Mark L. Van Name's Blog, page 258

On the road again: Boston, day 4; Arisia, day 2

My con activities today included two panels. The first, for which I was the moderator, was about truth being stranger than fiction. The audience, which grew to over three dozen folks, was into the topic, my fellow panelists were entertaining, and all involved seemed to have a good time.

The second panel focused on the uneven distribution of technologies, now and in the future, with a particular emphasis on the digital divide. The rather small room filled to SRO levels and beyond (some people were sitting on the floors at either end of the panelist table), everyone seemed very engaged in the topic, and I know quite a bit about the topic. Despite all the that, the panel very much did not work for me. I ended up shutting down and saying almost nothing, partly from frustration and partly because I was afraid of what I might say about some of the proceedings had I opened my mouth. I'm never sure whether it's better in such circumstances to go deadly quiet, which people do notice, or to turn into a complete asshole, but I almost inevitably choose as I did today and simply shut up.

Because I wanted to catch at least part of the con's masquerade, we headed to a rather late dinner at Hungry Mother in Cambridge. HM specializes in upscale, mostly locally sourced southern food, which is an odd combination to find around here. We sampled only smaller dishes, but all were at least good, and a few, notably the grits (from North Carolina's own Anson's Mill) with cheese and a bit of bacon were a perfect comfort food for a cold night.

I'm still puzzled about my reaction to that panel, and I probably will be for some time. I hope I do better on tomorrow's group discussion.

On the road again: Boston, day 3; Arisia, day 1

The Arisia convention began during the afternoon, but my daylight hours belonged to work. The work was interesting and important, but as usual, I can't discuss it. Some other time, I'll write an entry explaining why--but not now.

The late afternoon/early evening brought my autograph session, which officially started just as the dealers' room space, where I was to sign, opened for business. I don't expect many people to ask me to autograph books in the best of circumstances, and these were about as bad a set of arrangements as a con could have assigned me. I thus was not at all surprised to sign only one book; in fact, I was happy for that chance.

From there, we scooted to dinner at Menton, a fine new restaurant from the folks behind the wonderful No. 9 Park. I'd read good things about Menton and hoped it would live up to its hype.

It did. The service was very good, the dining room lovely and elegant, and, most importantly, every single dish was extremely tasty. A pleasant surprise was the bread, all three types of which were excellent.

Menton is now on my must-eat list for Boston.

After dinner, I worked, wandered the con a bit, and then took part in an eleven o'clock panel on balancing writing with your day job. We were opposite a huge panel on BDSM, so our audience was rather small. Still, its members outnumbered the panelists, so we pressed on. By the end, the audience seemed happy, we panelists had enjoyed ourselves, and all was well.

To end and for no particular reason, here are Shibori and Holden pining for the fjords some days ago.

On the road again: Boston, day 2

Yesterday, I mentioned the trees covered on one side with snow. Here's a shot of them; as always, click on any image to enlarge it. I took this with my phone and from across the street, but with luck it'll at least serve to give you the idea.


Even the signs hanging from the buildings ended up with snow on one side.


Today was mostly a work-in-the-hotel day, thanks to the snow's effect on some proposed meetings.

The last time I'd eaten at L'Espalier, the meal had been so weak--at times, so outright bad--that I'd written that it would take a lot to get me to go there again. Almost all the online reviews I've seen recently have praised the place, however, so I took them as a good omen and gave it another shot tonight.

I'm very glad I did. The meal was topnotch from start to finish. We had the chef's tasting menu, so we never knew what was coming next, which is one of my favorite ways to dine at a good restaurant. Though the chefs kept the shape of the meal largely within classic French boundaries, their creations displayed enough inventiveness that I never found it too predictable. I must now recant my previous post and once again recommend L'Espalier to anyone in this area. (If you go for the chef's tasting menu, though, bring plenty of money; it is not cheap.)

I have more work to do and then must crash so I can get up early for meetings, but for no good reason, I thought you might enjoy a photo of our cat, Lyra, attempting to help with laptop work (fortunately, not mine).


She did manage to trigger the spelling checker; perhaps the sheer numerical orientation of the Excel spreadsheet offended her.

On the road again: Boston, day 1

The weather news was filled with stories of the blizzard hitting Boston, so I wasn't sure I was going to make it here today. JetBlue canceled my first flight, but after a long time on hold yesterday I was able to move to a 5:35 flight this afternoon. It left about 20 minutes late, but it left, and it landed almost on the initial schedule. We hit a little rough air coming down and had a more exciting time braking on the Logan runway than I would have preferred, but I've had far worse landings and so cannot complain at all.

I'm in town for some client visits and Arisia, the Boston-area convention I try to attend each year. You can see my activities on my
Dinner was at Oishii, which was, much to my delight, still open despite the snow. The food was excellent, as always; perhaps I'll post a few pictures tomorrow.

Also coming tomorrow, if I'm not bogged down in work and don't forget, will be a picture or two of the trees that are, rather beautifully, coated with snow on one side and clear on the other, all thanks to the sideways-blowing snow.

