These are feelings from one to another

[sovay]

Obviously it would make a better story if I had won a Lammy, but I lost along with everyone else in my category to Isaac R. Fellman's The Breath of the Sun (2018). I am not sorry to have attended the ceremony. I got to hear acceptance speeches by Barbara Smith, Masha Gessen, and Larissa Lai, plus the roar of applause that Anthony Rapp got for existing onstage as a presenter. rushthatspeaks texted that they hoped I was having fun and I responded honestly, "There's fundraising karaoke happening in front of me. It's great." Justin Vivian Bond hosted in a glittery flapper skirt and a T-shirt reading "THEY POWER." I had a very great quantity of eel beforehand with ladymondegreen at Soho Sushi and some very delicious sautéed burdock afterward with Michael Cisco and Farah Rose Smith at Sobaya as well as consolatory drinks at Angel's Share, which is the bar you find by walking through a random side door in Village Yokocho. Earlier in the afternoon I visited the Strand and left with a hardcover of Barbara Hambly's Sold Down the River (2000), otherwise known as the hardcover Benjamin January that I could justify to myself because I did not already own it in any other form. Liz Ziemska's Mandelbrot the Magnificent (2017) came home with me on account of looking like terrific ghost-poem gematriya.

I remember when I went to Wiscon in 2005. I enjoyed multiple aspects of that weekend, but it was also a space in which I had been told I would feel at home and in fact felt badly alienated. I had no expectations of feeling at home at the Lambda Literary Awards, especially since it was a social event at which I knew no one else attending, but I am now processing the information that I do seem to feel more comfortable in majority-queer spaces. Which I have been in before, several households of people important to me fit the definition, mine's at least a fifty-fifty split, but there were a whole lot of people of various genders and orientations in that auditorium expressing them variously (and mostly looking great while doing it, though that's incidental to the point) and they did not make me feel like I was doing mine wrong. I'm not sure yet what to do with this fact. It's useful to know. I'm just used to feeling on the outside of wherever I am.

A total stranger screamed enthusiastically when my name was announced for LGBTQ Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror. They were sitting a row behind me to the left; I never had any idea who they were. That was heart-melting.

Tomorrow is more trains. I shall sleep.

Comments

[sovay]

It sounds like the event was full of joy.

It was. People were so happy to be there. People were so happy to win. I was glad to be part of it.

(Regarding Wiscon, I get the impression that it's highly normative--I mean that it has its own orthodoxy that it holds to very strongly--which is alienating if you deviate from the norm in some way.)

I think every con has its own culture; I just didn't mesh with theirs. I suspect I would have had an easier time if so many people had not told me I'd just fit right in and then I didn't.

And your meals! Eel and burdock--YUM. I love Japanese-style burdock, and I love eel!

I don't think I'd ever had burdock so as to distinguish its flavor before! It was kimpira-gobo, sautéed with carrot and rice wine; it was delicious. It had many of the properties I love of seaweed salad except that it tasted completely different. (Michael also shared with me some of his glacéed satsuma-imo and that was something else I had not had before; it tasted like a cross between an apple and a sweet potato, which are definitely forms of starch that go together, but are not usually literally the same plant.)

[asakiyume]

KIMPIRA GOBO IS EXACTLY WHAT I LOVE TO MAKE.
When we lived in Japan in the early 1990s, we belonged to a food coop that would send out a magazine with recipes along with the items you could order, and I got a recipe for that from it. I've made it ever since (though often with only the carrots when i couldn't get the gobo).

[sovay]

I've made it ever since (though often with only the carrots when i couldn't get the gobo).

Oh, that's wonderful! Is burdock something you can source locally, i.e., find growing wild?

[asakiyume]

Oh yes: you can find it growing everywhere. However, when it's wild, it's hard to dig up--much like pulling out Queen Anne's lace (aka wild carrot) is harder than pulling up a cultivated carrot. The roots, which when it's cultivated are long and straight, grow more crooked-y and branched. Also, wild burdock is much more tough than cultivated burdock. That said, it's still fun to find some and, if you're up for the struggle, harvest it.

I tried cultivating it for several years, but the seeds I got had a hard time germinating and then thriving, which is ridiculous, since as a weed you can find it everywhere. I'm sure you've seen it: it has massive leaves that call out to be made into hats or even whole garments. (That link also has a photo of the recipe from the co-op, laminated onto an index card.)

ETA: And the translation of the recipe--you can make it! You can get gobo, I'll bet, in Porter Square. (When I want to make kimpira gobo with actual burdock, I'm able to get it at an Asian food store in Amherst.)