In the Middle

Saturday, May 17, 2008

To the Muses of BABEL: Thank You and Good Night

Figure 1. Myra Seaman and Betsy McCormick [Kalamazoo 2008]

Yes, at some point, I am going to write a substantial post on the Kalamazoo Congress, and I fear I have almost too much to say about so many papers and sessions I don't know where to begin. But before we get there, I wanted to say something that I have been meaning to say for a long time. As we've pointed out again and again, the BABEL Working Group is a non-hierarchical collective with no top, no bottom, and only a middle, but we would be lying if we did not tell you that we do have three Muses who form the very heart and soul of BABEL: Betsy McCormick, Myra Seaman, and Kimberly Bell. Without our muses, BABEL doesn't want to live or even wake up in the morning. Everyone needs beauty in their lives, and in this case, BABEL's cups runneth over. But unlike other Muses [have you ever met any? they mainly sit around, look good, tell you what to do, then take credit for it afterwards], the Muses of BABEL are also doing all of the work: the editing, the writing of book chapters, the presiding, the presenting, the organizing, the paperwork no one wants to fill out, etc. You know that scene in the The Wizard of Oz when Toto pulls back the wizard's curtain and there's only a man back there pulling on various levers? Well, when you pull back the curtain of BABEL, it's Betsy, Myra, and Kim. I not only raise, but also toss over my shoulder, my martini glass in their honor. That sound of breaking glass on the marble floor of the house of BABEL? That's for the Muses.

Figure 2. Julie Couch and Kimberly Bell [Kalamazoo 2007]

Enough Said

My current Facebook status:

Jeffrey is ready for Commencement to stop commencing and start ending.

Two new blogs: medieval and disability studies

Both are composed by graduate students who are working to make these fields of study intersect. They contain ruminations personal and professional.

Friday, May 16, 2008

Karl's performative interspace, or, 'I want to...'

Karl's Kalamazoo paper was a work of art, riffing on the Gowtherian Idyll post he'd placed here a while ago and deploying his lexical trademark phrase (see the comments here) of "I want to ..." in order to open up what I now dub a performative interspace.

Briefly -- and correct me if I am misrepresenting you, Karl -- his Kzoo paper attempted to imagine what it would be like to stop Gowther before he could leave the idyllic hillside, before he had to exit that space where for the first time he has experienced a generosity existing outside the demand for reciprocation. Karl went further, and spoke of his own desire to co-inhabit that space, to be with Gowther and the greyhound in a realm where charity is divorced from telos.

I've been thinking about Karl's paper quite a bit, especially as it touched the other presentations in the panel. Eileen, especially, forged such a middle space while detailing the impossible desire of a demon to touch, to love, to be with a solitary saint. In a moment filled with anguish and desire, she lingered over the sadness of this demon forced to become fugitive, a demon hesitating with yearning even as he is compelled to depart. I think, too, of Nicola wandering the sadness of the dispersive "cloud" he described, and Anna errant in the worlds she evoked. What made all four of these so impressive was their performative force: they brought into being the interstices they imagined. Another way of saying this is that these four scholar/performers found in their texts moments of generosity, of invitation: they accepted their provocations, formed an alliance with what was offered, brought themselves and their texts to a space where both could meet, mingle, change. It was a wonder to behold ... or, as audience member, to be caught up in the becoming, even to participate unawares.

We've been talking quite a bit on this blog about new critical modes. I happened to watch an important one performed* at Kalamazoo.

*and yes I keep using that word intentionally, since I seem to have performance theory on my mind

Thursday, May 15, 2008

My BABEL Theme Song

So at our post-Celery World lunch, Eileen and the Tiny Shriner stared at me until I promised to pick my BABEL theme song. Stephanie Trigg had recently posted about her choice, and she did such a good job of making something out of Madonna's Ray of Light that I despair about my own selection -- especially because my taste in music is remarkable only for its ordinariness.

