Category: Travel
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The Barcelona Operation, Day 3
We ventured into Barcelona's Metro system for a trip to the park complex at Montjuic, at the southwest corner of the city. The subway is modern and efficient (though of course my sample size is very small). From the Metro we transferred to a cable car which runs up the side of Montjuic (it's actually…
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The Barcelona Operation, Day 2
When we woke the air in the square below was full of swallows. Apparently they nest in the walls of the church and come out at dawn to snag bugs out of the air. We watched some of the neighbors playing with dogs down below. Barcelona has a lot of dogs, but no cats. I…
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The Barcelona Operation, Day 1
Dr. Kelly had a science conference in Barcelona this summer, so the rest of us invited ourselves along. The plan was for the four of us to fly over together, spend a week being tourists, then the three non-scientists would come home together leaving her to devote her time to papers and networking during the…
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Where I Do It
I do most of my writing in coffeeshops. Fortunately, I live in an area with a good assortment of places. In Greenfield I can go to Greenfield Coffee, which is a dedicated coffeehouse so I don't have to feel guilty about occupying a table during lunchtime. The chief drawback is that the town of Greenfield…
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Ozblogging: The Patchwork Girl of Oz, Part 2
The three heroic questers set off searching for the plot coupons, and discover a problem which the Crooked Magician really should have thought of: none of them has the faintest idea where they're going. Ojo has lived his entire life in a remote cabin in the woods with a man who says about two words…
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Five Stories That Changed Everything: My Picks
A bit more than a week ago I drove to Boston in order to attend the venerable Boskone convention, which celebrated its 50th anniversary this year. As always, I spent a lot of my time either being on panels discussing things, or watching other people on panels discussing things. This year one of the most…
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Boskone 50, Featuring ME!
This coming weekend I'm heading back to the idyllic Westin Waterfront Hotel in Boston for the second of New England's two big wintertime science fiction conventions, Boskone. Here's my schedule: Friday, 9 p.m.: "The Monster in the Maze" — I get to moderate a high powered panel (Darrell Schweitzer, Paul Tremblay, and Christopher Golden) as…
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Sweringen and Spaceships
This past Thanksgiving I ventured to southern Maryland for a big family dinner. My host happened to live just up the road from St. Mary's City, the site of Maryland's first colonial capital. It's a very interesting site: there are reconstructions of some of the original buildings and some excellent exhibits about how archaeologists combine…
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City Life
In my after-action report on the Arisia convention I mentioned that the "Future of Cities" panel had crystallized some ideas that had been floating around inside my head. The panelists spent a lot of time discussing problems that afflict modern cities, particularly the metropoli of the northeastern United States. Congestion, sprawl, and the need for…
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Post-Arisia Report
I arrived at the Westin Hotel in Boston on Friday the 18th just as the convention was getting underway, and spent some time checking out the dealer room and saying hello to new arrivals. I did manage to attend one panel: "The Man Who Sold The Moon," featuring Cambridge Science Fiction Workshop stalwart Steven Popkes…
The Cambias Digression 