Transplanting a Seattleite

It is Memorial Day, which is, variously, a Monday where one may not have to go to school and/or work, a day where one has to figure out how to juggle child care responsibilities while still having to go to work, a day to remember those who have died in the service of our country and, for me, this year, a moment to remember how much I enjoyed Over My Dead Body by Greg Melville, because the author did such a lovely job of placing Decoration Day in historical and cultural context.

At the moment, I’m catching up on blogging, because I’ve been attending Balticon and hanging out with my sister and niblings who joined me at the con. It was a much shorter train ride for them than it was for me, and we left all the menfolk at home. It’s been fun and I’ve learned a ton. I’ll probably come back. Ironically, my sister wasn’t that enthused about this con, until I unilaterally decided to go with A. and invited them to come with me. Once here, it is being compared very favorably to RavenCon. Certainly, it is bigger, and both cons are very reader/writer focused, so the programming at both is what we love, but the quality of the moderation and the qualifications and competencies of the panel participants is wildly better. Some overlap, tho! Balticon is still running as a hybrid con which is nice to see.

ETA: I bought a tiara, a print, and a bottle of whisky over the last few days. The tiara wrapped up nicely and didn’t take up much space. The print is going to have to be handcarried. The whisky, it turns out, fits into a side pocket on the fjallraven kanken 17” laptop bag. It’s in a plastic bag within the pocket, in an effort to encourage people to not see what’s in my backpack. I’ll report back whether I have to ditch it on the way home. In theory, I think I can bring it on the train. Obviously this would not work on a plane.

ETAYA: I got a 30 minute reprieve on checking out, which was handy because A. wasn’t quite ready. We left our bags with the front desk, and walked over to the science museum where we looked around and saw the planetarium spring skies show. A. could not have dippin dots (sad face) because we were out of lactaid. Our next stop was a CVS where we bought offbrand lactase and branded Pepcid, both of which I intend to leave packed for future trips. Because of all this. CVS was a few doors down from a Shake Shack, so that’s where we had lunch including a frozen custard for A. She got the chicken sandwich, which looked really good.

We walked across the street to the con hotel to use the bathrooms, and then back to the Residence Inn to pick up our bags. We got an uber from there to the train station. My sister had gotten her train changed to an earlier one, still in the quiet car, so she was already home. I initially went to the wrong track, realized it was the wrong direction, asked for help, switched sides of the island (no need to go back up the stairs, yay!) and waited a couple more minutes and boarded. So far, have not had any damage to the print or the whisky. Presumably the tiara and so forth are fine in the bags.

We had a really nice time! I panicked a little, because time was getting tight, but we got to the train station about 30 minutes before boarding, so I even got to use the bathroom. The con floor was totally dead when we stopped at that hotel, so we had a bathroom to ourselves there. I know it’s stupid, but getting to have clean, quiet bathrooms is amazing.

Also! While waiting to board, there was someone with a paper Analog bungied on top of his roller so we chit-chatted. He’s got a novel coming out in the Eric Flint Ring of Fire universe involving Venice getting a radio (maybe 1633?). Apparently that’s where Charles Gannon is editing, keeping that massive multiverse going post death of Eric Flint. I couldn’t remember as we were chatting which panel I saw Gannon on; it was The Stakes are High and They’re Well Done, which was mostly about pacing. That’s the panel where I finally realized that all the “getting the beats right” comments were references to Save the Cat by Blake Snyder, and thus more examples of Novel / Story as screenplay.

It was a really good day.

I went to the The Cat Really Is Out to Get You panel about cats in SF. I was there because John Hemry/Jack Campbell was there, and I got there early enough to catch him before the panel started and show him the photo M. took when she met him at I believe Connecticon 10 years ago. I couldn’t attend, and I was envious, and they sweetly got a photo with him at that con. I’d lost it, but they still had it and resent it to me. In person, he’s almost exactly what I expected him to be like and the panel was enjoyable.

