Category: Travel

Travelling from Australia

personby Gillian Polack
schedulePosted on

People are asking me “Are you going to Belfast next year?” and “Are you going to Seattle?” and “Will you return to Germany?” and “Do we get to see you in person in Baltimore?” I always explain to European friends and North American friends that the airfares are large and more and more often they reply, “Well, it’s difficult for me, too.” And it is.

Yet the obstacles appear, to me, higher than they were.

I wondered if I was shouting about fire when it was merely a match that was burning. I know that my recent trip was difficult because I needed more physical help than I could afford. Several friends stepped up and made it happen, but there were too many times when I was nearly stranded with no recourse, simply because of the health issues. I still have nightmares about 5 moments that were well-nigh impossible.

For any future trip that takes more than 8 hours, I will need help at the other end and along the way. I have to accept that I cannot do things alone easily, even things that look perfectly straightforward to other people.

Shouting at me, “Get a scooter” when I’m struggling at a science fiction conference does not help, and (what happened a lot in Germany) someone walking by stopping to pick up my bag and get it over the hump or up the steps helps immensely. Neither of these are standard for any trip, but they’re what I experienced. Five times in one day in Glasgow I was told to get a scooter or a wheelchair, when, in fact, if I’d done that I’d have been unable to walk at all long term (or even a few days after).

This is not the first time that strangers and friends alike wanted to treat me in the way they thought chronically ill and disabled people should be treated and not consider (or even ask about) my actual circumstances. Because I can walk a little, most friends would say, “Come with me” and leave me at the other end with no thought that, since I had not planned to get to that place, I had no way of getting back in time for programme or for transport: I have to plan.

All this means is that I have to plan more when I travel. I need to be able to see what I can do and then achieve it.

I had to cancel visits to key sites in Germany because the world and my health simply did not permit it.

I had to cancel a half day at Glasgow because there were problems with a room for the panel I was on. All I needed to do to make everything work, was to sit. Not to sit and move and sit and move and sit and move – just to sit. Standing had fewer after-effects, so I stood and awaiting until the re-assigned room could be replaced with something else and the missing computer could also be replaced. All this happened, and was a miracle of reorganisation, but I had not sat when I had planned to. I could have done it on a panel or in a lounge chair, but intermittent movement with that particular pain meant that after that panel, I missed everything that didn’t take place in a single comfortable chair. I was not even able to walk back to the hotel and lie down. I was very lucky that afternoon because a friend stayed with me and we had a lovely evening and she got drinks and found mutual friends and… listened and paid attention to what I was saying about what I could do. She also made sure I got safely back to the hotel at the end of the evening, which was not a given because my direction sense fails when I am at that point of pain. Also, she did not treat me as a charity case, but as a delightful friend and who she was happy to spend time with. This friend resulted in there being no sour taste in my mouth from my incapacity. She’s wonderful. I did miss 8 hours of programming I had intended to enjoy, however.

All these are reasons for being careful how I travel, not avoiding long-distance travel entirely.However, I’ve now acquitted all the grants I was given to get to Europe. I took a moment to do some calculations after the last form went through.

In future, I don’t think I can get further than New Zealand without financial help. The recent trip cost the equivalent of 45% of my annual income. That was without adding enough assistance to make the trip at all comfortable, (which is what I was unable to do this time) and I’m still paying physically for the return journey. I could only pay that amount with help from the friends I stayed with and from the bodies that gave me grants, and, if I wanted an equivalent trip to anywhere in Europe or North America for a conference or for research without as many problems, it would cost me 60% of my annual income.

Without grants it’s just not possible. That’s easy to explain. What is not easy to explain is that many non-academic programmes and some academic programmes are pulled together at the last minute in these days of everyone working with too much pressure. If I’m not giving an academic paper or on programme, I cannot claim that amount on taxes. If I do not know about programme early enough, that adds $1,000-3,000 to the total cost of the trip because airlines play games with last minute travellers who need to arrange things carefully so that they don’t hurt for weeks. That brings the cost potentially to over 55% of my income if I go the route that hurts, and over 70% if I plan to hurt much less.

I will miss everyone, but I can’t travel long distances under these circumstances, however much I adore being with people and researching and discovering amazing things and listening to brilliant people. Also, the next person from Europe or North America who claims the same experience will be sympathised with, because over 45-70% of one’s income for one journey is quite scary.