Not knowing what to elect and yet wanting to live up to my pledge, I decided not to decide -- that is, I decided to allow someone else to decide for me. So I consulted my own Tiny Music Expert, Katherine Eleanor Cohen, who has recently become addicted to the nouveau retro tunes of Pink Martini.

The petite music snob dithered over which of two songs to recommend. She is an ardent fan of Una notte a Napoli, but thought lyrics in Italian might be too pretentious. So she selected the title song Hang on Little Tomato, a phrase of which the Cohen family is so fond that we use it in our vernacular as an all-purpose admonition. Try it yourself: "Hang on little tomato!" when verbally hurled at someone with the proper emphasis really does work magic.

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Introducing Glossator

So long as we're in a CFPing spirit, may I announce GLOSSATOR, another child of Nicola's genius? Please read on, my fecund friends, as what you're about to encounter is very much at home in the world we all inhabit here at ITM.

Glossator: Practice and Theory of the Commentary
Glossator publishes original commentaries, editions and translations of commentaries, and essays and articles relating to the theory and history of commentary, glossing, and marginalia. The journal aims to encourage the practice of commentary as a creative form of intellectual work and to provide a forum for dialogue and reflection on the past, present, and future of this ancient genre of writing. By aligning itself, not with any particular discipline, but with a particular mode of production, Glossator gives expression to the fact that praxis founds theory.

Glossator is an peer-reviewed open-access journal, sponsored by The Graduate Center, CUNY. It is available online at http://glossator.org.

Editors: Nicola Masciandaro (Brooklyn College, CUNY), Karl Steel (Brooklyn College, CUNY), Ryan Dobran (Brooklyn College, CUNY).

Section Editors: Erik Butler (Emory University), Mary Ann Caws (Graduate Center, CUNY), Alan Clinton (Georgia Institute of Technology), David Greetham (Graduate Center, CUNY), Bruno Gullí (Long Island University), Daniel Heller-Roazen (Princeton University), Jason Houston (University of Oklahoma), Eileen A. Joy (Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville), Sean McCarthy (Lehman College, CUNY), Sherry Roush (Penn State University), Michael Sargent (Graduate Center, CUNY), Michael Stone-Richards (College for Creative Studies), Frans van Liere (Calvin College), Jesús R. Velasco (UC Berkeley), Yoshihisa Yamamoto (Chiba University).

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

The Editors invite submissions for the first volume of Glossator, to be published in 2009.

Glossator welcomes work from all disciplines, but especially from fields with strong affiliations with the commentary genre: philosophy, literary theory and criticism, textual and manuscript studies, hermeneutics, exegesis, et al.

What is commentary? While the distinction between commentary and other forms of writing is not an absolute one, the following may serve as guidelines for distinguishing between what is and is not a commentary:

A commentary focuses on a single object (text, image, event, etc.) or portion thereof.
A commentary does not displace but rather shapes itself to and preserves the integrity, structure, and presence of its object.
The relationship of a commentary to its object may be described as both parallel and perpendicular. Commentary is parallel to its object in that it moves with or runs alongside it, following the flow of reading it. Commentary is perpendicular to its object in that it pauses or breaks from reading it in order to comment on it. The combination of these dimensions gives commentary a structure of continuing discontinuity, which allows it to be consulted or read intermittently rather than start to finish.
Commentary tends to maintain a certain quantitative proportion of itself vis-à-vis its object. This tendency corresponds to the practice of "filling up the margins" of a text.
Commentary, as a form of discourse, tends to favor and allow for the multiplication of meanings, ideas, and references. Commentary need not, and generally does not, have an explicit thesis or argument. This tendency gives commentary a ludic or auto-teleological potential.

Possible submissions include: critical, philological, and/or bibliographic commentaries on texts, art, music, events, and other kinds of objects. Editions and translations of commentaries, glosses, annotation, and marginalia. Historical, theoretical, and/or critical articles and essays on commentary and commentary traditions. Experimental and/or fictional commentaries.

