Musings

Friday was a hectic, busy day. We began at Mark’s at eight for breakfast. In the midst of a raucous meal with some twenty people, the power went out. This offered a real challenge for Dr. Alberto Rojo who was going to give a power point lecture about the “Physics of Jumper” at 10:00 am. Alberto is handsome, charming, a physicist and with a beautiful Argentinian accent that was like warm syrup. He asked if he could tape our conversations so he could write articles for a newspaper in Argentina. We all agreed, but I’m not sure how well we acquitted ourselves. When you’re with a bunch of writers the conversations range from the sublime to the ridiculous. At breakfast we were more on the ridiculous side of the scale.

Since we didn’t see any reason to just sit in the dark we headed over to the university, and just before Alberto’s talk the power came back on. We all sat in on his lecture, and it was great — all about teleportation and entangled particles interspersed with writings from all through history that seemed to hint at an understanding of these issue of quantum mechanics.

Next we were off to the luncheon where Connie Willis served as our master of ceremonies. Steve Gould made a charming speech as did Christopher Stasheff. The luncheon ended with an announcement by Patricia Rogers that she’d convinced JPL to begin naming features on Mars after famous science fiction writers. Some of the first two were our own Jack Williamson and Roger Zelazny. It had most of us in tears.

I bought Steve’s book REFLEX, and now it was quarter to two and time to retire to the Golden Library, Special Collections for an afternoon of panel discussions. Joan Saberhagen was being honored and our first panel was in remembrance of Fred and how much he had given to the field. When you watch a Terminator movie, or the Sarah Conner Chronicles you have Fred to thank. He was the first person to have an interview with a vampire. He was an amazing man. He and Joan helped me find my voice as a writer, and I’ll miss him forever.

After that Connie and agent extraordinaire, Eleanor Wood, were doing a panel on trends in SF and Fantasy. Walter and I got pulled onto that panel too.

The day ended with a panel on From Books to Film (which was the only panel on which I was actually scheduled.) Steve Gould talked about his Jumper experiences, Ed Bryant, who has worked in Hollywood and had stories adapted discussed his time in La La Land. Craig Chrissenger discussed his work as a journalist for Starlog, and I talked about my time in the trenches. Basically we were talking or listening from two o’clock until five twenty. I was exhausted.

But we still had one more wonderful event. Gene and Jeannie Bundy???? were hosting a dinner for all of us, and the as many of the Williamson clan as could attend. We drank wine and ate lasagna, and talked and talked and laughed and remembered.

There was one distressing moment in the evening. I was sitting at the dining room table with Alberto and the topic of race and America came up. He asked me if I thought things had changed in the country, if I thought things were better, and if Obama had a chance. Thankfully, I didn’t make a sweeping statement about how much better things were. I said, I wasn’t sure. The overt racism I witnessed when I was a child and we’d go to Oklahoma to visit my grandmother seemed to be gone, but the stain was probably still there.

And then Alberto told me about being at the Portales Country Club. He was sitting at the bar having a drink and visiting with a gentleman. Now remember, Alberto was teaching at ENMU. The man asked where Alberto came from. When Alberto responded, “Argentina”, the man said, “Oh, I thought you were a beaner.” It had Scott and Ed and I fumbling to make apologies. Alberto shrugged if off. He’d never heard the slur and didn’t know what it meant. When he said as much to the man, the man became uncomfortable and left the room. Another time at the same country club Alberto heard for the first and only time the “N” word used, by a young man.

I was tired after a long two days, and depressed about Jack and Fred and Rick, and these stories just left me devastated. Maybe we really haven’t come as far as I’d hoped. Which brings me to an editorial in todays New York Times that I recommend. It’s Bob Herbert cutting through all the crap about Obama’s “bitter” comment. Herbert’s contention is that Obama tied himself in knots to avoid answering the question of why some working class whites won’t support him. Rather than give the true and obvious answer — “Because I’m a black man.” Obama tried to parse and he ended up talking himself into a hole. Anyway, here is the link. It’s worth reading. www.nytimes.com/2008/04/15/opinion/15herbert.html?hp

Despite that brief moment of shame, it was a wonderful evening. I wanted to keep talking, but exhaustion won and I returned to the hotel. We all gathered for one final breakfast at Mark’s on Saturday morning, and then we all scattered to our various homes. It had that sad, letdown feeling you get at the end of a convention. You’ve spent time with all these people that mean so much to you emotionally and intellectually, and now you’ll part again for months, maybe years.

Fortunately I had company for the drive home. I gave one of my fellow Critical Mass members, Emily Mah, a ride to Albuquerque where she’d left her car. I returned home late on Saturday afternoon to find that the dog hadn’t eaten, but the cats had cleaned their plates. I have strange animals.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 15th, 2008 at 12:31 pm and is filed under writing, life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.