I’m definitely going back to Gen Con next year. I met a bunch of great people who I’m not going to list because I know I’d forget someone, bought books and a toy dalek for myself and some games for the kids in my family, attended interesting panels on writing and books which I’d be mining for blog posts for the next month if I’d taken better notes, discussed lots of publishing-related things, and helped defeat a Nazgul.
Playing games late at night is much more fun than the typical overcrowded con room party where you stand around trying to make small talk with people you can’t actually hear.
Downtown Indianapolis is really nice. Some folks at the newspaper in Toledo used to talk about Indianapolis like it was something Toledo should aspire to, and now I see why.
Sunday afternoon before leaving I stopped by the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art. If you’re ever nearby, go. I didn’t see all of it, but what I did see was fantastic. There’s a strong emphasis on current Native American artists, which often covered examples of melding traditional culture and arts with modern and European-inspired ones. There was one absolutely stunning painting by Yatika Starr Fields (called Renewal, go look at it) that I stared at more than once. On my way out, I got two books from the gift shop: Everything You Know about Indians is Wrong by Paul Chaat Smith and a book of oral histories of contemporary woodland Indians. Should be interesting reads.