LA trip report

Okay - finally because a friend nudged me, here is, at long last, my LA trip report.

fyi, the trip was in friggin August!

First thing: we were there for the LA Worldcon. The convention was good. One of the highlights was getting to meet authors I enjoy and admire.

We attended a Koffeklatch with Larry Nevin. Awesome! Although I really couldn't think of anything super-intellegent to say.

However, I had hoped to post some photos, but my photos are too big.

But at least I got started. :-)

who I am (or who am I?)

Perhaps one of the great philosphical questions.

I don't have much of an answer, however, I did want to post a picture of myself in my profile and the easiest way to do that is first post the picture here.

I'm just happy that they now have an easier way to post photos (one of my few gripes about Blogger.)

The photo is of me at the Temple of Mithras in London. The iron fence around the site was annoying, but of course, necessary. The site has moved from its original location. The neighborhood its located in is now the main business district of London (similar to the Wall Street area in NYC).

The photo was taken on a Sunday afternoon when the financial district was deserted. It was nice having the temple area to ourselves.

There is better information about Mithras elsewhere on the web, but I don't have the time to post the links right now.

The plan is to finish my discussion of our trip to LA by the end of this month (Jan. 2007).

The Geek

the latest travels

I do have much more to write about plagiarism. (the thoughts have been running around in my head for well over a month now...)

But, I will interrupt my previous rant to discuss (hopefully in depth) my latest travels in fandom.

I am currently attending the Worldcon

Although it says LA, it is in fact, in Anaheim. I hope to have more to say about our travels, what we have seen and done. As there is more to such travel other than just attending a convention.

More soon (knock wood....)

The Geek (in a major way - however, I am currently at a convention with 6,000 other geeks, so I am in good company.)

Henry Rollins, let me count the ways....

Okay, I have to admit it, although I am a punk (an older one, but still one), I never really cared for the music of Black Flag. (We saw them open for the Ramones back in 1981 - Black Flag being the only band in the world louder than the Ramones - and I have heard Black Flag many times since then.)

But I have been of a fan of Henry Rollins' more recent work and his political (and other) musings.

Someone who is smart, intelligent, punk and hey, can function in the "real" world. I like that type of person.

But now I love Henry Rollins because of this: His "love" letter to Ann Coulter.

I laughed so much I had to watch it three times. That night.

Dear Henry: Thank you, thank you, thank you! I desperately needed that.

Of course, as a teacher, one of the big problems with Ann Coulter's "writing" is that she is not alone in her use of crappy research and poorly written projects. I think her lack of clear citations and amazingly stunning plagiarism is a symptom of a commonly recurring problem.

But she is also completely nutsy cuokoo.

Thank you also to the amazing, the beautiful, and the wise Randi Rhodes, for sending the link along.

More thoughts later. I attended Balticon a few weekends ago and had a great time. For all those sci-fi geeks looking for a community. There it is - find us - we still exist!

The Geek

November thoughts

Well, there have been a lot things I have wanted to post over the past 2 months.

Of course, I do hope to eventually post about our trip. It would be great if I could figure out the photo software first. I now have a new expression "England tired" (a type of exhaustion from a day of driving and sighting seeing Roman and Medieval sites, along with much walking.)

Since the end of August...

I survived the Sept. 11th anniversary. [If you don't know me it is hard to explain - I and my immediate family was fine - although many panicked phone calls. But we had a hard time finding out about friends who worked IN or very near the WTC and a friend did die, but not in NYC, but here at the Pentagon. We did not know that when standing in our front yard, looking at the smoke from the Pentagon - 4 miles due north.]

In a horrible way, Hurricane Katrina made it so that here in the D.C. area, people went a little less insane (or at least the gov't was better behaved, as they had too much else to worry about.) They didn't put the anti-aircraft battery along the GW Parkway as was done in previous years. That's a start. I was okay until that Sunday night. Then bad dreams for a week.

And the hurricane meant that the news actually had to be on "news" and not re-inflicting the trauma of that day four years ago.

