How I love the big little interstitial con in Burlington in July! This will be its 20th year, and I have barely missed a single one. This year's Readercon Guests of Honor will be Elizabeth Hand, Greer Gilman, and . . . yes, there's always a Memorial Guest: Hope Mirrlees. While filling out various forms, I came across their Participants Page, listing every author signed up so far - which may be enough to get you there all on its own! - but the Mirrlees bio is absolute Essence of Readercon. Sign up if you want to spend a weekend with people who think like this:

It's been said of the Velvet Underground that they only sold 500 records, but that everyone who purchased a copy started a band. The VU of fantasy is unquestionably Hope Mirrlees, whose sole fantasy novel Lud-in-the-Mist (1926) has slowly grown in reputation from obscure oddity to full-blown classic. Since its reappearance in print in 1970 in Lin Carter's Ballantine Adult Fantasy line it has become a huge influence on a generation of fantasists, including Joanna Russ, Neil Gaiman, past Readercon GoH Michael Swanwick and both of this year's Guests of Honor. Mirrlees (1887–1978) led a fascinating life (see Swanwick's "The Lady Who Wrote Lud-in-the-Mist") that is well worth exploring, but we will of course focus most of our attention on her sui generis masterpiece. If you haven't already encountered this taproot text of modern fantasy, now is the time!

We're in Boston for a wedding (and various meetings). Armed with the courage of our Shakespearean convictions, we went tonight to the opening preview of the fantastic fantabulous daring and gifted Actors' Shakespeare Project's Coriolanus at the giant rehabbed Amory in Somerville, our old hometown. It's pretty amazing. And, as Delia pointed out (when she made me commit to buying tix) how often do you get to see it performed?

A favorite bit*:

BRUTUS (But not the one you're thinking of)
There's no more to be said, but he is banish'd,
As enemy to the people and his country:
It shall be so.
CITIZENS
It shall be so, it shall be so.
CORIOLANUS
You common cry of curs! whose breath I hate
As reek o' the rotten fens, whose loves I prize
As the dead carcasses of unburied men
That do corrupt my air, I banish you . . . .
. . . . Despising,
For you, the city, thus I turn my back:
There is a world elsewhere.

It's a crazy, risky play to do now, as C. is an anti-populist nutdog military hero whose values - and mistakes - are from a doubly-alien culture (Elizabethan & Elizabethans' Take on Ancient Rome); but what a fabulous collection of characters! Especially his mother, who is very well-played. They set it all in kind of an early Soviet era, which translates well.

*And if anyone wants to volunteer the Easy Reader version of this speech, I am prepared to chortle

I've known Joe Kessler since he was a longhaired teenager playing an electric blue fiddle in Harvard Square, busking for change. And keyboardist Michael McLaughlin is one of the guys who arranged the original "KlezNut" music for Shirim - and helped me write The Golden Dreydl - we had so much fun working together that I invited him to be the music director (and pianist/accordionist) of my Esther show - where he started working with Joe when we brought him in for fiddle . . . . and now they're in a band together (with some other great improv guys)! Listing their influences as "John Zorn, Don Byron, Frank London, John Mclaughlin, Shlomo Carlebach, Eric Dolphy, Ivo Papasov etc." KLEZWOODS has samples of their "Emo / Roots Music / Nu-Jazz " on their MySpace page, and are doing a FREE show on Dec. 22nd in Cambridge at Atwoods Tavern - wish I could be there - they're great to experience live - So you go, and give them my love!

Clearly, someone should write a novel about this woman - or at least give her a walk-on in as many period pieces as possible:

"When Annie Cohen Kopchovsky (who adopted the decidedly less ethnic name of "Annie Londonderry") left Boston in June 1894, she was a young woman with a 42-pound bicycle, one change of underwear, a revolver, and a dream of adventure and financial independence. Her epic journey around the world by bicycle turned this Jewish immigrant and mother of three into an international celebrity. In Around the World on Two Wheels: Annie Londonderry's Extraordinary Ride, author Peter Zheutlin vividly recounts the story of this audacious woman in a highly readable blend of social history and travel narrative."

Gakked from the Jewish Women's Archives, who are sponsoring a Lunch Talk with the author in Boston on March 18th. They are also collecting stories, photos, interviews, etc. that document the experiences of Jewish American women during the Second World War. You can help, no matter where you live.