Peg Kerr's Journal

I've been thinking about Minicon, which I attended last week. And I've been thinking about the concept of a palimpsest:

a manuscript or piece of writing material on which the original writing has been effaced to make room for later writing but of which traces remain.

I have been going to Minicon for forty years (well, aside for the years when it wasn't held due to Covid). That means a lot of memories. Minicon has long been a joy and a delight, an event to which Rob and I looked forward every year. We brought our kids--Fiona went to her first Minicon when she was only ten days old. We always got a hotel room. Many years, we worked on the convention committee. Rob was the Head of Operations when Minicon was in its heyday, when Minicon attracted more than 3,000 people. I cut my writing teeth at Minicon. I made so many friends, so many personal and professional connections. It was a cherished family ritual.

Now, I am the only member of my family who still goes. And as much as I still love it, and as much as the familiar soothes and comforts, it is also painful. Going to Closing Ceremonies and not seeing Rob there is so, so painful.

I didn't go to Closing Ceremonies this year.

I wandered around the con and took pictures of all the signs hanging up. They put those signs in storage and pull them out again every year. The memories are the same, yet different. I see a sign, and I see the sign again in my memory, in all the different Minicons in my mind.

So I created the collage from the signs seen around the convention, and over them, I placed ghostly memory images of Rob and myself. Back when we were young, when Minicon was nothing but joy, a string of dazzling conversations and fascinating interactions. I still feel ghostly echoes of that joy, but it's not quite the same. Minicon is not the same.

I attend Minicon, and I see traces of all the previous Minicons.

I don't see Rob.

Image description: logo for Minicon 57 March 29-31 2024. The rest of the card is made up of tiled signs seen around the convention (Consuite, Bar, Art Show, Dealer's Room, Programming This Way, Opening Ceremonies, Minicon Volunteers). Semi-transparent black-and-white images of a young man on a telephone (Rob, working as the Head of Operations on the Bridge) and a smiling seated woman (Peg) hover over the signs.

Palimpsest



Click on the links to see the 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2021 52 Card Project galleries.

This past weekend, Easter weekend, was Minicon 55, the first time the convention has been held in three years. It was the 37th Minicon I've attended, and only the third without Rob.

It was bittersweet.

I stayed at the hotel. The girls didn't come. The convention was small, and there were many missing faces. Besides those who did not choose to show up for one reason or another, the convention announced the names of about fourteen people who have died since the last Minicon was held in 2019.

I was scheduled for three panels, but one was canceled because one of the guests of honor, Elise Matthesen, was unable to attend:

Saturday 1:00 PM
Perfection as the enemy of creativity: When is good enough good enough?
'Pobody's Nerfect!' is not just a t-shirt, it's a way of life. Where does the need to be perfect come from? Where is the balance between wanting something to be enjoyed, and wanting it to be seen?

Danith McPherson (m), Alison Sommer, Adam Stemple, Rick Snyder, Elise Matthesen, Eleanor Arnason, Peg Kerr

Saturday 4:00 PM
Planning the unpleasant-to-think-about
Health care proxies, directives, and advance planning. What sort of paperwork should a person have? How will medical professionals know who to contact? How does a person best set up their end-of-life arrangements?
What components are important to a Will - Specifically, how do people make arrangements for their belongings, including the significant assets, and the errata? What are components of a good will? What is to be done with 'intellectual property'? Are there issues unique to fans and their interests? Why isn't everything marked 'collectible' actually worthy of collecting? Even if that hand crank nut chopper isn't important to you, what if it's important to one of your grandchildren? Bring your friends and discuss the inevitable!

Naomi Kritzer (m), Magenta Griffith, Peg Kerr, Shaun Jamison

Both were pretty successful.

At the freebie table, I picked up an old copy of Rune, the publication put out by the sponsoring organization of Minn-stf. It included pictures of Rob and myself from the Minicon held in 1988, with an excerpt of the log I wrote as the Communications Officer. Rob was the Head of Operations, responsible for running the convention. The pictures brought tears to my eyes. Minicon was big and booming, in its heyday; Rob and I were young and having fun. And I was still friends with Kij. Here are the pictures I found:

(image description left: Rob, standing, looks at the camera while on the telephone. Image description right: Peg sits at a table [the Minicon Bridge] reading aloud from the log book in front of her, laughing.)