Of course, one of the worst fallouts from Hurricane Katrina was it became clear that the federal government has no more of a clue than it did in September of 2001. And that is very frightening. After all the yelling and screaming and we are putting in these changes (their phrase "in the post September 11th world") so the government can respond, spending money foolishly on thousands of projects, color coded threat levels, it is obvious that they have no idea of what to do in a disaster.

But certainly the worst fallout from Hurricane Katrina is that the U.S. can not take care of its own citizens. No, I am not talking about paying for people to stay at hotels for six months afterwards. [which I am okay with.] I am talking about actually SAVING people. This was not like the tsunami. They had warning about the hurricane. We will never know exactly how many people died because of neglect just prior to, during, and after the hurricane.

We know from U.S. Census data (taken every 10 years) how many people live below the poverty line in New Orleans (or any given area.)

For those without a clue, living below the poverty line means

- you probably don't own a car
- if you do own a car, it isn't reliable
- you have no safety net, no "mad" money, no credit card that you can just charge a bus or plane ticket to and get out of harm's way or for you to stay in hotel away from the flood plain
- you frequently do not have medical insurance or homeowner's or rental insurance. Everything you own is in your space. If it is gone you have nothing. And if you have medical problems, you may not be physically able to leave or may not have any extra supplies of medicine.

The rapper Kanye West was wrong. It isn't that Bush doesn't care about black people - it's that he doesn't care about any people who don't have money. In New Orleans that meant the majority of those people were African-American. But it also included people who were European-American, Hispanic-American and Asian-American. We do not blip on his radar.

Remember, we are talking about wealthy, conservative Republicans who think that middle class includes people who earn $200,000 a year!!!!

What else has happened?

October was busy with the semester in full swing. We have a new textbook for the introductory course which I love and hate by turns. I missed my college's 20th anniversary reunion because I (along with the spousal unit) had the cold from heck which was making its way thru the Washington, D.C. area.

But more importantly, there was plenty of political activity for the Governor's race (plus Lt. Governor, Attorney General and House of Delegates races.)

In November, we had a victory, a loss, and a victory which is waiting for the recount (the difference in the Attorney General race is under 410 votes. NEVER let anyone tell you that voting doesn't count. It does!!!!)

Then comes the sober holiday: Veteran's Day. It is also known as Armistice Day.

It is all the more sobering now. Here is the poem I wished to post for Veteran's Day.

It is Eleanor Roosevelt's Wartime Prayer.

Dear Lord,

Lest I continue
My complacent way,
Help me to remember that somewhere,
Somehow out there
A man died for me today.
As long as there be war,
I then must
Ask and answer
Am I worth dying for?

From The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers at George Washington University.

Wow.


Until the next time we met....

The geek

Speaking of Community...

In the previous post, I talked about how Star Wars was important to me, how I was a member of a community of people.

Communities of people can be formal (e.g., being a member of an authorized fan club) or informal (sitting in a movie theatre on opening night at 12:01 a.m. knowing that almost everyone else in that theatre feels some type of connection to that movie, otherwise they wouldn't have bought the tickets in advance, arrived at the theatre hours earlier, and been there hanging around talking with strangers in the theatre while waiting for the movie to begin.)
[for the record: I am a member of the informal Star Wars community.]

Individuals can be members of multiple communities. Think about it: how many communities do you belong to?

Some of the communities people can belong to include: local neighborhood, religious organization(s), wider regional area, work, school(s), and specialized interest groups (such as a for a movie series or a sport team.)

There are no limits: some people are members of many communities, while others are members of only a few communities.

You are a member of an informal group if you identify yourself as a member and you are recognized by others from that group as a member.

Formal groups can set up their own rules of membership. These can include dues, attendance, affirmation of similar goals, or whatever the group sets up as their membership criteria.

I was recently able to spend time with another community, which I am a member of. In early August I attended the WorldCon (World Science Fiction Convention) in Glasgow, Scotland.

More on that - and our travels - in upcoming posts.

Anthro-geek

Star Wars: End of an era for me

It's true. I am a geek in the fullest sense of the term.

Last week, on opening day, I saw the most recent Star Wars film.

As I watched the credits roll by at the end of the movie, I felt sad for a moment. Really.

