Corflu on the Fly, Part I

An easy morning’s drive across the high desert brought me to Corflu Silver, happening in downtown Las Vegas. While there are a lot of people besides fans in the Plaza, I had a piece of luck in that almost the first person I ran into was Alan White, who made sure I knew where everything was — hotel registration, the Corflu con suites, etc.

When I reached the con suite (whichever of the two I was in), Claire Brialey and Mark Plummer were among those sharing squirrel anecodtes with Catherine Crockett, who surely had the funniest of the lot. (Did an L.A. squirrel really stow away in the back of pickup trucks to reach its feeding ground, and commute home again, every day?)

A steady stream of folks returned from the Red Rock Canyon hike, showing off the heavy layer of dust on their shoes. These included Murray Moore, Lloyd and Yvonne Penney. A bit later, Ken Forman and Andy Hooper also returned, presumably having done the whole route.

Around 3 p.m. the consuites closed and the meeting room opened (which happened to be directly across from hotel registration.)  In theory some music or open mike activity was scheduled. While Bill and Roxanne worked heroically on the tech (and in fact had the internet video up and running), the dozens of us in the room continued conversations and handing out fanzines.

Marty Cantor had a new No Award with a color Schirmeister cover — which is stopped to explicate each time handed out a zine. Later Rob Jackson and I renewed our fanzine trade after a mere 28-year gap — the time between issues of his genzine Inca.  Jackson’s zine was full of color phots. And Gary Mattingly gave out copies of Skug, which also boasted a great color Schirmister cover. All three seemed to agree it was worth pulling out all the stops once they were ready to produce their new issues.