'Zoo Day 1

[hrj]

The weather here at Kalamazoo is delightful -- warm enough that I slept with just a sheet last night (and the windows open), but not uncomfortably hot. I got in a little later than scheduled because they have some issues at the Kalmazoo airport with the non-visual traffic control systems, so we had to wait at Chicago for the light fog to burn off. (I heard of one flight that got as far as approaching the runway at Kalamazoo and was warned off because the visual-only visibility wasn't good enough ... and then had to go back to Chicago to refuel rather than circling until it burned off. (The fog, not the fuel.)

So I didn't try to make the morning session yesterday and simply hit the essential parts of the book room first. Picked up the new volume on the Oseburg textiles, the new definitive edition of the recently-discovered Middle Cornish "Life of Saint Ce", the new hardcover (and expanded?) edition of Ann Hagen's Anglo Saxon Food and Drink, a couple of used U. of Wales Press editions of various texts, and all sorts of other things. For the first afternoon session I picked one on gendered grave goods in Scandinavian areas. Next I hit one on Welsh-English relations (with the general concensus among the speakers that a useful metaphoric model for some of the issues is Canada-US relations -- especially in that medieval English writers pretty much ignore Wales, while Welsh writers are very conscious of the English elephant in the room). Then it was off to the DISTAFF display/demonstration, which I think works much more efficiently than the "cocktail party with show and tell" format for communicating what people are working on -- especially to random passers-by. I didn't include my "sheperds purse engineering experiments" in the display because I didn't want to end up pre-giving my paper dozens of times, and in fact the majority of the displays involved hands-on demonstrations, which I think are the best use of the context.

There was another set of paper sessions after dinner (only on Thursday, evidently) and I'd pencilled in another Welsh one but ended up deciding that actually eating dinner was a better idea, so a group of us from the DISTAFF display went off to have Indian food at Saffron. Then it was the usual "hang out in someone's dorm room and do textile geeking" except that I kept nodding off, so I went to bed early. (I had very carefully done my plane seat selection when I originally bought the tickets so that I could get a window seat -- the only kind I can really sleep in. But then I got suckered by "would you mind trading seats with my wife so we can sit together" and ended up on an aisle instead. *sigh* I'm just too nice for my own good.)

Comments

[gunnora.livejournal.com]

I would love the ISBN on the hardcover Hagen and what is the "gendered grave goods in Scandinavian areas" info? That one sounds fab!

[xrian.livejournal.com]

I heard of one flight that got as far as approaching the runway at Kalamazoo and was warned off because the visual-only visibility wasn't good enough ... and then had to go back to Chicago to refuel rather than circling until it burned off. The fog, not the fuel.

That was the one I was on. The flight crew sounded touchingly sheepish as they apologized for putting us through that. We got a round of soft drinks as compensation :) Kalamazoo was just as pretty the second time.

[hrj.livejournal.com]

The Hagen is being shipped, so I don't have it available, but you can probably find it on the David Brown (Oxbow Books) website. The grave goods panel was generally about objects associated with a specific gender -- although these session titles are often only a first approximation to something all the papers have in common. One was on relative elaborateness of men's and women's graves in various Scandinavian-settled areas and what it can tell us about settlement patterns. Another was on small finds -- brooches and such like -- especially as recorded by the Portable Antiquities Scheme. The last was more literary, on gender and sword imagery in poetry.