At 11:30, my sister and I attended the Sharon Lee interview, which was great. Since this is a hybrid con, I was not 100% certain she’d be there in person, but she was (and I got to see her in a later panel as well). The interviewer did a lovely job, and Sharon Lee’s story of her writing life is lovely and it was all a feel good time. After that, my sister and I went to the Water Street Tavern, which was a whole novel in itself. No unsweetened iced tea. The woman running the bar was hilarious and very entertaining. It’s very much a dive bar that gets a great combination of locals and regulars. It’s super close to the Residence Inn we stayed at, so I passed it repeatedly. The night before, when I’d gone out in a failed attempt to acquire Pepcid for A. (Gas-x ultimately got the job done), I’d passed it and it was crowded and raucous. Much quieter at lunch on a Saturday. I had the fish sandwich, which was fine, and a couple of beers, local, do not recall what but they were fine.

After lunch, I got A. up and through the shower and fed a meal.

I went to the 2:30 Editors Can Be Your Friends. This was really interesting, altho definitely a mixed bag. I was there to see Melissa Scott, and I chatted with her very briefly after the panel. There are a ton of grievances out there on the part of editors because people who submitted manuscripts were not happy with what happened next. Some of these grievances really do not sound great when aired.

I returned to the hotel to get A. in motion for dinner, and then we all ubered over to Bunny’s. I hadn’t intended to do anything non-walkable for this weekend, but I tripped over Bunny’s when reading menus and I couldn’t resist. It was amazing. I got the vegan chicken sandwich with vegan collard greens, and a “Silk Chiffon” cocktail that had a skewer with a little bite of vegan baklava on it. Wow. No regrets. We walked back, and that stretch of Baltimore is absolutely a lovely walk.

I went to a 10 am reading by Chad Ownby, who did a masters on Batman, and Fraser Sherman, who I’d heard on an author panel last year, and whose Atlas Shagged I found hilarious. He read part of a book, and the review piece from the Atlas Shagged collection. It hits a little different this year. I was the only attendee initially, but someone else showed up who was somewhat older than me, and who commented he liked things set in the 70s like some of Sherman’s work, because he cannot keep up with current things. It was a refreshing degree of non-judgment and self-insight. Often, people just trash current things as bad or at least not as good / enjoyable as past things, which is both more judgey AND less self-insightful.

Ownby was a sweetheart, who attempted to engage the other man with descriptions of more contemporary work that might be of interest to him based on other things he said he liked. Gotta love Kids These Days.

I also attended a reading by Sarena Straus, who I’d heard with interest on yesterday’s panel, and Nicole Glover. I will at least try samples from both of them.

The genre mixing panel and the romance in fantasy panel were both really enjoyable. Later in the day, the sex in SFFH panel was even better. It’s really clear that there’s a big age gap around content / trigger warnings / descriptions. People my age acknowledge the need for some trigger warnings; the younger folks seem to grasp that it’s not JUST warning people and potentially scaring readers away. Some of us are using the information to _find_ the stuff we _want_. I’d rather see it presented as “here’s what you can expect to find in this book”, rather than “stay away if this is bad for you”. In general, I prefer Content Warning (would really like to see it as “Content Disclosure”) over Trigger Warning.

A. was not tolerant of being outdoors for the laser presentation, so we arrived late and left almost immediately (but did see the match lit, so, yay). The neurofollies presentation was not much like its description; it was like an Introduction the Neurology, and at the very boring end of things.

We had dinner at Tokyo Sushi. It was good. A. had the chicken Katsu.

I also missed part of the Masquerade in favor of a Cozy Gaming panel, which had the author of the Cleric’s Guide to Smiting on it (bought at the dealer’s room). I’m increasingly curious what exactly people mean by Cozy. I thought I knew, but it’s clear people have different ideas (and also, people know it sells, so they are saying their stuff is cozy more or less independent of any conception of Cozy beyond It Sells).

Masquerade was enjoyable, but a little short.

The Imminent Peril live was okay — that could actually be a fun game to try with friends when it comes out.

