Here is my first report from the road. Internet access has bee touch and go here. Wireless access is available only from the hotel lobby, which is so crowded, that I haven't felt I could safely blog. Yesterday was such a whirlwind that I haven't had time to write about it yet. But I'll be back in a couple of days and will, I hope, have had some time to digest the many conversations I've had and the many thoughtful papers I've heard.

Thursday, November 17, 2005

Let me begin by pointing out that it is cold � COLD � this morning. It was 6 degrees F when I checked the thermometer this morning after rising, only slightly earlier than usual, to get ready to go. AJ woke up early too, and sat in the middle of my floor with his blankie, watching me throw all those last-minute items into my suitcase.

He�s being really good about this trip. The first time I went to a conference after he was born, he was two and he was miserable. The second time, a year ago, he was sad but okay. This time he doesn�t even seem that sad. He�s much more convinced by the knowledge that I�ll be back in a few days. He didn�t used to understand what that meant.

It�s still hard to say goodbye. They dropped me off curbside and I hugged him in his car seat. He didn�t want to let go. But I�ve got a picture of him grinning at me from a pile of leaves on my laptop desktop and I�ve got a picture he drew for me in my briefcase, in the folder next to the paper I�ll deliver on Saturday. It�s not unlike the picture I posted some time ago where I look like the That Girl icon and I�m surrounded by an array of red hearts.

Everything went smoothly getting to the airport. The security lines were the shortest I�ve ever seen them at O�Hare. But upon punching my ticket info into the check-in machine, I found that I could have slept a little later � my flight�s been rescheduled for a half an hour later. And so I�m camped out on the floor by the window at the gate next to the only plug, typing away. It�s my way of keeping the anxiety of travel at bay. It�s very busy here today. The airport is full of families leaving early for Thanksgiving.

There�s a startlingly large number of men in cowboy hats, which surprises me until I check the destination of the next flight out of the gate � Albuquerque.
Elderly woman in a parka too big for her down to her knees, a purple sweatshirt embroidered with evergreens, babushka scarf and sensible lace-up shoes. Visiting her �heart family� a family that has adopted her as an honorary member. Talking to those next to her heading to a funeral in Albuquerque. One of the group shows a turquoise bracelet and necklace that she will give to the granddaughter of the deceased. It was given to her by the mother who has died.

Another of the party is reading a composition book covered in spidery handwriting. It looks like it may be a diary and the pages are yellowed and old looking. I wonder if it�s related to the person who has died.

Man in a Hawaiian-style shirt but with cactuses and cowboys on it. He has an enormous spiderweb tattooed on one arm and an equally large python on the other.

Friday, November 18, 2005

Eventually, after all the waiting around at the airport, I ran into a couple of other students from my department whom I had never met. We ended up standing around talking until we got on the plan and also traveled from the Atlanta airport to the hotel together, which mad the journey more pleasant. I checked in and dropped my stuff in the hotel room, which is on the second-highest floor of the hotel and has a great view of the city, I headed down to check into the conference and promptly ran into my roommate for the weekend on the stairs. I spent the rest of the afternoon engaged in classic conference behavior, squeezing what papers I could in between conversations. I�ve already run into, quite by chance, two people in charge of jobs to which I�ll be applying and have gotten some good information, although I�m still working on how to talk myself up. I still feel weird doing that, even though I know it is expected and often appreciated on the other end. I did manage to catch a couple of interesting papers on Finnish Sami music and the way the Irish language revival intersects with traditional music in the Gaeltacht regions.

After the sessions were over for the day, I headed out to meet my friend J. J. and I went to high school together. She�s been living in Atlanta for a number of years, but I�d never been down there. It was really nice to be in someone else�s house for a little while. Her older son is almost exactly the same age as AJ. Both boys were showing off for me and both eventually had meltdowns of near epic proportions, of the kind I have seen before. It�s nice knowing that we are not the only ones who feel a little crazed when trying to sit down to dinner with a small child.

My trip back to the hotel by train was extremely chilly. Despite all the open outdoor pools I can see from my hotel window, it is not much warmer here than in Chicago. But I was met in the lobby by a couple of friends bearing scotch. We curled up in some sofas on one end and enjoyed one of the great pleasures of ethnomusicology conferences, the impromptu music-making. We were sitting next to a long-haired man with an instrument that sounded like a ukelele, but looked like a really small balalaika. The instrument appeared to be the property of a woman sitting next to him with her back to us and she was showing him what to do. A short distance behind us was an Irish seisiun, a bunch of fiddles and flutes sitting on the floor in a circle, which made me really wish I�d brought my own fiddle. Instead of joining in, my friends and I listened as we sat and talked with a researcher of Scottish fiddle music. Not a bad way to spend an evening.

Today will be busy. There are papers to see and people to meet and I need to investigate a new job posting I just heard about that seems to be asking for someone who does the interdisciplinary thing that I like to do. If this one were to pan out, rs536, we�d be neighbors. This evening there is a meeting for a new special interest group that I�m interested in and a university press party followed by a party thrown by my own university jointly with a certain university with which both dandlioneyes and borogoves are familiar. I believe it actually may be dandlion�s program that�s involved � know anyone that works on music that I should look up? With all these parties, you�d think the conferences would be more play and less work. Don�t let the name fool you. It�s all work. I will be exhausted when I get home, but so far, so good.

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