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The morning after the 4th of July fireworks, the Webmeister and I boarded a plane for the Left Coast. Those of you are are also involved in the YA-Get of My Butt Challenge for July and August will be pleased to hear that I wrote 1,000 words on the plane. Unfortunately, I haven't written anything since, but hey, I am on vacation, right? Does blogging count? Okay, okay, I'll get my butt in the chair later.

But in the meantime, it's been busy. The Webmeister's dad, who was an Olympic fencer and has been the fencing coach at the University of Pennsylvania for over 30 years, was being inducted into the Fencing Hall of Fame, and we flew in just in time for the ceremony, which was really moving and inspiring. We also got to see some of the national level competition:



It was really cool and made me want to say "en garde" and try fencing myself. I could just picture myself as the female version of:




(Note to self: Ask Manager Mom for a Photoshop lesson during our next Fairfield County Bloggers drink-a-thon intellectual discussion about the ins and outs of blogging)

Yesterday we visited the Tech Museum of San Jose, which had some really fab exhibits including this one about Peepy.



I swear, that Peepy really gets around!

But then so do I…in the intergalactic sense, I hasten to add. Here’s me in my rather fetching space suit.

Afterwards we watched some more fencing then hopped into our convertible (!!!) and drove up to Napa, where we are staying in the lovely Napa Inn. Having just scarfed down a delicious breakfast including sticky bread and strawberry rhubarb crumble, we are waiting for the limo to pick us up to take us on our wine tour. (Saraclaradara believes in drinking being able to look at the scenery responsibly.)

More later!

Richard Nash at Soft Skull saw my mention of Alex Cox's movie Walker and sent on a brief passage from Cox's upcoming book X-Films: True Confessions of a Radical Filmmaker, which Soft Skull/Counterpoint will be bringing out in a few months. Thanks to Richard for giving me permission to share this:

Walker is my best, my most expensive, and my least-seen film. It’s the bio-pic of William Walker -- an American mercenary who had himself made president of Nicaragua in the mid-19th century. In the US, Walker was an anti-slavery liberal; in Nicaragua he instituted slavery. He’s almost unknown in the US today, but in the 1850’s Walker was fantastically popular. The newspapers wrote more about him than they did about Presidents Pierce or Buchanan.

All the characters in the film existed, though they aren’t all accurate portraits, and there’s no evidence -- say -- that Walker and his financier, Vanderbilt, ever met. Most of what happens in the film is part of some historical record; but it’s a drama, and the bricks of truth are mortared with fiction.

I first went to Nicaragua in 1984, with Peter McCarthy -- on one of those leftist tours where you meet nuns and trade unionists and representatives of cooperatives. It was the week of the presidential election, which the FSLN -- the Sandinistas -- won. We were impressed by the revolution, by the beauty of the countryside, by the changes and the optimism in the air. In Leon, on election day, two young Sandinistas egged us on to bring a big, Hollywood movie to Nicaragua, which would communicate something about Nicaragua to the Americans, and spend dollars there.

Fair enough. Nicaragua was a poor country, under continuous terrorist attack. The Sandinistas were their elected representatives, who’d led the overthrow of the dictator, Somoza, in 1979. Not that this meant much in Hollywood. To get serious money for a Sandinista feature, it would need an American protagonist. Step forward, William Walker.

I have finally made my way through the 3,000 emails that had accumulated in the mumpsimus at gmail account during my absence from checking it. Thank you to everyone for bearing with me on that. If you need a response of some sort to something, and I haven't yet replied, please send me another note, because I think I have responded to everything that seemed to need a response.

There are some sites and items I discovered from the mail, including:

• The First Book, a site created by Scott William Carter to provide interviews with and information about authors of first novels. Scott was my roommate at the very first science fiction convention I went to, and he's not only a tremendous nice guy, but has developed a great career with lots of short stories published in a wide variety of markets and now a novel that is forthcoming from Simon & Schuster in 2010.
  
  
• Noticing my comments on Cormac McCarthy's The Road, Henry Farrell let me know about a conversation with China Miéville about The Road that he had a year ago. I completely missed this when it was first posted (probably because I'd just gotten back from Kenya), and regret that, because it's very much worth reading.
  
  
• Starship Sofa is a science fiction podcast with a great selection of material -- right now there's a podcast (mp3) about the life and career of the much-too-neglected John Sladek, and past shows have included readings of stories by Pat Murphy, Bruce Sterling, David Brin, and others.
  
  
• This isn't from the mail, but I'll add it here anyway: A thoughtful review of the soon-to-be-released Criterion Collection DVD of Alex Cox's Walker. This is an extraordinary movie, and I'm looking forward to seeing the DVD very much, because I've only ever watched it on an old videotape I got a few years ago, and the image quality on the tape is awful. I first got interested in Walker after I returned from a trip to Nicaragua and started reading up on Central American history -- and one of the stories that most captured my attention was that of William Walker, who took a ragged band of ruffians down to Nicaragua and declared himself president. Cox turned the story into a bizarre movie, and when I first watched it my reaction was basically, "Huh?" But a second viewing endeared the movie to me, and Ed Harris's performance as Walker is extraordinary -- he's one of the best actors out there, but seldom gets a chance to really show what he can do to the extent he got with Walker. The film is a political satire, an over-the-top historical epic, a chaotic mix of anomalies and goofiness, a sad and affecting tale of American capitalism and imperialism. Other films were made in '80s about Nicaragua -- Under Fire and Latino come to mind -- but Walker has more depth and nuance (even amidst its blustery weirdness) than its more straightforward and painfully earnest cousins, and it has withstood the passing of time all the better for it.