Dinner at Pat Wrede's
May. 14th, 2004 11:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pegkerrMet there with Pat, and Lois Bujold, and ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
pameladean and Caroline Stevermer 1crowdedhour.
Conversation ranged far and wide, touching at one point or another on:
asparagus, vegan cooking (including a recipe for French silk pie using tofu which Pamela promised to e-mail to everyone), my desire to learn to play Gaelic fiddle ("WRITE THE BOOK FIRST, PEG"), the movie "Touching the Void" and mountain climbing, Krakatoa, mass extinctions 250 million years ago, the change in European weather patterns from 1100 to 1400, Shackleton's expedition, Canadian roses, Canadian explorers, the discovery of asphalt under the ocean, the Bronte sisters and their novels, George Elliot and her novels, the distinction between George Elliot's and the Brontes' concept of feminism, LeGuin's Earthsea trilogy, Mark Twain and what he would have thought of Lord of the Rings (we decided he probably wouldn't have liked it very much, based on what he did to Arthurian legend in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court), Joel Rosenberg's opinion that Lord of the Rings would have been better written by Roger Zelazny (oy!), the ironic versus the non-ironic viewpoint, A.S. Byatt's Possession, which Pamela offers up as a fine example of a book that doesn't start with a murder but still hooks her right away, Gilbert & Sullivan operettas (esp. Pirates of Penzance, which Lois and Pat just went to see together), Ten Chimneys, the home of Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, Noel Coward, stage actress Barbara Bryne, engineers' ideas of practical jokes, Herman Melville's Moby Dick, The Eyre Affair, Edward Gorey's The Unstrung Harp (we amused ourselves by seeing how many bits we could recite out loud from memory. Lois, particularly, knew quite a bit of the book by heart), the New York City ballet (apparently Edward Gorey used to go to every performance. He also liked Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Maxfield Parrish, the beer ball game tradition at Carleton College and why it didn't make it into Tam Lin, a Sooper Secret writing project, World Con, Wiscon, Tommy Lee Jones, Al Gore, John Steinbeck, fanfiction, cats, gardening, and of course, LiveJournal.
*Sigh* I really treasure my friendships with these women.
pameladean and Caroline Stevermer 1crowdedhour.Conversation ranged far and wide, touching at one point or another on:
asparagus, vegan cooking (including a recipe for French silk pie using tofu which Pamela promised to e-mail to everyone), my desire to learn to play Gaelic fiddle ("WRITE THE BOOK FIRST, PEG"), the movie "Touching the Void" and mountain climbing, Krakatoa, mass extinctions 250 million years ago, the change in European weather patterns from 1100 to 1400, Shackleton's expedition, Canadian roses, Canadian explorers, the discovery of asphalt under the ocean, the Bronte sisters and their novels, George Elliot and her novels, the distinction between George Elliot's and the Brontes' concept of feminism, LeGuin's Earthsea trilogy, Mark Twain and what he would have thought of Lord of the Rings (we decided he probably wouldn't have liked it very much, based on what he did to Arthurian legend in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court), Joel Rosenberg's opinion that Lord of the Rings would have been better written by Roger Zelazny (oy!), the ironic versus the non-ironic viewpoint, A.S. Byatt's Possession, which Pamela offers up as a fine example of a book that doesn't start with a murder but still hooks her right away, Gilbert & Sullivan operettas (esp. Pirates of Penzance, which Lois and Pat just went to see together), Ten Chimneys, the home of Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, Noel Coward, stage actress Barbara Bryne, engineers' ideas of practical jokes, Herman Melville's Moby Dick, The Eyre Affair, Edward Gorey's The Unstrung Harp (we amused ourselves by seeing how many bits we could recite out loud from memory. Lois, particularly, knew quite a bit of the book by heart), the New York City ballet (apparently Edward Gorey used to go to every performance. He also liked Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Maxfield Parrish, the beer ball game tradition at Carleton College and why it didn't make it into Tam Lin, a Sooper Secret writing project, World Con, Wiscon, Tommy Lee Jones, Al Gore, John Steinbeck, fanfiction, cats, gardening, and of course, LiveJournal.
*Sigh* I really treasure my friendships with these women.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2004-05-14 09:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-05-15 01:03 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-05-15 06:22 am (UTC)As to Mark Twain and LotR, I dunno. In some ways, it's a very romantic book, and Twain was perfectly capable of falling in love, even when he didn't intend to. Just like Cervantes; it's not often noted, but he had more than a few Cervantes moments in Connecticut Yankee. Like Cervantes, he set out to make fun of knights, but fell in love, at least a little. Not in the way that Cervantes finally imbues the mad Don Quixote with a tragic honor and dignity, sure; but take careful note of Lancelot's final appearance in Connecticut Yankee, sitting up with a sick baby, a moment that Mallory and TH White would easily have understood.
And, for that matter, me, too. From Paladins:
He turned to Bear. "Cully will need to see them, as soon as possible. Gray, too."
Bear nodded, and tried to keep the surprise off of his face.
This . . . aggressiveness was very much not what he had come to expect from Niko, and he wasn't sure what the source of it was. He found himself thinking of a butterfly emerging from its cocoon -- a particularly fierce butterfly, at least at the moment, granted.
"As you wish, Sir Niko," he said, trying as hard as he could to keep any trace of irony from his voice.
He must have succeeded; Niko simply nodded. "We should all be off, I think, darkness or not. All of us."
"But, Excellency, we have work here, and -- "
"Shh." Niko held up one hand and dipped the other into his robes. It took him a moment to bring out a coin -- a gold crown. He held it on the flat of his palm for a long moment, as though he was studying the buttery metal for some insight, then smiled and shrugged and squatted down -- in front of Safeena, not her husband.
"I believe this will more than compensate your family for whatever work you'll lose," he said, quietly. He smiled. "I'm sure that you will want to put it somewhere safe."
She eyed the coin greedily, but with the baby cradled in her arms, she didn't have a free hand. Ercam took half a step toward her, but stopped at Bear's quick headshake. The boy was handling this as well as anybody could -- let him handle it without interference.
"May I?" Niko said, gently, holding out both of his hands for the baby.
Whether it was the gold or his manner that had worked the magic -- or, most likely, both -- she didn't resist as he gently removed the baby from her arms, and instead quickly crawled across the floor to give the coin to Ercam, then turned back, obviously to reclaim the baby.
She was too late. Niko -- no, by God, Sir Niko Christofolous was already sitting tailor-fashion on the bare dirt floor, the baby cradled gently in his arms, rocking back and forth and singing so softly that Bear would have had trouble making out the lullabye if he hadn't heard it before.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-05-15 08:15 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-05-19 12:30 pm (UTC)