Three Interesting Things

1. In what will come as no surprise to those who have read Hot Bartender, I find stories of folks who find themselves in a different dating scenario than they thought they were in fascinating.  Brandon Taylor's dive into both the online discussion of West Elm Caleb and also Sense and Sensibility is fascinating. 

2. The ALA Youth Media Awards were this week, and there are some amazing titles on the list. 

3. This tribute to Louie Anderson and the ways his relationship with his parents informed so much of his work is wonderful. 

In Person Cons and Acessbility

I want to draw attention to this post by Mari Ness, who had hoped to attend Discon Iii in DC here last month and talk a little about my experience planning a workshop for the RWA convention.

As Ness's post points out a lot, lot, lot of conventions are held in hotels that are old. Partly that's space, partly that's price, some things happen in the various planning stages that are out of folks control. Discon in particular was originally intended to be held at two hotels, and then one of the hotels went bankrupt in the pandemic, so there are lots of things that happened that the various planners could not have planned for ahead of time. 

But one key point in this, is that communication of the issues is key.

The RWA convention, at the time I was planning my workshop was a large behemoth. So as I invited speakers, I was asked to have them fill out a form that asked, among other things, what accommodations they needed, and then that was passed on to me. 

I then communicated the info I had been given about the layout of the space to all my speakers.

And then I arrived early to make sure it really was set up the way I had been told. Now my workshop was first of the day, which gave me some time to alert folks if things needed to be changed.

But here's what I couldn't plan for. One of the escalators that made moving between the lobby and the meeting rooms easy was broken. Only one, but one that meant if you needed assistance now you had to use the elevator. The elevators in that hotel were not sufficient for an entire convention of people all trying to hit the same three meeting levels at the same time.

We were super lucky, only one panelist was late. (I had not warned the speakers but I am a big believer in starting on time and letting people join the stage when they get there.) And that panelist, as it turned out had sprained her ankle earlier that week and so had had to wait for an elevator. 

So I say this not to pat myself on the back. But here's an obvious thing I could have done. I could have checked in one more time with everyone to see if any of their accessibility needs had changed.

As someone who wore a knee brace for the San Antonio convention, I know accessibility changes. 

But back to Ness's post. Yes, in person cons need to do a better job of thinking about accessibility at the hotel booking stage. But also, cons need to be clear about what the space looks like, and what challenges it presents, because you cannot ask people to pay for an experience they can't actually enjoy. Or fully enjoy.

And I think people want to put a happy spin on it, but really, saying hey, this is the space we have, let us know if there were things we can do to make it better is great. 

Saying oh, it's all compliant, there will be no problems, is not. 

Three Interesting Things

1. Despite having read a historical romance last year about undersea cables, I somehow had not considered how that might be an issue post volcano in Tonga. Also, here's a lit of some resources if you are in a position to send funds here are some folks looking to provide help to Tonga. 

2. This teenager discovered that he could get vaccinated without parental consent if he was willing to travel a bit, and is hoping to make this option more widely available.  

3. This article looks at the tennis dude who's immigration issues made a lot of news.  I think in addition to the rules are for others stuff, there's a point that immigration is often challenging and capricious for people who are not followed by reporters and it would also be nice if that were not true.  

A Knitting Allegory

I picked a sweater pattern that had unusual modular construction that let to a boxy but cute sweater. I have a tendency to picky boxy patterns and then wish they were less boxy even though a pattern doing what it promised is a me problem not a pattern problem. 

I had to reknit the front three times due to a reading problem on my part. 

And then I got to the sleeves. The pattern had you pick up the entire side and then decrease to make a very wide dolman-esque sleeve. I don't mind a dolman sleeve. But when the sweater is boxy, the dolman sleeve means a sweater that falls off your shoulders. So I figured, okay, I'll just decrease faster. 

And well, some of you know that if you decrease to much you basically get bunched knitting, so yeah, that happened. But I figured, well, it will block out. Or maybe if I pick up for the second sleeve the counterweight will balance it out. So I did that. And tried it on. If by balance we mean both sides bunched, it worked. I spent an evening trying to convince myself I wouldn't care. The bunching would be under my arms so who even would see it?

And then I ripped back and tried decreasing more than the pattern called for but less than I had initially tried. Less bunchy. 

And then I had a revelation. I could essentially just knit the sides together and start with less sleeve. Because the problem was I was trying to take a structure and make it something else, and instead I could change the construction. 

Of course then I overcorrected and made a very snug sleeve but well live and learn. 

So I called this an allegory because sometimes the problem stems from picking the wrong pattern, or from expecting that by adjusting a thing we can make it into something it wasn't intended to be. 

And sometimes you just have to rip back and try something else.

Three Interesting Things

1. As anyone who still thinks about that time a TV design show glued hay (an allergen!) to the wall of a children's playroom, and thought about the risks involved with TV design shows (Free makeover yay!  You might hate it, no!), this newsletter from Meg Conley about her friend's bad experience and also empire building, might be of interest. 

2. I found this article fairly honest about the challenges that reliable masking, staffing, and testing pose to keeping schools in person.  (I wish we were not calling remote school closed. But that's a discussion for another day.) 

3. This couple thought they were buying a blender, instead it turns out to be a new tower in the cat perch dominance standoff of their household.