The pinball community --- players, but also venues and manufacturers --- have done a lot to drive women out of pinball. Some of this is garden-variety sexism: Pinside, the biggest pinball forum, is almost notorious for being full of cranky white guys demanding to know why women can't take a compliment anymore. There are multiple games, from many decades, that include audio clips of women gasping in what men take to be orgasmic delight when you accomplish something, for instance putting a quarter in the coin slot. (Many of them are robot women, for that extra touch of objectification.) Some of it is subtler things, not all within the pinball community's ability to influence. Like, men get paid more than women. So it's men who have the ten grand to drop on a new pinball machine, often more than once, and so the pinball makers aim their offerings at men. Stern's last several pinball machines were themed to James Bond, Godzilla, The Avengers, Rush, and The Mandalorian. It's not that women don't like power-fantasy movies and 80s bands. And it's not that you don't get some tables with broad appeal. Jersey Jack's most recent pinball table is Toy Story 4, and before that Willy Wonka. Stern's just a couple years off of making The Beatles. And Spooky Pinball is releasing Scooby-Doo as we speak. But if you go looking for tables based on things that fit as stereotypically female interests like ... uh ... I don't know? Grey's Anatomy and true-crime podcasts? You won't see it. The people at the International Flipper Pinball Association, aware that pinball has driven women out, wants them to come back. For the good of the hobby, yes. Plausibly also the good of the market. But also because it's wrong to have pushed women out and the only way to fix this is to invite them back. Thus, the Women's North American Championship Series, for a women's pinball champion from each US state or Canadian province. (You may ask, what about non-white people? Hoo yes, pinball has been bad to them too. Some folks have asked if the existence of women's events implies we would have non-white-person events. Yes.) You have now likely gleaned why bunny_hugger was there, although you may be off on the particulars. Let me provide them. When the IFPA decided in 2019 to have a separate women's championship, and rankings for women in women's-only events, bunny_hugger leapt at the chance to be the State Women's Rep. She'd been looking forward to running it and her plans got delayed as pinball came to a freeze. But now, finally, with events resuming and a state championship for 2022? She was ready. PH and AJH were happy to have the Women's Championship at the same venue as the State Championship --- that's not required, but the logic is compelling --- and AJH was happy to serve as her second tournament official, as backup for making rulings particularly on games that affected her. I normally serve this role in Lansing events, and while anyone who knows us knows I would be as fair as possible, it's certainly better to have someone not related there. Especially as, for this tournament, there'd be money on the line. Also AJH is far more experienced in tournament-running, and the rules, than I am. And that, at last, is why we were there. First, so she could run the tournament. Second, so she could participate in it. The tournament has 16 competitors, eight of them the top-placed women in women's-only competition, eight of them the top-placed women in open competition. You likely ask: won't these be the same people? Not necessarily. bunny_hugger qualified on the strength of her wins in women's events. Well, event, since her winning the women's division at Pinball At The Zoo in April earned enough points she'd be ranked. (She's played in and mostly won other events, but they didn't affect her position at all.) In open competition she hasn't been nearly close to ranking anything. But there is considerable overlap, and a lot of bunny_hugger's early January was spent figuring out who ranked, in what category, and sending e-mails out inviting people, with the complication that someone who ranked in, say, open, then was removed from the women's-only rankings and so people below them moved up, and vice-versa. This was some dizzying calculations and bunny_hugger kept spreadsheets that somehow kept getting more confusing the more people decided to go or not. Still, she got her full quiver of candidates, and enough alternates to account for anyone not able to show up at the last minute. Though this was also confusing because the rules about open versus women-only seeds were written ambiguously enough that reasonable people, not just PhD's, could find them confusing. And she was excited for all this. She thought to use her new button-making machine, inaugurating that Christmas gift for the inaugural Michigan Women's Championship, making some neat button designs and spending free time on Saturday button-making. Along the way she learned the tricks of button-making. And had some frustration: she had printed out 18 copies of the colored picture for the buttons, figuring she would have a margin of two mis-fires in button-making. Well, three of them mis-fired, and she felt miserable about this. She finally accepted my suggestion to give the least-misfired one to a person she was going to see again soon, and make a better button before we saw her again. And then Saturday night she got devastating news One of the competitors had to back out. More, it was the person bunny_hugger was scheduled to face first round. The replacement person was someone she knew even less about, but what she could find wasn't good. The new person had finished top or second-highest in a bunch of tournaments, all at the same venue. Did this mean she was really good but didn't travel? Did it mean she was decent at a venue where everyone else was weak? One of those is a much more intimidating new opponent to face, and there was no time to get any intelligence about what the new competitor might be strong, or weak, on. There was also some scrambling to find a new alternate but, fortunately, one of AJH and PH's family was on hand and qualified to play, even if she didn't want to. If there were another person backing out there would still be a full sixteen players. All that was left was the playing. I didn't have time to collect and caption photos, so you get a break on that today. They should resume tomorrow. Trivia: In 1878 Professor David Edward Hughes produced a ``microphone'' consisting of only three nails: two in parallel and one resting across them. An electric current passing through this would be a sensitive detector of sounds or vibrations, audible in a telephone receiver connected to the circuit. Source: How The World Was One: Beyond the Global Village, Arthur C Clarke. (Clarke's point was about Hughes creating what has to be the simplest useful scientific instrument as, yes, it was just three nails placed together. It would be refined into a device using blocks of carbon for better sound detection but the principle remains that.) Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine Volume 19: Popeye in the Navy, Part 2 , Tom Sims and Bela Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle.