Actually, all I can do is laugh. Let me assure you that Thanksgiving ended well, and we enjoyed every bite. The leftovers are just being finished.
But it was an exciting day starting with the unfrozen Rock Cornish Game Hens (note to readers: start defrosting earlier,) the loss of a pumpkin pie, and the Spode dishes from .. well, the first was made in 1879, but this set is more likely from the 1950s.
This year instead of turkey, we had Hens — which are basically small chickens. Too small to stuff, so the stuffing was made separately. After being removed from the freezer, they were frozen solid even after two hours in the warmth, so we took extreme measures.
Which leads to a discussion of the sweet potatoes. (Work with me here.) They were boiled in the largest of the ancient dutch ovens, removed, mashed and the pineapple was added, and set to one side. The marshmallow topping would be added later.
Back to the birds. Having now a very large pot of steaming hot water, and hens still in their plastic covers, we – plop! step back! – put them into the hot water. Back on the burner for 15 minutes. Mostly unfrozen by the time we put them on the cooking sheet. Good enough.
Then they were seasoned with Dash and rosemary and popped into the oven to cook. Mission accomplished, right?
Off to dessert. We made two of the best-looking pumpkin pies. The first was deposited safely outside to cool. The other… well, the flimsy aluminum bottom folded in half, the filling slopped over, and it was all over the floor. I have seldom laughed so loud and long on a Thanksgiving. We cleaned up the mess, mopped the floor, and were happy with the single pie.
Now we move onto the matter of Thanksgiving dishes. We had decided to use the classic India Tree of our parents. Well, dishes of the earlier period are smaller. A lot smaller. (And, no, these weren’t the salad plates. They are the dinner plates. They are smaller than the ones from the last 30 years.)
So we put the hens on the plates. We found out within a few seconds that the Rock Cornish Game hens were as big as the plates. There was no room for the sweet potatoes, the green beans, the macaroni salad or bread.
So we dug out the smaller plates to hold the sides. Luckily, we have a large table.
We also discovered that the hen defrosting hadn’t been total. No problem. A bird-filed plate fits nicely in the microwave. Two minutes. Perfect.
The desserts of pie and with apple strudel cupcakes were enjoyed. No wine but Welch’s sparkling grape juice worked well in the mis-matched goblets from local wineries. Then there was the after-meal entertainment.
Barbie.
A memorable Thanksgiving made by the problems as well as the successes. Bring on the holidays!
Back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, I started going to science fiction conventions. It was where you found people who read the same stuff you did. Then when”Star Wars” came out, and that, with “Star Trek” fandoms, provided a schism between reading and media fans. I went with media.
In the Washington/Baltimore area, the major hotel for such conventions for decades was the Hunt Valley Inn up in Cockeysville, MD.
Now, it’s time to say farewell. The Hunt Valley Inn is closed forever.
In my youth when I drove up there, and reached the tri-level overpass of 1-70, I knew I was going to have a very fun weekend up there with my friends. The only food outlets were the Cinnamon Tree in the hotel, Hooters and a Pizza Hut you had drive too. I had a car so I took many of my high school buddies for pizza. No delivery back then.
As a hotel, it had decent hotel rooms, ample parking, and huge ballrooms for masquerades or to listen to actor and author speeches. I saw Nichelle Nichols, Richard Biggs, William Shatner, the late Jonathan Brandis (Seaquest) and so many others. Even saw a hostile Stephen King before he stopped drinking, and obviously didn’t want to be there.
The Hunt Valley Inn went through many owners. It was once a training hotel. Generations of waiters served Star Wars Stormtroopers, Elizabethan ladies or many versions of Doctor Who in the Cinnamon Tree restaurant.
“The Hunt” as it was affectionately known was a home for generations of fans. The ones from the 70s brought their kids twenty years later, and then their grandchildren.
We would relax in the hot tub which was beside the indoor/outdoor pool. Long indepth conversations were held in the wide landings between floors. People met their husbands or wives working the tech crews, helping the participants and sitting in The Polo bar loudly discussing the latest SF television shows, from “Beauty and the Beast” (1980s) to “Bablyon Five” (2000s).
We shopped for fannish gifts in the dealers’ room. Tarot readings. Wore handmade costumes since that was the only kind we had. Bought fanzines, fanzines, fanzines which was the only way that many fans had to share their love of shows, and write fiction about them. One of my earliest pieces of fiction had a Christmas Bat dancing on the rafters above above the pool (which now no longer has rafters. Also, forgive me the story, I was 19.)