Submission Deadline: October 31, 2008

Questions, queries may be directed to Nicola Masciandaro: nicolam@brooklyn.cuny.edu

Nous ne faisons que nous entregloser—Montaigne

Why I Can Never Go to Kalamazoo Again, At Least Not While Department Chair

This is the heap-o-labor to which I returned. Note that the Tiny Shriner has found an imperious new perch from which to scowl.

Mearcstapa

Like to tread the boundaries 'tween human and monster as if a fancyfooted Grendelkin? Stomp over to this new blog and peruse MEARCSTAPA [Monsters: the Experimental Association for the Research of Cryptozoology through Scholarly Theory And Practical Application]. I missed the organizational meeting, but this association looks terrific.

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

CFP: The York Massacre in Context

The York Massacre of 1190 in context:
Reassessing relations between Jews and others in medieval England
An Interdisciplinary Conference

CALL FOR PAPERS

29-31 March 2010, Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York.

The mass suicide and murder of the men, women and children of the Jewish community in York on 16 March 1190 is one of the most scarring events in the history of the city, and an aspect of its past which is widely remembered around the world. Little work has been done on the Jewish community of York in recent years but there is a growing body of new scholarship on the history and archaeology of the city and in the reappraisal of wider English society and government in that period which we feel could now be brought to bear on retelling the story of the massacre and re-examining its implications.

This conference will aim to use the events of 1189-90 as a lens through which to reassess society in England in the later twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. The York massacre was not just a local event but one of a series of violent attacks on local communities of Jews across England in 1189-90. This wider conflict provides an important insight into the rapidly changing nature of English society. We therefore wish to invite papers not only on Anglo-Jewry but on the wider interpretative frameworks of scholarship on English culture, society and government within which the events of 1190 need to be located.

We are pleased to announce that our keynote speakers will be:

Professor Paul R. Hyams, Department of History, Cornell University, "Anglo-Jewry and its place in the wider society c. 1189-90".

Professor Jeffrey J. Cohen, Department of English, George Washington University, "The Future of the Jews of York"

Following the conference we aim to publish a selection of papers as a coherent volume with a major university press.

We would welcome papers treating any of the themes suggested above including:
• the events of 1189-90 in England, their antecedents and aftermath.
• new scholarship on critical bodies of primary source material which illuminate relationships between Jews and others in medieval England.
• institutional and local engagement with Jewish communities in medieval England
• defining the Jewish community in medieval England in Christian or Jewish praxis and lexis.
• the memory of the events of 1189-90 both within the middle ages and beyond

Papers should be between 20 and 40 minutes in length. Please specify the proposed length in your submission and whether you would also want your submission to be considered for publication, or not. Preliminary suggestions would be most welcome by 23 June 2008 if possible (see below). Please send full submissions (maximum one side A4), by 15 January 2009, to:

Dr Sarah Rees Jones and Dr Sethina Watson, Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York, King’s Manor, Exhibition Square, York, YO1 7EP. Email: srrj1@york.ac.uk and sw555@york.ac.uk

Preliminary workshop:

On 24 June 2008 we will be holding a preliminary small workshop in York which will focus on the current work of Hannah Meyer (University of Cambridge) and Hugh Doherty (University of Oxford), as well as Sarah Rees Jones and Sethina Watson (University of York). This will be a small informal occasion for us to share ideas about our current projects and discuss the conference and volume in more detail. It would be extremely helpful to us if we could have preliminary expressions of interest for participation in the full conference by that date, or suggestions of contacts. We will of course still welcome later expressions of interest if this is not possible. If you happen to be in York you would be most welcome to attend the workshop, but we will try to restrict participation to around 20.

Close Your Eyes, and Let Me Kiss You

In case anyone thinks my weblog post title promiscuously original [or just plain promiscuous], let me just first say that it cites a line from a song on Betsy's latest CD mixtape edition of the Tim Spence Experiment, which mixtape I listened to on my way home to Saint Louis from Kalamazoo, and I couldn't help but think how apropos the line was to how I felt about Kalamazoo this year. Obviously, it is late at night [just trust me on this one] and I need to go to bed, and I will be writing several fuller posts about the Congress as the week progresses, but I did not want to let the night pass without expressing my emotions. To Jeffrey Cohen, to Betsy McCormick, to Myra Seaman, to Karl Steel, to Justin Brent, to Nicola Masciandaro, to Anna Klosowska, to Dan Remein, to Christine Neufeld, to Mary Kate Hurley, to Robin Norris, and beyond . . . . close your eyes, and let me kiss you. Or, as Patti Labelle once put it at the end of a concert, "I love you, I love you all, but I gotta go."

