Meeting of February 2, 1979 at Gillilands', Alan Huff presiding.
In attendance: Gilliland, VP; Berg, Treas. Mayhew, Trust. Callahan,
Trust., J Epperson, J Novak, T Schaad, B Brandt, M Owings, D Hastie,
Phil Cox, P Kelly, Lucille Ennis, Dan Joy, D Roepke, Lisa Peoples, S
Smith, S Leiter, W Miles, D Gilliland, J Lechner, B Newton, G McNitt,
J Prato, G Pochepko, Wayne Dionne, J Dionne, S Kerry, H Pease, Ken
Dunn, J Ellis, K Bloom, K Weston, B Lovell, R Ridenour, B Baum, F
Buhman, S Dennis, S Brown, J Chalker, E Whitley, J Judson, J Newton.
Showed up after the meeting: Avedon Carol, Ted White, Steve Stiles,
Dan Steffan.
The meeting was called to order at 9:10. The minutes were read and approved. The treasury has sundered to 2,357.26 Dollars.
COMMITTEE REPORTS
MEMBERSHIP:
Two new members: Jim Saklad, Angier Peavy (both absent.)
ENTERTAINMENT:
Doll suggested an emergency FANTASIA movie party. She investigated
same during meeting.
DISCLAVE:
Confirmed Pro guests: Norman Spinrad, Hal Clement. The con badges by
Richard Thompson were selected by Alan and shown to the club. For the
use of our clips and hooks, LUNACON has agreed to run a 1/2 page ad in
their program book. Joe Mayhew reports that he has sold 45 memberships,
Alan and Lee Smoire have sold others.
OLD BUSINESS:
Kent Bloom raised his amendment concerning classes of membership. It
was tabled until the first meeting in March.
CHANNAMAS BOOKS:
Those which are not claimed by the first meeting in March will, after
that meeting, revert to the Club. Rosa Oliver: Those wishing to have
passport pictures taken at the meeting, please contact her. SEACON
rates for the charter flight she is arranging may be around
339.-Dollars. The price will depend upon participation.
NEW BUSINESS
Kim Weston suggested a party for the 20th July, anniversary of the
moon landing. The matter was not voted on or discussed. Doll Gilliland
moved that the club sponsor tickets for mems in good standing to
attend the film FANTASIA at the UPTOWN Theater. The motion was passed
unanimously. Doll reported the ticket rate would be $2 a head.
Meeting adjourned at 10:10, followed by DC in 84 meeting.
ADDRESS CORRECTIONS
Susi Maennik,
[censored]
Baltimore, MD 21211
(301) 366-7365
Ray Ridenour
[censored]
Baltimore, MD 21211
(301) 366-7365
Suzi Koon
[censored]
Alexandria, VA 22312
NEW ADDRESSES
DISCLAVE
PO Box 23086
L'Enfant Plaza
Washington, DC 20024
Mike Kurman,
[censored]
Cockeysville, MD 21030
ANGIER PEAVY
[censored]
Bethesda, MD 20014
(301) 493 5457
John Huff
[censored]
Hillcrest Heights, MD 20034
(301) 894 8048
Meeting of January 19, 1979 at Pat Kelly's. Alexis Gilliland, VP, presiding. In attendance: Bill Berg, Treas. Sharon Harris, Secy. Joe Mayhew, Trust. Sue Wheeler, Trust., Lisa Peoples, Michael Harris, T Schaad, G Pochepko, D Joy, S Smith, J Epperson, J Novak, P Kelly, A Peavy, Phil Cox, T Rosenberg, B Dalzell, M Owings, J Fetter, J Sapienza, D Hastie, J Prato, D Gilliland, K Bloom, Jake Rosenberg, Jim Saklad, Bobby Baum, B Mitchell, CR Jones, W Miles, N Handwork, S Wheeler, E Williams, M Rosenberg, Jane Gardin, Cliff Mumpower, R Oliver, B Oliver.
The meeting was called to order at 9:15. The minutes of December 15 and Jan 5 were read and approved with the following note: Hexacon is spelled "Hex-uh-con", not an eye. The treasury has shriveled to: $2,423.56
COMMITTEES:
PUBLICATIONS:
The Journal is out.
DISCLAVE:
The club is invited upstairs after the meeting for an addressing party
with stapling and folding, stamp attaching on the side. There will be
a DISCLAVE meeting at Alan Huff's on February 9 at 2 pm. The Saturday
after the 1st Feb meeting. John Ellis submitted a tentative program
(printed elsewhere in the journal) The movie ALIENS will be opening at
the UPTOWN Theater on Friday, May 25, which is the first day of the
con. John says he will look into it as a special program item for
DISCLAVE.
ENTERTAINMENT:
Doll is looking into a FANTASIA PARTY for WSFA. Pat Kelly's housemate
has made piles of good nosh.
