Paul Newman moment

As mentioned in the previous version of this blog (see: QI 2009, from the archive below) visits to the United States are peppered with references and scenes from just about every film you've ever seen. If I were less tired and a little more sure of the difference between pseud's corner (see Ann, below) and academic rigour, I would perhaps make some erudite reference to multi-storied texts and/or  intertextuality. As it is I feel yet another version of the Amtrak story is upon us as I  neither experienced the familiar delays or frustrations that Jonathan did, nor the domination of big voiced black women, since our train was on time and our conductors were all very tall white men with enormous feet. I did however, have a seriously tempting "Paul Newman moment', since we were in the very last carriage, which had the kind of open platform with railings depicted in trains in all the best movies. At the time I took the photos the platform was crowded out by men with very large feet, but clearly, if I'd had the bottle, I could have staged my very own Paul Newman scene.
The 'bottle', however, totally eluded me and I resisted all temptation to step out onto the platform, shimmy up onto the top of the carriage and crawl along clutching the top of the roof with one hand, firing shots at the baddies with the other. This was not, you understand, because I am a total wimp who is scared beyond death of moving  heights, but merely because there are no low bridges between Chicago and Urbana Champaign and the whole bit where the hero (ine) ducks just in time to prevent decapitation and subsequently emerges at the other end of the tunnel unscathed to fire another shot etc was just not gonna happen.

Most of us are now here and registered for the conference, I have had a quick hug, before the frey, with the wonderful (and extremely hugable) Norman Denzin, who makes these conferences possible year after year. As I said to Norm, I found it (find it?) frustrating in a way that this conference is always in USA and always in Urbana  Champaign, but at the same time coming back year after year gives us a sense of a base and place and a geographical as well an intellectual homecoming. A very particular space is created here at this time every year, just as the students have gone...it is a different space every time, as different people provide different energy, but the climate of critical friendship and excitement about this field continues unabated. (Thinking about different energies reminds me that although more and more of us come from Bristol, there are some people missing, the particular energy that Ying Lin Hung brings with her is missing this year, last year she had her birthday here, so it must be her birthday this week... happy birthday Ying Lin ... we miss you!)

There's been trouble on this campus during term time mind... there have been four /five rapes of young women across the campus over the last few months and as you walk across the central quads the stencilled graffiti 'end rape' across many surfaces make chilling reading and are food for thought for us all. It is not all as tickedy boo as it might at first appear around here...