Not because the film was that good or bad (more on the actual movie itself in another post) but because a part of my life was now done.

Because I realized there would not be any more Star Wars movies. This really is the end of the story. Yes, maybe in 30 years one of George Lucas' grandchildren or some new hotshot director of the 30s (that's 2030s) may make some movie in the Star Wars universe.

But it won't be the same. I was of the generation which saw the first Star Wars movie in a movie theatre. Which saw all of the Star Wars movies in a movie theatre and in a time before it was assumed that every movie ever made would end up available for consumer sale within a year of a movie's release.

And for many years the Star Wars movies - and all the baggage that goes with them for a fan - was an important part of my life.

Cast your mind back to 1977. Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth....

Okay, maybe not that far back.

In 1977: The only science fiction on television were Star Trek re-runs, and even older episodes of The Twilight Zone and the Outer Limits.

There were no science fiction or fantasy novels on the New York Times best seller list.

To be known as someone who read science fiction or fantasy was to call attention to yourself as an outsider from mainstream culture.

And then in May 1977 this really cool movie came along.

And it changed everything.

Suddenly it was not just the weirdos and freaks going to this movie. It was moms, dads, kids. "Normal" people liked this movie.

Science fiction was no longer this really, really, strange thing that no one understood.

And if you went to the movie, you could met other people who also liked science fiction. Who had seen the movies like The Day the Earth Stood Still, or War of the Worlds, people who read Starlog, or were reading The Lord of the Rings for the first or second or third time, or even people who played that really odd game, Dungeons and Dragons.

It made science fiction (and fantasy) acceptable to the general public. And it let us who had known and loved science fiction realize that there were other people out there, just like us.

That first summer I saw it in movie theatres over 114 times.

Before you think I am totally insane, let me tell you how and why.

I was a young teenager. I did not have a lot to do in the summer. The number of household tasks assigned to me were very few (thanks mom!). :-) I usually spent much of my summer at the local swimming pool, hanging out with friends. I earned extra money by babysitting. I had the typical, generic, middle class suburban young teenager life.

Many people, especially kids, wanted to see this movie more than once. But most parents were not willing (or not able) to stand on line for hours waiting to get into a movie that they had already seen with their children once before.

It started with a neighbor's kids. I stood on line with them as their babysitter as they waited to get into the movie one day. Their mom included money for me to buy a ticket.

Word of mouth advertising (plus repeat customers) meant that I was able to spend as many afternoons in June and July watching kids on line for the movie. Or holding the place for someone on line. Not every parent gave me money for my own ticket. However, I easily earned enough from each babysitting job to cover my movie ticket and still have some extra.

Now, I do have to admit, there were some days when I saw the movie twice in a day because I bought tickets to two showings in a row. Why not?

It is hard for someone who was not alive (or least not a young teenager) at that time, to appreciate what it was like then - to see a movie like Star Wars and get caught up in a new experience. Something which was new, not only for you, but for many people. And that new experience was a movie.

It was something unique.

I loved the universe. I loved the story (who wouldn't imagine themselves as a freedom fighter? Except for my then boyfriend Mike who imaged himself as a stormtrooper.) I loved the special effects. I loved that if you sat on the front row of the balcony where it was slight curved, when it came to the part in the movie where Luke's fighter is moving down the trench on the Death Star, it felt like you were IN the fighter, you could feel the sensation of moving up and down in the trench. For only a brief moment you were truly there.

In hindsight: Is it a perfect movie? No. Does it have the best acting ever in the history of cinema? No. The best writing? No.

But the movie filled a void that many people did not know was missing.

It was unique and it was an important part of who I was. It allowed me to fully realize one of my identities: as a science fiction fan. And all the pluses and minuses that come with that title.

Other people may laugh and sneer. But I read. I watch science fiction t.v. shows and movies. I am not afraid to ask "What if?"

Not just what if we find living beings on other planets? Not just what if we explore more of the universe?

But what if... we did this and not that. What if... everything we know is wrong? What are... the implications of our actions (on a small scale and large - personal level to country wide.)

What if?...

And that is a question more people should ask.