasure in prodding her about her speech as often as I could. She seemed to enjoy the teasing and ended up giving a wonderfully Leibowitzian speech from scrambled notes. It was very cute and very appropriate, and a chance for her to think about and summarize her place in fandom. You're free now, Hope, and maybe I'll follow your lead and try to get it over with as soon as possible in the future rather than bribing my way out of it!
It's probably no surprise that Murray's suggestion last week, when I announced the roadtrip with Geri, that I ask her about the status of the issue of Science-Fiction Five-Yearly that is due this November has resulted in my being invited by Geri to co-edit. Ted White told me it would be a good rite of passage, and I said, "Sounds like more of a hazing to me." But I know that working with Geri is going to be a lot of fun (she's already talking about a collation party in Massachussetts), and wow, it's really something to be working on a Lee Hoffwoman zine. It's enough to make a fan doubt his worthiness! But if Geri and Ted think I can hack it, I guess I'll give it a go. Thanks, Geri!
The chance to get to know a bit more about Toronto fandom was also welcome. I finally met the very genial Lloyd Penney, with whom I got to talk quite a bit. Lloyd was quite handy around the convention as well and kept track of the winning bids and collected the money at the auction amongst other things. One person I hadn't heard of before the convention was Phil Paine, who turned out to be quite a database of Canadian history, sociology, linguistics, economics, and just about everything else. I think I learned more about Canada in three conversations with him than I had learned in my previous 45 years on this planet, and it was fascinating stuff, at least to me. The discourse on how the horrific Saskatchewan dustbowl of the '30s led to an overrepresentation of Saskatchewanians in the political elite was a sociological masterwork. Then there was Janet Wilson and her son, Paul, who knows way more about mimeos than I do even though he's half my age. He and Colin worked hard on theprogram souvenir book throughout the convention, and Geri, Andy, Hope, and I played mimeo groupies Sunday night as we watched them wrestle with Gestetners while Geri found entertaining items to peruse on teh internets.
There weren't a lot of zines at this fanzine convention, but Ian brought copies of his Snapshot 7 andflyingsauce's Zoo Nation 7, Jim Caughran had an issue of A Propos de Rien, and I handed out a few extra copies of surliminal's final Floss! from last year. (Another great issue of ZN, Pete. I read most of it on the flight back, and I'm especially wowed so far by the piece on the Toynbee Tiles. Dude, that's a brilliant editorial score!)
Okay, I'm running out of steam here, so I think I'll end with something Don Anderson told me in the consuite Friday night. I mentioned that Geri and I had taken I-90 much of the way from New York and that it led all the way to my hometown, Seattle, on the other end of the continent. Don said that it has always comforted him to think that from his house in Rochester, NY he could, if he wanted, drive a few blocks to I-90 and head west across the country, get off in Issaquah, WA and drive a few blocks to get to Wally Weber's house. I-90: Roadway to the Fans. I had a great time on the eastern ends of it, and now it's great to be back at the western end that I call home.
Thanks to Ron for all his hospitality and friendship, and thanks to Catherine, Colin, and Murray for a small but perfectly formed Corflu. See everybody next year in Austin, TX.
My first stop was in Troy, New York, which is near Albany. I was visiting my friend, the incomparable Ron Drummond, who moved there from Seattle last year. The most common question I heard throughout my visit was variations on, "Why the hell did he move from Seattle to Troy?" But Troy is an interesting post-industrial city in its own right, and the beer at Brown's Taproom, where we met Ron's friend Kevin for dinner Wednesday night, was quite tasty. The highlight of this part of the trip, however, came the next day when we rented a car and drove into the Berkshire Hills in western Massachussetts. We drove out on Route 2, also known as the Mohawk Trail -- a winding, wooded road through the rolling hills and dells and picturesque rural towns of the Berkshires. It was a beautiful, sunny day, and the woods were doing their best to paint themselves in every possible variegation of light green.
