Went to a writers conference yesterday here in town. It is put on once a year by the writing group my wife founded. She withdrew from the group after the last conference because she didn't want to keep running it, and wanted to spend more time with her family. That and the fact that there were internal political struggles going on. The same kind there eventually are in any small group and she didn't want to do that kind of fighting with people she liked. Unfortunately, since she is friends with most of the people who are "running" the group now and they talk to her regularly she can't completely avoid the stresses.
At any rate the conference was moderately interesting. One of the main stresses was that the person who was in charge of getting people to speak refused to deal with anyone else and got only people she wanted, which meant that the entire conference was directed to character development and sales until one of the other people move in and added some different speakers. Which as one can imagine led to some very cool relations between members of the ruling junta. Unfortunately, the one who screwed up the original invites to speak resigned and then unresigned and now insists that she will absolutely control who speaks next (if there is a next) year. The other members "don't want to make her mad." I wonder if the other members of the Politburo had the same feelings about Stalin?
I think I've said it before, but just offer middle level writers lunch and a place to hussle their books and they will role over and do just about anything. No need to pay them in money. Just food and a table to put their books on.
The number of writers there who are proudly announced christians and the number who are or were preachers of one real denomination or another, is amazing to me. Perhaps it is just where I live. One of the former ministers, Robert W. Birch even has a series of erotic novels.
From there we went to a concert of Blood Sweat and Tears that is part of a concert series my mother-in-law gets us tickets to every year. Generally, the concerts are very good particularly the classical ones. In this case however the band (the name of which is apparently owned by some business entity completely unconnected with say any real creative artists, since none of the original members are in the current group or for that matter even mentioned) was not how you say? Good. It was its own tribute band. I was a little surprised at how weak they were. But not all that disappointed since in my opinion they were not that cool when they were "cool."