I met a lovely young woman at the spice panel, and we chatted after until 11:30 when I bailed to get A. to bed. She reads even more than me, and was very happy to tell me all about it and I was overjoyed to hear her describe it. I finally got one person’s answer to the appeal of MM — it’s sexy, but without involving anyone doing anything to a body that she feels is like hers. Which, first, wow, that’s a clue I’m nonbinary if I ever needed one (I did not), and second, oh, honey.

R. and I went to the Citrus Club. I was 50/50 on whether I was going to go at all, but R. pushed very gently and we walked over. They asked me for a phone number, identified me using Resy, set up a Resy for us and handed us a circle with the Citrus Club logo and pointed us at the elevator. They took that circle back, but we left with a cardboard coaster so we still have circle from them. LOL.

Drinks and small bites were expensive, but yummy. View is incredible. The lime trees smell amazing.

We keep winding up in places that are full of groups of white women in nice dresses hanging out together. At some point, I will be wanting an explanation. My initial theory was that Charleston is where every white woman in the area goes for wedding and wedding-adjacent festivities, but R. is skeptical.

I wound up making a reservation at Marbled and Fin, and that’s where we had dinner. B. asked if he could order the Weller Millenium, which is listed at $3K on the menu (for what is presumably a 2 oz pour altho it is not specified). I said absolutely not, but I did look up the price of a bottle, and it seems to run $7K-$10K a bottle, so while $3K is nuts, it’s within the usual markup range. I do wonder how they keep the staff from sampling and diluting that thing. Our server said someone ordered 7 servings of it once. Food was good, everyone was happy.

We’ve been walking more (to and from the museum yesterday, to and from the Biergarten and the Citrus Club yesterday, to and from Marbled and Fin today). It’s dead flat and the weather’s been fantastic, other than getting a little windy and drizzly going to the Biergarten. It’s gotta really be tough in this town in high summer, but in spring, it’s lovely.

I got A. a sandwich at Jersey Mikes and the Black Forest cake from La Patisserie along with another pain au chocolate for tomorrow’s breakfast, so I got plenty of walking.

Pictures went okay. My sister was a little inquisitive with the photographer who was young and energetic and had an unusually large amount of what looked like lymphedema. Photographer was very nice about the whole thing. Lots of tiny bugs that were biting which was annoying. Fingers crossed about the pictures.

Dinner at Zen Asian Fusion. I had Ali get tempura chicken and rice, and there was a lot of chicken. Unfortunately, endless burps and needed pepcid again.

R. and I went back to Prohibition. Still fun!

Today we go to Fort Sumter! I got A. and I breakfast, and then R. drove the three of us to the visitor center in Liberty Square where we looked at things. I had no idea that the National Democratic Party Convention was here in Charleston in 1860 and that they were unable to come to agreement on a party plank about slavery. The actual secession declaration was by a “South Carolina Social Convention” or something along those lines. I’m still really unclear what their authority was, but it is very clear that there was a well-established alternative source of authority in South Carolina, reinforced by going to college together, by the Citadel and similar institutions.

I didn’t think we’d be able to do the 9ish ferry, and the 2:45 ferry was cutting too close to our 5 pm dinner reservation, so we did the noon ferry. Lunch was snacks on the boat. Presentation by the ranger on arrival was excellent. The interpretative displays were uniformly good. B. had texted me a photo from the visitor center the day before saying that slavery hung on in the South longer than the North, because agriculture, however, a little wikipedia reading revealed that New Jersey didn’t get rid of slavery; it went away there with the 13th amendment, and there were slaves listed on the 1860 census (even tho they were not supposed to be included and there was no separate slave census) so it’s not like a de facto / de jure difference, either. Also, the South was far more industrialized than the 20th century Lost Cause depiction presented it as. The southerners presented the secession as a second American Revolution, and given the textile production going South - North - South with substantial value extracted by northern mills, you can kind of see what they were getting at.

Any explanation for the continuation of slavery in the south must involve something other than agriculture as an explanation.