We stopped at Williams College for a quick visit with Paul Park, who teaches there, and then we continued on to Shelburne Falls, where we met
crowleycrow. Shelburne Falls is the model for Blackbury Jambs in his Aegypt quartet, and he led us across the Bridge of Flowers and showed us around the town, including Nancy L. Dole's wonderful Books & Ephemera shop, where I found ancient tinted postcards of the Mohawk Trail. Once he had determined that I was not an axe murderer or otherwise unkempt, Crowley invited us back to his house, where he and Ron looked over the proofs of artwork by Peter Milton that will be used to illustrate the 25th anniversary edition of Little, Big that Ron's Incunabula Press is publishing. (I had carried the proofs with me from Seattle, where I'd received them from John D. Berry over a couple of pints of Whoville Weizenbock at the Elysian.) Crowley seemed genuinely delighted and excited by the artwork and by the prospect of this special edition of his most famous book.After we left his house, we roared back to Troy on I-90 to met
ssprince for East Indian food at the Shalimar across the street from Ron's apartment. Sarah delivered stencil artwork for me to take to Corflu. I was a mule for quite a number of items with a number of destinations on this trip! It was great to meet Sarah after all these years and to hear about life in the Adirondacks. She had a lovely dog, too -- a mix of black lab and chow, with short hair, a curly tail, and a black tongue.Next day, after breakfast across the Hudson River with Ron, I was picked up by
gerisullivan for a road trip to Corflu. My geography lesson continued, as we traveled due west on I-90 across the widest part of New York to get to Toronto. I guess I've always thought Toronto was due north of New York, but I guess I was, you know, fucking wrong. Montreal, in fact, is due north of New York. Geri and I had a wonderful gabfest for most of the nine hour journey. She sure does know what's going on in a lot of different fannish communities! Reader, I now have your number. We also stopped at Niagra Falls, which I hadn't seen since I was a baby. Didn't remember a thing, oddly enough.Then we hit the convention, and as usual the linear narrative went nonlinear. It was a small Corflu, with only 26 in attendance, but I've never had a bad time at a Corflu and that's still true. Actually, last year in San Francisco was almost too much of a good thing, with so many people I wanted to talk to that I ended up sitting in a corner anxiously trying to figure out where to start. With a much smaller crowd in Toronto, I was paradoxically able to spend quality time with more people. Yvonne Rowse and Ian Sorensen were the token Brits in attendance, and I ended up hanging out with them quite a bit, which I hadn't been able to do at either Corflu Titanium or at Interaction last year. Ian was in fine form and kept me in stitches whenever he was around. Yvonne keeps him in stitches, but that's from hitting him whenever he makes a terrible pun or rude comment, which is approximately every 30 seconds.
Friday night, I helped
asfi load and transport goods from his house, and I thereby got to see the Gestetner that went spung. It was impressive that Colin wasn't killed in the accident. Can't remember what that style of house is called, but I really like it: narrow, deep, and two stories on top of a finished basement. This trip to the Annex neighborhood was pretty much the most I saw of Toronto. Otherwise I joined several expeditions around the downtown hotel for food, including Ethiopian, Chinese, Middle Eastern, Japanese (for the convention brunch) and New York deli meals. (Do they really serve something called "peameal bacon" in NYC?) I was one of the auctioneers for the TAFF auction, joining Murray Moore and Andy Porter. That was fun, and we collected over $300 for TAFF. The fannish slideshow that night was great, with many gasps of astonishment at thirty year old photos of friends who were once thin and dark- (not to mention long-) haired. Many laughs were to be had as Mike Glicksohn barked "Next!" everytime Taral tried to show a landscape photo from one of his roadtrips. Not infrequently, this would become, "Next! Next! Next! Next! Next! Next! Next!" Mike was in great form, and the loss of a kidney did not seem to slow down his consumption of peaty single malt one whit.Hope Leibowitz was the random guest of honor, and I took great pleasure in prodding her about her speech as often as I could. She seemed to enjoy the teasing and ended up giving a wonderfully Leibowitzian speech from scrambled notes. It was very cute and very appropriate, and a chance for her to think about and summarize her place in fandom. You're free now, Hope, and maybe I'll follow your lead and try to get it over with as soon as possible in the future rather than bribing my way out of it!
It's probably no surprise that Murray's suggestion last week, when I announced the roadtrip with Geri, that I ask her about the status of the issue of Science-Fiction Five-Yearly that is due this November has resulted in my being invited by Geri to co-edit. Ted White told me it would be a good rite of passage, and I said, "Sounds like more of a hazing to me." But I know that working with Geri is going to be a lot of fun (she's already talking about a collation party in Massachussetts), and wow, it's really something to be working on a Lee Hoffwoman zine. It's enough to make a fan doubt his worthiness! But if Geri and Ted think I can hack it, I guess I'll give it a go. Thanks, Geri!
The chance to get to know a bit more about Toronto fandom was also welcome. I finally met the very genial Lloyd Penney, with whom I got to talk quite a bit. Lloyd was quite handy around the convention as well and kept track of the winning bids and collected the money at the auction amongst other things. One person I hadn't heard of before the convention was Phil Paine, who turned out to be quite a database of Canadian history, sociology, linguistics, economics, and just about everything else. I think I learned more about Canada in three conversations with him than I had learned in my previous 45 years on this planet, and it was fascinating stuff, at least to me. The discourse on how the horrific Saskatchewan dustbowl of the '30s led to an overrepresentation of Saskatchewanians in the political elite was a sociological masterwork. Then there was Janet Wilson and her son, Paul, who knows way more about mimeos than I do even though he's half my age. He and Colin worked hard on the
There weren't a lot of zines at this fanzine convention, but Ian brought copies of his Snapshot 7 and
flyingsauce's Zoo Nation 7, Jim Caughran had an issue of A Propos de Rien, and I handed out a few extra copies of surliminal's final Floss! from last year. (Another great issue of ZN, Pete. I read most of it on the flight back, and I'm especially wowed so far by the piece on the Toynbee Tiles. Dude, that's a brilliant editorial score!)Okay, I'm running out of steam here, so I think I'll end with something Don Anderson told me in the consuite Friday night. I mentioned that Geri and I had taken I-90 much of the way from New York and that it led all the way to my hometown, Seattle, on the other end of the continent. Don said that it has always comforted him to think that from his house in Rochester, NY he could, if he wanted, drive a few blocks to I-90 and head west across the country, get off in Issaquah, WA and drive a few blocks to get to Wally Weber's house. I-90: Roadway to the Fans. I had a great time on the eastern ends of it, and now it's great to be back at the western end that I call home.