If anyone has solutions and would like to see me in person, I would love to talk. In the interim, please just say “I’m sorry – I wish you could do these things” rather than telling me “I suffer just as much as you” while planning your next trip.

How Was Your Convention?

personby Madeleine Robins
schedulePosted on
The American Falls

I’m sitting in the lobby of the Niagara Falls Sheraton (US side) waiting until it’s time to get a ride to the airport to go home. It’s the tail-end–or perhaps the last sight of the tail-end–of the World Fantasy Convention, which was swell. At least MY convention was swell. But as one of the attendees commented this morning, everyone has their own convention; I can’t speak to anyone else’s.

As with every human endeavor, how we experience an event is colored by what we want out of it, what our individual concerns are, and what happens to us individually. The people planning a convention can be as meticulous in planning as one could want, filling the schedule chock-full of entertaining and informative and cool stuff–but for the individual attendee all that can be eclipsed by any number of things: a friend who ghosted them; a bad knee; the bad dinner; missing someone who is normally there… you know. Human stuff. And it is a Truth, universally acknowledged, that even at a relatively small convention like WFC (which hovers around 1000 registrations) you can run into some people over and over, and miss other people that you know are there, but never find.

Of course, this principle applies to everything: school, workplace, relationships, families (I swear my brother and I had two different families with shared players and specific events, mediated by our ages and genders). It’s not a matter of position, exactly. It’s a matter of what matters to you, how you’re treated, what distracts or focuses you in a given situation.

So how was my convention? I saw many people, some I hadn’t seen in years (including one of my stage-combat teachers and colleagues: it had been 30 years!).  I met cool new people, or people I only know from the realms of the internet. I ate (Indian, Nepali, Italian, and more quotidian fare) and talked and laughed and listened. I visited a foreign land (with Canada within a 15 minute walk across the Rainbow Bridge, how could I not?). But mostly, I talked and listened and laughed and thought about things in new ways, which is really what I go to conventions for. I had beadwork in the Art Show (every time is new–last year my climate change necklaces all sold; this year none of them did) and a gratifying number of pieces went home with new owners.

It’s a huge indulgence, being able to do this: go to Another Place, see friends, and talk about the issues and ideas that writers worry about and gnaw on. I’m very lucky to have the time and the finances and the flexibility to be able to do it at all. But I also spent a good deal of time talking with some people in indie publishing, and now have –maybe not a publishing plan, but enough hard information to be able to put together a publishing plan so that the 4th Sarah Tolerance book can see the light of day, and I can bring out the backlist in a uniform edition. I call that a successful business trip.

Short answer: My Convention was good. Now to go home and start the real work.

Returning Home

personby Gillian Polack
schedulePosted on

My everyday was so much easier in Germany. Antisemitism didn’t play silly buggers with the ground I walked on there, as it does in Australia. Australian antisemitism is mostly gentle and kind, but no less troublesome for that. Until I went to Germany I had no idea of its place in the general scheme of things, but now I understand that, too. Five weeks where I could literally be myself taught me that I am not the heart of the problem. Nor is me being Jewish. I know about what is wrong with Australia and why bigotry triumphs right now. Around me, many people are raging about Nazis, but doing nothing about the gentler and more insidious racism. Whatever I do to handle this will be uncomfortable, and if I don’t do anything I will also be uncomfortable.

How did Germany teach me these things?

It still has all the history that cause the Shoah. It’s dealt with some of it supremely well, and other parts not at all. My research project concerned how Germany handles its Jewish past, especially the past up to 1700. I explained I wasn’t a German historian, but a French/English one. I was entirely open about my Jewishness, but also about the parts my family played in the war. There were no closed doors. In fact, it was quite the opposite. People wanted to talk to me and tell me their views and hear what I had to say. They were excited by my questions and chased things up for me: we all know a lot more about Jews in the Saarland, about the relationship between lebuchen and honeycake, about the Jews who never returned to Germany, about medieval expulsions and why they were not always as they seemed, about Roman Jews in Germania… and a whole lot more. There will be a book. In fact, nearly half the book is already written (and needs a publisher!) but this post is not about that book.

