Dear People,
Parkinson’s Disease runs in my family. I’m showing active signs myself and am now on a light dose of levodopa. My bigger bike (a Suzuki DL650) is not especially heavy but it has a high seat. Coming back from Chapel Hill I fell over three times when I cornered at a stop. My strength and balance are both poorer than they should be.
This is extremely bad (though not unexpected) news. Being me, I went instantly to end game. Looking up from there I began considering ways to find a livable solution for me. I expect that to be an ongoing process, probably for a long time. My aunt (dad’s younger sister) died recently at age 96.
One interesting part of the Parkinson’s business is that I’m in contact with health professionals more often than I usually am. They’re invariably struck by how good my health is. I don’t get annual physicals because statistically they have no effect on longevity (though they shift the cause of death to a degree; they catch some treatable conditions but iatrogenic [medically caused] conditions kill just as many people as the testing saved). Doctor visits are stressful to me (and I think to most people), so avoiding them has real health benefits.
The neurologist suggested a blood test to give them a base line. This was reasonable so I agreed. When the results came back, everything was excellent: “We never see profiles this good!” the nurse said.
That’s because I eat reasonably and exercise. Which everybody can do.
Having just come back from a convention, it strikes me that avoiding restaurant food is probably a major factor in eating reasonably. Tom Doherty is ten years my senior but he exercises heavily every day. At dinner his wife made a point that he’s heavier than I am. I think that the major difference is that he generally eats out and I generally eat at home.
My wife cooks very well. We have simple food of high quality, and when eating at home I find it easy to limit my intake. It won’t do anything to prevent genetic problems like Parkinson’s, but obesity and run-down condition are optional.
We’re back from a trip to Italy! Tuscany this time. I’m at work on a trip report, but there’s been a lot going on. The Parkinson’s diagnosis cast a mental malaise over me, but I still saw some really neat things.
I mentioned the convention: World Fantasy Con, in Los Angeles this year. I normally go to this one when it’s in North America. My agent, Kirby McCauley, started it in 1975, promising it wasn’t going to be like the SF Worldcon (which had been a horrible experience for me the year before). WFC quickly became the premier professional gathering in the F/SF field. Because of the number of professionals attending, the panels are generally excellent and broad ranging.
When the programming people send around a questionnaire early on asking about backgrounds and particular interests, I normally tell them to put me wherever they need me. There’s a lot of competition for panel slots. I have a wide background in the field and in WFC itself, so there are very few WFC panels on which I’d be unable to contribute usefully.
This year there was no questionnaire. My webmaster tried to contact programming, without result. When the program schedule came out, I wasn’t on it. This was very disappointing but I was just going to take it: I’ve always said they could put me wherever they wanted me. Apparently they’d decided they didn’t want me. On top of the Parkinson’s, I was really feeling that I’d lived too long.
My webmaster contacted programming again, making me out to be more pitiable than I’d have put it myself (I’m not saying she was wrong) and that I’d been on panels at WFC since 1975. She suggested two possibilities. (The various options were disappointingly slim.) This time the programming person responded and I was added as a seventh panelist on Fairy Tales. (I’ve always used them as source material and the first books I remember checking out myself from the Dubuque Public Library were Andrew Lang’s Color Fairy Books.)
I felt a lot better, but the other party to a negotiation always has a right to say no.
I thought (on looking at the panels generally) that programming had done an exceedingly bad job. Indeed all aspects of the con were poorly done (with the exception of the con suite.) There was excellent jewelry in the dealer’s room, but books and art were less well represented than is normal at WFC.
People involved in the Salt Lake City WFC next year assured me I would be on programming there. Furthermore at the banquet a member of the WFC board came up to me and apologized that I hadn’t been put on a panel (until Karen had gotten on them). Apparently my belief that the con committee hadn’t been up to the job was widely echoed.
Despite the glitches, it was good to see friends, many but not all business acquaintances. Outside the con I was able to see something that had fascinated me for 70 years: Rancho La Brea–the Tar Pits. The museum was about 10 miles from the hotel, too far to easily walk but I was sure I’d find somebody at the con with a car. In fact Karen thought to ask Mark Van Name ahead of time. He too was interested in going but the only time he could go was after the banquet Sunday (the site closed at 5 pm) but he assured me there’d be no trouble.
At the end of the banquet at 3:30 he’d learned that that it might be an hour to the site and the line there might be an hour long, but he’d go if I still wanted to. I did want to go. In fact traffic was very light and there was no line. The museum was a wonderful experience.
The displays include mounted skeletons and also life-sized models of many animals from the site. There are saber-toothed tigers, the huge American lion (25% bigger than the African lion of today, a display of dire wolf skulls (part of the 4,000 of the species found there), and many herbivores. Besides the well-known mammoths and mastodons, there are shovel tuskers with extended jaws and tusks top and bottom (which I didn’t recall had made it to the New World, though I should have known). Plus there were many horses and camels and bison (Bison antiquus, much larger than the familiar bison of today).
There was also Merriam’s teratornis, a huge bird like a condor but a third larger. All this was really a thrill to me. It was particularly nice because I found myself quite excited and perky, which I really hadn’t been since learning about the Parkinson’s. I’m coming back, people.
At the Baen dinner at WFC I chatted some while with Tim Powers who thanked me for the intro I’d done for his collection, Down and Out in Purgatory. I was particularly glad to hear that because when I’d asked Toni if he’d liked it; she said she wasn’t sure he’d seen it. He’d been effusively thankful to her, but that hadn’t been passed on to me. (Communication isn’t one of the strong points at Baen.)
While waiting in the hotel hallway for the maid to finish cleaning the room, Robert Silverberg came wandering up a cross-hall looking for the elevators. We chatted for half an hour, mostly his stories about working with John W Campbell in the ’50s. It’s wonderful to be on friendly terms with a writer whom I’ve been reading since I was thirteen. Certainly one of the high points of the con.
I think I have finally accumulated enough material for a plot of the next book (working title The Serpent). I hope to shortly get back to that. Wish me luck,
And be nice to other people, folks—
–Dave Drake
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