pyat

I had Beatles tunes (as sung by the Bee Gees and Aerosmith) stuck in my head all night, but managed to sleep soundly. The morning light streamed in bright and clear once again.


sassy_fae and I took our leave of halfelf and leonard_arlotte, and ate a mostly healthy breakfast in the con suite.


And that was that! Our time in con space was over, but we still faced the long and winding road (DUN DAH! DUN DAH! That leeeads to your doooor...) back to Hamilton...

( Driving to Toledo, whether we liked it or not )

I slept very soundly, and awoke to bright sunshine on Friday morning. Friday morning was the appointed time for leonard_arlotte's traditional Cheese Quest, an annual pilgrimage to the Mars Cheese Castle in Kenosha, Wisconsin. This was my first year taking part in the journey, and I was not disappointed.


Leonard and the Fae one!

sassy_fae, leonard_arlotte and I piled into halfelf's car and we journeyed northward into the wilds of Wisconsin...

( Good Times and Bad Food )

There was a free buffet, everyday!


Like I say, I have a monocle.

I'm home now. I had a fantastic time with very good friends, from far and wide.
( A sampling of photos without commentary, for now )

Went there today with melskunk, her girlfriend Madelaine (who was visiting from Germany), and kores_rabbit!

( Read more... )

Go away.




velvetpage made a crackling good fire.

(Posting from a roadside BBQ/gas station/firewood/shower )

_{City Hall}

I like Stratford. It's an odd sort of town, lost in time in some ways. It's not linked to any highway, and there is daily passenger train service to the 19th century railway station. It is home to some flourishing local industries - a luggage factory and a ball-bearing manufacturer. It has three regular newspapers for 30,000 people. While there are big box stores on the outskirts, there are thriving local groceries and restaurants and bookstores. They even have an indepedent multiplex with tiny 80-seat theatres, showing first run movies.

It is a farming centre, yet also a cultural centre thanks to the annual Shakespeare festival. The festival drives the city and attracts tourists from around the world. It keeps the economy afloat and allows Stratford to remain in its odd little time warp. And yet, it has not gentrified it past recognition. Scanning the real estate ads, we saw Victorian homes with 6 bedrooms for sale for under $200K. An entire hotel and tavern downtown was selling for $250K.

But, it has created a kind of core of rich Liberal intellectual businesses, surrounded by the trappings of a prosperous rural Canadian centre. You can go into one of a dozen bookstores, or buy a ultilikilt, and get served by a bespectacled woman with elaborate Sanskirt tattoos. Or, you can sit in a diner with Mennonites.

It was warm and humid on Monday, when we arrived, but the temperature dropped dramatically. On Tuesday morning, we went outside around 10 AM and it was only 11 C. I thought it was wonderful, though it did necessitate a quick trip to get velvetpage a cheap sweater. Also I... um... had forgotten to pack a pair of shoes. I'd been wearing shorts and sandals on Monday, and arose on Tuesday to put on my fancy theatre-goin' duds, and realized I'd left my shoes at home.



And now, (more) photos!
( Read more... )

"...Newport climbing wraithlike from its dreaming breakwater. Arkham is there, with its moss-grown gambrel roofs and the rocky rolling meadows behind it; and antediluvian Kingsport hoary with stacked chimneys and deserted quays and overhanging gables, and the marvel of high cliffs and the milky-misted ocean with tolling buoys beyond.

"Cool vales in Concord, cobbled lands in Portsmouth, twilight bends of rustic New Hampshire roads where giant elms half hide white farmhouse walls and creaking well-sweeps. Gloucester's salt wharves and Truro's windy willows. Vistas of distant steepled towns and hills beyond hills along the North Shore, hushed stony slopes and low ivied cottages in the lee of huge boulders in Rhode Island's back country."
- The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath

After leaving the Shunned House, we got in the Haunted Police Car and drove southwest to Newport, a town perhaps older than Providence, one surrounded on three sides by the Atlantic Ocean. The drive was slow and meandering and as we proceeded the surroundings changed from the blue collar homes of Providence, getting larger and often older, and more ornamental. We actually saw gambereled roofs. In Newport itself, there were entire neighbourhoods where every single house predated Canadian Confederation - all occupied and in good repair. In some places, there were rows of houses older than America.

I described the drive down as "cripplingly picturesque."

We were in Newport for two reasons. First, to visit the "mystery mill," a sort ruined stone tower that, at the very least, is more than 400 years old. No one is sure who built the tower, or when, but the best guess is that is served as a mill around 1650. However, there is apparently evidence to suggest it may have been constructed a century or more earlier, or even in Pre-Columbian times by wandering Vikings.

( Newport at Sunset )
After peering at the stone tower for a bit, we wandered around Newport on foot, trying to reach the ocean. This was fairly easy, but we could not find any beach - only docks. So, we gunned up the Haunted Police Car once more, and pointed ourselves southward.

