Dragon Con = Crazy Fun

The Great Corvalo, star of his own horror short. I think my son is channeling Igor...

Okay! Dragon Con in Atlanta, Georgia, is a huge S/F-comic-anime-fantasy jack-of-all-trades gathering, hosting everyone from crazed tv show and gamer fan types to--well, just about anybody, even an ancient S/F geek like myself. My taste is eclectic, and this is definitely the Con for that as it has a lot of everything, from classic S/F novels to old television shows like the industry-spawning Star Trek, to Horror, to Doctor Who, to Brit, Japanese, and American fantasy. My son, a software engineer and his wife, retired civil servant, have been attending for years, and this was the year they finally persuaded me to leave my cave in Pennsylvania and come down for four days of collective madness. I had no idea of just how big this event was.

Street scene--While waiting in a panel entry line which wrapped around a city block, I was accosted by a nasty goblin,
star of a horror short also featuring Walter Koenig of the original Star Trek

In the first place, I hadn't realized that this was going to be 70,000 people all squeezed into 5 hotels and then erupting like pyroclastic flow onto the streets of downtown Atlanta, right in the heart of the business district. I attended the very first Star Trek Con in NYC many, many years ago, and let me tell you, it was nothing like this.

As you can see, I'm a Doctor Who fan with questionable taste in friends...

We emerged from the MARTA on the first day and immediately passed any number of assorted monsters, storm troopers, Anime characters, Orphan Black and Stranger Things characters waiting in line for breakfast at the Chick'FilA. By the time we arrived at  the registration line, we'd encountered any number of full dress (and full drag) attendees parading the streets. Soon, we'd all be moving from hotel to hotel in search of the next panel discussion we hoped to get into.

Parade Day was Saturday! It takes over the downtown for a few hours of total madness.

The last (utterly vain) human female, veteran of many surgeries, (Doctor Who) and her "moisturizers."

There were many dragons.

Tom Baker version Doctor Who--two of them--with a somewhat disturbing version of his sidekick, Amy Pond.

Everyone's favorite Alien stalks the streets, and, later, the hotel lobby...

We arrived at 7 a.m. on Saturday in order to grab a curbside seat for the parade, and the place was already filling up. On this day, another GA dwelling son brought his school age daughter, as we'd planned a long day's adventure with her. As a senior and a marching band member, she is BUSY, but she made time to join us, in her best Hogwart's garb--House Slytherin.

Filk with talented Nick Edelstein--his uniform that of a Next Gen Starfleet Commander--who can do a mean Jimi Hendrix riff, too!

Filk is a Dragon Con tradition--the songs we all know with substituted S/F lyrics. Word play is second nature to writers, so I found this great fun. A well known classic in the genre would be Yoda, by Weird Al Yankovich, easily found on Utube--if you need to. My grandgirl, an apple who has not fallen far from the tree, could and did sing along with this deathless classic at one of the filk sessions we enjoyed. The term "Filk" comes from a long ago typo in a scholarly article about the influence of S/F upon Folk Music. Embrace the Typo, we say--or 'we says,' as LOTR's Gollum would have it.

Devo Mutants w/old lady in fav Dr. Who t-shirt

In short, this was

Zot! Pow! overwhelming!

The world has learned to embrace Nerd-dom, and finds it can still survive. (The world has also learned that it sure can make a good ol' American buck off all these OCD crazies, as well!) Two floors of a downtown mall were dedicated to vendors so the shopping sprees available were limitless. The crowds there were just as crushing as the hotel parade-see-and-be-seen lobbys.  Costume Play (Cos Play) seemed to have the most entries, though sugar-fix theme decorated cupcakes could also be purchased.

Not usually much of a shopper, I tried on a lovely green dragon tail--only $50.00--but decided I could probably live without this, especially when I considered wearing it onto the plane...

And, for all you Game of Thrones fans, the place was alive with characters from this show. Blonde Danerys look-alikes were everywhere, but we didn't manage to get a good picture. I especially liked the ones who had colorful baby dragons perched on their shoulders, a tender maternal touch.

Game of Thrones characters were everywhere

In the end, though, for me, this was big fun with family, always a GMA's ultimate good time.

All pics courtesy of DIL, Sons, and their trusty phones.
(And I'm sufficiently old that still sounds a little weird.)

~~Juliet Waldron

http://amzn.to/1UDoLAi    Historical novels by Juliet Waldron at Amazon

Goodbye Julian Bond, hero and powerful voice for justice, By Sandy Semerad

“Those were the days,” Julian Bond said, as I handed him a copy of my novel, A MESSAGE IN THE ROSES.

“It’s based on the murder trial I covered as a reporter in Atlanta back in the 1980s,” I explained.  He remembered the trial and the Klan march I wrote about in the novel.

            I felt fortunate to have reconnected with him. I wanted granddaughter Cody to meet a fearless and cool civil rights activist and listen to him speak at the Destin Library in Destin, Florida.

Although that was a year ago, it seems like yesterday. I can’t believe he’s no longer with us.

