View 494 November 26 - December 2, 2007 (original) (raw)
Monday, November 26, 2007
I didn't make it to LOSCON this year. Next year we'll have a book to promote, and I'll book a room at the convention hotel early on. This year it was too much. Thursday we drove out to the desert to have Thanksgiving dinner with Richard and Herrin, the first time in 40 years or so that we haven't had a big spread at Chaos Manor. Friday we drove home. Saturday I woke up with a scratchy throat, my eye messed up (normal with Bell's Palsy -- I am astonished at how many of my friends have had Bell's Palsy at some time in the past) -- and the opening of Don Giovanni looming up Saturday evening. I'm not as fond of the opera as Roberta, particularly since one ear needs to be stopped up or I get really odd harmonics and sound effects; but she's very fond of it, and she wasn't feeling up to going alone, and when I contemplated driving down to the airport hotels -- 45 minutes if everything goes well, more like an hour and a quarter as expected value -- and then driving back and then downtown to the opera, it was just too much. I went back to bed. My apologies to everyone who was expecting me, including the Writers of the Future. I'd hoped to have dinner with WOTF and Tim (another failing: I accepted the dinner invitation without noticing that Don Giovanni opened that night; probably because I'd rather have dinner with Tim and Larry and Laura Brodian Freas and the Writers of the Future gang than go to Giovanni). Fortunately Alex was able to take my place at dinner. He's pretty good company.
So today I have the blahs, the column and mailbag are due, it's already late in the day, and I now know the rest of the Mamelukes story and I want to get it written. And perversely, I keep flashing on scenes for a novel set in the Higher Education universe...
We interrupt this reverie for a commercial. It's high pollen season. If you use
this gadget it will help a lot. It flushes out the pollens. I get a couple of bucks if you buy it through this site, but I'd recommend it without that (and in fact did; they got so much business from here they set this up).
While we're on commercials, it's year end and a good time to renew your subscription (or subscribe if you haven't), but if it hasn't been a very good year, I thoroughly understand. I'm not after anyone's eating or rent money. Beer money, yes.
And now I'm off to get the mailbag and column done so I can get upstairs. I have a goal of 4 pages of Mamelukes a day until the story is done. It's a good story too. So is the other one. I do like telling stories...
For the record, I have found nothing that will fix the problem of Vista not finding either the DVD-ROM or DVD-RW drive when I put a CD in either of those drives. I am going to experiment by putting in a brand new Plextor drive to see what will happen; that should be in the column.
Regarding the makeover, the consensus seems to be not to do anything drastic. I still need to organize this place along more modern line, so that I can refer selected items to digg and del.icio.us and such like (and so others can). I also want at some point to have a way I can, at my leisure, and a little at a time when the mood strikes me, go through past mail and view and put together some links to past work, and make some of it up into reports. For those who don't know about the reports page, there is a wealth of information referenced there, some frivolous, some humorous (if you haven't seen dogs in elk you really need to) and some deadly serious.
What I need is an easy way to do some of the stuff that "modern blogging" software does, without really making any fundamental changes in the way this site works. I will never have a "standard blog" with everyone commenting on me and each other, I will never go to "blogological order" because I don't think that way, and I probably won't put up many whizbangs. I suppose there are a lot of good ones out there, but I haven't acquired new ones for years.
Suggestions on what I should do about organizing welcome, but I warn you, first comes fiction, then the column, then keeping up these pages, and finally some kind of reorganization, and I don't have quite as much energy as I used to. On the other hand, I would like to make life easier for subscribers.
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THE H. BEAM PIPER MEMORIAL PROJECT
On Friday morning, I and Dennis Frank left Boalsburg at 9:00 a.m. to meet with Bill Shauf of the Altoona Memorial Studio. Dennis had worked up two nice designs for Beam's new granite headstone based on the conversations we had during our previous visit to Altoona Memorial Studio. We were meeting with Mr. Shauaf to go over our plans, pick out an appropriate granite headstone and work up a price.
We are working towards dedicating the memorial headstone and having an unveiling in the summer of 2008. As soon as we have finalized the memorial design, we'll start collecting donations for the stone itself. We are hoping to involve the mayor of Altoona and Piper fans from all over the U.S., who will be there to join in our celebration of H. Beam Piper, an author who has brought us all so much reading pleasure.
The day was slightly overcast but had a real winter bite -- temperatures in Altoona hovered around 27 degrees. The drive was pleasant, allowing us to catch up on current projects, my new War World novel which was just published and several Paratime projects. I recently finished the first draft of the new Kalvan novel ("The Fireseed Wars") and a new Paratime short story -- The Transtemporal Man. Dennis does all the background research for the Kalvan Time-Line maps that appear in each book; the new book shifts a lot of the action to the New York City area (Agrys City) and the Upper Middle Kingdoms (Great Lakes area) and we are working out the details of several new maps.