On Friday or Saturday nights, you could wander the halls and drop in on an author’s group to hear them talk about books. Other open doors showed scratchy videotapes from the UK of shows like “Blake’s 7” which led to an avid fandom long before the show was ever available in the U.S.
We sang and danced to groups like Clam Chowder and Technical Difficulties against the brick wall of the escalators. We bought cassettes of their filk music, later CDs of filk music.
Clam Chowder 1979
It was a home to conventions like “Shore Leave,” “Octoberfest” and “Farpoint” which introduced many hesitent actors to fandom. An actor who might not be convention saavy could test their wings at the Hunt Valley conventions. The fans were in general gentle, despite what happened with James Marstairs at the height of his popularity in “Buffy the Vampire Slayer, when avid fans swamped the hotel and security.
I trolled for newspaper articles ideas. An early one was about costuming which appeared in USA Today. Later, I saw the Baltimore Sun followed it. What I heard was that they were going to ignore it, “but USA Today covered it.”
A high point came in 2005. I had been following the cast and crew of a Star Wars fan movie called “Star Wars: Revelations” for several years. After an interview, I knew I had what I needed, and tried to think of how I could sell it to my editors. I ended up taking a wrong turn, ending up in Baltimore and finally getting home hours later. The story ran around the world, to the point that fans crashed the servers.
It launched my beat covering “Star Wars” and other media.
But, the point of the anecdote is that without the Hunt Valley Inn, I would never had discovered it. I would have not met the actors, the director, the writers.
The Hunt Valley Inn was home to many conventions over the year, not all fannish. On their final weekend, they had two dog shows. Also, a small farewell party from “Shore Leave” and “Farpoint.”
Probably my fondest memory of The Hunt was on an Easter morning when Balticon was at the hotel. The building was full of locals dressed in their Sunday best, enjoying the brunches and egg hunts. On the fannish side, it was morning of day three of the convention. Hangovers abounded.
So I saw a family of three, father, mother, and a young girl all in their best walking down the corridor as three hulking barbarians, wearing their leather, daggers, swords, all in desperate need of aspirin, walking the other way. The contrast was striking. The conflict non-existent. Both worlds noted each other, tolerated, and passed by.
So, farewell to the Hunt Valley Inn. There are plans to demolish it.
But before that happens, maybe in the depths of the night, the ghosts of past will stir, and you’ll hear laughter in the pool, see cosplayers dress in the green room ready for the masquerade. On the landings between floors, teenagers are talking in intimate groups, trying to figure out their lives. Actors are walking by or stopping to talking with fans in the corridors. Books and fanzines are selling out in the dealers rooms. Music is coming from rooms.
I wonder what happened to the draft I just wrote. It’s gone. Pity. It was a classic.
It has been too long since I have published on WordPress and I intend to do better. Stay tuned.
In the meantime, we are coming up on the 4th of July, and Washington is full of tourists. Many locals just barely tolerate them, but I’ve always liked seeing new faces. I’m reminded that for some this may be the only time they come to Washington D.C. or even leave their own state. So, I try to help them find the Smithsonian (down the escalator on Metro, take that train, etc…).
It was only a month ago that I went to Arlington Cemetery to visit my grandparents. The visitors were split between tourists and family coming to visit their loved ones. The Cemetery is huge so it’s helpful to download the app, find the grave, and then take the special bus that will take you to the area.
My grandparents were in one of the older areas up on a hill. The biggest problem was that they were redoing the street up there, and it was difficult to find them. Two other couples had the same problem. My suggestion to Arlington Cemetery to station some of their young people up there to help people find the graves.
But I did find one new (living) resident. There is a wild turkey on the grounds. This blurry shot is because I wasn’t getting close to him after hiking amid the gravestones for an hour. My feet hurt.
By the way? I found my grandparents and left my flowers. Then I helped the others to find theirs.
So I decided to go for something lighter. I have two small stories, a decade apart, that may give readers a laugh or a nod of recognition. The sort of stories that come when you notice what is happening around you.
About twelve years ago, I was at a garden center choosing blossoms for the garden. Since my mother had passed years before, I didn’t connect that the holiday was coming up the next weekend.
