It is my nature to whine and complain.

I've been trying to over come this nasty habit for a number of years now, and count this list as one of my better efforts, as I had only two real niggles with Gathering. One is that the hotel put up this stupid sign saying their parking lot was full, (with a sign to park across the street) when it wasn't. I understand why they do this—so people off the street don't fill it to the point that the hotel customers don't have space to park—but across the street meant across the street westerly, not two blocks southerly. Oh well. Four bucks for the entire trip is a pretty small niggle, and I didn't even try (very hard) to get my money back because...

The other way they screwed up was to lose a package of mine. My business partner overnighted a package of slides to the hotel for me so I could put them in the Bruce Baker jury slide workshop mock jury. Fedex delivered them right on time, but then the hotel didn't know what to do with them, evidently because I wasn't registered at the time they came in. (My workshop started at 9am. Fedex was to have them there no later than 10:30am. I needed ’em by noon. But of course I didn't officially register for my room till 3:30–4, when the workshop ended. Hence the mixup with both the slides and the parking: registration is the point at which I would've been informed about the parking and the system would've been informed about me, but of course I skipped it...whoever designed the system wasn't thinking about conference attendees showing up bright and early.) At any rate, the hotel reimbursed me for the shipping, and I forgave them the parking. Specially since they didn't charge us for it.

So, onto all the things that went right, more or less in order:

Gathering was close (7hrs). This meant I could drive, and pack a lot of stuff, not to mention avoid the expense and stupidity of airline travel. It also meant a lot of my local beadmaking buds showed up.

The weather was amazingly cool. (Last year, we missed an unusual heat wave in Portland, when it got up to the 100s. Kentucky routinely gets tempeatures in the 90s and 100s, and we again lucked out. I figure next year we'll get zapped for sure.)

There was a beautiful, empty state park (Charlestown, IN) to camp at 20 minutes from Louisville.

And the hiking trails, especially Nos. 1 and 2, were just gorgeous—moss, ferns, lime stone rocks. Besides which there is no lyme disease in that part of the country. So the numerous ticks were not an issue. The equally numerous spiders (and their lovely orb webs) while disconcerting, kept the mosquitoes down amazingly.

Bruce Baker's seminar on jury slides was excellent. If you submit slides to art fair juries, I recommend it highly.

The FlameOff and Open Torch were within walking distance of the hotel. I particularly lucked out in this case, ’cuz a bunch of fellow GlassAct members came for the 9pm flameoff (which I missed) and gave me ringside seats for Luccio Babucco's demo at 10. I appreciated the opportunity to get the extra exercise in, walking to and fro. Plus, the room was huge, so people could sit at tables and yak or trade beads if they tired of watching the flameoff.

The pre-taped demos worked out satisfactorily. (When I heard the fire marshall wouldn't allow torches in the hotel, I figured the conference was just plain shaping up to be a total and complete fiasco. I'm so glad it wasn't.)

Moreoever, the food area—breakfast, lunch, snack—was next to the lecture hall, and again, there was plenty of space for people to sit, yak, and trade beads. (People seemed evenly divided on the food, as to whether it was better or worse than in the past. I really appreciated that the good fresh fruit, such as pineapple, didn't run out in the first 15 minutes, leaving latecomers only with a choice of cantaloupe or muskmelon. I gathered the coffee was bad and the bagels, in everyone's opinion, were execrable, but one needs a few bad-food stories to tell, no? Besides, my guess is they were no worse than anywhere else—it was the lack of a toaster that did their rep in)

The technical vendor room was across from the demo/lecture area, making shopping very easy. Plus, they were all in one room.

So were we, on Bazaar day: all in one room, which adequate ambient light, wide aisles, and it was so cool people were actually cold—pretty amazing, when you consider all the warm bodies and lights. The crowds were good (though I don't think any venue will ever match what we had in Alexandria, excepting perhaps if we have it New York, or maybe Los Angelos) so the advertising effort paid off. At any rate, no-one could complain that the customers never got to them ’cuz they were in a second, smaller room, or that the customers never got back to them because they got directed into a second area.

The usual number of fun new tools, torches and glass to try, plus freebies, and info about glass beadmaking and related arts was just as much in evidence as ever.

The hotel was nice in a number of ways—as I mentioned, the rooms had double doors between sleeping and sitting areas; a view of the river; elevators and other areas with lots of big windows to give an outdoor feeling, plus grand staircases, huge glass chandeliers and beautiful carpeting. Oh, and the bar was off by itself and never seemed smoky. This is the first time I can remember I didn't feel I had to change my clothes and wash my hair every night because of passing through clouds of cigarette smoke.

The gallery walk was a walk. (One year they tried bussing us to outlying towns. That didn't work so well.) Amazingly enough, there will still munchies by the time I showed up; the galleries were nice; we even got a glass demo thrown in. And it was pretty cool to see the mockup of the actual dichroic glass sculpture that was mounted above the pedway we took to get to Open Torch.

This part of Louisville had a lot of public art (and the local contingent took some screamingly funny pictures of us playing in and around it—I stood on the fancy bike rack, of course, being the only cyclist in the group but no-one could top Denise and her wonderfully lascivious poses with the bronze guy sitting on the park bench) and beautiful commercial buidings. Plus a cool riverfront plaza.

Louisville had some very nice restaurants within walking distance of the hotel. I missed the mayan one, but Saffron, the Persian restaurant I went to on two occasions, had exquisite food and exotic drinks. Plus, Louisville painted fiberglass animals were of course horses. (Yes, I was horse-crazy as a child.) The one (almost) in front of the restaurant had a purple blanket, rhinestones and curly eyelashes and a beaded fringe. How could you bead, I mean beat that?

Even the fact that Sunday night Open Torch was cancelled wasn't all bad. I took off right after the last demo and was home and in my own bed by midnight. Ahhhh....:)

Here's to hoping Gathering will go equally well next year.

Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.

Sylvus Tarn