OLD BUSINESS:
Kent Bloom presented the following amendment: That the WSFA bylaws
be amended to provide that WSFA is a social organization under the
Internal Revenue Code, and that membership in WSFA consists of two
non-exclusive classes: Class A (which is allowed to attend the annual
convention of the Association and has all privileges allowed to
members except the right to vote at meetings) and class B, (which has
all rights except the right to attend the annual convention, including
the right to vote at club meetings.) Dues for Class A membership
would be set each year by the DISCLAVE Standing committee. Dues and
qualifications for Class B membership should be the same as for
current members. Discussion of this amendment was postponed
until the February 2 meeting.
NEW BUSINESS:
Zip.
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Alexis has sold $80.60 worth of cartoons to STARTOONS. Dave Hastie is having a party at his place Feb 3, 1979.
The meeting disintegrated at 9:36.
DISCLAVE COMMITTEE MEETING
Held at Alan Huff's, Feb 10, 1979: Present: Huff, D'Joy, L'Smoire, Bob and Rosa Oliver, Joe Mayhew, Janet Prato, Nancy Handwork, Fran Buhman, Ray Ridenour, Bob Lovell.
AS OF THE MEETING there were 125 members in DISCLAVE: Nancy Handwork is coordinating the Friday Night costume party. This will not be a formal, judged masquerade. Proposed panels Include: PUNS IN SF, RELIGION IN SF and an Artists' Panel. The regular badge will be color coded for staff, hucksters, and SFWA members. Several aspects of the convention were discussed and most seem to be progressing smoothly.
DC in 84 MEETING: Held after the February 9th meeting.
The question about whether to go with the the 84 year aspect of the bid was resolved. It was determined that we would stress that it was a serious bid and it was also decided to include support from outside the club. An ad was made up by Alexis Gilliland and Dan Steffan.
Alexis Gilliland sent in the little piece below, from an obscure newspaper somewhere, which we thought might be of interest to many fans.
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LEXINGTON, Ky. -- In the sad list of things that will always be beyond me, philology is toward the top, up with my inability to drive an automobile or pronounce the word “mirroring.” The well-meant efforts of two universities to teach me to read (and in a recurring nightmare, to write and speak) Old English, or Anglo-Saxon as they sometimes called it, I have no intention of forgiving. Some grudges are permanent. On Judgment Day I shall proudly and stubbornly begrudge learning how to abandon a sinking ship, how to crawl under live machine-gun fire, and Anglo-Saxon.
The first professor to harrow me with the syntax and morphology of Old English had a speech impediment, wandered in his remarks, and seemed to think that we, his baffled scholars, were well up in Gothic, Erse and Welsh, the grammar of which he freely alluded to. How was I to know that he had one day written on the back of one of our examination papers, “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit”?
Not until years later could I know that this vague and incomprehensible lecturer, having poked around on a page of the dread “Anglo-Saxon Chronicle” for an hour, muttering place names and chuckling over variant readings, biked out to Sandfield Road in Headington and moved Frodo and Sam toward Mordor.
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Even when I came to read “The Lord of the Rings” I had trouble, as I still do, realizing that it was written by the mumbling and pedantic Prof. J.R.R. Tolkien.
Nor have I had much luck in blending the professor and the author in my mind. I've spent a delicious afternoon in Tolkien's rose garden talking with his son, and from this conversation there kept emerging a fond father who never quite noticed that his children had grown up, and who, as I gathered, came and went between the real world and a world of his own invention. I remembered that Sir Walter Scott's son grew up in ignorance that his father was a novelist, and remarked as a lad in his teens when he was among men discussing Scott's genius, “Aye, it's commonly him is first to see the hare.”
Nor, talking with his bosom friend H.V.G. (“Hugo”) Dyson, could I get any sense of the Tolkien who invented hobbits and the most wonderful adventures since Ariosto and Boiardo. “Dear Ronald,” Dyson said, “writing all those silly books with three introductions and 10 appendixes. His was not a true imagination, you know: He made it all up.” I have tried for 15 years to figure out what Dyson meant by that remark.
The closest I have even gotten to the secret and inner Tolkien was in a casual conversation on a snowy day in Shelbyville, Ky. I forget how in the world we came to talk of Tolkien at all, but I began plying questions as soon as I knew that I was talking to a man who had been at Oxford as a classmate of Ronald Tolkien's. He was a distinguished lawyer, Allen Barnett. He had never read “The Hobbit” or “The Lord of the Rings.” Indeed, he was astonished and pleased to know that his friend of so many years ago had made a name for himself as a writer.
“Imagine that! You know, he used to have the most extraordinary interest in the people here in Kentucky. He could never get enough of my tales of Kentucky folk. He used to make me repeat family names like Barefoot and Boffin and Baggins and good country names like that.”
And out the window I could see tobacco barns. The charming anachronism of the hobbits' pipes suddenly made sense in a new way. The Shire and its settled manners and shy hobbits have many antecedents in folklore and in reality -- I remember the fun recently of looking out of an English bus and seeing a roadsign pointing to Butterbur. Kentucky, it seems, contributed its share.
Practically all the names of Tolkien's hobbits are listed in my Lexington phone book, and those that aren't can be found over in Shelbyville. Like as not, they grow and cure pipe-weed for a living. Talk with them, and their turns of phrase are pure hobbit: “I hear tell,” “right again,” “so Mr. Frodo is his first and second cousin, once removed either way,” “this very month as is.” These are English locutions, of course, but ones that are heard oftener now in Kentucky than England.
