Current Post On Trae’s Blog:
My grandmother died last night. This wasn't a shock or a surprise. Her health has been on the decline, and she's been in hospice for the last month. She lived a long life, and in her final days she was surrounded by her three adult children.
My grandma was a kind woman. She wasn't perfect, but I always felt loved in her presence. She was a retired kindergarten teacher, and was still working when I was a kid. I have so many happy memories sitting at her kitchen table, and I'm going to carry those with me for the rest of my life. She was also proof that anyone who claims that you get more conservative as you get older is full of shit, because she certainly didn't.
I think it's interesting how the body processes grief sometimes. I don't know that I'll cry, but over the past month, knowing this was coming, I've felt a tension in my gut. Now that she's passed, instead of relief that tension is replaced by a sense of emptiness. That something is missing that should still be there. Something has been taken away, and I feel it.
Of course, as I wrote that, I immediately started crying... so I guess my body processes grief in pretty ordinary ways too.
I wanted to come up with something profound linking this to Beltane, which we sit in the middle of right now, but it just seemed hackneyed. Like I was trying to dig out some greater significance when the truth is death comes whenever it wants. The only predictable thing about it is that it's the end of all of our journeys. I hope that when I pass I'm so lucky to have lived such a long life with people that I love around me in my final days.
For the record, I will be fine. I just needed to get these words out while they were still in my head. I don't have some rousing conclusion or deep insight to tack on here at the end, just that gut feeling that something is missing.
Because it is.
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Grin – haven’t drawn THAT duty since I took up working Con Ops. Possibly our busiest time, even just fielding “can we leave this here?” requests by people who should know better…
We always ran feedback in a separate room. I don’t think I ever saw more than 25 people. Once closing ceremony ended, we started tearing stuff down.
I’m always a little amazed how few people stay for the feedback panel.
And how many of those have one single issue they want to spend the whole panel talking about.
The feedback session is with the con chair and the vice con chair aka next year’s chair. Usually it’s not that full, but everyone present decides they want to monologue.
I really want to see how Veronica deals with monologuers.
Sadly we won’t get to see that this year, as I have to wrap up the con on Thursday.
Because next week is November.
We used to fun comments after closing ceremony, and it wqas routinely 50% “Your con is the best con ever” despite us politely telling people If you had a wonderful time, great, but we want to hear what we could improve on.”
Eventually, we just had an online comment page because we wanted to pack up after Closing ceremonies and get to the staff dinner and the boozings. Works good, we think.
Not to mention, if there are a lot of people waiting to comment, some might not get their chance to make a legitimate criticism because too many people ahead of them wasted time with praise and talking about how many years they’ve been attending.
Unless, of course, they want to praise Otakon’s Classic Video track.
Wasn’t present (or even on the ConCom thank Ghu) the time a convention which shall be left nameless because it was a looooong time ago had enough visible-to-attendees screwups that bard Leslie Fish turned up at the gripe session with a song about the lot and started singing. I’ve heard the song. Oh dear…