Peg Kerr's Journal

Went to elisem's haiku earring party last night. Elise had dozens and dozens of earrings spread out on the table when the party started. What you do is you pick a pair, show them to Elise, and she gives you a title. Then you write a haiku based on that title, and then you get to keep the earrings.

I did four poems:

Fair and Perilous (dangling leaves in irridescent white)

Where her white hands touch
frost steals forth, coating every
leaf and twig with ice

The lamp of the willow (frosted clear balls, dangling from beads of willow green glass)

The willow dryad
holds up a water bubble
glowing with moonlight

Hidden Powers (flouride, sort of a smoky green, sort of oval, sort of rectangular)

Death, mixed with my tears
I hold it out to you and
bid you take a sip

Self Control (many-faceted teardrop blue glass beads)

Mermaids synchronize
their strokes, rather than rushing
to sea, arms spread wide

It was great fun. Much poetry was composed (Elise had hundreds of poems by the end of the evening, many better than mine) and I got four lovely pairs of earrings.

Cheers,
Peg

There are computers here in the hotel lobby, so I am grabbing the chance to update from Wiscon. Am having a wonderful time. Rob is working this weekend, but the girls are not neglected, but instead have been under the loving care of their Grandma. So I'm guilt-free. I've been staying with kijjohnson and Louise Marley, an author from Seattle who was in a writing group with Kij. The three of us have hit it off quite well. Right now, the Tiptree auction is going on, and Ellen Klages is making everyone double over with laughter as she auctions items off. The James Tiptree, Jr. Award was created because Karen Joy Fowler and some other authors (Pat Murphy, I think, among others) noticed that there were no major sf awards named for a woman, so they decided to create one and call it the James Tiptree, Jr. Award. James Tiptree, Jr. was the mysterious writer who wrote for ten years, winning just about all the major awards in the field, and all people knew about him was that he used a post office box as a return address. James Tiptree, Jr. was eventually revealed to be a woman, Alice Sheldon (ex-CIA operative, ex-designer, ex-psychologist, writer). The Tiptree award is given to the work each year which has most creatively examined the concept of gender--I don't know exactly the mission statement; but you can probably find it at the website (I'm not on my own machine and so am not going to put in the link right now; maybe later). They raise money for the award by holding bake sales, and by doing the Tiptree auction.

I've met some of my lj friends for the first time this weekend: sdn, lcohen and oracne. Have been on three panels. Have gorged on sinfully delicious, fatty food, have blown the budget shopping, have stayed up too late having wonderful conversations with people. The Tor party is tonight, and will probably be up too late again.

Wishing you all were here. Well, not all of you. That would probably make the bar too crowded.

Peg, heading back to the party.