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Saturday, August 19, 2017

Ted Hand comes to town


Ted Hand (right) and I in the Cafe Ah-Roma coffee shop in Berea, Ohio.

I don't live in California, or in Britain, and so I've met very few of the people I've gotten to know on the Internet via this blog. It's a bit like my earlier days in SF fandom, when I would correspond with or read various fannish writers, but often go years before I finally met them at conventions.

But Ted Hand, who lives in the Bay Area and is a blogger and writer and active on Twitter, has been roaming over much of North America, and I found out on Facebook Friday that he was in Cleveland to visit the Buckland Gallery of Witchcraft & Magick, a new museum in Cleveland I hadn't heard of before. So I invited him to meet for coffee Friday.

We met at the Cafe Ah-Roma coffee shop in Berea, the small city/Cleveland suburb where I live next to Cleveland's main airport. Ted Tweeted a selfie of us afterward, writing "Super fun times discussing Robert Anton Wilson, journalism's plight, SF fandom, and how lucky I am to live in California, with @jacksontom"

We also talked about many other topics before I had to go back to work, although somehow we didn't get to our mutual interest in Late Antiquity. I asked Ted about his current projects, and he told me plans to write a book on Philip K. Dick's knowledge of esoterica. He is also working on a set of Philip K. Dick Tarot cards and on an alchemy adult coloring book. Ted also wants to write critical theory about Robert Anton Wilson's interpretation of magick. Ted was easy to talk to and I appreciated him taking the time to meet.

 

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