I was able to use my experience to better understand the 1930s in Germany and why so many non-Jewish Germans were silent then. Also why everyone’s favourite patriotic children’s author was murdered. The murder was death camp stuff: tragically normal that year. The silence, however, was mostly not intentional. I strongly suspect that the vast majority of non-Jewish Germans did not hate Jews and are still trying to handle what happened. Many people closed doors for emotional safety because life was too full of problems. Small lives became smaller lives. Some of them closed doors to keep out people (Jews, Roma, people with the wrong politics or sexual preferences) who might make their own lives more difficult in a chancy decade. There was fear; there was selfishness; there was small life syndrome. The actual hatred was confined to a much tinier portion of the community than we mostly think.

Those who accepted the Nazis, or got on with their lives despite the Nazis are perfectly normal people. Good people who mostly led good lives. They silenced those around them without hate (or with only a little hate, not enough to murder or throw stones) and when the worst happened were terribly shocked. I learned a lot about things from how shocked people were and how, three generations later, they are still determined to fight and ensure this does not happen again. They are still dealing with their families being a part of the horror. Good people who discovered that goodness is not enough by itself, that silencing and closing doors and leading small lives can feed terror.

Australians are doing the small life thing to most Jewish Australians. I’m largely not dealing with hate. Three people I know well clearly hate me because I’m Jewish, only three, out of hundreds. The occasional hate mail is just that – an occasional nasty piece of email from a nasty piece of work. Most of the others who make my life more and more difficult are agreeing with politics that silences or isolates (why I am so worried about the Aussie Greens – anyone who backs them without pushing them to talk to the Jewish community as a whole is helping close doors) or they are dealing with impossible situations personally and do not have energy left to find out why I’m missing from this place or that, or… there are a number of other possibilities, but they all come down to preferring small lives above shared lives.

The biggest thing I noticed in Germany was how much easier life is when one doesn’t have to do a bunch of work to be heard. In Australia, I have to run an extra mile before anyone will listen to me, because I have to prove I’m someone who deserves a little attention. I have to open closed doors. Some of the once-open doors are locked and I have to beg for a key. All attention I previously had for my books, my classes,Women’s History Month, and a truckload of other things is immaterial to the world around me. at home Bookshops do not stock my books. Reviewers won’t review my books. And this applies to the vast, vast majority of Jewish writers.  In Germany, scholars and students looked at my books and my work. My life’s work is important and interesting. I could also talk openly about my research and its impact and everyone talked openly back. Me being Gillian is sufficient.

I’m not going to spend the rest of my life contacting politicians and people I used to work with and social activists who knew me, once upon a time. I wrote to them when I could before I left, and they never answered. I am still the person who can give excellent policy advice on these things. More so now, in fact, because of my current research. I’m still the person who spent twenty odd years of her life fighting for human rights for many people, and teaching people how to fight for themselves. I am an expert they need to talk to, but their doors are closed. Those politicians and activists and most of Australia’s left have chosen small lives. If someone doesn’t bother to read my email because I’m no longer the right person or the known person, or assumes that someone else will be more acceptable, then that’s their choice. All those choices have been made. I will not write any more letters.

If someone wants to talk with me, I am still the expert I once was. I discovered this is Germany. I don’t teach what one has to do to prevent or limit the spread of bigotry: I teach how things happen and tools that can be used. Choices and paths are for the person dealing with it in their every day. I once made a living providing history and understanding and tools, and had completely forgotten about that part of my life, because of the amount that part of my life has been sidelined. Right now, just getting to see anyone and get a decent conversation that may or may not lead to changes is like running a marathon. To run marathons, one needs spoons. I’m chronically ill. Another thing I discovered in Germany is that one can lead a much better life with a chronic illness if one doesn’t have to battle to be heard.

I’m still very happy to help anyone deal with identification of bigotry, whether they are themselves unintentionally excluding, how cultural tendencies push towards how we see people. However, I’m not well, and I’m not willing to spend all my energy explaining why I can be useful (very, very useful) at this moment in Australia’s history. I tried that, and it took all my energy with no results. I left thinking that I was not the person I thought I was, and had nothing useful to give. Now I realise, thanks to the last five weeks, that it is Australia that has changed and that I am simply one of many people dealing with the downside of that change. Being Jewish is my everyday, but that everyday results in closed doors. Much of Australia is quietly and gently hiding itself from anything that might cause it emotional distress, and one of those subjects if being Australian and Jewish. Simple descriptions are applied to us and who we are and how we live our lives is not considered something worth knowing.

If you want to talk to me about these things, and the shape of prejudice in society and how to handle different manifestations of that prejudice, then I’m happy to help. Ask me. Don’t wait for me to find you. If you want to scold me for being Jewish or thinking Jewishly or keep me out of things until I know my (polite and submissive) place, then you’re not seeing me.

