Sadly, I will not be attending Hamvention this year. My wife’s health has improved a lot, but I don’t feel comfortable leaving her alone for the six days a roundtrip to Hamvention entails. To remind me of what I will be missing, I have been reading my old Hamvention posts and after reading one from 2019, I thought it deserved repeating, so here it is.
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| 2019 Hamvention Booth Babe |
As a ham radio operator, you usually have no idea about the people you contact over the air.
For years, Bill and I were key operators in a ham radio network spanning Connecticut and we worked together to make the network function efficiently. I never met Bill in person until I ran into him at Hamvention. (Yes, we traveled over 750 miles to meet each other even though we lived about 40 miles apart.)
After that first encounter, we usually met up at Hamvention each year, until I began showing up as a woman. I was shy those first few years attending as a woman, so I did not go out of my way to find Bill. Then about 10 years ago, I saw Bill sitting in the audience of a forum I was attending and when the forum was over, I made a beeline to Bill to reintroduce myself.
Bill was surprised, but seemed OK with the revised me and said that I had to be true to myself. Since then, Bill and I usually meet up at Hamvention as if nothing changed.
At Hamvention in 2019, I was returning to our booth after making my presentation and I heard someone call out my name. I turned around to find Bill waiting in line to buy lunch from a food truck. He informed me that he retired as a state police officer (I had no idea he was a state cop) and had moved to South Carolina. And then he said he wanted to introduce me to his wife, who was also waiting in line.
It does my heart good when a friend or acquaintance wants to introduce me to their spouse. It is so meaningful to me because they have accepted me as a real person, not a freak, but a woman.
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| Wearing Boston Proper |
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| Womanless beauty pageant contestant in Guymon, Oklahoma, 1966 |
I have had a number of run-ins with the police officers, when I was in accidents and they were all okay with me.
ReplyDeleteThe first time it was when I was in an accident on the Maine Turnpike at a tool booth. This was before I transitioned, all my documents were in my deadname, the officers asked how I like to be called and I said Diana. Even though my docs were in my male name he called me Diana. (When the officer was leaving he asked me if I paid the toll and said yes but he didn’t. The officer rushed over to the other driver.)
I have had a number of crash bangs since then (None were my fault, the last one was at the Bourne’s South Rotary on Cape Cod).
Now I sit on a committee with the head of the CT State Police and the sergeant in charge of the Hate Crime Unit, along with someone from the state’s Attorney General’s office. A retired Appeal’s judge is the chair of the committee.
Stana -
ReplyDeleteI hope that your wife''s health continues to improve, so that you can go to Hamvention next year.
Good luck and best wishes.
M
Every convention has its share of “Booth Babes” and Stana DID not read the memo and showed up in hot pants showing off her long legs. No doubt her red pumps going click clack as she walked around kicked up the heart rate several notches of many attendees. I looked up some pics and its mostly old men buying and selling radio stuff and Stana is the most beautiful woman there. Most of the women there did not choose to express their sexuality But Stana chose to be the woman she is. Dah dit dah
ReplyDeleteWell, nobody has made a civilian -- femulator" speculation about our Oklahoma cutie yet, so let me do a little speculation. The alter-ego palette is very neutral. While he looks like a boy, there's no seriously masculine feature, save his Adam's Apple. That feature doesn't seem visible in her photo. I immediately checked out his very nicely arched eyebrows as the only possible femulator link -- speculation again. But Stana has presented us with a very feminine teenager once again. I'm guessing the mother was somewhat of a perfectionist and did her best to create the winner of the contest. I'd have voted for her!
ReplyDeleteI often think about what we missed here in the DC/Baltimore region by not having these pageants. I also think about how most of them seem to have occurred in what are now considered "red states". Ha!
If we had such pageants here when I was in school, and I expressed interest -- "my friends are doing it" -- I know my mom would have been 100% on top of it. She was a hard-core perfectionist and I would have been as gorgeous as my generally neutral palette would have allowed. Being a wizard with her Singer sewing machine, she most certainly would have created a pageant dress for me. Mom was so good that she created her own patterns - she should have been a costumer in the theater community. When my sister came along, her Barbie was probably the best dressed Barbie in the country! I'm not kidding about the "wizard" label.
Dream on, Mikki, dream on.
Do you think he was one of us and "not a civilian"? My Mom too was a seamstress on occasion had me wear dresses so she could hem them. I always protested and wish now that I didn't--Paula G
Deletehowdy. lovely read. 73' KJ7WAF
ReplyDeleteI was recently at a convention in Atlantic City and witnessed numerous booth babes first-hand, many of whom were dressed not that different than Stana in this photo. I must say that our Stana is a fabulous representative from our community into the booth babe sorority❣️
ReplyDelete