conferences and art

for the past two weekends I have been whirring here and there to and from academic conferences. they were pretty fun, if a little nervous-making. the first one, two weeks ago now was in Washington, DC. having an excuse to go there was fabulous. freund Jeremiah came with me, I got to meet his most charming aunt and uncle, and when I was not conferencing, we saw as much of the city as we could drag ourselves around to see.

the brand new National Museum of African American History and Culture.

the treasury, and a statue of that Alexander Hamilton guy.

this dashing fellow, waiting with me for the streetcar to take us down H street, near Capitol Hill.

the gallery we wandered into had some interesting art.


we also took in some theatre; this is the playbill from a pretty hilarious 5-woman comedy.

an inscription on a statue outside the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center. "The voice of reason is more to be regarded than the bent of any present inclination." I imagine the guy in the statue is the guy who said these words, but I didn't ever figure out who it was.

the next conference, last weekend, wasn't so much attended by fancy sight-seeing. are there sights to see in East Lansing, Michigan? if there are, I did not take time to see them. I only saw Michigan landscapes on our way there, the insides of conference rooms most of the rest of the time, one hotel room, one Thai restaurant, and one coffeeshop.


the Michigan State University conference center had this cool piece of art. I promise, it did look less gloomy in real life.

and in one of the conference workshops, I got to make this little double-walled basket out of reeds. I don't know what I'll keep in it-- maybe coins? or jewelry? or ... dried flower petals?

in conclusion, count me grateful that my life gets to have conferences and travel and art in it. I came away from both conferences with some pretty clear threads of inspiration, and now I'm gonna use the rest of the semester and year to make some serious scholarly things happen.