Back to Salem / Wil Wheaton reading
This afternoon, I took one of those excellent long naps that happens when you've had a full day, been happy, and perhaps got just a bit too much sun. That's how this whole weekend has been - and when you get down to it, how a lot of the past few months have been (that is, if you discount the bit about the sun). I realized that I would never update this journal again unless I just dove back in, and trust that sometime, I'll manage to write up all the important and exciting stuff that's happened since my last update in (eek!) mid-March. There was some nifty stuff, probably most notably that I was an alternate delegate at the state Democratic convention, but those deserve their own eventual posts. This post is about my weekend. It was excellent, and truly relaxing, and I really needed it.
As all good weekends do, it began with leaving work early on Friday. My parents, who drove in from Rochester on the now-no-longer-flooded Thruway, picked me up at work to head up to Salem, MA. I had only been to Salem twice before, once on a logistics scouting visit for The Witching Hour back in 2004, when I was still on the logistics committee, and then for The Witching Hour itself. TWH, for the non-fen, was that Harry Potter convention I went on an on about in October of last year. It kind of kicked butt. It also took up pretty much all the time we had in Salem, and was on a very rainy weekend, so I didn't actually do much sightseeing then. It was excellent to know Salem well enough to be a good tourguide to my parents, yet to have all the attractions feel shiny and new.
We went to the House of Seven Gables and did the house tour, which I totally recommend. You get to climb up a secret staircase built into an old chimney - how cool is that? I love social history, so the house was a lot of fun. It's amazing to think of how long it took someone to cook a meal on cast iron pots over a wood fire in the 1700s, or how tiring a day of work would have had to be for rope-supported straw mattresses in a cold attic to have been comfortable enough for a servant to fall asleep on. We also went into the Nathaniel Hawthorne birthplace, and spend some time lazing in the lovely gardens. (Those are the gardens we had the TWH keynotes at, like my personal fannish-academic fave Henry Jenkins). We also went to the Peabody Essex Museum, which I'd been to on both previous visits but never gone beyond the atrium (where we had the TWH ball) and East India Marine hall. There's a lot of fascinating maritime history and memorabilia there. Since I've been rereading my childhood favorite novels, David Eddings' Belgariad and Malloreon series, I've been thinking a lot about old ships and how small and, to me, fragile they were. It's astounding to imagine having the guts - or the need - to get into one of those things and ride into an *ocean*... but also easy to imagine the excitement, the thrill of travel and the waves, the way the smell of salty air can so easily make a day feel alive. My favorite gallery at the PEM, however, was the contemporary Native American art. I appreciate seeing how native artists discuss their traditional and modern identities, and this particular gallery had a real vibrancy to it both in the color and the content of the art.
We also took a side trip up to Crane Beach in Ipswich. It was, hands-down, the most gorgeous beach I've ever been to. It's on a protected private nonprofit reservation, so it's not hemmed in on either side by commerce, and the parking lots and beach house and snack vendors are all hidden away from the water by grass-covered sand dunes. This beach is one of those classic beaches, all broad expanses of sand, no pebbles or debris to speak of, and gentle waves. The water, on the other hand, was wicked cold. I mean colder than the Pacific Ocean by San Francisco, and I know cos I waded in the Pacific there last summer. This was the kind of cold where at first, my feet and legs felt numb after even just a few minutes wading into the water. But I really, really didn't want to give up on the idea of swimming, and there were a few brave souls in the water - mostly kids with parents hovering nervously right on the shore - so I sat down at the tide line and slowly, slowly got acclimated to the temperature.