I despaired of trying to tell Barnett what his talk of Kentucky folk became in Tolkien's imagination. I urged him to read “The Lord of the Rings” but as our paths have never crossed again, I don't know that he did. Nor if he knows that he created by an Oxford fire and in walks along the Cherwell and Isis the Bagginses, Boffins, Tooks, Brandybucks, Grubbs, Burrowses, Goodbodies, and Proudfoots (or Proudfeet, as a branch of the family will have it) who were, we are told, the special study of Gandalf the Grey, the only wizard who was interested in their bashful and countrified ways.
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Guy Davenport, short-story writer and critic, teaches English at the University of Kentucky, Lexington. His next book of stories is “Da Vinci's Bicycle.”
The following is the treasurer's report:
BALANCE
from December 1st, 1978: $3,289.77
TRANSACTIONS
December 15, 1978
OUTGO:
To Alexis Gilliland for presentation books to members: $100.46. To
A Gilliland for food and beverages for this meeting and Christmas
solstice Dinner: $96.32. To Joe Mayhew for printing and mailing
expenses for WSFA Journal vol 2#5; $24.39. To Joe Mayhew for
additional hangings for DISCLAVE Art Show (from DISCLAVE FUNDS)
$35.00. To Dan Joy for WSFA Journal #2/4; $10.98. Solstice Dinner
additional funds to A Gilliland, $17.00. To Dan Joy for printing
layout pads: $4.06. To Alan Huff for DISCLAVE account, transferred
from Disclave Funds: $500.-
(whew!---ed.)
January 5, 1979
OUTGO:
To R Roepke for roast beef at solstice dinner, $9.00. To Lee Smoire,
for food and beverages at WSFA's New Year party: $19.00. To Bill Berg
for F&B at this meeting: 50.00. Note: solstice dinner, total $72.32.
SUMMARY
BALANCE ON HAND BEFORE DECEMBER 15, 1978 $3,289.77
INCOME DURING PERIOD 0.00
OUTGO DURING PERIOD 366.21
TRANSFERRED TO DISCLAVE ACCOUNT 500.00
BALANCE, JAN 5, 1979 2,423.56
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Rosa Oliver is collecting Campbell's soup cans for her son's school. We urge you to please donate freely.
IF THE FOLLOWING PEOPLE DO NOT PICK UP THEIR CHANAMAS BOOKS BY THE FIRST MEETING IN MARCH. . .Charlie Ellis, Carol Fowler, Betty Lockwood and Kevin Lockwood. . .THEIR BOOKS WILL REVERT TO THE CLUB.
(I have a sneaking suspicion that this may be out too late to prevent their doom.)
STRANGE SPELLINGS: I do apologize for the strange spellings of the letterpress headings in this issue. I have to use whatever is left over from FANNY HILL letterpress stock, since I do not charge WSFA for materials in making up this newsletter; therefore, I have to use whatever letters are left on the sheets.
Today's SCIENCE NEWS has some pretty shattering material on the new Jupiter photographs. Apparently Ganymede has a shell of liquid water under its ice that shifts around dramatically, vindicating much terrestrial plate tectonics; Io is bright red and yellow and exudes great masses of sodium ions while being bombarded by funny rays from Jupiter. . .Returned from BOSKONE, where I was snowed in for a while. I found it rather a stern, prim convention on the whole.
Recommended new SF books: ALICIA II by Robert Thurston (Berkley/Putnam) and WATCHTOWER by Elizabeth Lynn. (Berkley/Putnam also). Isaac Asimov's Memoirs (part I)---long but cute.
LOCAL BOYS DEPARTMENT: Chris Lampton has a book out from Doubleday---GATEWAY TO LIMBO---which can be obtained at your local Moonstone. It has a hideous black-and-white cover, but is a rather well-done adventure story that pulls you right along. This is Chris' third novel (the other two were, however, Laser books). He and Steve Brown are collaborating on a great project, the nature of it as yet unrevealed.
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THE WSFA JOURNAL is produced by and for the Washington Science-Fiction Association and is distributed free to all members in good standing. . .only! Editor: Somtow Sucharitkul; Also Editor: Joe Mayhew.
News, address changes, moving experiences, and the like, should be sent directly to Somtow Sucharitkul at 3428 South Stafford Street, Arlington, VA 22206, or you may call him (preferably between 11 a.m. and 3:30 a.m., but emergency calls may be made at other times) at the number (703) 931-5098. Joe Mayhew is distributing the zine, at the moment, so please call or write him as well if you require that your copy be sent to another address. This address is: 6000 67th Avenue, Apt 104, E Riverdale MD 20804.
I have returned from Thighland.
UNICON: POB 263, College Park, MD 20704; Calls [Blto. (301) 332-1619, DC. (301) 794-7374.] BALTICON: The hotel is sold out, unless you wish to get a suite at an outlandish price. The overflow hotel. . .LUNACON '79: Sheraton Inn LaGuardia, Ron Goulart, Gahan Wilson. $9.50 at door. Walter Cole, [censored], Brooklyn, NY 11230.