Belated Minicon report
Apr. 26th, 2019 03:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pegkerrI went to Minicon 54 this past weekend and it was good.
It was good last year, too, my first after Rob's death, which sort of surprised me. And then I fell apart spectacularly the day afterward. I feared that this time, too, grumbling to myself that I didn't have time for a grief storm, what with work heating up so much right now. And I really didn't have one.
This was the first time I faced Minicon without ANY of my family. Fiona and Delia bailed this year.
Had breakfast with Jane Yolen both days, and really, what an excellent way to start any day.
I decided quite deliberately to sign up for panels in order to keep myself busy, and that worked well. One was on the tie between mental health and creativity, and how creative people can use art to keep depression at bay. I brought my soul collage cards and talked about them, and people were definitely interested. I put out about forty or so for people to look at after the panel, and quite a few people lingered to see them, which was gratifying for me. Adam Stemple was also on that panel, and he brought some research with him that fit with everything I've thought about the subject: creative people ruminate, meaning, they think deeply and repeatedly about certain subjects, turning them over and over in their mind--but rumination can also be at the root of depression.
Another panel I thought was extremely interesting, with lively discussion, was about assumption of commonality. I may have derailed it a bit when the moderator got to me and I started talking about how I'm concentrating these days on trying to see beneath the assumption of commonality, and trying to deconstruct my own privilege by noticing how we are different, and I brought up one of the examples I'd learned about in my racial justice task force training: many of us had checked into the hotel for the weekend and found, as always, the little samples of shampoo that the hotel provided. I said that I had always assumed that was a nice, welcoming gesture--until someone pointed out that those are always, always, always, hair products for white people. Black people have different hair with different textures that often require different hair products. That had never occurred to me until it was pointed out to me. Anyway, the discussion was respectful, interesting and thoughtful (to me at least), and I enjoyed it very much.
Also was on a fanfic writing panel with Naomi Kritzer, Lyda Morehouse, Ruth Berman, with Katie Clapham as the moderator. Got to talk about Alternity, which was fun.
I bought too many books. I also discovered another reason to miss Rob: he was the one who kept the mental inventory of what books to buy next in the series we both collected.
I bid on something in the art show, the only time I've done so in all the years I've gone to Minicon. Wouldn't you know, it ended up being the only item in the entire show that went to auction (it was a dishtowel with mathematical symbols, with the value of pi woven into the number of threads in the stripes; I'd wanted to get it for Fiona. I met with the other bidder and we worked it out, and Fiona is now the proud owner of an overpriced dish towel that she will love very much.
Eric stopped by the hotel briefly to see me on Saturday night. I got to introduce him to a few friends in the Green Room. Minicon in the evenings is not quite what it was a decade or two ago, however. He didn't stay long, but I was touched that he came out to see something for himself that is, after all, quite important to me and part of my personal history.
The hardest part came at the end, sitting through Closing Ceremonies. I was a bit teary when I walked out--not just because Minicon was over, which always brings me down a bit, but because Rob and I generally went our own separate ways at Minicon, but we always, always sat together at Closing Ceremonies, so that is when I miss him the most.
This came up in my Facebook memories feed today: Rob and I sitting together at Closing Ceremonies at Minicon 46 in 2011. Rob, of course, is wearing a Minicon shirt.
It was good last year, too, my first after Rob's death, which sort of surprised me. And then I fell apart spectacularly the day afterward. I feared that this time, too, grumbling to myself that I didn't have time for a grief storm, what with work heating up so much right now. And I really didn't have one.
This was the first time I faced Minicon without ANY of my family. Fiona and Delia bailed this year.
Had breakfast with Jane Yolen both days, and really, what an excellent way to start any day.
I decided quite deliberately to sign up for panels in order to keep myself busy, and that worked well. One was on the tie between mental health and creativity, and how creative people can use art to keep depression at bay. I brought my soul collage cards and talked about them, and people were definitely interested. I put out about forty or so for people to look at after the panel, and quite a few people lingered to see them, which was gratifying for me. Adam Stemple was also on that panel, and he brought some research with him that fit with everything I've thought about the subject: creative people ruminate, meaning, they think deeply and repeatedly about certain subjects, turning them over and over in their mind--but rumination can also be at the root of depression.
Another panel I thought was extremely interesting, with lively discussion, was about assumption of commonality. I may have derailed it a bit when the moderator got to me and I started talking about how I'm concentrating these days on trying to see beneath the assumption of commonality, and trying to deconstruct my own privilege by noticing how we are different, and I brought up one of the examples I'd learned about in my racial justice task force training: many of us had checked into the hotel for the weekend and found, as always, the little samples of shampoo that the hotel provided. I said that I had always assumed that was a nice, welcoming gesture--until someone pointed out that those are always, always, always, hair products for white people. Black people have different hair with different textures that often require different hair products. That had never occurred to me until it was pointed out to me. Anyway, the discussion was respectful, interesting and thoughtful (to me at least), and I enjoyed it very much.
Also was on a fanfic writing panel with Naomi Kritzer, Lyda Morehouse, Ruth Berman, with Katie Clapham as the moderator. Got to talk about Alternity, which was fun.
I bought too many books. I also discovered another reason to miss Rob: he was the one who kept the mental inventory of what books to buy next in the series we both collected.
I bid on something in the art show, the only time I've done so in all the years I've gone to Minicon. Wouldn't you know, it ended up being the only item in the entire show that went to auction (it was a dishtowel with mathematical symbols, with the value of pi woven into the number of threads in the stripes; I'd wanted to get it for Fiona. I met with the other bidder and we worked it out, and Fiona is now the proud owner of an overpriced dish towel that she will love very much.
Eric stopped by the hotel briefly to see me on Saturday night. I got to introduce him to a few friends in the Green Room. Minicon in the evenings is not quite what it was a decade or two ago, however. He didn't stay long, but I was touched that he came out to see something for himself that is, after all, quite important to me and part of my personal history.
The hardest part came at the end, sitting through Closing Ceremonies. I was a bit teary when I walked out--not just because Minicon was over, which always brings me down a bit, but because Rob and I generally went our own separate ways at Minicon, but we always, always sat together at Closing Ceremonies, so that is when I miss him the most.
This came up in my Facebook memories feed today: Rob and I sitting together at Closing Ceremonies at Minicon 46 in 2011. Rob, of course, is wearing a Minicon shirt.