Neither of us had a ten o'clock panel, so we slept until eight, had big breakfasts, and I gave the dog a nice walk, before we packed up our backpacks and were off. Since it was Saturday, traffic was light, but Waze pointed out a problem south of town. Apparently it was okay near the hotel, but traffic was backed up on the freeway nearby due to an accident southbound. So we went through I-20 this time and down I-75. Much better than yesterday!

James and I parted for most of the time today; this has become a normal thing. Most of our interests completely diverge. My first panel was "Deep Time" (description: "journey into the past with rocks, the original time machines"). Yes, I went to a geology panel! I hated biology, hate chemistry, but Earth Science...that was so for me. I've been into geology, paleontology, anthropology, etc. since junior high school, so this was a natural fit. So I had a full hour of ages of the universe, formation of the Earth and the moon, and other geologic wonders.

Next came one of the panels I was waiting for: Jeremiah Mitchell doing a narrative on the sinking of the Lusitania. I always enjoy the narratives, although I think some people still think it was Lusitania that "pulled the trigger," so to speak, on the United States' entrance into the first World War. It almost tipped the scales, but America was as isolationist at that point as before Pearl Harbor. It took the Zimmerman telegram to light the fuse. We also chatted about some of the books out about the event, especially Eric Larson's Dead Wake, which turned the U-boat prowl after the doomed liner into a thriller. Interesting fact: one of the "wolf pack" U-boat captains was none other than Georg Von Trapp, later to gain fame in The Sound of Music.

James had signed up for a class at one, and I didn't have anything else planned, so I attended a panel on H.P. Lovecraft and the history of American horror novels. I remember going to a Lovecraft tour of Providence when the World Fantasy Convention was in town. I'd never heard of him back then, and the tour was kind of nifty as it went up to the historic streets of the city. We were even shown a window Edgar Allan Poe mooned over because a girl he was in love with lived in that house.

My next panel was in the Literature track, "Researching Effectively," and the panelists included experienced writers Lee Martindale and Stephanie Osborne. They not only talked about sources for research, but Stephanie mentioned that in her Sherlock Holmes books she was complimented for having him realistically smoke his pipe. This was because she actually learned how to smoke a pipe to be able to portray it properly! It was emphasized that you should confirm facts in as many places as possible (don't use Wikipedia as a sole source!). We were also warned against doing info dumps of all our research, no matter how fascinating, and getting so fascinated by the research that you don't do any writing (I have that problem myself).

Next on the schedule was "Why Some Chocolates Are Better Than Others, Storage Life of Drugs, and All Sorts of Weird Stuff," given by Kevin Menard (who works for Mettler-Toledo). Shades of Mark Miodownik--it was a material sciences panel! He talked about the precise tempering of chocolate (and why European chocolate is better) and why transparent aluminum (alá Star Trek IV) can't exist, referencing a poem John Updike (!!) wrote for "Scientific American" called "Dance of the Solids." Who knew the author of Rabbit Run wrote science poetry?

African Burial Ground panel

I had also been looking forward to the next panel, "The African Burial Ground," after reading about the site in the book The Bowery Boys Guide to Old New York. This was also presented by Dr. Mozingo-Gorman, who was part of the group brought in to excavate the ossuary that was found while excavating for a new high-rise in New York City. It turned out to be the burial ground for African slaves brought over starting when the Dutch settled New Amsterdam, but the boom really came when the English took over. Since slaves could not be buried with white people, their cemetery was relegated to land near the middle of Manhattan Island. This was not an easy panel to listen to: not only did it deal with slavery, but how badly the slaves were treated. All were malnourished because they were allowed to eat only corn. (They often supplemented their diet with other things, but they were only fed corn by their masters.) Half the bodies were of children who showed signs of being forced to do hard labor from when they were four years old. One young woman was literally beaten to death; she had bones broken from head to toe. It was fascinating to learn of the burial customs they brought from Africa, but appalling to hear from someone who saw the remains firsthand about their tormented lives. Cruelty seems to have no end in the history of mankind.

Rejoined James, who had spent the past couple of hours trying to make a chain mail bracelet. He's so deft with his models I thought this would be a doddle for him, but he got very little done, as the links were small and he had nothing to pin one end of the bracelet to while working on the other. We enjoyed the panel about "Time Travel Stories and Why We Love Them," with the audience contributing titles of books and television series we had enjoyed.

Neither of us had a panel at six, so we spent some time chatting with friends. One set of friends had some bad news about another friend that they are helping through medical problems; this person has completely given up on trying to get well and appears to be just waiting to die. We bumped into some other friends after this and sat talking with them for a while; one couple is planning to retire.

I had nothing to do after that, so I went with James to a panel about 3D printers. He would love to have one to make specialty parts for his models, but the early ones have been expensive. The prices are falling, but I couldn't imagine where he would actually put it. His "man cave" is stuffed full, like a Thanksgiving turkey. (My craft room has a similar appearance.) The learning curve looks a bit steep as well.

We stuck around for "That's Not How That Works. That's Not How Any of This Works," which was billed as "Scientist round table talks about and answers questions on modern misconceptions" because it sounded interesting. It was, but rather scattered. They did talk a bit about scientific mistakes in movies, but they seemed to be having more fun talking to each other. It was still good for a few smiles, just not what we were expecting.

It was still nice and clear, so we had a nice ride home: there was so little traffic we just went straight up the Downtown Connector, then got off at the I-75 HOV exit.

Labels: conventions, friends

----------------------------------------------------------------
. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:57:00 PM

Comments: Post a Comment