TusCon, where we went last weekend, is a small but friendly SF convention held each year in, duh, Tucson. We tend to see and catch up with old friends there.
This is Curt Stubbs, from back in the way early days (the 70's) of Phoenix fandom. Curt moved to Tucson in the 80's. Besides the latest year's worth of medical problems to report, Curt had the better news that he'd been working on poetry again, and had read a piece on local radio.
He also has an awesome beard, the bastard. (Not that I'm BITTER, y'know, or OBSESSIVE, y'know, about having to stay clean-shaven for work the last few years.)
We also saw Jennifer Roberson again for the first time in a few years. Jennifer had moved to Tucson since we'd last spoke, and was multitasking, hitting both TusCon in her career as an SF/Fantasy writer, and a major dog show in her capacity as a Corgi breeder. This is Jennifer with Gabby, one of her newest Corgis:
Gabby was named after Gabrielle Giffords, being born a week after the shooting last January. In evidence that Everything Is Connected, Curt had been in hospital (a MRSA infection in his foot) the day of the shooting, and was one of the ICU patients hurriedly transferred to a regular ward to make room for some of the shooting victims.
We also saw Tom Watson, for the first time in about twenty years, at TusCon. Tom had been one of the members of a writers' workshop back in the 80's, along with Jennifer, Hilde and me, Mike Stackpole, and Liz Danforth. He's gotten back to writing again (unemployment can do that to you), which is good. (Tom was, I think, the member of the workshop who was actually making the steadiest income from writing at the time, but it was non-fiction for pet industry trade journals.)
I was struck, at TusCon, both by how many young people (late teens, early 20's) were in attendance, and by how our own generation of fans is (phrasing it politely) "greying". Curt was using a walker, Jim Webbert was using a walker, and Jan Lockett was not only using a walker but had a litany of health issues and crisises from this last year that had us amazed she was still alive. (She actually came to the convention from the rehab hospital where she's still recovering from the latest crisis.) Made Hilde and me feel we've been pretty lucky this last year. (Although the con suite had a large mirror on one wall, and I kept being taken aback when I kept seeing an Old Guy looking back at me whenever my eyes drifted in that direction.)
This is Curt Stubbs, from back in the way early days (the 70's) of Phoenix fandom. Curt moved to Tucson in the 80's. Besides the latest year's worth of medical problems to report, Curt had the better news that he'd been working on poetry again, and had read a piece on local radio.He also has an awesome beard, the bastard. (Not that I'm BITTER, y'know, or OBSESSIVE, y'know, about having to stay clean-shaven for work the last few years.)
We also saw Jennifer Roberson again for the first time in a few years. Jennifer had moved to Tucson since we'd last spoke, and was multitasking, hitting both TusCon in her career as an SF/Fantasy writer, and a major dog show in her capacity as a Corgi breeder. This is Jennifer with Gabby, one of her newest Corgis:
Gabby was named after Gabrielle Giffords, being born a week after the shooting last January. In evidence that Everything Is Connected, Curt had been in hospital (a MRSA infection in his foot) the day of the shooting, and was one of the ICU patients hurriedly transferred to a regular ward to make room for some of the shooting victims.
We also saw Tom Watson, for the first time in about twenty years, at TusCon. Tom had been one of the members of a writers' workshop back in the 80's, along with Jennifer, Hilde and me, Mike Stackpole, and Liz Danforth. He's gotten back to writing again (unemployment can do that to you), which is good. (Tom was, I think, the member of the workshop who was actually making the steadiest income from writing at the time, but it was non-fiction for pet industry trade journals.)
I was struck, at TusCon, both by how many young people (late teens, early 20's) were in attendance, and by how our own generation of fans is (phrasing it politely) "greying". Curt was using a walker, Jim Webbert was using a walker, and Jan Lockett was not only using a walker but had a litany of health issues and crisises from this last year that had us amazed she was still alive. (She actually came to the convention from the rehab hospital where she's still recovering from the latest crisis.) Made Hilde and me feel we've been pretty lucky this last year. (Although the con suite had a large mirror on one wall, and I kept being taken aback when I kept seeing an Old Guy looking back at me whenever my eyes drifted in that direction.)
1 comment:
Aw, man, it's great to 'see' Curt again. Been so long, and the good times were so good. They need to have some kind of convention or something where people can get together and see each other every now and then.
Tell him hi for me! There's a link from my name on the front page of Making Light that will send him (or you) to The New Pals Web-Log, which in turn has links to my flickr page, if he's all that desperate to look at me. Perhaps he'd rather keep his memories intact, though. (I think it's the second Me link; the first one is probably my LJ, which also has me-stuff at it.)
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