We soon discovered Ocean Drive, a scenic stretch of road sided on either side by the famous Newport Mansions, a series of 19th century and early 20th homes built by the barons of American industry. I took no pictures, but we were both suitably awed.

As the stars began to appear we found a stretch of clear, rocky beach, and disembarked.

( In these realms where the Pole Star shines high )

We returned northward to Providence and paused for supper at the Newport Creamery, a local chain. After resting in the hotel for an hour or two, we hitched up our resolve and headed back to downtown Providence to see what night-time diversions the city had to offer.

First of all, we discovered that the city core is much livelier at night. During the afternoon, the downtown had been nearly empty. At night, we had trouble finding parking, and knots of people were everywhere. One wonders if it is a city.... of VAMPIRES!

In any case, the highlight of the evening's jaunt was our visit to the Haven Brothers Diner. This establishment is significant for two reasons. First, it is the oldest diner in the world - founded in 1888. Second, it is a diner in the original sense of the word, which is to say that it is a portable structure. It has been parking in the same spot since 1892, though of course the original vehicle was a horsedrawn cart. Today, it's a trailer hitched to a truck.

I loved it.

After downing cheese dogs and coffee at Haven Brothers, Alex and I walked along the river, looking at things.

( Lovecraft has no good quotes about diners )

We got back to the hotel around midnight... and came home on Sunday. The drive home was fun, but I didn't take any photos.

This concludes The Great Lovecraftian Pilgramage of 2007

"You came not as one curious, but as one seeking his due, nor have you failed ever in reverence toward the mild gods of earth. Yet have these gods kept you from the marvellous sunset city of your dreams, and wholly through their own small covetousness; for verily, they craved the weird loveliness of that which your fancy had fashioned, and vowed that henceforward no other spot should be their abode."
- The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath

The Stars, as they say, were finally right.

Last night, nottheterritory (hereafter known by the mundane sobriquet of "Alex") and I returned from something of a whirlwind tour of Rhode Island in general, and Providence specifically. This trip was something I first conceived dimly in high school reading H.P. Lovecraft for the first time. The shape of the pilgrimage solidified in my first year of university, when I read Lyon Sprague de Camp's thorough (though hardly impartial) biography of Lovecraft.

Though the Lovecraftian angle interested me particularly, the journey was not one of mere literary significance. Providence intrigues me in and of itself, by virtue of being one of the oldest cities in North America, and furthermore compact enough to be easily encompassed in relatively short visit. Finally is has the quality of a "real" city, which is to say it is a living metropolis and not merely a tourist destination or collection of attractions.

I should note that thebitterguy also hoped to come with Alex and I on the trip, but had to back down due to work obligations. His loss on the trip was regrettable! That said, Alex was an excellent travelling companion, and there was no point where our mutual impulses for the direction of the trip were out of step – no arguments about maps or stops or places to eat, etc., etc. More importantly we seem to share a certain aesthetic when it comes to self-directed tours of this kind, and always seemed happy to see the same things the other fellow wanted to see.

We left Hamilton late on a rainy Friday afternoon... (click on the images for larger versions!)

( The Trip and the Tomb )

After visting the tomb, we went for a stroll through the cemetery grounds. Alex, who is a military history buff, was inspired by the vintage of the stones to tell me his favorite anecdote about the Civil War. Almost as soon as he'd begun, I noticed a monument to one Major Sullivan Ballou a few metres off our path, and pointed it out to Alex.

"That fellow seems to have died in the Civil War," I said.

Alex, incredibly, recognized the name on the tomb. As he noted in his journal:

"Those of you who know Ken Burn's Civil War documentary well will now have little shivers running up and down your spine - for the rest of you who never shared that particular deep geekiness, Sullivan Ballou is essentially no-one. He is, as far as I know, almost completely unimportant in history, except for one thing:"

That one thing being a particularly poignant and eloquent home to his young wife, Sarah. Alex quotes a few lines from the letter, and later directed me to full reading of it from a Civil War documentary. The letter starts at 2:27 in this video link:



( My love for you is deathless )

After leaving the cemetery we headed into downtown Providence with two specific destinations - the Westminster Arcade and the "Shunned House."

I'll write about those later...

On Day Two (Saturday) of Pentacon, normanrafferty and I were roused by the sound of "The Entertainer" as played by vandringar's cel phone. vandringar was in Ohio, but his cel phone travelled with normanrafferty, it seems. We showered and then went on to breakfast in the Desoto Cafe, attached to the hotel, and ventured back to the dealer's hall for another day of battle.

Things in the hall continued quietly. We played more games of The Great Space Race with Jolly Blackburn and sold a smallish number of books. Mr. Zodo ran game events. The relative peace was broken by the sudden arrival of the Stoneburners - halfelf and beautiful missus, hammergrrl.

( Pictures below! )

normanrafferty, halfelf and hammergrrl


"Good news, everybody! I've invented television, apparently!"