epershand

I'm still coming down from FOGcon, which was incredible and exhilarating and fun and emotionally exhausting (featuring both baby's first time being on a ConCom and baby's first time being on a panel, with bonus hanging out with Pat Murphy and chilling over a cigarette with Terry Bisson and apparently missing pantsless geography lessons by like two minutes and meeting so many incredibly cool people who I'd only known from a distance or over the internet before.) And I have a bunch of different posts about random things in my head.

But before I completely collapse into sleep tonight I just want to throw out in defense of CS Lewis's ungainly but (I think) ultimately delightful Christianity the following ungainly but (I think) ultimately delightful poem about the nature of prayer and metaphor. (I've posted it before but I think it bears repeating.)

Footnote to All Prayers
-- C.S. Lewis

He whom I bow to only knows to whom I bow
When I attempt the ineffable Name, murmuring Thou,
And dream of Pheidian fancies and embrace in heart
Symbols (I know) which cannot be the thing Thou art.
Thus always, taken at their word, all prayers blaspheme
Worshipping with frail images a folk-lore dream,
And all men in their praying, self-deceived, address
The coinage of their own unquiet thoughts, unless
Thou in mimetic mercy to Thyself divert
Our arrows, aimed unskillfully, beyond desert;
And all men are idolators, crying unheard
To a deaf idol, if Though take them at their word.

Take not, oh Lord, our literal sense. Lord, in Thy great,
Unbroken speech our limping metaphor translate.

Have you been considering coming to FOGcon (March 11-13, San Francisco, new convention made of awesomeness) but don't have the resources to make it to the Bay Area this year? Are you based in Madison or the Twin Cities?

jesse_the_k is looking for a personal assistant for the con. To quote Jesse:

I'm looking for a personal assistant (PA). Their job description would include:
1. Push my wheelchair
2. Keep me on an even keel cognitively, which includes taking the lead in navigating airports, noticing if I'm too tired to think or too hungry to sit up, etc.
3. Run errands outside the hotel if need be

The PA would *not* have to do lifting, bathing, toileting or other body care.

I'm willing to pay for the PA's FOGcon membership, the other queen bed in my con hotel room, and airfare (if we start from Madison or Minneapolis). We'd arrive in SF on Thursday 3/10, the day before the con starts, and leave on Monday 3/14.

It's a sweet setup. The down side is, since I need the PA to get anywhere, they must be there ready to get me moving at the start and end of panels. Depending on hotel layout, that could mean they can only attend the panels I'm going to.

jesse_the_k fails to mention a very significant up side: you get to spend an entire con hanging out with her.