We arrived at the Studio at 10:00 a.m., right on the dot. Bill was waiting for us and we went right to work; after viewing a number of samples, we finally decided to go with a gray granite stone with an unfinished surface as something Beam, a true outdoors man, might have liked. We decided the black and white etching of Beam would be done in an oval of black granite set into the gray stone with the epitaph underneath. The oval will feature H. Beam Piper's head-and-shoulders taken from the painting done by SF artist Alan Gutierrez, which is the proposed cover art for my upcoming H. Beam Piper biography ("H. Beam Piper: A Biography" from McFarland & Co.). It is now listed on Amazon with a publication date of March 30, 2008.
We left Bill Shauf a disc with a high resolution scan of the original artwork; Bill will e-mail us some sample designs as soon as he meets with his artist. When we have a final design, I'll post it on my website and Dennis will post it on his for everyone to view.
Neither of us had realized the many grades of granite and other choices (flower pots, etc.) that faced us. Pricing headstones was a first for both of us and quite informative! As with most things, the more attractive and stronger granites cost the most: I suspect we'll choose the Rock of Ages granite as it's the only one with a warranty against cracking. The Memorial Studio offers a very reasonable insurance policy against vandalism, which will be included in the purchase price. Since the demise of the railroad yards, Altoona is no longer the safe harbor it was during Beam's youth... And Fairview Cemetery has seen much better days; fortunately, the Piper grave site is at the front of the cemetery, underneath a security camera, across the street from the Altoona Hospital.
After our meeting with Bill, we went to the Altoona Public Library to go over the old telephone directories for more information on Beam's Altoona residences. It was a good choice: we discovered an unknown Piper family residence at 320 Howard Avenue in the 1906-07 Directory, when H. Beam Piper was only 3 years old. The next surviving phone directory was the 1910 edition which listed Beam's father, Herbert Orr, at 400 Wordsworth. The 400 block is at the end of Wordsworth, about a quarter of a mile from a small stream, and was declared a flood plain in the 1970's, according to a local neighbor we questioned, and all the houses were bulldozed. On our previous trip to Altoona, we found evidence of several foundations on the 400 block, but none far enough from the "road" to be 407 Wordsworth.
The source of the 407 Wordsworth address is the heading of a September 21, 1939 letter from Piper to Ferd Coleman, which Don Coleman has preserved and photocopied for use in the Piper biography. We were unable to find any evidence of the 407 Wordsworth in the address in the 1939 telephone directory (unfortunately, there was no 1940 directory either on the shelves or on microfilm). The 1941 directory listing for Herbert O. Piper gives the Piper address as 400 Wordsworth. It's our conclusion that Beam mixed up the two address in his 1939 letter, after just having moved from 400 Wordsworth to 407 Howard Avenue.
We did make one serendipitous discovery: we found Beam's grandparents' address in the 1896-97 telephone directory! It listed the Piper address (under Mary E. Piper, widow of Henry Beam P.) as 2110 W. Chestnut Avenue. Also listed as occupants of 2110 W. Chestnut Ave. were Henry A. Piper, Herbert O. Piper (Beam's father), James E. Piper, Katherine E. Piper and William G. Piper. H. Beam Piper was named after his paternal grandfather, Dr. Henry Beam Piper, who fought in the Civil War and was also known as H. Beam Piper. It's obvious Beam was named after his famous grandfather: why he kept it a secret and told people his first name was Horace is anyone's guess...?
Our next visit was to the 320 Howard Street address which was near Fairview Cemetery, a location we've walked several times. Sadly, Piper's first home no longer exists and, like all three of the other known H. Beam Piper Altoona residences, is the site of a parking lot. In this case, a SubExpress deli parking lot...
We were disappointed, but not surprised; another reason why the Piper memorial headstone is necessary and important.
Also at the library we located three other residences (that have been torn down) on the 1950's 1314 8th Street Piper residence. Most of the foundations are long gone, which is why we were interested in finding out how many other 8th street residences were on the 1300 block. The corner house, 1300 8th Street, is still standing. Beside it is a large garage, with two two-door garage doors, that looks as if it pre-dates the 1950s. It's a small block and it's impossible at this time without a photo or map showing individual residences to locate the exact position of Beam's final Altoona residence.
Our final stop was 2110 West Chestnut; not an easy location to find due to intersecting rail lines and dead end streets. To add to the confusion of finding places, many Altoona streets lack street signs at intersections. We finally located the house on an unmarked corner; it's a three story red-brick stately Victorian home, fallen on hard times. The neighborhood, like much of Altoona, is depressed and most of these stately old Victorians in the 2100 block of Chestnut have been broken up into smaller apartments and boarding houses. The Piper family home is a large old building in what was once one of the better Altoona neighborhoods. When we got out of the car and examined the house, we discovered several "Condemned" signs on the front door on dating back to 2007. It appears we were just in time to visit it before the wrecking crew arrived! Regardless, we were ecstatic as this was the first Piper residence of any kind either in Altoona or Williamsport that has not been razed and turned into a parking lot...
On our next trip to Altoona to finalize the Piper memorial design, we will take along cameras so that we can document it and add it to Dennis's website along with all the other Piper/Lord Kalvan related pictures he has up. Here's the link to Dennis's website: http://users.penn.com/~djfrank/Lord_Kalvan/Lord_Kalvan_page.html
John F. Carr www.Hostigos.com <http://www.hostigos.com/>
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