We have lost a hero and a powerful voice for justice.

I first saw Julian on television at the Democratic National Convention. He was nominated for Vice President of the United States, leading up to the 1968 election.  He was only 28 and had to decline, due to a constitutional age requirement of 35.

            Julian was ahead of his time. He began his activism at 17.  He helped lead the sit-in movement to fight segregation in Atlanta, and bravely spoke out with a deep and resonant voice for those with no voice in the Jim Crow South.

He was one of the Freedom Riders with Martin Luther King, Jr. and later helped start the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee.

            In 1965, he was elected to the Georgia House of Representative. (The Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act had given blacks the opportunity to vote).

Although he was lawfully elected to serve, the Georgia House refused to seat him, because he had endorsed SNCC’s policy opposing the Vietnam War.

            Julian refused to back down. He fought for his rightful seat in the House. He took his case all the way to the United States Supreme Count. The high court ruled (Bond v. Floyd) in his favor, stating the Georgia House of Representatives couldn’t deny his freedom of speech. He went on to serve four terms in the Georgia House and six terms in the Georgia Senate.

            I remember meeting him face to face for the first time at a Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner in Atlanta. We kept running into each other while talking to the same people. We laughed at this coincidence and he said, “Must be in the stars.”

            And speaking of stars, he was a bright and shining beacon of hope, who spoke out for what he thought was right. For decades he's been saying black lives matter, women’s rights matter, gay rights matter, human rights matter, and he never gave up the fight.

“If you don’t like gay marriage, don’t get gay married,” he has said. He was born African American, just as some people were born gay, he said.

            Thanks to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Julian co-founded with Morris Dees, the Klan lost its vicious bite.  SPLC sought justice on behalf of victims. These lawsuits helped to break the Klan financially.

            I could go on and on about Julian Bond’s accomplishments. Not only was he a civil rights activist, commentator, eloquent speaker, professor, author, poet, Saturday Night Live host and occasional actor, he was also a husband, father and grandfather.

“He advocated not just for African-Americans but for every group, every person subject to oppression and discrimination, because he recognized the common humanity in us all,” Morris Dees has articulately said.

I say amen to that, as I bid farewell to a great man.

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Was it serendipity or a higher power? By Sandy Semerad

As I reflect on certain events in my life, I can't help but wonder. Did these things occur by chance or was a higher power at work?

Tell me what you think after you've read this:

 Years ago, I worked as a reporter for the Marietta Daily Journal. The phone rang in the newsroom, and I grabbed it.

“Where can I turn to for help?” a woman asked. “It’s almost Christmas and my children still believe in Santa. We’re running out of money for shelter and food. I’ve called the United Way and all the churches. No one will help us,” she said.

I listened to her plea. Her husband and two young children had driven across country to relocate for her husband’s job, she said. He’d been offered a better position, as a trucker for a local transport company.

On the long drive to Atlanta, their car broke down. They spent most of their savings on repairs, she said.

When they arrived in the city, they found a motel they could afford. The room was grimy and scary, but she told herself, it was only temporary. Once her husband started his job, they'd be able to afford a better, more permanent home.

Her husband, being protective, didn’t want to leave his family alone and unsafe. So he took them along with him in his truck. When the company found out, he was fired.

“We have never asked for a handout before,” she said. “I used to criticize people who begged for handouts. Now I know I was wrong to judge.”

Her story touched me. It rang true.

I wrote a feature article about her family’s dilemma. The story ran, with their photo, in the next issue.

The following day, I was in my kitchen, and the phone rang. I started to let the machine get it, but something told me to answer the call.

“Are you the lady who wrote the article about that poor family?” a man asked, and then described in detail what he'd read.

“Yes,” I said.

“Do you think these people are dependable?” He asked.

“Yes.”

 “I have an apartment, and I’m thinking of letting them live in it for free until they can get on their feet,” he said.

“That would be great,” I said.

A year passed. I was working as an editor for American Health Consultants in Atlanta. Christmas was approaching.

The phone rang in my office. I answered it.

It was the desperate woman, who had called me a year ago. She said she got my new work number from the Marietta Daily Journal. “I had to call and thank you and let you know, we’re going to have a wonderful Christmas this year.”

Her words touched me to tears, but it was years later when I began to wonder. Why was I in that exact spot when the phone rang in the newsroom? Why did I decide to write the story? And why did I answer the phone when that generous man, with the apartment, called?

I don’t know.

There have been many other examples I could share. I’ve included at least one of those instances in A MESSAGE IN THE ROSES, a novel based on a murder trial I covered in Atlanta. The book is primarily fiction, but as a professor once told me, “Fiction is the lie that tells the truth.”

Truth is a relative term, I know. We strive for truth, but don’t always achieve it. As to the truth about what causes certain events to occur, I’m still wondering. Do these things happen by chance—serendipity--or is a higher power at work?

What do you think? 

To find out more, visit my website: http://www.sandysemerad.com/ 

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