Satchel Pages: Con-Version VI

I was wondering what to blog about tonight as I haven't a lot of time, so weightier topics must be postponed in favour of sleep. I came across this picture of the satchel I often use for toting gaming manuals and rulebooks along.

There is a lot of nerdy and actual history contained in those pins and badges, from the silly (like the revolutionary graffiti badge from the Amiga game "Fernandez Must Die") to the tragic (the Challenger mission patch for STS-51L featuring an apple for teacher Christa McAuliffe, the first civilian to die in space) and a heap of pop culture for good measure. 

There are quite a few Games Workshop promos in there (including the brilliant new Ultramarine Chaplain pin Bryce got me at a store event recently) and more than a few comic-related ones that are kind of cryptic - like the old Kree military symbol and the badge for Thanagarian police like Hawkman and Hawkgirl.

What a similarly afflicted person might recognize or deduce, those with more mainstream interests might be able to look up, but this one could be tricky: 

The Roman numeral is tricky to make out (honestly thought it was a VII at first...), but Con-Version is pretty visible and there is a Wikipedia page for them.

This was a lapel pin I got at Con-Version VI, a sci-fi con in Calgary in 1989. Some of the lads and I attended a few times in the late 80s and early 90s, with Audrey even coming along to one in 1995 before we moved to Toronto for four years.

The rat on the pin is because the guest that year was Harry Harrison, author of the Stainless Steel Rat book series, featuring a charming confidence man and adventurer in an interplanetary future. I believe this was also the year our alien rock band *Unpronounceable In English made its debut at the costume contest, as we each got a set of the novels as a prize for Best Performance Under Fire.

I may have the program book around here someplavce but it is just as possible it was lost in the purge of our basement bookshelves last year. An archived Fancyclopedia article mentions how they held their final con in 2010, and I see someone trying to sell other lapel pins on eBay.

The pin is a neat bit of nerdy decor and also a useful tether to a time long past and a different person who is still, somehow, me. When I inevitably give away or misplace the pin, how long will the event linger in my memory? Will that person be gone with it?

For now. it is a helpful kind of nostalgia that takes little space and no effort to maintain, so it remains, as do I.