Monday, May 12, 2008

Kzoo 2008 Wrapup

Expect a substantial post as soon as I can get out from under the grading that ambushed me as soon as I stepped in my door. But, first, a few awards and memories:

For hilarity, enthusiasm, for the promise of transforming the profession, and for throwing the best darn parties: this year's BABEL core (Eileen, Betsy McCormick, Myra Seaman, and Justin Brent).

For being everyone's Lodestar: Anna Kłosowska

For being some of my new favorite people in the world: Christine Neufeld, Holly Crocker, Dan Remein

For de-zombifying me in the airport: Tison Pugh, James Schultz, Martha Driver

Some trivia: How many times moved to tears (or at least wetter eyes) during sessions this time? Three. Eileen's Guthlac paper (the description of the two demons watching Guthlac, weeping over his fortitude); many times during the Pete Beidler session (including tears of laughter at the image of PB, at a Kzoo session on clothing, getting on a table to don his Foot-Mantel); Steve Guthrie's paper on torture ("You start with the present because that's where the bodies are buried"): if you slept in Sunday, you missed a lot.

Favorite New Session Title that I'll Never Get to Use: "Crazy Shit I found in the PL." (if the first year's a success, we'll continue with the CCCM and MGH).

Post Kzoo Post

In the only Kzoo conference post not focused upon Tiny shenanigans, I made the declaration that "My work has an audience." I'm not sure why I phrased my Pronouncement thus, other than that I'd been thinking about how much of the work I've done over the past fifteen years has only recently seemed to me to be something other than letters mailed to unknown receivers. (I am exaggerating, as usual: look at the acknowledgments page of any of my books and you'll see who sustained the thought that went into each ... but still, for a long time I had the feeling that much of what I was writing wasn't making it very far beyond the people thanked in those acknowledgments). I was thinking also of my first Kalamazoo, in 1995, when I felt a little lonely and melancholic. Glenn Burger helped me to see the brightest side of what can happen there, but I still left wondering if I'd ever have an audience among medievalists.

On further reflection, though, I realize that this year's conference reaffirmed for me something rather different: I've never been seeking an audience so much as interlocutors. An audience gets assigned discrete tasks like applause (or tsk-tsks), reviews (good and evil), book purchases (or burnings). Interlocutors don't allow the space of a conference panel or the confines of a book jacket to confine them: they engage with work at its moment of production, alter its coming into being, challenge and affirm ... and once this work has found the pseudo-permanence of page and print, they ensure that its life does not come screeching to an end, that its future includes strange new forms and unanticipated progeny. That's what was reaffirmed to me at this Kalamazoo: not that the audience I'd been only imagining early in my career had materialized, but that there is a large group of people with whom to have conversations about mutual obsessions, anxieties, desires. What's best about this group is its lack of stratification: I discovered as many dissertations being formed as I did second, third and fourth book projects by people whose scholarship I've long admired. So, forget audience. Look, I am crossing it out: ~~audience~~. Without the mutuality that interlocutor stresses, scholarship has a tendency to take root and -- even if it flourishes -- not move much from its place of origin. And what happens if you are trying to thrive in your garden, and no one is stopping by to notice your sparkle? Better to cast your lot with the wanderers. They might take you to unexpected places (karaoke bars in Kalamazoo, for instance) but you might also learn that unlooked for spaces, communal spaces, are really the only ones that matter.