Image description:
Lower left: Peg in an N95 mask at a convention panel (photo credit d_db), behind a microphone. Background: cover of the program book for Minicon 55, showing jewelry made by Guest of Honor Elisa Matthesen. Signage from the convention scattered around the collage: Green Room, Bozo Bus Tribune, Consuite, Freebie Table, Party Rooms, Registration.

Minicon



Click here to see the 2022 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2021 gallery.

I 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.

We haz 'em. And my daughter Delia (ooh_pretty_mine) is maintaining them.

Minicon Tumblr.

Minicon Twitter: @minicon.

The girls are back home (yay!), and we're back from Minicon weekend.

Rob has been quite busy all week with this temporary census job. It has prevented him from putting any work in on the room rearrangement project--and since it's to a large extent his stuff that's the bottleneck, I was stymied from doing it myself. But we got started finally on Friday morning. Two bookcases and a dresser have been moved so far, so we're partway there. My computer is still in the room that's going to be Fiona's bedroom, at least until we figure out wiring. Rob may resort to running cables rather than depending on a wireless card. Not sure. We'll see. I hope we'll be able to work on it during the coming week, although I think he has more census work in the way.

The two of us headed to Minicon on Friday afternoon. (Didn't stay at the hotel this time, but drove home in the evenings.) The con is quite small now, just about 400 people now (quite a change from the days when 3000 used to show up). I did no programing this year, and mostly just sat around and talked with people. That was nice.

The girls got back late Saturday afternoon and came straight to the hotel. They had a marvelous time. Delia ran quickly through her pictures on the digital camera, showing me the people and scenes from the past week. They were rather tired, and Fiona's fighting a cold. We didn't stay late Saturday, and we left right after the con was finished today.

I indulged in one thing in the dealer's room, the Heart of Faerie Oracle Deck by Brian and Wendy Froud. It's been my tradition to do a tarot reading on Easter Sunday, when Minicon was over. Laurel Winter did them for me for years, but since she's stopped coming to Minicon, I've started doing them myself. I had thought it was a tarot deck, but it turns out it was a different animal, an oracle deck. It's truly a lovely thing. I took it home and studied it and tried to do a reading, asking What do I need to know about turning fifty. I was quite impressed. I have two other decks, but I have a truly powerful affinity for this one, and I think it will become quite a favorite. The backs of the cards look like this:




How perfect, with their hearts (heart of flesh/heart of stone, natch), and the roots, which make me think of trees (esp. the Holy Tree) and the spark at the middle (Light in Dark Places). The wings don't make me think of swans so much as ravens, but that's okay, too. (You can see other cards from this deck pictured in the slideshow at the bottom of this review.)

So: the girls are safe and well and home, the con was subdued, but quite pleasant, and I have a beautiful new deck. Life is good.

Here is Fiona's karate picture! ( Isn't she spectacular? )

She's in that peculiar teenage stage where she is convinced that if she smiles for the camera she will die. I may be biased (okay, well, I am) but I think she's still insanely beautiful anyway.

Edited to add: But barondave managed to snag a picture of Fiona doing karate while smiling! Read the account of how Fiona and Delia assassinated the Mn-stf President lydy at Minicon (and how Rob resurrected lydy again, via a legalistic interpretation of the Mn-stf Bylaws) here. Thanks, barondave!

( Here's the action picture )

Edited to add: And see dd_b's entire sequence of both girls performing the assassination, here (click on the first picture with Fiona and then click "next" to see the entire sequence). Thanks, dd_b!

I will be at minicon41. My panels are as follows:

Depression and Creativity (Saturday 3:00 - 4:15 p.m.)
Young Adult Novels for Adults (Fiona is going to be on this one, too) (Saturday 7:00-8:15 p.m.)
Jane Austen's Influence on Fantasy (Sunday 11:30 a.m. - 12:45 p.m.)

I will not be doing a reading, as I haven't written anything new in about a year and if you want a book signed, grab me any time, but I figured that just about anyone who wanted anything signed has had it done by now, so I didn't sign up for a signing time.