In any event, I did a bit of a dive on slavery through the millenia, because I knew about latifundia and the throughline was clear, but I wasn’t sure about the details of transmission. Surfing through wikipedia built a story in my mind of ambient warfare and what to do with the losers who surrender. Some peoples enslave and keep the losers; some sell them elsewhere. When you have a lot of ambient warfare, you get established slave routes and markets, and when there is a mismatch of supply from warfare and demand from buyers, you get people out there looking to capture.

Faith-based strictures on enslaving one’s own meant that there was a vigorous Xtian / Islamic swapping of slaves. Egypt and on occasion other empires had entire slave armies always in search of young men. But all cities were looking for girls and women to do domestic labor from laundry to food to childrearing to concubinage. Islamic explorers started working down the coast of Africa, and when their empire receded, they were replaced with Iberian xtians from Portugal and then Spain. That trade was readily available when Native Americans as a source of slaves dried up due to pandemic resulting from exposure to Euro-Asian diseases. I have no idea what was going on around the Pacific, but the story around the Atlantic is horrifyingly clear.

As one absorbs this erased migration of people-as-property, it becomes painfully clear this story has been actively erased, probably due to shame. But it’s got to be un-erased, because this is actually how technological diffusion occurs. The knowledge and technique goes with the captured humans. I knew that from paper and from rice, but it may well explain everything everywhere all the time.

So when A. wanted an explanation of what all these interpretative exhibits were about and slavery and so on, I actually had a mildly coherent story to tell. But there’s so much more to learn.

We had dinner at Park & Grove, which was absolutely fantastic, other than that we all overate to some degree and A. most of all. Duck leg salad, duck rillette, yellowfin tartare with spicy wonton crackers, clams, but really the best of all of it was the hoppin john with broccolini and mushrooms. I had a mocktail which was yummy, and a manhattan, also good. The restaurant is near Hampton Park, where we will be doing pictures later in the week.

A. passed out briefly when we went back to the hotel. She’d had the steak frites and a brownie with ice cream. I gave her two lactase so I don’t think that was the problem. I think it was just way too much food, especially fries. R. got her a couple pepcid, so she didn’t actually vom, yay, but she was still overly full at midnight and we ate at 5ish. Clearly, I need to make some different life choices.

My sister and I did laundry later in the evening.

We had a 3:45 flight, and our aircraft was there when we arrived at the airport. R. got stopped at security again and they made him dig his bike tools out of his roller again. He really should pack these in an outer pocket of his backpack. Or in a pocket where he can leave them in a tray. Whatever. We had lunch at Wahlburgers and a good thing too because our flight rolled away from the gate and developed a battery charger issue before getting all the way to the runway. So back we went and some people got off and then they replaced a part and turned the plane off and on again and then everyone had to deboard and reboard because some people had gotten off and they weren’t really sure who. Oh well.

Anyway. We did manage to take off, and we landed about an hour and a half late. I listened to much of Lev Menand’s “The Fed Unbound”, which is not great but isn’t actively horrible either. My sister had taken the Palmetto (Amtrak) from Virginia, and we ran into her entering the elevator down to the rental cars. We then rendezvoused at the Culver’s at the Tanger outlets and had a lot of food — onion rings were good, crinkle fries were good, chicken tenders were above average, and people said nice things about the cheese curds and the custard. My sister’s family knows Culver’s from Tampa; I’d never been to one before. 100% would happily eat at one again. The lactaid A. took with her custard was inadequate to the task and she had substantial burping later which a gas-X eventually fixed so we could sleep.

R. and I went out to get a drink. Last Saint was too loud and crowded, so we wound up at The Select, after the live music had left but before (relatively early for a Saturday night) last call and close. I had a manhattan and they default to rye with a selection. I picked Rittenhouse. He had a drink of the week which was a super tasty Monte Carlo but it’s got benedictine in it so I only had a taste. We got no food; we were very full from Culver’s. They had great sound treatment, including these amazing lights that opened and closed like jelly fish but in a paper-fluffy sort of way. Awesome. I had R. mke a reservation for the Annex at Last Saint on Thursday because Resy wasn’t letting me have a 5 pm reservation at a beer garden and a 10 pm reservation at a speakeasy. Why not, Resy. Maybe it doesn’t approve of being greedy, which, fair.