Thanks to Ron for all his hospitality and friendship, and thanks to Catherine, Colin, and Murray for a small but perfectly formed Corflu. See everybody next year in Austin, TX.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-05-09 10:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-09 10:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-09 10:38 pm (UTC)Who's running it?
Thanks for handing out Floss again - you are so much more committed to this than me!! - I had actually entirely forgotten about Corflu if you hadn't mentioned it.. (AND I haven't seen ZN 78 yet - nbt neither has most of Britfandom I think.)
Heavens, Mike Glicksohn - I don't know when i last saw him!
Why does every beer you ever mention from the Elysdian sound completel;y fictional ? I think you are Having us On.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-09 10:38 pm (UTC)pps tell Andy H thanks for the zines from me!!
no subject
Date: 2006-05-09 11:38 pm (UTC)I promote the final Floss! because it has a piece by me in it!
The beers at the Elysian aren't fictional; they're heavenly.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-10 12:04 am (UTC)At one point in your trip, you drove right past the world's largest Tolkien collection in private hands.
From your description, definitely the real Ian Sorenson, not an imposter.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-10 03:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-10 12:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-10 12:50 am (UTC)Geri Sullivan's Return of the Living Living
Date: 2006-05-10 03:02 am (UTC)I just minutes ago sent Geri Sullivan back on the road for the final leg of her long drive back to central Massachusetts. Called her yesterday and suggested that if timing and wakefulness allowed, she should stop in for a brief visit on her way home tonight, and she did. We went to Holmes & Watson, one of the finer bars in the area, and I had an unpronounceable but quite drinkable micro-brew from Pennsylvania while Geri had a cup of coffee. She was tuckered but happy, and gave me a fascinating backgrounder on the Five Year Ish (congratulations dude!), and then talked about the ways we've each gone about figuring out what it is we are uniquely suited to do in the world, a la Ted Chiang's brief email of early April. And then a short walk back to her car, a big hug (Geri's a champion hugger, as everyone will attest who has had the honor) and a cheerful goodbye. Lovely visit, brief as it was.
(I told her you'd already posted a report, you over-achiever you, and she swore she'd read it before staggering off to bed. He Geri!)
Cheers,
Ron Drummond
editor@littlebig25.com
Re: Geri Sullivan's Return of the Living Living
Date: 2006-05-10 03:10 am (UTC)Ron
Re: Geri Sullivan's Return of the Living Living
Date: 2006-05-10 06:57 am (UTC)Thank you for our most welcome conversation. The break really helped me make it through the last 120 miles with far more ease than is usual on long drives from the west.
Rockin' trip report,
(I first typo'd that as "bather"...must have been the influence of all that good, clean fun....)
Re: Geri Sullivan's Return of the Living Living
Date: 2006-05-10 03:32 pm (UTC)Re: Geri Sullivan's Return of the Living Living
Date: 2006-05-10 07:48 pm (UTC)LoCs from last time around coming your way soon, too.
Re: Geri Sullivan's Return of the Living Living
Date: 2006-05-10 03:29 pm (UTC)Re: Geri Sullivan's Return of the Living Living
Date: 2006-05-10 07:38 pm (UTC)Hey Randy, a pleasure on both counts!
As for the music we listened to on our drive, here's what I wrote on a certain popular discussion board last Friday:
"...as we passed through farm country in eastern New York and into Massachusetts, and the forests grew thick and the hills rose up and the road became ever more windy, I looked through the small stack of CDs I had brought and chose the one I almost left behind -- Rich Goodhart's Earth Spiral Water Sound (http://www.richgoodhart.com/).
I cannot even begin to say how perfectly suited this music was to the incredible landscape through which we glided as in a dream -- it was magical, everything, the clarity of the music sounding out over the rush of wind through the windows and the brilliant sunlight angling through forests whose textures and interiors and vistas were ever-changing, whose shadows were as subtle and vivid as their colors, and to hear through that movement, that glide, the sounds of time pulsing like a beating heart under the brilliant blue dome of sky, and then to climb wending the high passes, endless valleys folding out into the distance -- I never wanted it to end.
For an hour and more everything matched, the mantra called sojourning resounded in the bell of us, sounded through the billion-leaved greens that pirouetted away on either side of our passing, as new arms of branch and macadam, of ragged-edged rivers of sky above and water below, of long fanning aisles of arboreal perspective opened endlessly before us and all around us, welcoming us into ever-changing views of manifold horizon....
And finally to drift into Shelburne Falls along the Connecticut River, just as Rich Goodhart's trance-lucent music grew still at album's end, and to see John Crowley taking his ease at a little round table under a cafe/grocer's long awning across the narrow road from the old iron bridge, awaiting our arrival -- it was all simple, lovely perfection."
Great album, wonderful day!
Cheers,
Ron