Eventually, I was able to go in and swim, for two stretches of 20-30 minutes each. It was brisk, and I kept having to check my toes to be sure I wasn't going numb, but it was glorious. When I swim in the ocean I like to play with the water, turning in circles and running it through my hands, floating with my feet up or just sort of hanging in the salt water and letting it carry me. There's truly nothing else like it. By the time I got out of the water for the second time, though, my body temperature had dropped enough that both my parents could feel it, and I ended up needing to wrap in towels and shiver violently for about ten minutes afterwards. So I think I probably pushed it a little too far, and might have been closer than I realized to an actually dangerous level of cold exposure. So, ah, don't take this paragraph as a recommendation for going swimming in supercold water. It is, though, nice to know that if I ever have to do it, I can. And I wouldn't have given up a minute of swimming and luxuriating in the ocean yesterday.
I should also mention the fabulous bed & breakfast we stayed at in Salem. It was the Northey Street House, and it was not only inexpensive and available at relatively short notice, it was perfectly situated and oh so comfortable, homey, welcoming, and warm. It's just north of Salem Common, so it's a ten minute or less walk to all the main Salem attractions without being right smack in the middle of things. The room we shared (one queen bed and a very comfortable single futon) was beautiful and cozy, and had its own huge bathroom. Flora, the owner, has thought of all the little things, from a hot water spigot at the sink in the kitchen that's perfect for tea-on-demand, to providing free passes to the PEM, to omelettes and croissants for breakfast! I can't recommend this place enough.
Changing gears, we left the PEM at noon today and drove back to Boston, for a Wil Wheaton reading at the Brookline Booksmith. Wil is one of my favorite bloggers, and plus there's that whole geek love in that he was my second ever childhood celebrity crush - after the kid who played Eliot on ET - and Star Trek is pretty much the one shared religion of my father's extended family. I brought my parents along, even though they hadn't paid attention to Wil since after he left Star Trek, because I knew they'd appreciate his brand of humor and human observation, and that they'd probably walk away new (or renewed) fans. We got to the reading pretty much exactly on time, and after a brief hug with ursamajor, who unsurprisingly was also there, we settled in and I tried to explain to my parents as much as I could about Wil's life post-Star Trek. (My mom said that crib session helped, though she was lost on a lot of the pop culture references, but that it hadn't stopped her from enjoying the reading. And she didn't say no to a copy of Wil's book, either :D!)
When Wil came out, there was a ton of applause. It's so great when there's a good energy in the room, and the room was packed with fans. I think the only empty seat in the house was next to me, because we came in so late, and that's only because they had already opened up some extra seating they hadn't planned to use. So it was a totally sold-out crowd, even though I think there was very little publicity outside Wil's blog and the Eventful demand that got the reading going in the first place. It's worth mentioning the Eventful demand, because it's really neat that, basically, fans in Boston heard he was going to be here at the end of a cruise gig, created a demand on Eventful, and it reached critical mass high enough that he booked a show... *and* then came through when it counted with the bodies in the room and, later, in the book line. It was a great model case of how a system like Eventful can make a whole bunch of people, both fans and performer, really happy without having to involve any pesky expensive middlemen. Rocking. (Check out my Eventful, where I added the blog group I co-run and an upcoming wiki conference.)
Wil's performance itself was spot-on. He has a really excellent comedic presence, knowing just when to press forward with what he was doing, when to engage ad-lib with the audience even when it's not part of the reading, and overall, just knowing how to present himself honestly and engagingly. It felt sort of like his blog coming to life - which means that his blog is really truly in his authentic voice, which is just plain yay. Since I've never seen any of the shows where Wil's done voice work, the first thing that struck me when he came onstage was that his voice, duh, is deeper than I remember it from the Wesley Crusher days. He talked a bit in general, and then read two of his short stories, "Fireworks" and "The Trade." Until this afternoon I didn't yet own one of Wil's books, so it was nice to have it confirmed in person that his book-writing lives up to the high expectations his style of blog-writing sets. One thing that was neat with "Fireworks," and which I expect to see more of in the other stories in his books, is the rare glimpse into the experience of someone dealing with being a celebrity, especially as a teenager, and still being a normal person with normal insecurities. That's another one of the nice things about reading Wil's blog. I meet so many niche blog-celebrities in my work life, and had enough experience with the BNF phenomenon in fandom, that it's easy to remember that Big Name Bloggers are just ordinary folks too. Wil's blog takes it one step further, because Wil is a beyond-blogging celebrity, but who's very much also just ordinary folk. He's as big a dorky fanboy as we are, and we love him for it.