For now, more work, then a big, crashing sound as I fall into bed.

Are you a good brain or a bad brain?

Yesterday, while at work, my left tricep began to itch. I was wearing a thick shirt, so scratching my arm through the shirt wasn't doing the trick. So, I did the only obvious thing: I reached up my sleeve and scratched the itch. In the process, I tore the cuff of the knit shirt at the seam. The tear ran the full length of the cuff, a few inches.

I tried to ignore the loose fabric, but it kept bugging me as I worked at the keyboard. Those who know me are aware that I cannot abide jewelry on my hands; it's too distracting. When I used to wear a watch, I took it off at every opportunity. The flapping cuff of my shirt was making me crazy.

I know less than nothing about clothing repair. The last time I tried to sew a button onto a shirt, I ended up with a fabric ball anchored to a button by so much thread that the button was barely visible; my thinking was that I never wanted the button to come loose again. I threw out the shirt.

I consequently asked Gina what to do. She said a safety pin was the answer. I, of course, do not carry safety pins. She thought she had one but couldn't find it. I was working at high speed and could not afford to give more time to this issue.

I finally persuaded her to solve the problem my way: with great protest, she stapled the cuff shut for me.

I've since heard this was not the appropriate solution, but it worked just fine until the wee morning of the hours, when the staple fell out. I was ready for bed by then anyway, so I consider the solution to have been perfect.

Good brain or bad brain? You decide.

The sky is falling, the sky is falling

That's pretty much the attitude around here when it snows.

Or when it might snow.

Or even when snow is remotely conceivable.

To be fair, the warnings for today had been universally dire: we're going to get lots of snow, you should expect problems, etc. It even is snowing in some parts of the area--but not in most. We don't need actual snow to panic, however; we just need the rumor of it.

The reason is that the moment someone discusses snow, we all have to face two realities:

1) No local government is really set up to handle it. They're much better at it than they were when I moved here, but snow really does constitute an exceptional experience for my part of North Carolina.

2) No one here knows how to drive on snow. Well, you do, of course, and maybe your friends, but not the rest of the people.

The combination of these factors means that you do not want to be stuck away from home should a real snowstorm hit, because you probably won't make it safely back there.

So, when the snow rumors start, our population follows a predictable pattern:

* We close the schools.

* Everyone who can work from home does.

* We swarm the grocery stores and buy all the milk, eggs, and bread that we can.

I've always found this last bit mystifying. Dennis Rogers, once a local newspaper columnist, hazarded a guess that we were all planning to make French toast should the white stuff fall. Perhaps it's toad-in-the-hole. I'm not sure.

Regardless, I'll be heading home from the office soon. Maybe we'll have breakfast for dinner.

Black Swan

After a lovely and entirely too calorie-heavy dinner at the wonderful [ONE] restaurant, a group of us headed to the theater to check out Black Swan. The buzz surrounding this one is amazing, so we wanted to see if it deserved all that praise.

It does--but don't go without understanding what you're getting into. Sarah summarized the experience as like being punched in the face for two hours, and that's a fair assessment. The intensity never lifts, and the descent into madness is terrifying and believable.

Natalie Portman is simply brilliant. If she doesn't win the Best Actress Oscar going away, there is no justice. I haven't seen another performance in a 2010 film that even came close to hers.

Everything about the movie works. All the performances, the direction, the script--you name it, and it was strong, very strong.

Just understand that you'll be signing up to watch the disintegration of a person, and that is very hard to do.

I don't regret going, and if you're up for the film's subject matter, I can't recommend it highly enough, but I doubt I'll buy the DVD or watch it again. I just don't know that I want to take that pain again.

A few words about the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords

Almost all the coverage I've read and all the people with whom I've spoken have leapt immediately from this shooting to political discussions. I certainly understand that urge, but I think we should resist it. Let's look at the key points.

1. This is a tragedy. As of this writing and using online news sites (msnbc.com and cnn.com) as my information sources, it appears that a gunman shot 18 people, including Congresswoman Giffords. He killed six of those people.

2. We don't have any data yet that would prove this was a targeted assassination. If you're out for one person, you probably don't shoot 18. Among the six dead people, a group that included a child, was a Federal judge, John Roll, whom President Bush appointed.

3. We don't have any data yet that would prove this was a politically motivated shooting. Sure, it occurred at an event of the Congresswoman, but that could have been because it was an event, something that would draw a crowd. Or not. We don't know.

4. Consequently, let's not blame anyone other than the shooter or any group at this time. Let the data tell the story when it is available.

American political discourse, like so much else of what passes as discussion in our country, has devolved into people repeating their messages, not listening to one another, and fighting to see who can sound more clever or produce a more memorable one-liner or graphic. Let's not use this tragedy as one more topic for such low-end political tussles.

