St. Louis, Louisville, St. Louis

Elisa is wondering if there isn't some kind of "Luis" motif going on here with the cities she's been visiting...she arrived in St. Louis on Monday, March 15, and then on Tuesday, March 16th the two of us drove off to Louisville, Kentucky. It might all seem in honor of her father, but that is all rather coincidental, of course. We went to Louisville to the Conference on College Composition and Communication, and had a great time. We loved our hotel, with its wonderful view of the Ohio River. The first night there, we ventured out to dinner, and discovered the superb Jeff Ruby's. We had no idea at the time that the restaurant's website claims "culinary entertainment", but Elisa exclaimed, as we were escorted to our table "This is just like Sex and the City!" It is a cool restaurant, and the food is delicious. We had been talking in the car about fried chicken (yes, Kentucky fried chicken) and being someone's favorite meal and all, well, I had to order chicken! And I was warned that they make their chicken fresh, and so it would take more than half an hour. As we were in no hurry, of course I was willing to wait. And it was delicious...roasted with lots of rosemary. Elisa loved the moment when I asked one of our young waiters (the one whose job was to ensure that we always had a good supply of ice water) where the ladies' room was. He held out his arm to escort me there, and off we marched, rather merrily, while I tossed a look to Elisa over my shoulder. Some friends were at the same conference and really wanted to go there the next night, and after much arm twisting, I agreed. This time Elisa and I tried the sushi, and were again delighted.

Our third night in Louisville we went to a bar in the hotel called 'Jockey Silk' which offers who knows how many different kinds of bourbon, and I discovered that I quite like the taste! It brings back many memories of my Dad indulging on a Saturday evening Manhatten when I was growing up. Louisville is a fun little city. They cordon off part if 4th Street (isn't it convenient that our hotel was at one end of 4th Street?) on special occasions and weekends to offer live music and general hanging out. We stopped there on Saint Patrick's day evening and I drank my first ever green beer. I was listening after we got back from Louisville to Paddy Maloney of 'The Chieftan's' fame being interviewed on my favorite NPR show 'Wait Wait Don't Tell Me' and he confirmed that St. Patrick's Day in Ireland is nothing like it is in the U.S. Green beer indeed!

I really did attend a conference in Louisville...and put my head up at exactly the right moment to see Sarah Kegley just about to enter a room to attend a talk. I managed to shout "Sarah!!!", and we chatted briefly, making plans to meet up that evening (the Friday). Sarah, Elisa and I went out for a meal and a lengthy and highly enjoyable chat. Elisa and I also did a bit of sightseeing in Louisville, including a wonderful "Kentucky Show" at the Kentucky Center for the Arts. I was all set to move to Kentucky after seeing it, what with the blue grass, beautiful horses, great music and friendly people. Louisville probably has too many parking garages sprinkled around its downtown area to attract, however (maybe the huge river makes it difficult to construct underground??). We did have a pleasant walk around, seeing the glassworks, the outside of the 'Louisville Slugger" factory, and various statues and buildings.

We drove back to St. Louis on Saturday - it is a very pleasant 4 hour drive through Indiana, Illinois and over the bridge to Missouri. Along the way are glimpses of an immense, flat and very fertile Illinois with its stretches of corn crops, more of the same in Indiana, although as Kentucky nears the land becomes very rolling and green, with some impressive bedrock hills.

Alas! Elisa went back to Boston on Sunday...we will be going there in April, so something to look forward to! In the meantime, I now enjoy St. Louis with Diana...visits to the library at SLU punctuated by lunches with her...and some shopping, like to buy her some shoes and me a pyjama. Yes, this weekend a friend is driving from Kansas City to St. Louis to pick me up, and we'll take off north for Rockford, Illinois for a reunion/pyjama party with young and very dear friends from elementary and high school. Looking forward to it!

San Diego, St. Louis, Atlanta...

I’m feeling somewhat like I was shipwrecked over the Pacific and washed up here in the U.S. Sydney now seems like a dream…did it really happen? I guess this blog is good evidence it did (but who is that woman in the hat???).

Well, I finally did fly out of Sydney on February 27th, after that 7 hour delay. So I left Sydney at 10 pm, and I arrived at 4 pm of that same day (I can’t figure out if that somehow means I got younger…though it certainly doesn’t feel like it!) and my friend Lisa picked me up and drove me to her place in Delmar, near San Diego. I arrived in California to rain, but that did not spoil the view as we were having dinner right on the beach in Delmar, and in fact probably enhanced the nighttime drama of the roiling waves.

Lisa had bought tickets for a wonderful whale-watching trip on the America, a replica of the very first America’s Cup winner for Sunday, so we were very glad to wake up to bright sunshine. Still, the captain of the America warned us that the trip could be a bit rough, given the previous day’s storm, and rescinded their usual “no seasickness” guarantee, offering anyone their money back or a ticket for a future date. We decided to go ahead, and it was well worth it. We proved to be pretty good sailors, and just enjoyed the beauty of the sea, and the excitement of spotting whales. (There’s that woman in the hat again!).











Honest, if you look hard you will see a whale’s back in this picture (it was difficult to look at the sudden spouts of water that would announce the presence of a whale, and get the camera ready for when one would plunge out of the water, while hanging onto a rope of a rocking boat trying to avoid dropping my camera into the middle of the Pacific).

I flew to St. Louis on Monday, March 1, arriving very late in the evening. I picked up a rental car, and drove off to Russell Blvd, the same house where Diana and I lived in 2007, and where Diana still is living. It was so good to see her! She looks great, and is doing very well in her job at Saint Louis University here in St. Louis. She had just returned from a trip to Miami for a college fair and high school visits. An added treat for her was a visit from her cousin John, who lives in Orlando, who brought her brownies from her Aunt Mary Ellen to help celebrate her 26th birthday.

I took off for Atlanta then on March 5th for the American Association of Applied Linguistics conference. The conference was great…seeing people I’ve met before, meeting new people, going to interesting talks, having interesting chats. I found Atlanta somewhat impersonal – the downtown area we were staying in is virtually empty at night. A telling sign that no one lives in the vicinity is the set of loudspeakers blasting music outside of a nearby restaurant (and I mean blasting!)in the late evening and into the night. On the last day, I went to see the Martin Luther King Jr. national historic site. We couldn’t get into his house, as the numbers on each tour are very limited, but still it felt inspiring to see where he lived as he was growing up with his family, and to see his tomb. The museum I found impressive perhaps not least because it celebrates the life of Coretta Scott King as much as it does MLK. Then we went off to see a totally different world: that of Margaret Mitchell – the house where she lived when she wrote Gone with the Wind. We had a most interesting tour guide who would inject comments such as “I can’t forgive her for marrying Red Upshaw. So any of y’all who are single remember this: never marry an alcoholic”. That evening, we had a drink on the 70th floor of the Westin Hotel, which is reportedly the tallest hotel in the western hemisphere. It has a revolving bar/restaurant on the 70th floor, a fact that is good to have in mind when you get way up there. I was standing there, looking out the floor to ceiling windows at a rather breathtaking nighttime Atlanta spread out way down below, and thinking “I’m feeling dizzy! And I haven’t even had a drink yet!” when I realized that we actually were moving.

I arrived back in St. Louis on Wednesday, and have been working on the paper for the Conference on College Composition and Communication, in Louisville this week. Elisa arrives tomorrow (Monday) (yipeee!!) and she'll be going with me to the conference. We leave Tuesday (16th) and will be driving there...we come back to St. Louis on Saturday. So, another trip and another city!