The C’s. Ah, the C’s. I absolutely love going to the C’s, partly because it’s so rich and impossibly large and overwhelming. There’s always something going on, and inevitably good things happen, both professionally and personally. And there’s a very endearing serendipitous quality to the whole thing. I’ve never had a bad time when I’ve gone, and this year was no exception. I’m going to give you the straight chronological narrative, trusting that the qualities that I so enjoy will reveal themselves . . .

After stopping at my grandparents’ house on Wednesday, Barb and I drove around Humboldt Park, which is coming back, I’m overjoyed to say; nearly all of Cabrini Green has been torn down, and Division from California to the Loop is becoming quite gentrified. (Geez, I wish we still had that house!) I was really happy to see this and wished that I could somehow tell the old folks . . . they were so depressed to see the neighborhood decline. And well I can understand it; it must have been glorious in the teens and 20’s.

After the Humboldt Park tour, Barb dropped me off at the Palmer House, where I went up to my room, dropped my bags, and went off to register. Came back to the room, signed up for internet access, futzed with my presentation, waited for my roomies, who had arrived already and were out doing the town a bit. After everyone got there, we lounged a bit, worked on our presentations, then headed off to the LSU-Lafayette party (read: A soiree at the “summer home of Dr. Keith Dorwick” – a north shore condo - which I’ve been dying to see since well before Dr. Keith Dorwick was a Dr.) After waiting for what seemed like forever for a bus, we decided to hail a cab, which resulted in the cab ride from hell. I felt like kissing the ground when I got out . . .

The condo did not disappoint. The gathering was small, which turned out to be really great, since my roomies (D. and L.) had never been to the C’s before. Since the group was small, they got to know everyone there well enough to feel comfortable talking to them later in the conference. And they both had a really good time. (Since this whole thing was basically my idea, I felt very invested in helping them have a good time.) Oh, and here’s the best part: John and Keith gave me tickets to the Lyric Opera’s Saturday evening performance of Carmen. They couldn’t go; they were doing something else instead. I gratefully accepted the tickets. Never mind that I was supposed to take the train back home on Saturday afternoon – train reservations are easy to change, and train tickets are cheap. I figured I’d try to find someone who had an extra bed on Saturday and would be willing to swap it for an opera ticket . . . It’s the C’s. I knew something would work out, because it always does.

Thursday we did our session, nice and early in the afternoon. I forgot what I did in the morning, but I’m sure it involved cruising around saying hi to people. The session went very well, although I was disappointed in my performance. My colleagues, however, were wonderful. I heard later from a colleague at EMU that two of her grad students had been very enthused about our panel, which was nice to know.

So then we all went to various sessions, and then it was off to the Bedford/St. Martin’s party at the Field Museum. It’s Bedford’s 25th anniversary, and boy, did they put on a show. The current special exhibit (on Pompeii) was open, and there was fabulous food – hot buffets with Italian and Oriental selections, waitpeople circulating with trays of hors d’ouevres – and an open bar that included mixed drinks. They ran continuous shuttles (big tour buses) from the Palmer House to the Field Museum. Everyone was there, it seemed; the place was packed and I ran into lots of my friends. And my opera dilemma resolved itself in one swell foop: I ran into Jane from Inkshed. Of course she wanted to go to the opera, and of course she had room for me, and of course her roomie (Juli-Ann Also from Inkshed) wouldn't mind sharing the room. There you go. Serendipity. And Inkshedders.

The Bedford party pretty much took up the evening; no other dinner plans emerged (and really, after the buffets, we were all full), but that was all good, as they say. I’ve lost my knack for staying up late, alas. Too many nights in a row of that and the days cease to be fun.

Friday morning I walked down to Union Station to change my train ticket (which was not a problem), then turned the wrong way down Jackson on my way back to the hotel, and wandered by a little restaurant called Lou Mitchell’s. I stopped in (it was crowded so I ate at the counter), got a wonderfully tasty scrambled egg (fluffed up like an omelet), terrific potatoes and bacon, and outstanding bread. I read the local arts rag (free) and learned, among other things, that there was a Warhol installation at the Museum of Contemporary Art, an Eastern European film festival, a Mamet festival, and a bicycle show at Navy Pier on Saturday from 9 am – 7 pm. I resolved to go to the bicycle show. (Saturday was shaping up quite nicely.) At noon D. and I attended a presentation on an online system for scoring placement essays devised by people at MIT and elsewhere. The presentation was enlightening, and I absolutely loved getting to see the building where it was held – a conference room inside what had to have been a gentleman’s club (in the 19th century sense of that term) on Jackson Avenue. Woo, hoo! Chicago architecture! And here I thought New York was Deco . . . Lunch was good, too.

Then it was a two-hour rant about courseware hosted by Bedford/St. Martin’s. What fun! I always have something to say about courseware, and being locked in a room for two hours with similarly opinionated people (and fed and paid for the pleasure) was a wonderful way to spend the afternoon , , , After the rant I found some people headed to the bar, and joined them for a late-afternoon beer. I saw Dickie, and told him there was a bike show on Navy Pier. He expressed serious interest in going, and we agreed to get in touch after his very-late-for-the-C’s afternoon session on Saturday.

That evening I attended the 5 C’s SIG, then joined my colleagues at the event honoring Geneva Smitherman (which was really fun and certainly a well-deserved honor). By the time I got there, the place was packed, the presentation was rolling, and I could only get a seat by the door – with a bunch of people from MSU, as it turns out – Kitty, and Laura, and Leonora (all of whom say hi to you, Rob! :) Afterwards, I found D. and L. (who already knew Laura) and we and the MSU contingent went out to dinner, which was really fun. I’ve never really gone to the C’s and spent time with local colleagues, and I have to say, it was a pleasure.

Saturday morning, bright and (way too) early, I took my stuff down to Jane’s room. As luck would have it, she even had an extra room key . . . I went to a few Saturday sessions, then called Dickie, who still wanted to go to the bike show.

I knew he would, because Dickie is a serious bike geek, and, as with all exercise stuff, we are on the same wavelength. On the bus ride to Navy Pier we discovered that both of us have studded snow tires for our commuting bikes, and neither of us was surprised by this. When I explained to him that I was reluctant to move from Ann Arbor because of its outdoor public pools, he understood completely (and then we talked about Pools We Have Known and Loved for twenty minutes). Dickie just recently moved to Ohio after having lived for probably 25 years on Michigan’s Keewenaw Peninsula, so he had to buy himself some roller skis . . . we then discussed the relative merits of roller blades and roller skis. And so it went. All afternoon - as we walked to the bike show and ogled the bikes and cruised the sale racks. It was really fun. I got some really cheap and really silly bike socks and some knee warmers, too.

Got back to the room in time to sit and talk with Jane for a few minutes, then get dressed for the opera. (As Kris Kristofferson would say, “I fumbled through the [suitcase] for my clothes and found my cleanest dirty shirt.” I didn’t exactly pack clothes for the opera.) We wandered around looking for a restaurant for probably twenty minutes, during which time Jane caught me up on the doings of friends from Canada, which was nice. We landed at a really first-rate Italian place, and got so involved in our conversation that we ended up having to run for the opera, getting there just before the lights went down.

And that’s where I’ll leave you for the evening, dear readers; I am not going to attempt to do justice to Carmen in this message. Leave me to sort my superlatives a while longer . . . It was a fabulous performance and Jane was fabulous company. I have to say, the final act might have been one of those life-changing theatrical moments for me . . . Stay tuned.