If you want to know who is pushing me aside in this way, just look at groups of people or events I have been involved with in the past. If I’m not there, ask the event people why. I am not given reasons why – I’m just excluded – so I can’t speak for them.

If I am at an event and especially if I’m talking about things that matter to me, then please celebrate, for the people organising that event are not closing doors. They’re not taking the lazy path into bigotry. Their lives are bigger than this.

 

PS For those who are curious, I was a Research Fellow at Heinrich Heine University for a month, and was doing research supported by Deakin University. I owe both universities a great deal, for helping me understand the incomprehensible.

Mysteries

personby Gillian Polack
schedulePosted on

I don’t know how to say this, but I’m going home this week. I don’t know what I will do in my last little time in Germany, but I do know the flight back home to Canberra (3 flights, one of which is just under 14 hours long) is a total pain. Even with the best service and the nicest staff… it’s too long. So think of me this week. I’ll be bereft at my great adventure finishing, and then I have to get home. One good thing. I left home in midwinter. As I type this blogpost, it’s -2 degrees outside. 28.4F, for those who need Fahrenheit. I am going into summer. And when I leave Germany, I will be heading into spring.

I marvel at this kind of change every time I travel. My favourite is, of course, the once I traveled from Sydney to Los Angeles. I then went on to Houston, where my book tour began, but the Sydney to LA was the magic bit. I arrived earlier than I had left…

Dusseldorf

personby Gillian Polack
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This week may well be entirely spent in Dusseldorf. Or it may not. Things are being planned, but I don’t know the dates. I do know, however, that I am giving workshops. My favourite one is a subject I used to teach a lot and haven’t had the chance and … it’s going to be so much fun. A whole group of German translators are going to learn how to write battle scenes from the Old French epic legends. The epic legends were written in Old French. I cannot write in Old French, though i can still read it, so I teach in English. I’ve used the English writing to show how language changes the way we think about things and so, after the group had learned how to write an Old French poetic technique into English… they’re going to translate their verse into German. They are all far better linguists than me, so I’m going to learn a lot by teaching them. If I’m really lucky, I will learn some really effective German insults, along the way. I do not expect the students will use them on me. Insults just happen to be a part of that form of verse…

The details of the other workshop won’t be public for a few days (as I write this). That gives me a great quandary – do I tell you, because it will all be known by the time you read this? Or do I obey everyone and not tell you. I am obedient tonight, largely because it’s an impossible hour here and I am especially obedient when it means I get to sleep a few minutes faster! If you want to know what else I did in Dusseldorf this week (including that workshop) ask, and I’ll be forced to tell you when I return.

Trier and environs

personby Gillian Polack
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This week I travel to the Saarland. I’ll be working with friends who are also locals, because my German is pretty bad. This is when we delve into what people know about their local landscapes, foodways, folklore and other things. The Saarland is a special region. I’m visiting it and hopefully also Aachen to try to understand the role Charlemagne and his heirs and then the Holy Roman Empire played in the lives of Jews. When they came, why they came… and what locals understand of any of this. Do they remember the importance of their Jewish neighbours, once upon a  time? I’ve already played with maps and I know just how important this region was. It’s not talked about a lot, but it was so important that France and Germany have fought over it. Most Jewish histories talk about the French side of the border, of Nancy and Metz. The German side is just as important.

I’m worried about just one thing. Very worried. I know I’m going to make Dreyfus jokes and I should not. The Australian Attorney-General is Mark Dreyfus and his father conducted me in a school choir once upon a time and, as an historian of France I’ve read up on the whole Dreyfus Affair and one of my favourite French writers wrote the  ‘J’accuse’ letter, and the whole Dreyfus name comes from that border area, some of which is now in France and some now in Germany… and… I will try so very hard not to make Dreyfus jokes. Those jokes would be wrong in so very many ways. and yet I’m already tempted

Heinrich Heine University

personby Gillian Polack
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Heinrich Heine University in Dusseldorf is my home this week. I checked the time, and earlier today (if you read this post when it’s planned to go up) I will be working with a group of MA students on my personal take (in one of my short stories) on the Australian Gothic.  Earlier in the week, I’ll give a seminar on understanding the Australian Gothic. Everything else at the rime I’m writing is research, mostly on the memory of the Middle Ages. It takes more than a few days to even begin to understand a subject that big. Every town I visit will give me a different view, and simply going to Germany will open new horizons. By training, I’m a book research person, but the older I get the more i need to actually walk the streets in order to understand what the primary sources tell me.

