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A few items from Dayton, Ohio, history:

• How Ohio State University nearly was sited in Dayton
• The rise of the Miami and Erie Canal
• The source of Dayton’s drinking water; a vast aquifer

My brains fry sometimes when people run the same plot / setting over and over again and call it Fresh! New! Alternate History when it’s Done To Freaking Death.  Like, say the American Civil War, or World War II - or in more recent times, taking sub-sub-genres (steampunk, undead stuff, dragons and fantasy stuff) and proclaiming THAT as Alternate ( Read more... )

Alternate History that Doesn’t Involve WW2 or the Civil War - Friday, 02-10-2012 - 11:30 am to 1:00 pm - Birch B
As any judge for the Sidewise Awards knows, hundreds of Alternate History stories come out each year. Though many of them seem to fixate on World War II and the Civil War, some find more unique points in history for a divergence. What are ( Read more... )

BBC play set in 1964 about an effort by radical students to kidnap Prime Minister Sir Alec Douglas-Home (yes, this really happened) and Issue Demands.  Sir Alec was alone (his bodyguard was elsewhere and this was in the middle of Nowhere, Scotland) and managed to talk his assailants out of the act.  Well, he also used some beer…

• UK pay download ( Read more... )

Go out and get your Guy on, hear?


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…new fall show showing up on TV this fall. This is totally a guess, but my take is that sometime in the recent past, a group of around 50 scientists came to ‘our’ timeline from an alternate one that was more advanced than ours - similar enough to communicate well, but the difference / advancements were SO different that the Powers That Be don’t ( Read more... )

Susan and Mere are doing a rummage sale today (Friday) at at our house: 577 Hitchcock, in Lisle, IL. (Roughly IL 53 and 55th/Maple Avenue.) I will either be inside hiding from the heat or outside in my wheelchair; Susan and Meredith are running the table, and selling more of the boxes of books I dug out from my collection for the earlier rummage ( Read more... )

My daughter Meredith is a competitive roller skater, and her skating club is doing a big rummage sale Saturday and Sunday at the Lombard Roller Rink in Lombard from 9-3.  I will not be there; Susan and Meredith are running the table, and I had an operation earlier this week and in no shape to walk or travel, but I dug out many boxes of books ( Read more... )

I’ve been asked to speak at a Wright State University forum; their Honors Institute is having a symposium on Chinese-American relations called “Connecting With China”,  and I’m to talk on “Exploring Issues in Cross-Cultural Adoptions” from 2-4 pm, February 17th.

The event is free to the public, but you have to register in advance to get in due to ( Read more... )

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