Austen Geekery, part 2
I need an Austen icon.
We get color-coded lanyards (first timer or not) and everyone puts their tickets for the special events or their order for the banquet in the back of the badge holder, which then, inevitably, flips around. So I spent a lot of yesterday with people named "high tea" or "chicken."
Also, there's a building I can see from my window that has turned the entire top set of stories into a light show. Last night it was a lava lamp all night. Tonight, it's an aquarium.
Today, I started to get into the swing of things at the con, and have friends. Met at yesterday's events. First up, a knitting workshop for cuffs. Like the bonnet, I took the materials and the pattern but did not do the project, as we were given wool, which I passed on to another participant. I worked on another square of the project du jour, a self-designed throw called "When I'm 64," which I will put on Rav for free if it works out. Certainly it's working up fast; while here I have completed 2 of the 64 squares (which will become a ~64-inch square throw).
From there to a dance workshop. The teacher, an elderly gentleman, was strict but very good, and had us just about grasping the basics of 3 dances. I shouldn't make too much of a cake of myself tomorrow at the big ball. (My main problem was one several women had; with a predominantly female membership we had to flip between male and female positions and some of us were having trouble remembering our gender of the moment and kept trying to dance the wrong side of the line.)
I had a long lunch at the British Pub, coming back late for the opening ceremonies and talk about silence in P&P. which hadn't interested me,but when I got there, the speaker was great. He peppered his talk with trivia challenges (”How many umbrellas are mentioned in Austen?") and went on to point out some rather deep things that he'd discovered. Such as it took him 14 reads of Emma to realize that everyone in town quotes the apothecary, but the reader never hears him speak directly. Or the last time you read Captain Wentworth's direct thoughts in Persuasion, he's thinking the direct opposite of the truth.
The first of the "breakout" talks (SF folk think "multi-track panels") was about economics and the Poor Relief laws, and how,that would affect P&P in that readers of the time would know that Darcy was from a county known for its liberal views. (Whereas listeners of this time heard the same "minimum wage laws will bankrupt commerce" and "the poor are poor because they're lazy"arguments that shape American politics right now.)
The second talk,the one I wanted most of all, with menus, place settings, and games of regency entertaining, with handouts... was cancelled. I have to take deep breaths and remind myself that of course the speaker's family comes first and that my misery has the requisite company, as apparently fully 1/4 of the convention had signed up for that talk. (The con runners are having a hard time of it; another talk had to be given by the speaker's son because she'd broken her leg.)
I ended up making a consolation prize of the talk that showed how elements of Austen's juvenalia were toned down and made more realistic and put into P&P and others, and laughed so hard that I almost didn't miss the other one.
Tomorrow I may sneak between the breakouts on cooking in Austen's times and the simultaneous one on how film versions always reinterpret through the lens of their time of making, illustrated with how the Netherfield ball is handled. (I was telling someone that I might clutch a phantom phone as my excuse. She said when she was leaving a panel early, she always clutched her stomach so everybody got quickly out of her way.)
By the time I got back to the room I thought I was neither hungry nor thirsty, but I suddenly realize that without noticing, I've packed away a small Caesar salad, an entire Starbucks venti cooler (my latest addiction; at least it's a low-cal one) and all of the chocolate housekeeping gave me over the last two days. (I've been tipping $5 rather than my usual $2-a-day on the advice of my new tipping app; my housekeeper's response has been to shower me with thank you notes, pillow chocolates, and gifts from the cart.)
We get color-coded lanyards (first timer or not) and everyone puts their tickets for the special events or their order for the banquet in the back of the badge holder, which then, inevitably, flips around. So I spent a lot of yesterday with people named "high tea" or "chicken."
Also, there's a building I can see from my window that has turned the entire top set of stories into a light show. Last night it was a lava lamp all night. Tonight, it's an aquarium.
Today, I started to get into the swing of things at the con, and have friends. Met at yesterday's events. First up, a knitting workshop for cuffs. Like the bonnet, I took the materials and the pattern but did not do the project, as we were given wool, which I passed on to another participant. I worked on another square of the project du jour, a self-designed throw called "When I'm 64," which I will put on Rav for free if it works out. Certainly it's working up fast; while here I have completed 2 of the 64 squares (which will become a ~64-inch square throw).
From there to a dance workshop. The teacher, an elderly gentleman, was strict but very good, and had us just about grasping the basics of 3 dances. I shouldn't make too much of a cake of myself tomorrow at the big ball. (My main problem was one several women had; with a predominantly female membership we had to flip between male and female positions and some of us were having trouble remembering our gender of the moment and kept trying to dance the wrong side of the line.)
I had a long lunch at the British Pub, coming back late for the opening ceremonies and talk about silence in P&P. which hadn't interested me,but when I got there, the speaker was great. He peppered his talk with trivia challenges (”How many umbrellas are mentioned in Austen?") and went on to point out some rather deep things that he'd discovered. Such as it took him 14 reads of Emma to realize that everyone in town quotes the apothecary, but the reader never hears him speak directly. Or the last time you read Captain Wentworth's direct thoughts in Persuasion, he's thinking the direct opposite of the truth.
The first of the "breakout" talks (SF folk think "multi-track panels") was about economics and the Poor Relief laws, and how,that would affect P&P in that readers of the time would know that Darcy was from a county known for its liberal views. (Whereas listeners of this time heard the same "minimum wage laws will bankrupt commerce" and "the poor are poor because they're lazy"arguments that shape American politics right now.)
The second talk,the one I wanted most of all, with menus, place settings, and games of regency entertaining, with handouts... was cancelled. I have to take deep breaths and remind myself that of course the speaker's family comes first and that my misery has the requisite company, as apparently fully 1/4 of the convention had signed up for that talk. (The con runners are having a hard time of it; another talk had to be given by the speaker's son because she'd broken her leg.)
I ended up making a consolation prize of the talk that showed how elements of Austen's juvenalia were toned down and made more realistic and put into P&P and others, and laughed so hard that I almost didn't miss the other one.
Tomorrow I may sneak between the breakouts on cooking in Austen's times and the simultaneous one on how film versions always reinterpret through the lens of their time of making, illustrated with how the Netherfield ball is handled. (I was telling someone that I might clutch a phantom phone as my excuse. She said when she was leaving a panel early, she always clutched her stomach so everybody got quickly out of her way.)
By the time I got back to the room I thought I was neither hungry nor thirsty, but I suddenly realize that without noticing, I've packed away a small Caesar salad, an entire Starbucks venti cooler (my latest addiction; at least it's a low-cal one) and all of the chocolate housekeeping gave me over the last two days. (I've been tipping $5 rather than my usual $2-a-day on the advice of my new tipping app; my housekeeper's response has been to shower me with thank you notes, pillow chocolates, and gifts from the cart.)