I just learned that I've lost my director, Lu Kemp, for this weekend, due to a death in her family. Mr Punch will be directed by Patrick Rayner instead. Which is very very strange -- Lu and I have been working on Mr Punch for almost exactly a year, now, and I wrote (and rewrote) the play very much for her, and with her as sounding board and almost a collaborator. I'll miss her and am sorry we won't be working together on it. She has all my love and sympathies, and is the second of my friends to have lost a family member this week. (I thank that's enough deaths for now, please.)
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My brand spanking new photo iPod loses everything, all photos, playlists and songs, whenever it's attached to, and then stopped and unattached from, a computer (any computer). A soft reboot later and they're all back, but still, I want something that works as it's meant to. No suggestions from Apple apart from "reinstall the software", which being done changed nothing. If anyone out there has any ideas, please let me know. Otherwise I suppose I'll swap it for one that works properly when I get the chance.
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Artist (and friend) Michael Zulli has a website, with a gallery and a blog and all sorts. You will need to click on the blue flowers. It's a lovely site, and I'm sure will grow into a lovelier one. http://michaelzulli.com is the place to start exploring. It is of course the way of the world that the one painting I immediately loved -- the one he calls Simple Abundance -- isn't for sale. But lots of paintings and drawings are. Michael's moving across the country very soon, so go and buy paintings and prints from him so he has less to carry.
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Fiddler's Green Queen and Death Boot Girl Davey Snyder answers the question -- sort of -- about the Fiddler's Green cool souvenir books:
The leftovers (which might still be a couple of hundred, after we've mailed out the copies to the folks who bought memberships but didn't get to the con, and all the contributors) will be shipped to the CBLDF, to offer as they think best. It's a non-cash part of the convention's donation to the Fund. --Davey
If you want one (and you probably do) I'd suggest writing to Charles Brownstein at the CBLDF and making an offer. Or waiting until the CBLDF are at a convention near you, or doing an eBay auction.
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And Neal Pollack, possibly the Greatest Living American, does his 5 books of the year, and says lovely things about 1602. Which is a good excuse for me to link to his article about novelists and elections and things which I meant to do last week, and then forgot about.