Archive for July 24th, 2024

Things I didn’t know about until today.

Wednesday, July 24th, 2024

But which I find interesting:

1. The Romance Writers of America filed for bankruptcy at the end of May.

2. The RWA convention is in Austin this year. Maybe. According to the article, it was supposed to take place at the end of July, but is now scheduled for October. Except, when I went to the registration page, it doesn’t seem to be allowing registrations.

Edited to add 7/26: conference registration is now open. Dates are October 11th – 13th, and the cost is $349 ($399 if you’re not a member of RWA).

How did they manage to go bankrupt? The way you’d expect: they angered a bunch of their members, who are now ex-members.

Today, the group’s membership hovers at around 2,000, and it owes approximately $3 million in hotel contracts for the group’s past annual conferences.

I kind of want to keep this post short-ish, so I’m not going into details about how RWA made so many people angry: the linked article discusses the Courtney Milan affair (which I remember reading about as it was unfolding: as much as I hate linking to Wikipedia, that entry fills in some missing details) and the 2021 VIVIAN controversy (I know, two Wiki links in a row, but the primary source link is broken and the other links are to sites I don’t link to, or are not good sources). You can click through if you want more details on those issues: I just find the collapse of RWA interesting, and a little sad. I feel like writers need strong organizations to protect them from predatory publishers and publishing practices, so I’ll be unhappy to see RWA go.

“It would have been easier if I could have just said, ‘Well, deeply racist organization gone forever,’” she said. “But that’s not the story as I saw it. For me, and for a lot of people in Romancelandia, this was a group where they had made lifelong friendships, where there were very promising signs of progress in terms of redressing past mistakes.”

And if RWA goes away, that’s going to reduce my chances to network and sell my gunsmith romance series.

(Also, another year, another Hugo controversy. But I already knew about that, and I don’t have any sites I’m willing to link to. Very short version: someone was trying to buy votes, and did it so clumsily a seven-year-old could have figured it out.)

3. On a happier note, at least for me – because I hate the Olympics – the IOC is threatening to revoke Salt Lake City’s hosting status for the Winter 2034 games.

The IOC seems to be upset that…wait for it…the United States government, specifically Congress and the Department of Justice, are looking into how the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) handled the case of the Chinese swimmers.

But many American athletes say they don’t trust WADA’s procedures and want probes to continue.
“What the athletes think, they want transparency,” said Katie Ledecky, the star U.S. swimmer, who spoke at a separate press conference on Wednesday. “They want further answers to the questions that still remain.”
In a statement, Travis Tygart head of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) blasted the IOC for linking the China scandal to Salt Lake City’s bid.
“It is shocking to see the IOC itself stooping to threats in an apparent effort to silence those seeking answers,” Tygart said. “It seems more apparent than ever that WADA violated the rules and needs accountability and reform.”

…

“Russia and China have been too big to fail in [WADA’s] eyes and they get a different set of rules than the rest of the world does unfortunately,” Tygart said.

I’m excited about this. I hope the IOC pulls the Salt Lake City bid, I hope they have to frantically scramble to find a new host city, I hope they completely fail because nobody wants to host the Olympics because they are a giant money pit with no financial returns, and I hope some folks from the IOC and WADA wind up in prison.

Posted in Books, Sports | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: July 24, 2024.

Wednesday, July 24th, 2024

John Mayall, massively influential British bluesman. NYT (archived).

Though he played piano, organ, guitar and harmonica and sang lead vocals in his own bands with a high, reedy tenor, Mr. Mayall earned his reputation as “the godfather of British blues” not for his own playing or singing but for recruiting and polishing the talents of one gifted young lead guitarist after another.
In his most fertile period, between 1965 and 1969, those budding stars included Eric Clapton, who left to form the band Cream and eventually became a hugely successful solo artist; Peter Green, who left to found Fleetwood Mac; and Mick Taylor, who was snatched from the Mayall band by the Rolling Stones.
A more complete list of the alumni of Mr. Mayall’s band of that era, known as the Bluesbreakers, reads like a Who’s Who of British pop royalty. The drummer Mick Fleetwood and the bassist John McVie were also founding members of Fleetwood Mac. The bassist Jack Bruce joined Mr. Clapton in Cream. The bassist Andy Fraser was an original member of Free. Aynsley Dunbar would go on to play drums for Frank Zappa, Journey and Jefferson Starship.

As you know, Bob, music – especially music of this period – is outside of my area of competence, so I am going to defer to valued commenter pigpen51 for additional comment on Mr. Mayall and his legacy.

Also outside of my area of competence (Hello, pigpen51! Really, I should give you posting privileges here.): Duke Fakir, of the Four Tops.

His family said in a statement that the cause was heart failure.

“Heart failure,” MacAdoo said in an almost sorrowful tone.
“Heart seizure,” Haere said automatically.
“What’s the difference?”
‘Everyone dies of heart failure.”

–Ross Thomas, Missionary Stew

Lewis H. Lapham, of “Harper’s Magazine” and “Lapham’s Quarterly”.

This might just be me, and I may very well be speaking ill of the dead. But when I see someone described as a “scholarly patrician”, I mentally translate that to: someone who thinks they are better and smarter than you are, therefore they know better than you how to run your life, and believe the government should enforce their point of view on you.

Finally, one I’ve been holding for a couple of days and want to get in: Robert L. Allen, “writer, activist and academic”. I knew of Mr. Allen because he wrote the book on “The Port Chicago Mutiny“, which was proceeded by the Port Chicago explosion.

There were a large number of black soldiers stationed at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine, loading and unloading ammunition. Safety procedures may not have been what they should have been. On July 17, 1944, the E.A. Bryan exploded during the loading process. It was a massive explosion which destroyed everything within 1,000 feet, including another ship. 320 people died, many of them black sailors.

White officers were given leave to recover, but Black sailors were soon ordered to continue their dangerous work loading munitions at a nearby port. They did not know why the ships had exploded — a cause has never been determined — and 258 refused to keep working, leading an admiral to threaten to execute them by firing squad, Mr. Allen said.

…

Of the 258 men, 208 returned to work, but they were still court-martialed for disobeying orders. The 50 others, in a summary court-martial, were convicted of conspiracy to commit mutiny and sentenced to eight to 15 years of confinement.

Interestingly, Mr. Allen’s death apparently prompted the Navy to exonerate all the sailors last week.

“The secretary of the Navy called to offer condolences,” Ms. Carter said in an interview, referring to Carlos Del Toro. “And he said, ‘I’m going to do more than that — I’m going to exonerate these sailors.’”

I haven’t read Mr. Allen’s book, though I kind of want to. I know about the book and the incident from a long piece John Marr wrote in the late and very much missed “Murder Can Be Fun” zine (issue #11).

Posted in Books, History, Music, Obits | 1 Comment »