BABEL panel blogged

Check out Meg's impressions of "What is the Place of the Present in Medieval Studies?" at xoom. The moment she speaks about -- when Katharine Jager foregrounded the classroom and pedagogy -- was an important one. Since Jager's departure point was teaching "Monster Culture: Seven Theses" as part of a composition course, I responded by trying to link the comment to an earlier observation made by a historian at the University of Hawaii about intervening into departmental and university culture, and to the conversation without terminus that the BABEL panel aspired to catalyze.

ADDENDUM. My own reaction to the panel is rather mixed. On the one hand it was energizing to be present in a space where disagreement unfolded and so ideas came to matter all the more. On the other, the opening remarks were too inhospitable to and dismissive of the work of the other panelists. They were not well supported nor defended (I thought). I also wish we had had another hour in the room together, because it was the conversation that followed which really seemed to matter. That's why I labeled it the conversation without terminus: it must go on.

ADDENDUM TO THE ADDENDUM. Another mention, by the amazing Dan Remein, who sometimes buys clothes in the same embarrassing place I do.

Sunday, May 11, 2008

Home

One hour and five minutes to fly from Detroit to BWI, then one hour and twenty two minutes to drive from Baltimore to the house due to the fact that when it rains all DC area drivers ride their brakes for fear of hitting a drop... but I am home, and have been hugged so heartily by the kids that I have bruises. Gifts this year: winged unicorn in a tiny purse for Katherine, wax replica of the seal of Richard I for Alexander (he was Couer de Lyon for a school wax museum).

Here's hoping everyone else made it back with a minimum of delays.

Tiny Shriner's Kzoo Adevnture, Fin

So Tiny and I are sitting at the Detroit airport, waiting for the plane that will speed us back to DC and the ordinary world. He's sipping a caramel macchiato ("short" of course) and I am just realizing that this is the most solitude we've had since Wednesday. I am looking forward to returning home, of course, but I miss the conviviality of Kalamazoo as well.

Yesterday was our much anticipated ITM Bloggers Day Trip to Celery World, an expanse of celery and bike trails that can be described best as either "green" or "stalky." The sky was that crisp blue that holds sway only on perfect days, and the pathetic fallacy was in full swing as we walked nature trails, pointing out wildlife to each other ("A duck!" "A goose!" "A squirrel!" "A toddler on training wheels!" "Celery!"), and for a few leisurely hours reveled in how much we enjoy each other's company. Tiny's legs are too stubby for him to keep up with us, so he climbed into Mary Kate's purse and peered in regal splendor from its outer pocket. As we left he insisted on riding a tractor. Though the Celery Interpretive Center was closed for the season and its gate locked, Eileen declared (in typical Eileen fashion) "Fences are for climbing!" and spryly sprung over the top, Tiny clutched in hand. He enjoyed the tractor but admits he is a city boy ... and let's face it, even celery towers over the guy.

Later in the day, in the midst of lunch, he climbed to the top of a soda bottle and proceeded to lecture us on how repulsed he was to learn that the celery in his Bloody Marys grows in the ground, and bugs touch it. Luckily Karl was eating a sandwich nearby, so he didn't get to deliver too long a screed before hopping from the bottle top due to whizzing mustard.

Tiny was exhausted, so he missed the panels and the 5 PM wine hour. He wants you to know, though, that the winners of this year's Best Coiffed Medievalist were announced at that libation celebration. Among the men the unanimous victor was Dan Remein, who thanks his stylist Kelly. In the women's category we had an UNPRECEDENTED three way tie (it was a good year for coiffure): Christina Fitzgerald, Betsy McCormick, and Christine Neufeld (reconfirmed after numerous recounts and brief hanging chad scandal). Congratulations to all, and remember: you are not a serious medievalist unless you possess serious hair.

The Tiny Shriner thanks all the friends who made this conference such a good one. He looks forward to returning to his ledge for a few weeks, though, and dozing away the patina of learnedness he accidentally accumulated.

Saturday, May 10, 2008

Celery World, We Are Coming

Today the ITM Bloggers are taking their first annual daytrip. We'll pack into the PT Barnum, strap the Tiny Shriner to his booster seat, and drive to a nearby celery farm (which we have rechristened Celery World, making it seem more exciting than it actually likely will be).

