From: jzimm@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Joann Zimmerman)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Well Met in Austin!
Date: 16 Oct 92 15:04:13 GMT
Reply-To: jzimm@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Joann Zimmerman)
Organization: The University of Texas at Austin, Austin TX
Originator: jzimm@huey.cc.utexas.edu

The Austin cell of the raberati held a meeting on Saturday, October
10, at 10 a.m. with all current active members (Katherine Catmull and
myself) in attendance, supplemented by Austin raberatus emeritus Mike
Godwin, who was in town on (mostly) business.

In a relatively recent fantasia composed by Mark Taranto, in which he
imagined what would happen if all the raberati were to converge on his
apartment, he suggested that I and Barbara and the late-lamented
Annette would show up very late, because we got lost. I took
exception, and told Mark that I was pathologically early, and anyway,
I had real trouble getting seriously lost. Well, Mark, time to get
your revenge! Because ... 

The signs and portents for this meeting, called on fairly short
notice, were not good. I was 10 minutes late, because I had trouble
with an ATM machine that had refused to accept my card into its maw.
When I'd got that dealt with (holding my thumb over the slot to
prevent premature ejection) I found my driving progress to be
impeded by a rather long funeral procession. Ominous foreshadowing?
Then I had to wait for about a minute at every red light. There were
no green lights. At least I found a parking space in fairly short
order. And at least I didn't get lost, unlike certain Princeton
raberati who shall remain nameless, but who put considerable
ingenuity, last June, into trying to make "Well Met in Princeton" into
"Ill Met in Trenton," much to the amusement of my husband and myself.

I entered the chosen restaurant (Mexican breakfasts and lunches) and
perceived frantic waves from the very rear of the long room, where sat
the suave, lawyerly presence of Mike, familiar from previous encounters.
(But, it seems, not familiar enough. I had been severely embarrassed
two evenings previously when I had seen the same sort of waves from
the corner, in the restaurant where a pre-convention gathering for
ArmadilloCon was happening, and had not been able to figure out who the
hell was acting like a semaphore in distress. It had been Mike, and
the only excuse I could offer was that since he hadn't let me know he
was going to be in town--"I had assumed you'd know," he said, casually
assigning to me psychic powers far beyond my true abilities--it
hadn't occurred to me that it could be him waving at me. Or that it
was me that whoever it was was waving at. [Sometimes I wonder if I've
picked the right field. I'll probably not recognize the bloody Pieta
at some critical time like my doctor's orals ...]) 

I'd never met Katherine, but recognized her blondish pixie-like
features from an Austin Chronicle cover from a few weeks back. Today
she was dressed in very baggy O.D.s and a baseball shirt (sorry,
Roger, Heather and other fans, but I didn't notice what team).

Sometimes we discussed books, sometimes we gossiped. Francis will be
disgusted to know that we didn't mention him at all. Mike dismissed
Mark by calling him "a nice guy." Kate expressed her undying love
for Infidel. We dwelt upon "books in the time of love," and the
anecdotes rained down hot and steamy. Since Mike and Kate were
old friends, some of the tales of gonzo bibiophiliac passion were of
people whom I did not know but both of them did. They apologized, and
I replied that it was fun--I could try a bit of deconstruction and
detective work to a new sort of text. Later I realized that what was
really going on was that I had fallen into the latest volume in a
family saga that had already run to 10 volumes or so.

Mike showed us Bruce Sterling's new non-fiction book, _The Hacker
Crackdown_, in which he (Mike) gets a more than flattering writeup. I
won't spoil the fun for you, except for one phrase--"flypaper-brained
polymath." Now if only someone would describe *me* that way ...

A shadow hung over the meeting, due to the absence of Tom Maddox, who
had been due to come down to ArmadilloCon that weekend, but who, it
seems, had suffered unaccountable lapses in his travel arrangements.
We all three professed ourselves to be somewhat annoyed by this turn
of events, and when it came time to turn down a glass for Tom at the
fourth seat at our table, we showed our irritation by turning over an
ashtray instead. But I will hereby make amends by dubbing thee, Tom
Maddox, "raberatus Austintatious honoris causa," in the sure and
certain hope that you will grace our revels next year. [You'd damn
well better. The panels just weren't the same without you.]

At a bit before noon, we left the restaurant (Mike had apparently held
a business meeting there before Kate and I showed up, and the waiter
was wishing he'd vanish) and went our separate ways, Kate and I having
agreed that a post-election lunch would be a marvelous thing.  The
next time I saw Mike, he was talking to a girl in a black catsuit 
and some strategically-placed silver chains, while chaperoned by a
chappie in black tie as the clock struck midnight, but that's another
story ... 

The evolving customary practice seems to be for these sorts of memoirs
to be posted in several parts. And so they will, but the by-laws for this
here cell state that the other parts will be written and posted by the
other attendees. Only fair, I think. Over to you, Mike and Kate!


-- 
"Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector's passion
borders on the chaos of memories" 
                                                -- Walter Benjamin
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