Sendak supplemental

In my praise of my favorite Maurice Sendak work yesterday, I managed to forget that I first encountered and became fond of it in the form of his illustrations for picture books with words by other writers: the amusing process-oriented infinitive-filled definitions of A Hole Is To Dig by Ruth Krauss (which courtesy of the publisher you may browse here) and the etiquette parodies of What Do You Say, Dear? and What Do You Do, Dear? by Sesyle Joslin (similarly here and here).

These light witty drawings appeal to me much more than the most renowned Sendak of his Great Mythic Period, the likes of Where the Wild Things Are and In the Night Kitchen.

Bruce Pelz remembered

rwl reminds us that it's the tenth anniversary of the death of Bruce Pelz: a giant presence in many areas of science fiction fandom - convention running, club building, costuming, filking, apahacking, fanzine collecting ... He was also the editor of one of the first Tolkien fanzines, I Palantir. And, a librarian by profession, one of the librarians whose presence in fandom convinced me that I was making the right choice for my own profession, though I've never met through library work any other librarians at all like Bruce.

I commented to Richard's entry:

Among the many things I would like to talk with Bruce about is experience with cruises. Bruce and Elayne had discovered these as a form of vacation fairly late in life, and he was an enthusiastic convert to their pleasures. B. and I finally got on one ourselves a couple years after his death, a week on a small ship in Alaska, and we had a wonderful time, though for various reasons we haven't been able to repeat the experience. Now it's too late for me to share his enthusiasm with him.

Bruce taught me to play mahjong (a harrowing experience: he was not a patient teacher) and to appreciate ice wine. And of course even across vast expanses of time and haze I remember Lasfapacon at his home, the Tower.

I am pleased that I was able to attend his LASFS memorial session, a special meeting at Westercon two months after his death.