L'Anse aux Meadows National Historic Site

Time to get back to finishing my blogs about our Canada trip last year.

We entered Newfoundland from the North via a short ferry from Blanc Sablon, Quebec to St. Barbe, Newfoundland. We headed to St. Anthony to get our accomodations. We had learned about L'Anse aux Meadows from the Americans we met at Manic 5. The site of the Viking landing in North America, it is both a National Historic Site in Canada and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Naturally, it was on my must see list.

It was a gray, rainy day for our visit and lighting didn't look promising., so I left my good camera in the car and set out to enjoy my day in spite of the weather. These pictures are courtesy of Henry, as he carried his smaller camera with him on our tour.

As you begin your guided walk through the excavated mounds, you pass through this amazing sculpture, The Meeting of Two Worlds. Designed to celebrate the meeting of the European culture with the Aboriginal people who were Newfoundlands first peoples.



The site is grass covered and there are still a few houses in the distance along the sea that will be removed as the original owners have been allowed to remain for their lifetimes. Ultimately the goal is for this site to look much as it did when the Vikings arrived.




We took the guided tour of the site and were so fortunate that our guide was intimately involved - his grandfather had led archaeoloists Helge Ingstad and his wife, Anne Stine Ingstad to a mound on his farm that turned out to be Leif Erickson's Vinland colony. This 11th-century settlement is the first European presence in North America. The excavated ruins are similar to the wood framed peat-turf buildings found in Norse Greenland and Iceland. In some ways the construction is like the sod houses originally built by settlers in the Great Plains - wood timbers with blocks of the peat bog creating thick walls with a sod roof.


Time to get back to finishing my blogs about our Canada trip last year.

This long house is still under construction or they are redoing the peat sod roof, but it gives you an idea of the size and construction of these amazing buildings.




The Vikings only stayed here somewhere between three and ten years, but the archaeologists found a soapstone spindle whorl, a bronze-ringed pin process and toerh iron, bronze, stone, and bone items. I learned that you can get iron ore from peat bogs and the Vikings made nails from the iron found in the peat.

We were lucky to be visiting on a day when public school teachers were visiting for training - so there were hands on demonstrations of making nails, knitting with one needle, and story telling. They have recreated the long houses and the site is a living history with people dressed up as Vikings and showing how the people lived and retelling the ancient stories.

As the day was cold and rainy, I enjoyed sitting by the fire and soaking in the stories and the ambiance of life in the 990-1030 AD time period.

Christmas Letters

In my morning reading:The Plot Lines of our Lives.

Being a self confessed hoarder (I'm working on it . . .) I save Christmas cards. Occasionally I do go back and read them and these Christmas letters provide a lovely history of the joys and struggles we've all faced as we walk through life.

While I can understand why some people may not like these letters - I have found over time that I do, because it allows me to keep up with what is going on with people I care about who live far away.

(P.S. The talk of mimeographed letters in the article - I now do mine using photoshop and a faded version of my Christmas card-hoping this adds a touch of elegance and specialness to my Christmas letters.)

The Changing Face of Science Fiction Conventions

We're at ArmadilloCon 29 this weekend. I remember the first ones. How can it possibly be almost 30 years since the first one? And while things have changed, some of the best things remain the same.

I was introduced to science fiction when I started dating Henry . . . in the late 60's . . . (that also seems like a long time ago) Heinlein was still writing new books, Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Andre Norton, Anne McCaffrey, and Larry Niven were among the writers I was reading at the time. We went to our first science fiction convention: AggieCon held every year at Texas A&M. I remember sleeping in the parking lot in our station wagon (we were poor back then.) I don't remember whether it was 1972 or 1973, but in checking Wikipedia, we were certainly there early in its history. Hard to think back so far, but at that time, we did not have VCR's or DVD players. Cable TV was in its infancy. So one of the drawing points to AggieCon was that each evening, a science fiction film was shown in the big auditorium. The films drew the aggie's to buy their membership and the science fiction fans came to meet their favorite authors. NASA always had a big presence - it was so interesting to hear what was the latest news about the space program. Some of the scientists were also fans and they always gave such interesting (and inspiring) talks. We dreamed about L-5 colonies where people would live and colonize space. Amazing that over 30 years later, we are still struggling with our presence in space. And the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) would do demonstrations outside of medeval fighting - with authentic weapons and costumes, a precursor to the Renaissance Festivals so popular today.

Back to the films, almost every science fiction had a film room going all day, with the new big SF movies shown in the evenings. There were some great and some not so great classic films - and you really could not see them anywhere else. Some of them were ones I remembered seeing as a child. The Rocky Horror Picture Show, made in 1975, became a cult classic and was shown at midnight every year at AggieCon for years.

My early memories of ArmadilloCon was the classic films that were shown . . . they weren't necessarily my favorite, or even ones that I particularly liked, but it was a major part of the programming.

At a Houston convention, I remember literally a mob scene for one of the films. We were asked to leave the film room (I don't remember the reason, but perhaps to make it fair to all the people who wanted to see this particular film.) No one went far from the door and when they let people back in, it was crushing as people were trying literally to push their way into the small room. I can understand easily how people can get crushed and hurt in such situations. We were so lucky no one got hurt that night. While we got in to see whatever film it was . . . someone called the fire marshall - and from that point on, entry was much more orderly and the quotas on how many people were allowed in the room strictly followed.

As vcr's came out, more of the old films were easier for everyone to access. But old episodes of TV shows like Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Babylon 5, Twilight Zone were still hard to get hold of. So the film rooms changed. As time went on, the horror films from Japan quietly changed to the newer anime - which is still popular in the film rooms of cons today.

But now, one can go into any video store or book store and buy many of these old classics. Or they can be ordered online. So while film is still present at cons, it is not as big a draw.

Archon still has a media guest of honor each year - someone who has starred in a science fiction film or TV series. Star Trek characters still attend various Star Trek conventions each year.

ArmadilloCon has gone from being a "bad film" festival to being an amazing literary convention. They host a highly acclaimed writer's workshop before the convention. Many of the guests of honor are now up and coming writers getting their first chance to be GOH. And this year's programing looks to be very interesting.

The dealer's rooms and the art shows are still thriving.

The friends you meet in Fandom are still there.

And it is still so much fun to hear authors talk about their work and other science fiction themes.

Yes . . . thirty years later, I still love a science fiction convention.