nkyin kyin: ALA Conference in Ohio

Friday, April 15, 2011 - Athens, OH

Friday, our last day in Athens, was filled with ever more panels: New Trajectories in South African Literature, Black Channels: Historiography, Art, and the Black Diaspora, and Publishing Africa, my final panel.  The publishing panel was the only one I felt really qualified to be at (well, other than the poetry one from Thursday, and that was just a reading), and I was a little disappointed to find that it was a panel on how to get one's book published, rather than on the nuances of publishing Africans and scholarship on Africa.  Either way, it was nice to end the conference on a note of full comprehension, and on a slower day.  In between the panels, Roger and I spent a lot of time lounging around outside, where the weather was warm and sunny and beautiful.  It feels like it's been a long winter in New York, and so it was lovely to be outside without a coat, even if only in between conferences.

Sunny, sunny Ohio University

We skipped the evening keynote and reception to hang out and enjoy our "vacation" a little, without any more intellectual stimulation.  Roger told one of his former professors during the conference, "I used to think everyone was being a little silly complaining about how hard conferences are, but they're more tiring than they sound."  I couldn't agree more.  We bought two small pies at Avalanche Pizza, which we ate back at the hotel in a move that reminded me a lot of vacations with my family when we were younger.  There's just something really decadent about eating in a hotel room.  Especially, I guess, when each person has a pizza to themselves.  My pizza, the Chicken Chubacabra (chicken, bacon, artichoke hearts, and cheddar), was really good, but a little much by the end of the second slice.  It did make me really keen to make my own bacon-and-artichoke-hearts pie sometime soon, though.

After two and a half days of lovely weather, the rain we'd outrun on our way out of New York finally made it to Ohio, and as we watched countless episodes of That 70s Show on netflix (oh, Roger, why must you draw me in to your terrible tv-watching habits!), it poured and poured outside, proof that if I need to drive for more than 45 minutes, it will rain for at least part of that drive.  That, however, is a story for tomorrow.