This is only the first week in Dusseldorf. It’s so far a quiet week because I need to slow down every few days and give me feeble body a chance to catch up. I want to do everything, but my body won’t let me. This is one of the times when I let it complain in peace.

Also, I will have notes to write up. This is where I admit a terrible truth. I intend to take those notes next year (after I’m finished the current project) and turn them into a book. I am confronting a whole bunch of really tough emotional things as a Jewish Australian, as the descendant of a Jewish German, as an historian who tried to avoid German history because it was too damn emotionally difficult. I will write down what I face and all the mistakes I make facing it. I will write down the history I learn and anything special or amazing that I discover. And, in the process, I will learn more about why some people hate Jews for existing and why others see us as human beings. It’s not going to be easy, but it will be worth it.

Speyer, Germany

personby Gillian Polack
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I’m doing research in Speyer. It’s partly for a novel, which I’ll tell you about in a moment. It’s also partly because I really, really want to know how Jews are remembered in regional culture and into Jewish life in Speyer, Mainz, Worms from the 11th-18th centuries. These three towns gave us the set of Jewish cultures that are dominant in the world right now. Ashkenazi Judaism comes from Germany (Ashkenaz) and it spread from there. We know that some of the early Jews in that region came from Italy and of them, one of the most important families had a family tradition that they were forced to Rome when the Second Temple fell. That strong link between Jerusalem and Jews over a thousand years later explains some of the traditions my family possess. That bit’s easy, and well-studied. Also well-studied are the expulsions and the massacres and the Jew-hate. The Holocaust didn’t begin everything… it was the worst by an impossible amount, not the only.

I don’t want to explore the hate. We carry too much hate with us right now and there is more to human life than hate. I’ll learn more about the lost cultures of the Jews of Speyer and Mainz and Worms, and how their work gave so many people so much. I’ll do that because I have German ancestry right up to about 1830. I need to know more, even if it isn’t quite the right part of Germany. Jews were important to Speyer, and so I want to know how Speyer sees its Jews. This is the other side of the coin to Reading. How are the Middle Ages remembered? How are the Jews of Speyer remembered? This is contemporary history. In our time, now, how do people interpret their own past, before the modern horrors changed everything?

And the novel? I can’t writ it until next year, after my current big research project is finished. I will be gathering material for it, however. I want to know the lives of the Medieval Jews and the Early Modern Jews in Speyer. I will create a town in the same future as my novel Poison and Light, and it will be a novel with two groups of Jews (from Speyer) and one group of Christians (from St Ives). At the moment that’s what it will be. Novels often change as the research opens more pathways. I’m writing this novel.

Glasgow

personby Gillian Polack
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It suddenly feels passing strange to be writing this from winter in Canberra. One country from afar has a kind of logic, but a second?

I’m in Glasgow for the World Science Fiction Convention. I believe I have a workshop to give. Also so many people to see and things to do.Not much of it is tourist-y. Most of it is, in fact science fictional.

One thing I do not want to miss are the Govan Stones. I want to photograph them and ponder the really interesting relationship between the Strathclyde rulers and their friends from the north. Or from Dublin. Or from the north via Dublin. I also want to put Govan in its place as part of the Arthurian material. I know the literary side: now I get to see the Stones. The Stones are probably too young for Arthur (if he existed) but from the oldest to the youngest they cover the time when the early Arthurian stories were disseminated. These aren’t the stories most people talk about, but much earlier and rather more interesting.

My week in Glasgow is all about people. If I pass this test of my health, then I can dream of going back to Scotland and seeing more. I suspect that seeing friends entails eating interesting food. So many of my fiends are foodies. Food and friends and much, much, much science fiction and fantasy. And so many of my friends are writers, so there will be talking shop.