Breakfast at the hotel. I found and started reading Eve Rodsky’s “Fair Play” last night, after formulating the problem I am trying to solve (how to share the responsibility of running a multi-adult household). The book is aimed at couples, but the approach seems extensible to an arbitrary number of adults. I’ll see if she considers the role of children as they become adults or not, or other adult members of a household, and I’ll also check in with Priestess to find out if she knows of any poly households using this or a related system. It is imperfect, because the project manager approach turns over all of a task to a specific person (altho they can delegate subcomponents, maybe?) and then tasks get redelegated frequently, making it a lot like P.E.T.

Midday meal at Hen and Hog and it was really good.

Dinner at Beach House and the view from upstairs was surreal. It was soooo good. The drinks were strong and good. The food was excellent. The temperature was perfect. The service was attentive without being intrusive. Everything was delightful. It was loud, but even that was great, because when it is too loud to talk, MIL just sits and smiles and honestly, it’s very nice that way.

R walked over to visit her earlier in the day and messed up his leg walking along the beach. Ooops.

Lunch at Confisco. We rode the trolley before lunch. I had the vegan crab cake, and it was really good. Didn’t taste at all like crab, but had a lot of the same vibe and texture. We rode Forbidden Journey, then took the train over to Studios. We tried to buy one of the engraved leather bracelets for A but the kiosk wasn’t where I remembered it and I couldn’t remember a different one in the park. We’ll try Etsy; I am pretty sure I remember people doing those leather bracelets there. Dinner was at Islands. My sister went back after dark to do Seuss rides, but I was so freaking tired even after a pre-dinner rest that I went to bed early. I had the lettuce cups at Islands, and I feel like every time I go to Islands I wind up feeling so awful maybe I just shouldn’t go there again? It could be because it’s usually the last meal of the trip and I’m usually pretty tired no matter how carefully I pace myself. We said goodbye to B and R because they are flying home at 10 am and will be out of the hotel around the time we are getting up.

A tried the Wok Experience but didn’t like the taste of the chicken or the beef. But she liked the dessert and she ate a bunch of rice and some lettuce and raw carrots so that was fine.

We did Bourne and Horror Makeup show. R bailed on Bourne, which is a pity because it’s fun. But she freaks out at a lot of the warning signs. We had lunch at Jake’s as we were checking in and dinner at Orchid Lounge. See photos for a picture of the rice spirit aged in cherry casks. Really good stuff.

When we got there, Not BIL was checking in, and my sister said they were going to head out to CiCi’s for lunch as soon as they were done. I almost said something intemperate, but I caught myself and said instead, if you check in without involving me, you’ll have to put the rooms you check in on your own credit card. I don’t know if my sister realizes exactly how much that is (it’s one king room, and one room with two queens, concierge level, Christmas week for 3 nights, you can go work out the details yourself if you want to — I’d put a deposit down, but it was still a lot of money that they collect when you check in), but she understood enough that she turned around and jogged back to let Not BIL know to slow his roll and wait for me to get there. I just had to get the luggage on to the cart and headed where they would hold it until our rooms were available.

Anyway. It always takes a while to check in, because it’s a minimum of 4 rooms, plus one more in this case because B and R are with us this year (we often have company on these trips). I sent my sister downstairs to get us a table at Jake’s, so we all had lunch together, which was nice. After lunch, we trooped over to buy tickets for everyone but A and I (we still had months on our passes), and lanyards and then we all headed over to the parks.

There’s a decent chance that my sister’s family didn’t really want to go to CiCi’s at all, and were hoping for a better meal if they went to the hotel first. I’m never really sure about what anyone over there is thinking and they don’t reliably self-report.