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Mo Starkey is a hero. She sawthis wonderful painting inPlanet 51 while at Gallifrey and Jean Martin tooka photo and Mo touched it up for thecover. I have the best friends!I am happy to report that M isout of the hospital! SaBean and Jaybrought her home on Monday. It’s stillnot the best of news, they say thatshe’s going to have to have surgeryin 6 to 8 months, once she’s gainedsome weight back, and then she’llhave a fairly long recovery from that,but it’s good news for the rst time ina while. SaBean’s been pretty ippedout, which is always hopeful. She’sbeen through a lot this last year or so.It’s looking like they’ll be settling intoSanta Barbara County pretty muchpermanently, which makes me happy.
Tom Becker is a damn nice guy.He’s the current lay-out dude for SF/SF, and he’s in charge of the up- coming Potlatch in Sunnyvale, the land of my living! Here’s an article on that self-same convention, com- ing to the Domain Hotel! 
A Place Where Readers and Writers Meet onCommon Ground
Tom Becker 
potlatch
n. [Chinook Jargon, fr. Nootka
 patshatl
, giving.]
1.
a ceremonial feastof the Indians of the northwest coast,marked by the host’s lavish distributionof gifts.
2.
 
 Northwest 
: a social eventof celebration.
3.
 
Contemporary
: agathering devoted to the discussion,creation and appreciation of modernspeculative ction.
4.
 
California
: aplace where readers and writers meet oncommon ground.
I missed Potlatch 1 in Seattle in1992 (and Janecon the year before),spending time instead on otherdistractions like moving, gettingmarried, working 20-30 hours a weekon a Worldcon, and shipping a productat work. Then I heard that Potlatch was coming down to the Bay Area andI got involved. The history page on thePotlatch web site says Tom Whitmore was the chair, but what I remember was that Debbie Notkin ran it. Most of the meetings were at Debbie’s house.Any committee that would let meon was a pretty loose affair. There wereall sorts of characters on it, such as Jeanne Bowman and Alan Bostick.Loren McGregor (who was in the BayArea at that time) and Debbie werethe voices of reason, the stabilizinginuences when people got overlydramatic. Except that we all lookedup to Debbie, while any time Lorensaid anything, no matter how wise anddiplomatically stated (and he really wasquite good), several people would jumpon him. It was explained to me that he was a very divisive personality.But however wacky it was, thecommittee worked. People came up with a lot of great ideas and madethem happen. There was a strongcommitment to creating a Bay AreaPotlatch that would have its ownpersonality. One of the ideas wasto have a Book of Honor. The rstPotlatch in Seattle intentionally did nothave a Guest of Honor. They wantedPotlatch to be about science ction,not celebrities. We liked that idea, but we wanted something to celebrate,something to bring together the readersand writers at the con, something we would all have in common. Obviouslyit had to be a book. We discussed whatkind of book. Someone, I think Debbie,said the Book of Honor should be abook that everyone knows about butnot many people have read. I still thinkthat is brilliant. It very quickly lead tothe realization that
Frankenstein 
wouldbe perfect for our rst Book of Honor.
art from Genevieve
 
And so it happened. At the con, we hada Book of Honor panel, with a bunchof people on it. The one who stole theshow was a retired community collegeenglish teacher, a fellow named ArtWidner, who really knew his stuff.Since then every Bay Area Potlatch hashad a Book of Honor, and the traditionnow has been taken up by Seattle andPortland.One of the primary reasons Potlatch was started in Seattle was to helpsupport the Clarion West Writers’ Workshop. Every Potlatch has abenet auction. The money raisedin the auction goes to scholarshipsfor students who would otherwisenot be able to afford to go to ClarionWest. I’ve always liked this aspectof Potlatch. It’s an investment thatpays off as each new Clarion Westgraduate creates more innovative andhigh quality science ction for me toread. And the auction itself can be alot of fun, especially if the auctioneersknow what they are doing. At PotlatchII, Jeanne Bowman brought along afriend of hers, who she met at HarbinHot Springs, a clothing-optionalspa in Sonoma County. Jeanne was occasionally working there as amasseuse, and Ellen Klages was upthere writing a book about the place.We met Ellen at Jeanne’s place, and Ithink she came to a party at our place,and she said she’d like to help withthe auction. What I didn’t know at thetime was that she was seriously intostand-up comedy and had a real talentfor it. So she shows up at the auctionand starts helping to auction stuff off.Initially everyone’s asking “who is thatperson” but then they’d start laughingand soon they were saying “Look! I gotthis fabulous Freddie Baer t-shirt foronly $100.” Fast-forward to now andEllen is not only the all-time championauctioneer for Clarion West and forthe Tiptree Award, she is a damn-ne writer with a Nebula, a Locus, and abunch of other awards she’s earned.And to think I knew her back when.For Potlatch II I signed up to do thelocal guide, which we decided wouldbe called the Native Guide. As partof my research I went up to Berkeleya couple of times and walked all thestreets around the hotel, making mapsand notes about local restaurants anduseful shops. I was visiting with myfolks, who live in Berkeley, and mymom told me she’d had the weirdestexperience. She was driving downtownand saw someone who looked just likeme, but she knew if couldn’t be mebecause I wasn’t in Berkeley, I wasdown in Hayward. I had to explain thatactually, it was me, and I was sorry Ihadn’t seen her. Anyway, my mom is way cool and it wasn’t a problem. Sheactually joined the con, not that she isvery much into science ction, but she wanted to support us and see what it was like.Another fun thing I did for Potlatch was design a logo and the souvenir totebags. The logo is an actual Californiaindian artifact. I liked it because itlooks kind of like a propeller. Not thatit actually was one. If the Californiaindians made propeller beanies, they would have made them out of basket- work, not carved them from stone. It was some kind of ritual object that just happened to resemble a propeller. There was one other similar ritualobject I had an image of, but that one was more bulbous and, um, life-like.It was interesting, but not the sort
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