I also really, really appreciated that Wil both allowed recording of the reading with a Creative Commons license, and made a solid quick plug for the critical importance of Network Neutrality. I know you lot all know and love Creative Commons, but if anyone in the US isn't up to speed on Network Neutrality, please ask me about it. Several of my colleagues have done some great work on it, and created some good easy education pieces and one podcast for folks who want to understand the issue. ( My standard work discussion disclaimer) It's one of the most important issues of our time, because it affects the very core character of the internet, which affects our ability to make full use of our rights to freedom of speech, of assembly, and of democratic participation. A non-neutral internet is a discriminatory internet, and losing the openness we currently have would seriously change and cripple the net as we know and love and depend on it. Heck, that should probably get its own post soon, though I hope you've all heard about it from friends, MoveOn, etc. It's real, and it's critical.
Sadly, I wasn't able to stay to meet Wil in the signing line afterward. My parents were anxious to bring me and my luggage back to Somerville and to get going on the next stage of their trip, visiting my brother in Connecticut. I was luckily able to give my shiny new copy of Just a Geek to ursamajor, who hopefully was able to get it signed and can give it back to me at blog group. I'd have liked to meet him, but heck. I've had such great geek celebrity karma in the past year, including being one of the first people in the signing line at the Neil Gaiman Anansi Boys reading, and getting to meet Seah Maher and Morena Baccarin at the first Serenity preview, plus Cory Doctorow in February, that I really, really, truly cannot complain. I'm just glad I got to see him read, and be a part of such a fun event. Heck, after the success of this Eventful reading (and the one last week in Montreal before the cruise), maybe now Wil will be able to do more performances like this one, grow his fan base even bigger, sell more books to folks like me who up til the reading had just been faithful blog readers, and gain a steadier foothold in his writing and acting careers. That would be great for him, great for us, and just all around spiffy, and I'm happy to have been one tiny part of it.
As all good weekends do, it began with leaving work early on Friday. My parents, who drove in from Rochester on the now-no-longer-flooded Thruway, picked me up at work to head up to Salem, MA. I had only been to Salem twice before, once on a logistics scouting visit for The Witching Hour back in 2004, when I was still on the logistics committee, and then for The Witching Hour itself. TWH, for the non-fen, was that Harry Potter convention I went on an on about in October of last year. It kind of kicked butt. It also took up pretty much all the time we had in Salem, and was on a very rainy weekend, so I didn't actually do much sightseeing then. It was excellent to know Salem well enough to be a good tourguide to my parents, yet to have all the attractions feel shiny and new.
We went to the House of Seven Gables and did the house tour, which I totally recommend. You get to climb up a secret staircase built into an old chimney - how cool is that? I love social history, so the house was a lot of fun. It's amazing to think of how long it took someone to cook a meal on cast iron pots over a wood fire in the 1700s, or how tiring a day of work would have had to be for rope-supported straw mattresses in a cold attic to have been comfortable enough for a servant to fall asleep on. We also went into the Nathaniel Hawthorne birthplace, and spend some time lazing in the lovely gardens. (Those are the gardens we had the TWH keynotes at, like my personal fannish-academic fave Henry Jenkins). We also went to the Peabody Essex Museum, which I'd been to on both previous visits but never gone beyond the atrium (where we had the TWH ball) and East India Marine hall. There's a lot of fascinating maritime history and memorabilia there. Since I've been rereading my childhood favorite novels, David Eddings' Belgariad and Malloreon series, I've been thinking a lot about old ships and how small and, to me, fragile they were. It's astounding to imagine having the guts - or the need - to get into one of those things and ride into an *ocean*... but also easy to imagine the excitement, the thrill of travel and the waves, the way the smell of salty air can so easily make a day feel alive. My favorite gallery at the PEM, however, was the contemporary Native American art. I appreciate seeing how native artists discuss their traditional and modern identities, and this particular gallery had a real vibrancy to it both in the color and the content of the art.