Baycon 2024 report

personby Deborah J. Ross
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Baycon is my local science fiction convention and I’ve been attending it, more or less regularly, since the 1990s. It’s moved from one hotel and city to another over the years and I have followed, “as the tail follows the dog.” My attendance came to a screeching halt in 2020 with the pandemic. The last convention I attended in person was FogCon in February of that year. We knew that a nasty virus was afoot but nobody wore masks. We “elbow-bumped” instead of hugging. If anyone got sick, I never heard. Then came the lockdown, as we called it. Conventions switched to virtual attendance. Althought I’m a somewhat slow adopted or tech, I’d become used to video chatting back in 2013, when I took care of my best friend in a different state while she was dying of cancer. My husband and I stayed in touch (via Skype, if I remember correctly). Then when my younger daughter attended medical school on the other side of the country, we visited by video chat regularly. She moved back to this area for her residency. Her final year was 2020, during which her regular service rotations were replaced by caring for dying Covid patients. Needless to say, I became quite cautious about my exposure. So even when conventions began to move from virtual-only to hybrid to in-person, I reconnected slowly. Even when I was ready to attend a convention in person (2023, which shows you how long it took me), armed with masks, hand sanitizer, and rapid tests, the universe conspired to jinx my plans. It was hard. I missed my friends and all the chance encounters and spontaneous expressions of community. All this is a prelude to my first successful return to in-person conventions.

Baycon programming had asked potential panelists to suggest topics. Two of mine were accepted, including Writing Beyond Trauma. Here’s the description I wrote:

These are perilous times for many of us. As survivors or the loved ones of survivors, how has our experience affected us as writers? How do our stories transcend and heal? Escape? Educate our audience? Are there times when the pain is so great, the words simply will not come–what do we do when we have lost our voice and how do we use writing to regain it? In this panel, we will strive to listen respectfully and to leave time between each speaker to absorb more deeply what they have said.

As a survivor of complex PTSD, I’m passionately interested in how my experiences affect my writing but also how writing provides a path to healing. But trauma refers to much more than individual experiences: it includes community and membership in larger groups (such as race or gender/sexual minority, immigrant status, incarceration history). My co-panelists included two people of color, a Native Indigenous person (Ohlone) and a survivor of cancer. Several of us had lost people we loved to violence or lived with mental illness. Others had experienced genocide directed at our communities. As moderator, I wanted to make sure the discussion was safe, respectful, and inclusive. I reached out to my co-panelists before the convention to make sure I understood which topics they wanted to be included and which they would prefer to avoid. How might we tread the line between invasion of privacy and triggers while being open? One thing I did was to keep the discussion slow, with time to listen deeply to each person’s comments. On several occasions, I asked for a moment to let what someone had said sink in. Panelists shared strategies for unblocking the inner voice when it has fallen silent due to overwhelming pain and grief. These ranged from picking up a different medium of creativity like music or crafts to “putting fears on the page” to using “baby steps” to reconnect with the flow of words. The panel was rich, compelling, and deeply moving.

The same day, I was on a panel on Creating Original Worlds. When I was a young writer, world-building checklists were highly touted. I could never do that. My characters took me on guided tours of the worlds of my stories. My fellow panelists agreed that an organic approach to world-building is not only perfectly valid but works better for many writers. I’ve had the experience of not knowing what research to do until the story demands it. I loved the phrase “reality-adjacent” to describe taking real-world history, cultures, etc., and tweaking them. Alternate history is an example, as are worlds that are familiar except for the addition of a fantastical or science-fictional element. How a writer creates worlds also depends on whether they are a “pantser” or an outliner.

In the panel on Beta Readers and Critique Groups, the panel agreed that it was as important to know what advice to ignore as what to take seriously. We also agreed that while it’s nice to ask your mother/partner/child to read your manuscript, they probably aren’t the best source of helpful feedback. When approaching a trusted reader or critique group, it’s a good idea to specify what level of feedback you’re looking for, whether overall impact, sensitivity issues, or line editing. For myself, I rarely let anyone see my first drafts—second or third is usual. I still revise a lot because my rough drafts are very, very rough. I also value the community support of writers’ groups.

My last panel was Paying Forward, Backward, and Sideways, a love letter to those who have encouraged us. We told stories of more senior writers who mentored us, how our colleagues cheered us on (and vice versa), and our responsibility to the generation of writers after us. I was reminded of a quote from Samuel Goldwyn: “When someone does something good, applaud! You will make two people happy.”

In between all this, I hung out with friends I hadn’t seen in person in four years, had a delightful time in the dealers’ room (gift-buying destination!) and got to attend a few panels. My all-time favorite was The Worst First Page, in which panelists attempted to write truly dreadful first pages. Being great writers, they failed, often with hilarious results. One particular entry was so well done, the audience enthusiastically urged the writer to submit it for publication as a humor piece.