As I headed back to my car, I saw a young father with two young boys, maybe 6 and 7, in front of me.
In each of Dad’s hands was a hanging basket of flowering plants which he was carefully holding well above the children’s heads as they flanked him. One of the boys kept asking, “Dad, Dad, do you think she’ll like them?” After two minutes of badgering, Dad said, in a very tired, harassed voice, “I don’t know! I don’t know!” They carefully placed the flowers in the back of the SUV, clambered and were strapped into the car, and he drove away to face the ultimate judge on Mother’s Day.Â
Just two days ago, I passed a father who had one boy in a pram, one around 6 beside him, and behind him his maybe 7 year old daughter, the oldest of the trio of kids. Dad looked overwhelmed and tired, obviously not used to the circus.
What I noticed the wary, but determined gaze, of his daughter. Tightly held In her arms, was a water-filled pressed glass vase and a bunch of flowers – daffodils, purple Iris, and tulips, obviously carefully chose by the family from the display at Whole Foods. That daughter wasn’t going to let anything happen to the bouquet for Mom.Â
I smiled under my mask because I thought no matter how harassed Dad might be feeling right then, his daughter had his back, and Mom had a beautiful surprise coming.Â
In February 2020, I wrote a long post about an exhibit at the National Museum of Asian Art about a wonderful Syrian/Iraq exhibit involving ISIS destruction.
Then came the pandemic, COVID-19, the coronavirus, staying at home, the election, the endless elections, etc. The hunt for toilet paper and Lysol spray. Then other real life problems intervened.
I wonder if the 2020s will be like 1920s when the people moved quickly on, passed all those deaths from the Flu. The world now is considerably more wired now in that we know of deaths in India as we do in Oregon as we do in Italy. Will we block it out because it’s too much to acknowledge all the time?
My outdoor visits were mostly to help take care of adoptions of cats at my local Petsmart, food shop, and to take occasion long walks. I did help write a book. More on that later.
At the end of this brief, I will keep that Iraq post handy since the museum will some day reopen and I can post it. In the meantime? Enjoy the spring/fall depending on where you are. Mother Earth seemed to have enjoyed cooping up humanity because in my area, the plants are bursting out all over.
I’ve always been affectionate towards Asian culture since I grew up surrounded by it. Many of my blog postings are about the Orient/Far East/Asia (depending on what you called it and what generation you are.)
(Updating my original posting at bottom) I did get to the Kennedy Center for their Winter Lanterns Lunar New Year exhibit. A hundred children, assorted adults of varying ages and lots of cell phones were there to greet me. It was a chill evening as well.
That said — It was a wonderful night for taking pictures, and listening to onlookers, and to watch children react to the lanterns. Welcome to the Year of the Rat!
There were two sets of LED-lit lanterns – the upper set included the four cardinal animals – Tiger, Dragon, Firebird and Turtle, and the Chinese Zodiac.
The lower set had mushrooms in various non-authentic colors, drooping pink lilies, a sea reef complete with a turtle.
Then, D.C.’s obsession — pandas. Two large pandas decorated for the New Year, had small pandas cavorting around it.
There were food trucks and a small lit dancing area in The Reach which is the Kennedy Center’s newly built addition.
On Sunday I went down to the newly-named Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art for their Lunar New Year entertainment. They had artisans making small characters, and then holding out molding clay for the children to create their own.
A Chinese finger painter, Hao Da Wei, painted characters on red paper and autographed, with his chop, his small painting. Of particular fascination to the children, and accompanying adults, was the candy blower, who created sugar rats, handing them out on sticks.
It was a great way to spend the weekend.
Original Posting:
Tomorrow I head down to the National Museum of Asian Art (the renamed Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery) for their New Year celebration. I will revisit the Hokusai: Mad About Painting exhibit which is worth multiple visits.
The Kennedy Center in Washington DC with an outdoor exhibit of the animals of the Chinese zodiac. I’m looking forward to photographing it, and posting my pictures.
So, this is a place holder — I’ll update it tomorrow night. In the meantime, may your Daruma wishes come true. The Daruma doll has many meanings but at New Year’s it symbolizes persistence and good luck. You make a wish, paint one eye, and maybe with hard work and good luck the wish will come true.
You see one of mine did and both eyes are painted. The others? Wishes in progress of course.
