From: anderson@macc.wisc.edu (Jess Anderson)
Newsgroups: soc.motss
Subject: Re: Siting Cons
Date: 6 Apr 92 20:15:50 GMT
Article-I.D.: macc.1992Apr6.201550.15144
Organization: Madison Academic Computing Center, UW-Madison


In article <1992Apr6.152638.2947@queernet.org>
rogerk@QueerNet.ORG (Roger B.A.  Klorese) writes:

>In article <1992Apr6.114423.21310@macc.wisc.edu>,
>anderson@macc.wisc.edu (Jess Anderson) writes:

>>I've been surprised pleasantly any number of
>>times that a place I thought would be awful has turned out
>>to be quite nice.  In the case of a motss.con, the place is
>>only part of it, the people being (one would think) the
>>*main* motivator.

>I really don't understand this point...  you mean you travel
>for the purpose of visiting with the people who are there,
>and then figure out what, if anything, you're going to do
>while you're there?  Or do you find "visiting" to be an
>activity instead of a circumstance?

My, it can be difficult, can't it?  I say that because I
don't understand your question, either, at least I'm not
sure I do.

Near as I can figure out, the answer to the first part would
be: "Yes, I often go somewhere to see someone without having
given any thought beforehand to what else I might do while
I'm there."  If your "if anything" meant to suggest that I
might be content to do "nothing" while there, you'd be not
far off the mark.  And yes, while I might not think of
visiting as an activity, I'd be unlikely to see it as a
circumstance.

If I read between the lines a little and rely on my memory
of earlier parts of the thread, I take it all this is quite
different in your case, something like this, maybe:

You consider what the place has to offer in the way of
circumstances (in your sense) that interest you enough to
support the idea of investing time and money in going there.
If there's something additional, like a motss.con, so much
the better.  But the primary thing would be what you can
*do* there (not sure what that includes, though).

Well, I sometimes find myself in off-the-track places rather
by accident.  When I go on an extended vacation, I throw
camping gear and suitable clothes in the car and start
driving, turning right or left or going forward as the mood
strikes me.  Unless time is strictly limited, I usually get
off the main roads, since how long it "takes" is usually a
secondary concern.  

Let's assume the general direction is west.  After one gets
west of the states that border the Mississippi, secondary
roads become a whole lot more secondary than they are in my
own part of the country (this is also true of much of the
southeast quadrant of the country, except that out west the
distances can be enormous and you can be on gravel for many
hours, going over really difficult terrain).

So in that sense, some of the visiting has been a kind of
circumstance, in the sense of unplanned, and certainly I
didn't *intend* to be where I was.  For example, Wiliston,
North Dakota; Ten Sleep Canyon, Wyoming; Moab, Utah.

In the case of the famous urban centers of the country, I've
been in most of them more than once, some of them *lots* of
times, so I've seen the major museum collections, and
usually concentrate on rather odd collections in out of the
way places (a small Wisconsin town has an interesting museum
of surgery, for example), I've seen most of the well-known
touristy places, and done the well-known watering holes and
restaurants.

There's always the less well-known, yet to be discovered, of
course.

I think a lot of younger people want to go out and see the
sights, visit the LG bars, whore around a bit, and all that.
But I'm quite prepared to go to the next life without ever
setting foot in another gay bar, for example.  Christ,
I've done that 10,000 times if I've done it once.

So (how much in contrast to you would be more for you to
say), when I think of a motss.con, what the thing presents
to me is the idea of meeting the people whose postings I've
read (and loved or hated) for so long, of having a
conversation over lunch or a cup of coffee, of going to a
new bookstore, and (to be sure) catching a few new vistas
along the way.  Night life interests me not at all, by
that time of day I want to be alone.

My guess is that some of this makes me, rather than you,
more the oddball (but you're odd in other ways, Roger!  :-),
which is something I seldom give a second thought to, having
reached the point where I don't care much what people think
of my habits or interests.  It can be very liberating,
that I *will* say for it!

<> Q: Dear Abby: A pair of gay men is moving in across the street.
<>    What can we do to improve the neighborhood?
<> A: You could move.
<> -- Abigail Van Buren, advice columnist
-- 
Jess Anderson <> Madison Academic Computing Center <> University of Wisconsin
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