We also took a side trip up to Crane Beach in Ipswich. It was, hands-down, the most gorgeous beach I've ever been to. It's on a protected private nonprofit reservation, so it's not hemmed in on either side by commerce, and the parking lots and beach house and snack vendors are all hidden away from the water by grass-covered sand dunes. This beach is one of those classic beaches, all broad expanses of sand, no pebbles or debris to speak of, and gentle waves. The water, on the other hand, was wicked cold. I mean colder than the Pacific Ocean by San Francisco, and I know cos I waded in the Pacific there last summer. This was the kind of cold where at first, my feet and legs felt numb after even just a few minutes wading into the water. But I really, really didn't want to give up on the idea of swimming, and there were a few brave souls in the water - mostly kids with parents hovering nervously right on the shore - so I sat down at the tide line and slowly, slowly got acclimated to the temperature.
Eventually, I was able to go in and swim, for two stretches of 20-30 minutes each. It was brisk, and I kept having to check my toes to be sure I wasn't going numb, but it was glorious. When I swim in the ocean I like to play with the water, turning in circles and running it through my hands, floating with my feet up or just sort of hanging in the salt water and letting it carry me. There's truly nothing else like it. By the time I got out of the water for the second time, though, my body temperature had dropped enough that both my parents could feel it, and I ended up needing to wrap in towels and shiver violently for about ten minutes afterwards. So I think I probably pushed it a little too far, and might have been closer than I realized to an actually dangerous level of cold exposure. So, ah, don't take this paragraph as a recommendation for going swimming in supercold water. It is, though, nice to know that if I ever have to do it, I can. And I wouldn't have given up a minute of swimming and luxuriating in the ocean yesterday.
I should also mention the fabulous bed & breakfast we stayed at in Salem. It was the Northey Street House, and it was not only inexpensive and available at relatively short notice, it was perfectly situated and oh so comfortable, homey, welcoming, and warm. It's just north of Salem Common, so it's a ten minute or less walk to all the main Salem attractions without being right smack in the middle of things. The room we shared (one queen bed and a very comfortable single futon) was beautiful and cozy, and had its own huge bathroom. Flora, the owner, has thought of all the little things, from a hot water spigot at the sink in the kitchen that's perfect for tea-on-demand, to providing free passes to the PEM, to omelettes and croissants for breakfast! I can't recommend this place enough.
Changing gears, we left the PEM at noon today and drove back to Boston, for a Wil Wheaton reading at the Brookline Booksmith. Wil is one of my favorite bloggers, and plus there's that whole geek love in that he was my second ever childhood celebrity crush - after the kid who played Eliot on ET - and Star Trek is pretty much the one shared religion of my father's extended family. I brought my parents along, even though they hadn't paid attention to Wil since after he left Star Trek, because I knew they'd appreciate his brand of humor and human observation, and that they'd probably walk away new (or renewed) fans. We got to the reading pretty much exactly on time, and after a brief hug with ursamajor, who unsurprisingly was also there, we settled in and I tried to explain to my parents as much as I could about Wil's life post-Star Trek. (My mom said that crib session helped, though she was lost on a lot of the pop culture references, but that it hadn't stopped her from enjoying the reading. And she didn't say no to a copy of Wil's book, either :D!)