"War Stories" - a snippet

In 1985, I backpacked through Europe for almost two weeks after working for nine days at a trade show. When I returned home, I wrote an essay, "War Stories," that I've never sold. In email the other day, Sam Montgomery-Blinn, friend and editor of Bull SPEC, suggested that I visit the Holocaust Memorial in Boston while I'm at Arisia. His suggestion led me to recall the essay. Here's one small bit of it, exactly as I wrote it then, never before published.

We toured Dachau for several hours on an early May afternoon. The reconstruction was largely faithful to the original, although the old barracks had been destroyed. Two replicas of the barracks stood in the stead of those now gone.

The Dachau museum and grounds were an assault on the imagination. Several months past I had attended a Bruce Springsteen concert. My seat was very close to the stage, and the music was very loud. The music and the feeling of community lifted me into a state of near euphoria. It also left me unable to hear correctly for over six hours. The week before I had learned that the greatest art man can produce can only be absorbed for a sadly small number of hours. After four or five hours in the Louvre I was ready to beg for no more Da Vinci's, no more Raphael. My head and eyes hurt even as my heart rejoiced in the good that man can produce. Both of these were attacks on my senses and emotions. My recovery from each required some time.

Neither matched the gut-level battering that Dachau delivered. I doubt I shall soon recover from it. In self-defense, I seem to let through only a few memories at a time. Still, several images have not left me.

As I walked past the guard towers and into the complex, it began to snow. The temperature was around thirty degrees, and the wind was whipping about small trees like a child playing with a noise maker. I was freezing. The snow was not sticking, but it was wet and cold nonetheless.

Inside, about an hour into my tour and warm and comfortable, I came to an exhibit that explained some of the common prisoner punishments. A first offense, mild reprimand, the plaque explained, was to be forced to stand at attention for twenty-four hours on the parade ground. Thinking about it briefly, that did not seem so bad. I had to stand for long stretches at the trade show a few weeks before, and, while unpleasant, it certainly had not been torture.

On the way out I saw the last of the snow falling. As I opened the door I was hit with the strong wind and was instantly chilled to the bone. It was the third day of May. I was shaking cold in under a minute. I had on a long-sleeved shirt and an old army coat. The average prisoner uniform was a thin gray shirt and matching pants.

Only two images brought me to tears. I covered my face each time, unwilling to share them with my companion. The first was a picture of a room. The room seemed to be about ten feet by about fifteen feet, with a nine foot ceiling. With the exception of a few empty square feet near the ceiling at the front of the room, it was filled with the bodies of dead men. These were the bodies of those who had not yet been cremated in the camp's ovens. They were the backlog. There were two large ovens at Dachau. Both were run around the clock near the end of the war.

The picture alone did not make me cry. However, I later visited the room in the picture. It was scrubbed clean now, its walls eggshell white. It was larger, more like fifteen feet by twenty feet. It was not a reconstruction, but the same room as in the picture. I stood in the middle of it, and then I cried.

The second image required no visit. It, too, was a picture of a room, this time one in Auschwitz. It was a room seemingly nearly twice the size of the first one, filled almost to the point of overflowing with shoes of the cremated dead.

According to the book I bought at the museum, over two hundred and six thousand prisoners were kept at Dachau from its opening in 1933 until its liberation in 1945. Over thirty-one thousand deaths were reported. This does not count those assigned to Dachau by the Gestapo for execution, Soviet prisoners of war who were sent there for execution, or those who died in evacuation transports and death marches.

A sign just outside the museum and at the head of the main parade grounds offers an admonition and a promise. In four languages, including English, it says

"NEVER AGAIN"

Things I understood better when I was ten

The year I was ten, many bad things happened to me: my most recent father died, I joined the paramilitary youth group, we moved in with another family because we couldn't make it on our own, the daily beatings began--I could go on, but that list seems like more than enough. I certainly remember all of those things, and they have undoubtedly shaped me a great deal, but I more often recall what the world felt like to me back then.

As some of those memories hit me earlier today, I realized that the younger me understood a great many things better than I do. For example, at ten I knew that

grass smells amazing after an afternoon rain

if you cut that grass right then, it smells even more amazing

people with nothing to share will usually give you more than those who have more than they need

on a hot day, the first sip of cold water from the spigot in the shade of the house is as delicious as anything could possibly be

you + your friend + an afternoon = infinite possibility

building a fort is insanely great

a fort you've built is as good as any castle

if you're sad, go outside and play. It's hard to be sad when you're running around like a mad thing

laugh when you run. Everything's better when you laugh

a butterfly that lands on you is a touch of heaven

superheros are the best

walking into an air-conditioned building after hours in the hot sun is like getting to eat dessert first

they really did play that song on the radio just for you

rock and roll can fill you up so much that you just know you could explode and blanket the whole planet with your energy

pie is awesome

when you bite into that cheeseburger and the juice runs down your chin and they tell you to wipe it off, ignore them, take another bite, and, man, is that great

being able to make the Tarzan yell would be like having a superpower

hiding in the branches of a tree is almost as good as being invisible

books are magic

it was a mistake to give up your invisible friend

I was so much wiser then.

Maybe, as Dylan wrote and the Byrds sang, "I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now."