July 31, 2014
This is what my participant’s badge looked like when I checked in this morning:
“But I’m not the winner,”I said. I wasn’t. I placed second. I was thrilled about it, but a blue ribbon emblazoned with WINNER was inaccurate and a bit painful.
“Yes, you are,” Barbara, the staff person said. “You took second place. You all got ribbons. Scholarship winners get ribbons too.”
Shouldn’t they be red, then? Well, it turns out the faculty wear red ribbons on their badges. Couldn’t it say something other than, “Winner?” “Placer,” maybe? Well, no, that looks like a type of gold ore. Anyway, it seemed grandiose and embarrassing and when I got back to my hotel room this afternoon I removed it.
I did notice that people looked at my badge twice, once, then again (and then at me) when they registered a blue ribbon. Isn’t that interesting?
I am thrilled, by the way, that I placed second because I win money (making our tax accountant happy) and because I feel pretty validated.
(l)Fran, board member and room elf, with Scott
Scott Hutchins is the novel instructor. So far, he’s good. Where he excelled, though, was in the staff reading he gave today after lunch. Hutchins’s book has an artificial intelligence in it, and for his reading his had programmed in the AI’s part of the dialogue from a section. He read the human’s part, and his laptop read the AI’s part. (Okay, no, not really, but that was the illusion.) It worked beautifully. Then he read from a tragic, harrowing and hilarious part of the book that takes place between two humans.
Malin Alegria is the YA instructor, and she read from one of her Latina YA comedies. Read? It was a four-star performances, with Alegria doing the voices of her characters. Fall-out-of-your-chair funny.
Malin Alegria
Fabiola, Alegria’s POV character, comes to a startling realization
Charlotte Gulick was the director of the conference for four years. Several years ago she took a job in Austin, Texas. She is back this year as an instructor. She read a touching personal essay about the nature of faith and families.
Charlotte Gulick
Scott Hutchins