When Wil came out, there was a ton of applause. It's so great when there's a good energy in the room, and the room was packed with fans. I think the only empty seat in the house was next to me, because we came in so late, and that's only because they had already opened up some extra seating they hadn't planned to use. So it was a totally sold-out crowd, even though I think there was very little publicity outside Wil's blog and the Eventful demand that got the reading going in the first place. It's worth mentioning the Eventful demand, because it's really neat that, basically, fans in Boston heard he was going to be here at the end of a cruise gig, created a demand on Eventful, and it reached critical mass high enough that he booked a show... *and* then came through when it counted with the bodies in the room and, later, in the book line. It was a great model case of how a system like Eventful can make a whole bunch of people, both fans and performer, really happy without having to involve any pesky expensive middlemen. Rocking. (Check out my Eventful, where I added the blog group I co-run and an upcoming wiki conference.)
Wil's performance itself was spot-on. He has a really excellent comedic presence, knowing just when to press forward with what he was doing, when to engage ad-lib with the audience even when it's not part of the reading, and overall, just knowing how to present himself honestly and engagingly. It felt sort of like his blog coming to life - which means that his blog is really truly in his authentic voice, which is just plain yay. Since I've never seen any of the shows where Wil's done voice work, the first thing that struck me when he came onstage was that his voice, duh, is deeper than I remember it from the Wesley Crusher days. He talked a bit in general, and then read two of his short stories, "Fireworks" and "The Trade." Until this afternoon I didn't yet own one of Wil's books, so it was nice to have it confirmed in person that his book-writing lives up to the high expectations his style of blog-writing sets. One thing that was neat with "Fireworks," and which I expect to see more of in the other stories in his books, is the rare glimpse into the experience of someone dealing with being a celebrity, especially as a teenager, and still being a normal person with normal insecurities. That's another one of the nice things about reading Wil's blog. I meet so many niche blog-celebrities in my work life, and had enough experience with the BNF phenomenon in fandom, that it's easy to remember that Big Name Bloggers are just ordinary folks too. Wil's blog takes it one step further, because Wil is a beyond-blogging celebrity, but who's very much also just ordinary folk. He's as big a dorky fanboy as we are, and we love him for it.
I also really, really appreciated that Wil both allowed recording of the reading with a Creative Commons license, and made a solid quick plug for the critical importance of Network Neutrality. I know you lot all know and love Creative Commons, but if anyone in the US isn't up to speed on Network Neutrality, please ask me about it. Several of my colleagues have done some great work on it, and created some good easy education pieces and one podcast for folks who want to understand the issue. ( My standard work discussion disclaimer) It's one of the most important issues of our time, because it affects the very core character of the internet, which affects our ability to make full use of our rights to freedom of speech, of assembly, and of democratic participation. A non-neutral internet is a discriminatory internet, and losing the openness we currently have would seriously change and cripple the net as we know and love and depend on it. Heck, that should probably get its own post soon, though I hope you've all heard about it from friends, MoveOn, etc. It's real, and it's critical.
Sadly, I wasn't able to stay to meet Wil in the signing line afterward. My parents were anxious to bring me and my luggage back to Somerville and to get going on the next stage of their trip, visiting my brother in Connecticut. I was luckily able to give my shiny new copy of Just a Geek to ursamajor, who hopefully was able to get it signed and can give it back to me at blog group. I'd have liked to meet him, but heck. I've had such great geek celebrity karma in the past year, including being one of the first people in the signing line at the Neil Gaiman Anansi Boys reading, and getting to meet Seah Maher and Morena Baccarin at the first Serenity preview, plus Cory Doctorow in February, that I really, really, truly cannot complain. I'm just glad I got to see him read, and be a part of such a fun event. Heck, after the success of this Eventful reading (and the one last week in Montreal before the cruise), maybe now Wil will be able to do more performances like this one, grow his fan base even bigger, sell more books to folks like me who up til the reading had just been faithful blog readers, and gain a steadier foothold in his writing and acting careers. That would be great for him, great for us, and just all around spiffy, and I'm happy to have been one tiny part of it.