trading posts
Scattered across the American southwest are trading posts. Not the Hudson's Bay company fur trading posts that mostly closed in the 1840s; these are trading posts founded to trade with the Navajo and other tribes in the 70 years after the Long Walk. At their peak, just before World War II, there were nearly 150 of them, of which dozens remain in operation -- I don't know exactly how many as there is no comprehensive list, nor a category in Wikipedia. I've been to several: Hubbell, Cameron, Gouldings, Ismay, Twin Rocks, McGee. They're all different, sometimes drastically so: Cameron's Trading Post is absolutely enormous with tour buses pulling in to it every few minutes, whereas there wasn't much sign that anyone other than myself went into Ismay's Trading Post at all on the day I was there, towards the very end of its 90+ year existence. Hubbell is now a museum; McGee is mostly an art gallery. Each has taken its own path.
But for all their differences, they have some things in common, so much so that when researching this post, I read yelp reviews stating "that's not a trading post" and nodded, because the establishment in question didn't fit the pattern. I'm not sure I can exactly put my finger on what the rule really is. In my experience generally they're right on a political boundary, right next to at least one stunning landmark, and buy things as well as selling them. But I don't think this is what those yelp reviewers were talking about and there are exceptions to these and any other rule you might come up with.
So it is, I think, with the sorts of science fiction conventions I like to work on. DragonCon and WesterCon are as different as Cameron and Ismay. But there is a kernel of sameness within them anyway. And there's no need to define that essence, nor any one rule that exactly describes what that kernel is.
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But for all their differences, they have some things in common, so much so that when researching this post, I read yelp reviews stating "that's not a trading post" and nodded, because the establishment in question didn't fit the pattern. I'm not sure I can exactly put my finger on what the rule really is. In my experience generally they're right on a political boundary, right next to at least one stunning landmark, and buy things as well as selling them. But I don't think this is what those yelp reviewers were talking about and there are exceptions to these and any other rule you might come up with.
So it is, I think, with the sorts of science fiction conventions I like to work on. DragonCon and WesterCon are as different as Cameron and Ismay. But there is a kernel of sameness within them anyway. And there's no need to define that essence, nor any one rule that exactly describes what that kernel is.
(
Comments |Comment on this)