Cupcakecon Report

Yes, I have been Off The Grid for an entire week. If something happened which you want to be sure I know about, please leave a comment here.

I wrote up Cupcakecon as I went, in a somewhat elliptical fashion. Thusly:

Cupcakecon: Prologue

Arrive Madison airport -- Curse Delta for charging $25 to check a bag. -- Reading With Custer's Cavalry. -- Photograph of Comanche, (allegedly) the only living thing found on the battlefield after Little Big Horn. -- I buy a book of logic puzzles in Minneapolis. -- Tucson after dark. -- Five miles is longer than you think. -- The dithering dance of the juvenile rabbit. -- Having not been eaten by grues, I arrive safely at Endicott West.

Cupcakecon Day 1

Scenic horses. -- I startle a ground squirrel. Twice. -- The implausibility of the Tucson Mountains. -- Carriages at the Tucson airport. -- Arrival of Bear and Leah. -- Food, food, and more food. -- The Horrifying Habanero Incident. -- We encounter a stunningly gorgeous Malamute. -- Portrait of four authors in a hot tub.

Cupcakecon Day 2

We decide it is not a smoke detector, but a sin detector.

Cupcakes! -- Chocolate chipotle OMG. [N.b., for those of you in the Tucson area, this is the Red Velvet Cupcakery, which I cannot recommend highly enough.]

Gates Pass. -- Entish saguaros. -- Sonora Desert Museum. -- Do not feed the coyotes. (Also, do not teach coyotes to operate motor vehicles.) -- Petting a gopher snake. -- Mountain lions. -- Black bear. -- Mexican wolves. -- Can you spot the screech owl in this picture? (Hint.) -- The coati is busy and does not wish to see you. -- Otter. -- Beavers. Plural. -- Bighorn sheep. -- Small creatures sleeping underground. -- Cold hummingbirds. -- RAIN.

Beth's ponies. -- Nefer accepts my adulation. -- Saguaros with rainbow. -- Portrait of the author as a scale referent.

Dinner out.

Concerned Cat Is Concerned.

Cupcakecon Day 3

A white tree with a weeping habit.

Bisbee. -- Sacramento Pit and Lavender Pit. -- Delving too greedily and too deep. -- Quest for lunch. -- Leah and I learn about horchata. -- The Copper Queen Hotel. -- Angel gates and fluffy kitty. -- Stairs and steep places. -- French bulldog.

Tombstone. -- Clydesdales & Percherons. -- The Crystal Palace. -- Astonishing roulette wheel. -- We embrace the kitsch. -- Not Doc Holliday. -- I buy books.* -- Leah buys a parasol. -- Bear buys a wallet. -- Emma Explains The Gunfight. -- The Bird Cage. -- Still not Doc Holliday. -- Also not Josie Marcus. -- Tombstone's gilded Black Mariah. -- Duelling organs. -- Mrs. Fly and her Great Danes. -- Victorian racy photos w. Very Patient Dog under the pool table. -- Prostitutes named Cuckoo and Copperhead. -- Not Josie Marcus' crib. -- STILL not Doc Holliday. -- Oh John Ringo no!

The language of squirrels is entirely made up of profanity.

Portrait of three authors in a hot tub.

Cupcakecon Day 4

It is good to have wings. -- Coyote and javelina tracks.

Colossal Cave. -- A bull for Bull. -- 70 degree cave. -- Nineteenth century vandals. -- The C.C.C. -- Treacherous stairs and bad jokes.

Beth's ponies, part 2. -- Portrait of the editor as a scale referent. -- Beth longes Cai; Cory licks Bear. -- Bear rides Surprise; Cory licks me. -- I ride Surprise; Cory licks Bear. -- Surprise is 16.2 hands. A strapping wench. -- Beth is The One True Biped; I am a mere encumbrance. -- We hinder in a helping way. -- Volunteer Dog gets biscuits.

