Last week I spoke about the genesis of MosCon “40”, drawing on my own inadequate knowledge of how the revival started. Mike Finkbiner dropped me a comment which filled in some of my blanks, and I’m happy to repost it here: “Steve—You give me too much credit. I think the original impetus to have a PESFA/MosCon gathering came from Madilane Perry at Beth’s (Toerne) memorial service. Several of us talked about it and thought a small one-day relaxicon might be a better reason to travel the distance than just getting together for dinner.
Kathy took the idea and ran with it. She had been interested in starting some sort of fannish gathering and thought this was a good opportunity to combine the two ideas.
I was a bit dubious, considering the short schedule and lack of a con committee, but Kathy and Tabitha have had a lot of experience running other sorts of events and felt she could put this together. She wanted to do things her way and it turned out she could.
Betty Smith helped with the memorial, budget and finance; Donna Bailly, who had run Hospitality at MosCons in the past, gave good advice on what to stock; and I gather other people both came up with ideas and helped put them together—I don’t know much about that end.
But this was really Kathy’s idea and hard work. I imagine that next year, with more time to plan and organize a group of volunteers she will be able to offer more.” As the late Stan Lee used to say, “’Nuff said.” Thanks, Mike.
One of the interesting things about this particular MosCon was that there was nothing really suitable for dealers, so—and this is the first time I’ve seen this—there was a line of tents set up in the parking lot for dealers. There were about 6 or 7 dealers selling costumes, jewellery (Canadian spelling), and other fancy stuff. I neglected to photograph those, too. In fact, I was a photographic failure at this convention and have had to eke out my photographs with help from Kathy Sprague (Figure 1) and Lynn Kingsley (Figures 2,3, 5, 12, 13, 14; all copyrights reside with her for those photos).
Among the people who came was Nels Satterlund (Figure 5, Column 259), once a Pullman native (with his sister Lisa Satterlund—Figure 5), but now a Californian. Nels has attended every MosCon so far. Also on hand were ex-PESFAns Sasha Zemanek (Figure 5) with her dog and daughter (sorry, only dog is shown with Sasha) and Jane Fancher (Figure 7) and her wife, noted author C.J. Cherryh (Figure 8), once a MosCon GOH. Jane and her sister Lynn Fancher—who we memorialized at the convention, along with a lot of others—were both University students; Jane is now an oft-published writer whose latest effort (just finished) is a collaboration with C.J.
As I said, I learned about the writing panels too late to participate fully, so I was only scheduled for the memorial (see last column) and the “MosCon Memories” panel. But both those items were well attended, because not only has MosCon meant a lot to a lot of fans, but a lot of fans (and pros!) have meant an awful lot to MosCon and its attendees. I’m not able to show you all the wonderful people who attended—people I’ve not seen for many years, but I can show you some of them. Figure 6 shows, from left, Steve Forty (who was a MosCon fixture); M.J. Engh, well-known SF writer and Palouse local, with local Eric Wegner; and Roger Wells, peripatetic fan (he’s been out and around a lot of the world) who first attended from Oregon.
fair portion of my convention time was spent—since the hotel didn’t have a bar or restaurant—in the convention suite (“Hospitality”) or the lobby, chatting with fans and pros who attended, like Madaline Perry, Bea and David Taylor (Figure 13), Mark Rounds (from Idaho) and Betty Bigelow and David Bigelow from Seattle, as well as Julie Zetterberg Sardo and husband Greg Sardo. Julie is a Master Costumer, and entered the Cosplay Contest (she won a prize, too!). Betty was one of the Cosplay Contest judges, as well (Figure 11). Edmonton fans Stuart Cooper (Figure 10) and his wife Colleen Harris were also there, but I don’t have a photo of Colleen.
So from here to the end, I’ll just post some more photos. My final comment was that it was a lot of fun and we’ll certainly be coming to MosCon 41 next year! (Check out the 2019 page at https://www.mosconrevival.com/.) I apologize that I don’t have the names of the Cosplay Contest entrants shown; I’ll try to find out and tell you next time. Nor do I know the names of the judges except for Betty Bigelow at right (Figure 11).
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