Even for a person who has spent the last 40+ years in genre fandom such as Doctor Who, Star Wars, X-Men, Avengers, 2019 was a memorable year for endings.Â
I’ve been a Star Wars fan from 1976 when I first picked up the book. In 1977, the movie came out, and I dived in the deep end. I went many times with my equally obsessed friends. So The Rise of Skywalker, an official ending to the Star Wars saga is a moment to be marked in my life.Â
Years later, I was lucky enough to cover Star Wars for years as a journalist. In December, I came out as a dedicated fan lit writer in the documentary Looking for Leia, now available Syfy.com and YouTube. If you have daughters who like Star Wars but feel intimidated, watch the 7 segments of LFL which are between 10 and 15 minutes each.
They will realize there are world of women and girls in Star Wars fandom to welcome them. My segment was on the women fans from the very start of fandom of Star Wars fandom, but whose very existence had been forgotten. Â
However, anyone who thinks that The Rise of Skywalker is the end of the Star Wars universe have missed the phenomena called The Mandalorian, on Disney’s new streaming service, Disney+. The series is the closest in feel to the original Star Wars that I’ve experienced.Â
When I first brushed into Doctor Who, I was a child staring at a small black-and-white television, and got sucked into the fantasy of the old man, his daughter and a blue police box who had adventures in time and space.Â
Now The Doctor is a woman, played by Jodie Whittaker, returning January 2020 after a year’s hiatus. New stories, new worlds, and a new take on a 50 year old character and television series. Times change.Â
In my mid-teens, I collected comic books. This was the time of Dark Phoenix, Avengers, and Xmas. A couple of years later, I ended up going to art school in NYC, and gasp! worked at Marvel Comics as a lowly clean-up artist on the pages of the comics I’d devoured only a few years before.Â
I even worked on the comic Star Wars adaptation of The Empire Strikes Back, combining two of my interests.Â
So what now?Â
In the fannish communities of the 1970s and onward, there were many women writing fan lit involving Star Wars, Beauty and the Beast, Robin of Sherwood, and many others. Coming out of the dust of the past like ghosts becoming solid again, these women are telling their stories. Writer Jenni Hennig is planning on a collection of memoirs for Geek Elders Speak planned for the fall. There is some urgency here. We’re dying off.Â
Finally, I may take up the pencil again. After school, I basically gave up on producing at since in the early 1980s, there were no jobs, especially for women. I went on to get a masters, went into journalism, and closed the sketch book. Is it time to open up again? Stay tuned.Â
In the time between Christmas and New Year’s, there is usually chaos in Washington D.C.. Gift returns, shopping for yourself, watching streaming television… it’s exhausting. So take some time out for peace and beauty.
The Smithsonian’s National Museums of Asian Art, (formerly the Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery), has reached into its huge archives to bring out books, fans, and screens, to bring to life the masterful Japanese artist, Katsushika Hokusai.
His work is known to much of the western world from one woodblock print: the Great Wave off the Coast of Kanagawa. The towering wave with snow-topped Mt. Fuji in the background is so so well-known that it will be on Japan’s currency 1000 yen note in 2024.
Hokusai himself was an “obsessive,” said Frank Feltens, the Japan Foundation Assistant Curator of Japanese Art. The artist started sketching at six. Hokusai “had an insatiable urge to paint.” As he grew older, he published under several names, but in his fifties, hit by lightning, he “became a changed man,” Feltens said. Â
It’s worth stopping and reading the panels at the start of the exhibit about Hokusai’s life. In his youth, he sold prints of the ukiyo-e woodblocks of beautiful kimono-clad courtesans  graduating to painted screens and manga books of his doodles. It was after he was sixty that he did the famous series, Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji and other major works.
Out of the Freer archives comes a very rare piece. The scroll “Pounding Rice for Mochi” shows two men and two women at work. What makes this so special? The cloth on the top and bottom are original dating back to circa 1822, showing very different designs. Most scrolls have been re-mounted on newer silks as the original fabric deteriorates.Â
Hokusai wanted to live until one hundred and ten when he felt he might have reached the artistic level he wanted. On display is his last scroll painting, Thunder God, with a demon of immense power.Â
He died at ninety.Â
This exhibit will be on display until November 2020. The current scrolls will be rotated with others for preservation reasons.Â
I read a lot but too much of it is on my computer. So I choose carefully when I decide to pick a up a book, and am likely to put one down if I am not taken with it.
