Of which a whale can tire

I am returned from New York, where my entire family went yesterday to see La Cage aux Folles. We took the trains; I read Britten on Music (ed. Paul Kildea, 2003) on the way down and Gemma Files' A Book of Tongues (2010) on the way back and in between worried about not being able to find my copy of David Quammen's Monster of God. This afternoon was spent at the American Museum of Natural History, where I made pilgrimage to the Hall of Ocean Life and wrote down the titles of several books to look for, including a children's book about Zheng He's treasure ships. All through Connecticut, the sky was fading over the water from the slow gilding haze that looks like a certain school of nineteenth-century painting, especially where there are masts and buoys, to after-twilight like watered ink, darkening at the line of the sea on one side, still embers and violets on the other. I saw a scarecrow set at the edge of a salt marsh with a whitewash face and what looked like a staff in its hand, though I suspect it was merely a support. I can't imagine what it was meant to scare away, since all it overlooked was cordgrass and blue-skimmed water, but there was no mistaking it; I shall think of it as a ritual or apotropaic figure until told otherwise.

I no longer have bronchitis. I am speaking again, although still coughing at irritating moments. One of my toes is still broken, but it does not seem to have taken any unusual damage from walking multiple east-west blocks. The man who sat behind me at La Cage aux Folles leaned over at the intermission and told me he hadn't seen hair like mine on a woman since his great-grandmother, whose hair came to her knees; she used to braid it and pin it up in coils and at three or four years old, he was enchanted by it. I do not think my hair is a fraction of that impressive, but I thanked him. Then he told me a story about a friend of his whose hair was only to the small of her back, but who decided one day to cut it very, very short. She was tired of the upkeep. Her husband protested. All right, she said; if you like it so much, you brush it every night. Which, the man finished, her husband has done every night for the last thirty years. "She says it's one of the most intimate things she's ever experienced. You should keep that in mind." I can guarantee I will remember it longer than the various people who ask if I'm going to donate my hair to charity.

In short, a quite decent example of the species flying crazy visit. And as the person who read the original rave in The New Yorker and determined we needed to get tickets stat, I think I can be justifiably proud that my brother's wife liked this musical much better than the last show we took her to. Admittedly, that was The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny.

I will be traveling again in three days. Maybe I could just sleep until then.

As small as a world and as large as alone

Right. My schedule for Wiscon, in case anyone wishes to meet up around it:

Friday 4:00—5:15 PM
Greer Gilman's Cloudish Universe
Moderator: Faye Ringel, Rush-That-Speaks, Greer Gilman, Sonya Taaffe

One of this year's Tiptree Awards honors Greer Gilman's Cloud & Ashes: Three Winter's Tales. Along with her earlier novel Moonwise, this book is set in a universe that may remind us of Northern England in the seventeenth century, but with significant reversals. As the Tiptree jury writes, "Power shifts about, much of it gender-based; time eats itself like a mobius strip. These are stories about Story in a world in which power seems to belong to the male but reality to the female." Knowledgeable guides—and the author herself—will provide threads through the labyrinth of Gilman's difficult yet rewarding work.

Saturday 10:00—11:15 AM
Mothers and Daughters
Moderator: Shira Lipkin, Greer Gilman, Kimberly Gonzalez, Sonya Taaffe

In a follow-up to last year's Fathers and Daughters panel, we discuss the impact mothers, even those dead or absent, can have on their daughters, and how daughters can change mothers. There are many books where mothers are missing from the story, but that doesn't mean they are unimportant to the characters. Would Flora Segunda have been half as spunky without her unique background? How is Ista of Chalion changed and challenged by motherhood? How many of your favorite stories portray girls forced to become substitute mothers?

Saturday 4:00—5:15 PM
Five Tales for Cerberus
Greer Gilman, Hiromi Goto, Adrian Simmons, Sonya Taaffe, Cliff Winnig

A reading from novels and stories that explore the limits of the bearable . . . In the darkness, in the trembling, when there is no one to turn to and the morning light is a lifetime away . . . What will she do? What can she do? Out of the wretched, from nightmare paralysis, young men and women tap into previously undiscovered strength to overcome that which seeks to destroy them.

Sunday 10:00—11:15 AM
Must Pleasures Be Guilty?
Moderator: Vito Excalibur, Lesley Hall, Sumana Harihareswara, John O'Neill, Sonya Taaffe

Why are we ashamed of the books we love? Critical acclaim recognizes some SF/F as serious literature, works one might recommend to a non-genre reader who thought it was all talking squid and ray-guns in space, to demonstrate what the genre can do. But are these the books you love and reread over and over again, especially when feeling low? And if not, why not? What is the difference between love and admiration? And why is pleasure so often constructed as "guilty" or embarrassing to admit?

I am not a morning person, so we'll see how the two panels that require actual thought go—and I don't think I've written a single story that fits the description for "Five Tales from Cerberus," so I hope everyone's all right with ordinary underworld—but it should be fun. All I have to do is be awake enough to catch the plane at oh god o'clock on Thursday with nineweaving and rushthatspeaks. Who may I expect to see when we arrive?