Mark W. Tiedemann's Blog, page 94

A Few More Memories

I thought I'd post a handful of photographs from Clarion '88.  Just a few.  The temptation to try to do humorous captions is great, but I decided to simply be informative.  Enjoy.

The entrance to Owen Hall, the dorm building

Van Hoosen, where the workshops were conducted

Tim Powers, our first week writer-in-residence, in session

Pizza with Powers

Daryl Gregory, doing his Tim Powers "I Got No Story" Clarion Blues

Kelley Eskridge arrived already injured, with sprained ankle, but as optimistic as...

Clarion

Tomorrow, June 26th, is the 22nd anniversary of my arrival at the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Workshop, on the campus of Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan.  The following piece was written for an anthology about Clarion several years ago, one which firstly did not take the essay and secondly seems not to have appeared at all.  Be that as it may, I've decided to post it here.  Enjoy.

And to all my fellow Clarionites, Happy Anniversary.

Baked Grass and Surgical...

Shaw

Given the subject of the last post, I feel this is appropriate.  Add a little light to the dark.

Tomorrow—June 23—is the 15th anniversary of the closing of Shaw Camera Shop.  I was there on the last day (and at least one day afterward) and saw it shut down.

I grew up there.

As I've noted, I became interested in photography when I was fifteen.  Dad gave me his vintage Canon rangefinder, bought me a small lab—Acura enlarger, a few trays, tongs, mixing bottles, a plastic film developing tank, a...

Gene

This is not the way I wanted this to be done.

I've talked here before about my years at a place called Shaw Camera Shop—4468 Shaw Ave, in St. Louis, Missouri.  I worked there for 20 years.  I did black & white processing, printing, waited counter, swept up, stocked shelves, eventually hired (and fired) people and ran the lab, finally, toward the end, ran practically all of it because the then owner more or less walked away from it and let it die.  I ended my tenure there with mixed feelings.

Bu...

Dad

My dad.  I have a lot of mixed feelings about him, as every child does even if they don't admit it.  Most of mine are positive.

To be clear, he is still alive.  He'll be 80 next month.

In his own way, he encouraged me in just about everything I ever did.  The problem usually was that I didn't appreciate his encouragement.  Partly this stemmed from a profound misunderstanding between us of the reason for his encouragement—or perhaps I should say the purpose behind it.  See, Dad was a Depression ...

New Look

Not for the blog.  For the house.  Today we are having painting done in the bedroom and the downstairs bathroom (gosh, that makes the house sound huge, doesn't it?)  We'd intended to do the painting some time ago, after we bought our new bed.  But just as we were lining all that up, our stove blew up.  (Not massively—it's an electric stove, so the blow-up was a very large white spark and then complete inertness for the mass of metal).  Well, a new stove was on the menu for a long time.  The o...

Resume du jour

It's June.  A smidgen over a year ago (May 29th, 2009) Advance Photographics closed its doors and I have been unemployed since.

In that time I have written half of the sequel to my alternate history novel, Orleans, and a complete new novel, a murder mystery called  The Drowned Doll.  I've written blog posts for both here and Dangerous Intersection and occasionally for my MySpace page (which is getting more and more neglected in favor of Facebook, through which I can stream this blog).  I...

It Was Thirty Years Ago (Plus One)…

Not that I think anyone is especially interested in me as subject for biography, but once in a while I stumble on something that brings back a flood of memory and I feel compelled to say something about it.  Recently a friend of mine wrote in his blog about the Twenties being the most painful time of life, at least of his life, and it got me thinking.  All pain is relative and certain periods possess character, and characteristic pain.  The Twenties are painful insofar as most of us...

Rand, Civil Rights, Rand

Rand Paul, senate hopeful for Kentucky, made a fool of himself with remarks about the 1964 Civil Rights Act and racism and affirmative action et cetera et cetera so on and so forth.  If Kentucky votes him into office, they get what they deserve.  There was a brief moment when I thought Ron Paul was worthy of some respect—he seemed willing to speak truth to power.  I found that I disagreed with him on specifics, but it is useful (and rare) to have someone doing the Emperor's New Suit schtick.

H...

Labels

Conservative.

Liberal.

We act as if we know what these labels mean.  Conservatives are traditionalists, fiscally opposed to anything that smacks of gambling, private, often religious, and pedantic on what they consider "appropriate" in either government or personal conduct.

Liberals, on the other hand, are often taken for progressive, willing to spend social capital to repair perceived problems, tolerant, agnostic if not atheist, and overly-concerned with a definition of justice that ought to...