Greer Gilman's Blog, page 47

Like Patience...

...as a monument.




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Aftermath

I know, I know.  But it was so beautiful out there--the slantwise silver light, the sudden williwaws, like powdered mercury--that I spent two hours wandering around and marvelling.  Damn near flash-froze myself.  None of that haze is cloud:  it's all spindrift.

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Persephone in mittens...

...shoveling her way upward and out.

This year's Boskone schedule is short and sweet.

Beauty and the Beast

Friday 15:00 - 15:50, Lewis (Westin)

Disney adapted "Beauty and the Beast" into an animated film 25 years ago, but where did this age-old romantic story begin? What other stories of mythic love and romance have survived the ages? Are these old fairytales and myths derived from tales of "Cupid and Psyche" or "East of the Sun/West of the Moon?"

Priscilla Olson (M) , Chris Jackson, Peadar Ó Guilín, Jane Yolen, Greer Gilman


Bards, Ballads, and Storytellers

Friday 17:00 - 17:50, Lewis (Westin)

Bards and poets were once the social historians, providing musical tales of great and wicked deeds, as well as offering social commentary on events of the day. Can we identify great bards of the past in different cultures? What examples of their work remain today? Where have all of the bards gone and will they return? Have bards found new life in fiction?

Ada Palmer (M), Greer Gilman, Mary Ellen Wessels


Reading: Greer Gilman

Friday 21:00 - 21:25, Griffin (Westin)

Greer Gilman


The Romantics and the Development of Speculative Fiction

Sunday 13:00 - 13:50, Harbor I (Westin)

Shelly, Keats, Coleridge, Byron, Polidori, Blake, Hugo, Grimm, Wilde, Dickinson, and Poe are just a few of the iconic authors from the Romantic period (approx. 1780-1850) who had a significant impact upon the development of the speculative fiction genre. Panelists discuss the art and literature of the Romantics that has had the most influence upon their own work. What should you read? What should you avoid? And what is a Romantic anyway?

Theodora Goss (M), Gregory Feeley, Greer Gilman, Walter Jon Williams

Mulling over a reading.  I could do a bit of the work in progress, as I did at the Bear Party:  Jack Donne and Ben Jonson on the Left Bank, on a book crawl.  Or in London, among Donne's peaky and precocious stagestruck children.  Or elsewhere.

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Encoding

Here, have a virtual Enigma machine.

GFSHIAOIGWP

Tea for tig

The inch-long tiggy is from Delft; the tea set from San Francisco.  I have the nicest friends!

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Tufnel's winter

“It's like, how much more white could this be? And the answer is none. None more white.”

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Snow on snow on snow

And the Cailleach still gathers sticks.

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Despicable

“'We should be getting measles, mumps, rubella, chicken pox, these are the rights of our children to get it,' said Dr. Jack Wolfson of Wolfson Integrative Cardiology in Paradise Valley."

"He said viruses — not vaccines — are a part of the natural world. 'Unfortunately, they mean that some people get sick and some people die,' he said. 'But the reality is that we can't inject our children with chemicals.'"

He's taken it down, but his vilest rant is preserved here at comment #37.   He and his scorpion wife blame a mother for her child's death from chickenpox.

He should die, seriatim, of every infectious disease that ever was, and be resurrected to die again.  Nowhere on this planet, of course.  He may have to have his own isolation wing of hell.

And then there are the children who should be issued new parents:

Let's replace Crystal McDonald, whose "daughter was so concerned about missing two weeks of Advanced Placement classes that she suggested simply getting a measles inoculation. 'I said, "No, absolutely not," ' Ms. McDonald said. 'I said, 'I’d rather you miss an entire semester than you get the shot."'"

And shouldn't Child Protective Services be having a little talk with Kelly McMenimen, who decided "not to vaccinate her son Tobias, 8, against even 'deadly or deforming diseases'"?   Poor "Tobias has endured chickenpox and whooping cough. ... She considered a tetanus shot after he cut himself on a wire fence but decided against it: 'He has such a strong immune system.'”

Really?  How'd he catch those viruses, then?  He's damned lucky not to have succumbed to tetanus.  Horrific way to die.

And if schools are concerned about making safe spaces for children with allergies, why not for a child who's had cancer?  If Susie can't bring a PB&J in her lunchbox, why should Billy be allowed to bring measles?

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Whee!

Well, it wasn't Fimbulwinter, but a nice deep snow. Not the enchanted kind that gloves the world with ghosts. Nor the wind-carved sort that sweeps a knife-edged hollow round each stone. Not even really good for snowballs. But--hallelujah!--so not slush.

The Hotspurs were out in full force, going wheeee! down the library steps.  Up the hill slowly...



Down the hill fast...



... And a dignified finish on your arse.



Note the concerned citizen holding up the rope, which is right at breakneck level.  Windpipe, if you're lucky.







If this were MIT, there'd have been a crew working on that course.  They'd long since worn the snow off, and were going yatteryatteryatter OOMP! down all those stone edges into the drifts.  Not that a valiant few weren't trying to repair the slope, but they needed a design.





Wipeout City, man.









"Oh, fudge!"



Some days it's just not worth it, getting up.



I watched until my hands got too cold. Can't take pictures in gloves.

To my amazement, two quite different people called out that they liked my old green woollen coat: thriftshop, threadbare, but ankle-length. Never saw it as a fashion statement...
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It's starting to mean it out there...

It's that diamond-dusty snow that mounts up, and the wind is piercing.  There's no one out frolicking with snowmen as they were on Saturday, just a little gang of Hotspurs risking their fool necks on tea trays down the library steps.  I just saw a brave soul go by on skis, clad either in nothing but shorts and a bobble hat, or in the thinnest possible pink silk longjohns.

The homeless guy with an atavism for wild weather isn't on his usual bench in his umbrella cave.  I hope he's all right.  (The neighborhood isn't callous:  cops and churches and social services have all looked out for him on snow days, but he's always refused to take shelter when it's offered.)  

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