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The mark of (Dean) Cain and other victories   Recently updated !

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged fandom ICE New Hampshire on by

I was pleased to learn that ICE agent Dean Cain is having trouble getting gigs at fan conventions. GalaxyCon, a company that runs commercial fan conventions, has notified him that it won’t work with him because “GalaxyCon’s values don’t align with Dean.” He faulted GalaxyCon for not being more specific, but I can understand their wanting to handle the matter politely. He surely knows what they meant.

In August 2025, I pointed out that having an ICE agent as a guest puts attendees in danger. Cincinnati Comic Expo had him slated as a guest, and I left a comment on their Facebook post expressing my concern. I felt I was fighting a lonely battle, but later on the organization found a reason not to have him appear. GalaxyCon also sees the danger, and Cain’s reference to a “blacklist” suggests that other conventions have similarly rebuffed him.

While I doubt that I had any great influence on the decisions, I can say I was one of the first to point out the concern. Some people in the Cincinnati organization must have seen my comment. Maybe it gave someone encouragement or a better choice of words to address the issue. The effect of what you say isn’t always immediate or obvious.

In other good news, Rockingham County in New Hampshire has “tabled” plans to hold ICE abductees in the county jail. County commissioners Tombarello and Coyle supported this position. In September 2025 I wrote about Commissioner Steven Goddu’s position, which was basically that the county should be morally agnostic and grab the opportunity for federal money: “It is not my position that the county should evaluate the appropriateness of actions ICE is taking.”

Did I have any significant effect on the decision to turn ICE away? Probably not, but it’s possible I made a little difference. This post, if the right people see it, might encourage someone to run against Goddu and replace him.

Speak out when you can, after being as informed as you can. It can make a difference.

Layout note: Up to now, I’ve laid out the blog with ten posts per page, displaying only the start of each post. This is causing problems with email subscriptions, which I just can’t get to show the start of the post and clearly let the recipient know there’s more. Starting with this post, I’m switching to putting full posts in the blog page. Once there are a couple of these, I’ll reduce the posts per page from 10 to 5. I think this will make it easier for people to follow the blog without extra navigation. Let me know what you think.

The Arisia code of conduct 2

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged fandom Massachusetts on by

Another in my series of posts on SFF conventions’ codes of conduct. This time I’m writing about the one for Arisia 2026. Arisia is held in Boston or Cambridge in January each year. I haven’t attended Arisia in years, but I found the code of conduct surprisingly reasonable. However, there’s another requirement which potential attendees could find burdensome.
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In memoriam: Leslie Fish 4

This entry was posted in Music News and tagged fandom filk music obituary on by

Leslie Fish, one of the best-known members of the filk music community, has died. She was talented, opinionated, outgoing, and just weird (in the best sense of the word). I didn’t know her well, but I’d seen, heard, and talked with her on many occasions. Other people who knew her better will write about her, but I should give my perspective here.

She appeared on the fannish scene around 1975. With a group called the DeHorn Crew, she produced a vinyl LP called Folk Songs for Folk Who Ain’t Even Been Yet. Another, Solar Sailors, came out the next year. The songs focused on Star Trek and space travel. In addition to being a fan, she was an anarcho-syndicalist, associated with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), aka the “Wobblies.” She was no fan of central economic planning, and her politics often ran in a libertarian direction.
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Answering the “Nazi-punchers” 2

This entry was posted in Commentary Writing and tagged fandom filk liberty writing on by

Social media can be hugely deceptive in judging how popular ideas are. One side can be noisy while the people who disagree feel too intimidated to dissent. An example is the self-declared “Nazi punchers.” They’re self-righteous in their advocacy of violence, and they like to distort a footnote of Karl Popper’s into a “paradox of tolerance” that says they must be intolerant to be tolerant. But we don’t routinely see news reports of assaults of this kind, which is a clue that they’re more noise than action or few in numbers. Probably both.
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The Montreal Worldcon code of conduct 1

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged Canada conventions fandom on by

I’ve registered as an attending member for the 2027 Worldcon in Montreal. Even though it’s in another country, it’s an easy day’s drive from my home. I hope that crossing the border won’t be too dangerous to consider by then, but today I’m here to talk about its code of conduct. There have been better ones and worse ones. I have concerns, but they weren’t enough to scare me out of registering. Let’s take a look, as I have with other conventions.
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