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Somerville Artist's Image Selected for Boston First Night Button

A painting by local artist Scott Listfield has been chosen to be featured on Boston's First Night button this year. The button will serve as the ticket for admission to all indoor First Night Boston events on December 31st. The image will also appear on other promotional materials for the event. 

"I think it's really exciting. I think it will be a little surreal to see people walking around with my artwork on their sleeves or wherever people put pins these days," Listfield said. 

"I think it will be a little sad, walking around January 1st, and they are sort of strewn all over the ground, but that's sort of the nature of it. The buttons are for the event and afterwards they become a little disposable," he added. 

Listfield has called Somerville home for more than ten years. Though he has not seen the finalized button design, he says it is pretty safe to say it will feature his trademark astronaut.

Check back with me at About Town just ahead of the design's release in early November, for more about Scott Listfield's work, what inspires him and why astronauts are ever-present in his work. 

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An 'Epic Quest': In Search of the Meaning of Gaming

Ethan Gilsdorf's venture to write Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms largely began and ended right here in Somerville. 

Gilsdorf, who has called this city home for six years, traveled the United States and across the world to research the book. He ventured to Georgia, Chicago, western Pennsylvania, across the pond to the birth town of The Lord of the Rings author J.R.R. Tolkien in England and even around the globe to New Zealand to where the imaginary realm Middle-earth was created for the Lord of the Rings movies. 

I met Gilsdorf much closer to home at True Grounds in Ball Square. We sat and chatted next to the table where he spent hours writing the book. He described it as a hybrid of travel memoir and investigatory journalism with a focus on the fantasy and gaming subcultures. 

"The one story line is the personal story. It's sort of me coming to terms with my inner geek and making sense—for my own personal reasons—why this stuff was important to me as a teenager and why it still sort of has a hold on me in a way as an adult," Gilsdorf said.

"The second part," he added, "is me going on this quest to go around the country and around the world and talk to people who are into various parts of gaming and fantasy to ask them why they do it, what meaning it has for them and how they describe the experience." 

In the book, he also tells the stories of the people he meets along the way, at various conventions and gaming events or just in his general travels.

"When you think of someone who is into gaming, a lot of people still think of the pimple-faced teenager, or the young adult who still lives at home and can't get a date," the author said. "But when you penetrate and hang out with some of these people in these various subcultures, they are very welcoming and very excited that people take interest in what they are doing. But they are just people like anyone.

"I met a guy at the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism) who is an airline pilot. [I've met] lawyers, sales people, marketers, doctors—it's not just IT people. So I wanted to show that that's changing." 

Gilsdorf said many people have a negative view of the fantasy and gaming worlds and think of them only as a way for people to escape from a reality they can't deal with. Instead, he said, the escape isn't usually negative. He found that the games can provide a sense of accomplishment and empowerment and they open up avenues for people with similar interests to socialize. 

"In our culture, we have this sort of double standard in that some activities are allowable, like if you get together on a Sunday afternoon to watch the Patriots' game, or to play poker, or whatever it might be, it is an acceptable use of leisure time," he said. "But, if you tell people that, 'Well, on my weekends I dress up as a knight and I beat the crap out of people with my foam rubber sword,' people will go, 'Huh? What's that about?'"

One story from his travels that was particularly poignant to Gilsdorf was that of Nissa Ludwig. A lifelong gamer, Ludwig was involved in live action role-playing games for years until she was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy. She now continues gaming online. 

"She realized that by playing some of these online games, one, the number of people she could come in contact with through these games exponentially increased. So she has this very vibrant social life that largely takes place over the Internet, and she gets to do things in the game that she can't do in real life," Gilsdorf said. "Probably the most emotionally affecting thing she said was that, for example, in a game like World of War Craft, her little digital avatar can run barefoot through the grass when her body in the real world can't do that any more." 

Gilsdorf says his book can be enjoyed by like-minded gaming geeks, novices and even those who may have a loved one committed to the game. For the latter, like me, the book comes complete with a glossary to help us understand the lingo. 

If you want to hear more from Gilsdorf, head to downtown Boston tomorrow, Oct. 20, for the Boston Public Library's Author Series at 6 p.m. There, Gilsdorf will tell the stories of those he met on his quest, share photos and probably even proudly gush about the geekiest things he did along the way.   

Ethan Gilsdorf is an avid The Lord of the Rings fan who, once upon a time, was a dedicated Dungeons & Dragons player. Now, he's mostly retired his dice and works as a teacher, poet and freelance writer.  His work can be seen regularly in the Christian Science Monitor, the Boston Globe and the New York Times. Gilsdorf teaches writing at Emerson College (my Alma Mater!) and at Grub Street in downtown Boston.