On the way home, my sunblock tries to kill us both, but fails.

Ravening Wolverine Is Ravening. -- Alarmed Cat Is Alarmed.

Portrait of four authors in a hot tub.

Bear and Mole were sisters.

Cupcakecon Day 5

Croissants! om nom nom. -- Nancy Drew lit crit. -- The awesomeness that is ZZ Top.

The Chevy Diva. -- We achieve an Amanda.

New Mexican cuisine FTW. -- Inferior cupcakes. -- We go in search of a climbing gym. -- A brief and unintentional tour of the old barrio. -- South Toule Street is well hidden, but we penetrate its mysteries. -- At higher elevations, it is harder to go up walls without DYING. -- We provide climber groupies for a woman we have never met.

I resurrect old skills and enact a lady's maid.

Quiet evening in for Mole.

Cupcakecon Day 6

The Tucson Festival of Books. -- Signing. -- Airedale with saddlebags. -- Sun. -- Corgi with saddlebags. -- Food. -- Panel. -- Signing. -- Signing. 4 p.m. In a tent. Facing west. -- The yellow face it burns us.

And yet, I am not sunburned. Neutrogena 100+ sunblock FTW.

Guatemalan cuisine also FTW.

Portrait of three authors in a hot tub and two authors in deck chairs. -- Short stories these days: "They lie there limply, twitching a little." "With their eyes shut, audibly chanting England, England, England."

Cupcakecon Day 7

Awake at 4:45 in the morning. -- Almost but not quite worth it for the stars. -- We drive to the airport. -- They call it a blind spot for a REASON, dipshit. -- The airplane does a good imitation of a sardine tin. -- Reading about Doc Holliday, as I do not want to start shouting at Wyatt Earp in public. -- Amazingly good babies. -- HOME.

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*Gary L. Roberts, Doc Holliday: The Life and Legend; Casey Tefertiller, Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend; Allen Barra, Inventing Wyatt Earp: His Life and Many Legends. One begins to sense a theme.

UBC: With Custer's Cavalry

Fougera, Katherine Gibson. With Custer's Cavalry. 1942. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986.

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This book is the memoir of Katherine Garrett Gibson; since it has no critical apparatus, it's impossible to tell how much of what we get is what she herself wrote and how much she was edited and/or expanded by her daughter (Katherine Gibson Fougera). I don't say this because I suspect Fougera of misrepresenting her mother's text, but just to signal that there is no way to tell.

Katherine Garrett Gibson went west to live with her sister, Mollie Garrett MacIntosh, a year or two before Little Big Horn. As Mollie was the wife of one of Custer's lieutenants (also killed at L.B.H.), Katherine's narrative is full of the officers of the Seventh Cavalry; General Custer himself, with his brother Tom, teaches her how to ride and shoot, and her friends are all officers who will die at L.B.H. and their wives. (Her own eventual husband, another of Custer's lieutenants, would have been at L.B.H. except for a premonition which caused her to nag him into rejecting the transfer.)

Katherine Gibson and her narrative are very much products of her time, with all the racism, classism, sexism, and other toxic ideologies that implies; this is not a deep or thoughtful look at Custer's Seventh Cavalry and its fate (she clearly idolizes Elizabeth Custer, and she remains unthinkingly loyal to the closed society she married into, even when her narrative itself suggests points of criticism). But it is keenly observed and full of fascinating details: my favorite is Senora Nash, the Mexican wife of one of the sergeants, the best laundress, cook, and midwife in the regiment--who is revealed upon her death to have been a man. (Katherine Gibson is baffled by this, and offers an elaborate explanation about a Mexican bandit escaping justice and Sergeant Nash's gluttony.) And since apparently I'm researching something to do with Custer, this was an excellent book to have on the plane.

pointer

Alaya Dawn Johnson (whose awesome novel Moonshine is coming out in May) has an excellent guest post on Justine Larbalestier's blog, about people of color on book covers.