This year I’ve read two outstanding books: Working by Robert Caro, and The Pigeon Tunnel by John Le Carre (a pen name for David Cornwall.)
Many might know Caro from his Pulitzer Prize winning biographies of Lyndon Johnson and Robert Moses, the architect of much of the landscape around New York City.
He started as a reporter in New Jersey. That is key to his brilliance. He was your classic reporter, fascinated by the story he was reporting, and a fast worker. He grew fascinated with political power as told through the toll on the victims as well as the cost to the powerful.
Working is a series of essays on how he works, on who he’s met and what it takes to do the kind of work he does. It’s beautiful. It rings every bell of my 30 years in journalism. It’s the kind of writing that the very best reporters do if they had thousands of pages to tell their stories. I just can’t wait for the more.
In 2016, John Le Carre wrote a memoir called The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories From My Life. Le Carre, famous for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and The Honorable Schoolboy. The memoir is a series of essays of how he researched and wrote his spy novels for the last nearly 60 years.
Le Carre had been part of British Intelligence in Berlin during the 1950s before leaving to write fiction in 1963. It is obvious from so many of the stories in The Pigeon Tunnel that his readers, from foreign governments to desperate refugees, continued to think he had connections in the intelligence community. He denies it all.
Like Caro, he believes in doing his own research. His friends in the journalism world took him into danger when he asked so he could get the background he needed for his novels. Over the decades, Le Carre was occasionally told he’d told too much about the British Secret Service but it’s very clear from the memoir that he kept so much back.
What do both of these writers show through their memoirs? Empathy for all the humans involved. Caro puts you into the world of 1930s Texas Hill Country that molded Lyndon Johnson. Le Carre puts you into the world of the Cold War and spies, and the deaadly consequences of careless actions. He also has wonderful stories about real espionage traitors such as Kim Philby.
Both books are worth a summer read, and may stay with you long into the Fall.
(One of my resolutions for 2019 was to blog every month, so consider this July. We’re only halfway through August, so prepare for another posting before Labor Day. Hopefully)
Okay, I’m way late on this. But the Washington DC’s Pride parade was so fun, then scary, that I let weeks slide by. Spoiler: one pix has naked male buns. You are warned.
If you watched the poor television coverage of the Parade on June 8th (I’m a former journalist so I can bitch about them), you’d think the fear spread by the semi-accurate rumor about a gun was all that happened. I can tell you, that’s not true. Whether you were gay or straight as I am, the march was joyful.
It was a parade full of friendly folks, armed with ear-splitting whistles (honestly, who thought that was a good idea?), glitter, and wings. The participants were big on throwing beads, a la Mardi Gras and stickers The corporate participants handed out ice water (thank you, Giant Food).
Marriott float at DC Pride
Churches came with their floats. The Gay Mens Chorus of D.C. marched by.
I did what I usually do – wander through the set-up areas, then try to find a place along the route. Unfortunately, I was on the wrong side of the long linked fencing, so I ended up with the photo journalists, staying out of their way while taking pictures.
The Parade started with military flags. Local politicians went by. Then international: Costa Rica, the EU, the South Asian community, Ireland, Nordic countries. The UK had a stunning float. They also had military officers leading their group.
UK military march at DC Pride parade
Good will abounded. I caught the eye of one of the Aussie contingent who bounded over and gave me a big hug.
Float after float went by. A magnificent ‘woman’ with rainbow hair. The Caribbean man, full of joy. The watchers held out their hands for beads. The story is more in the pictures so I’ll let the images tell it.
From the Caribbean with Pride
Magnificent rainbow of Pride
Mid-Atlantic Leather at Pride
I ran out of power in two camera batteries, so I headed for the Metro to go home. All was fine. I was exhausted, dehydrated, sore back, sore feet. I took the escalator down to the platform.
Then came the gun scare. I held on to the handrail with a death grip because a flash flood of panicked Pride watchers tore past us at a fast run down the stairs. I thought the escalator might break and stop. I knew that if I let go and was swept along, I’d end up hurt. It was not as if you could be prepared for this. You could smell the fear. Longest ride to the platform that I’ve ever taken.
Got home safely, drank lots of water and watched the repetitive coverage of the parade which was all about the panic, and nothing about the joy.
A Walker in Many Worlds 