I'm a little worried about Tiny, though. He stayed up far too late last night at the BABEL party. A small scandal is swirling around him: he was seen emerging from a closed coat closet with a well known medievalist who had been in the running for our annual Best Coiffed competition. Suddenly s/he had hair so rumpled that said medievalist was immediately disqualified.

I just found Tiny in my coffee mug, insisting it is a very compact jacuzzi. He is about to learn otherwise.

Friday, May 09, 2008

Things I Have Learned or Relearned at Kalamazoo

The Tiny Shriner is my id.
My work has an audience. I was so pleased at the number of people in attendance at the panel where I gave "Chaucer's Fairye" ... and my editor told me that my book sold out immediately afterwards at the Palgrave table. EDIT: Actually, the book sold out its first print run, just after Laurie Finke's very nice review in Speculum. I'm told it is being reprinted right now and will ship for free at the conference price to all who ordered Hybridity, Identity and Monstrosity at Kalamazoo.
The New Middle Ages series at Palgrave is going to be field-shaping for a long time to come. There was a well-attended champagne reception this evening over which Bonnie Wheeler presided with her usual charm ... and spoke glowingly of titles to come. One in particular I find especially exciting, possibly because I was the press reader.
Nicola Masciandaro, Anna Klosowska, Karl Steel and Eileen Joy can -- when combined in a single panel -- give me an almost religious experience of disembodied pleasure/love/knowing/being. (Why doesn't English have a word for that?)
Mary Kate Hurley is too damn smart for someone so young. So is Dan Remein.
Asa Mittman is the most impassioned presenter I've ever seen. No sleeping when he is talking about monsters.
Self-igniting "Fire Hens" caused the Cotton Library fire in 1731, at least according to Asa.
BABEL has a tradition of going to the local Dairy Queen ("the DQ Run"). I went along, and discovered -- as milkshake flew -- that Karl is a messy eater.
My nun count rose to 17 today. It was pointed out to me, though, that it is very possible that I keep seeing the same nun over and over.
Exemplaria is the journal to watch. Under Liza Scala, Tison Pugh, Patty Ingham and James Paxson, good things will be coming down the line.
Betsy McCormick (who graciously provided the photo adorning this post) will always be frightened by my penetrating glance no matter how many reassurances are sent her way.
Kalamazoo is my favorite conference.

Thank goodness he blacked out after one drink.

Despite what you might have read at Gawker, we ITM co-bloggers actually enjoy each other's company and don't refer to each other via abusive epithets when out of ear shot. (While it is true that I call Karl "The Scold," I call him that to his face. He has in fact been quite scoldy to me this conference).

We ITMers and a cohort of our BABEL supporters had dinner together last night. The repast commenced badly, with the Tiny Shriner demanding quite imperiously

to be removed from my coat pocket
to sit at the table with the adults
to have a booster seat so that he could see something other than those areas of human bodies that used to get medieval monks' ~~knickers all knotted~~ cowls all crumpled
that he be given more of a say in blog content

He also kept winking at Eileen, and I could tell she was getting very uncomfortable -- he muttered something about being better than any damn gnome. Tiny then went on to lecture us about how our readership isn't as high as it could be, how our posts are predictable and do not feature Tiny Shriners nearly enough, how if he hears one more time how much we love each other he is going to hurl Tiny Chunks all over our oven roasted garlic appetizer spread. When he began t

o implore us seriously to start featuring "All Naked Tiny Shriner Tuesdays," we knew we had to act.

MKH gave him a glass a wine. He drank with gusto, reeled for a few minutes, and .... well, let's just sa

y that dinner was a lot quieter after that.

Wednesday, May 07, 2008

The Tiny Shriner's Kzoo Adventure I

I wish that I could announce that the Tiny Shriner is an engaging travel companion, but the truth is that he is rather high maintenance.

You'd think that our blog mascot, someone who spends most of his life as part of the natural water fe ature in my office staring out the window from a ledge where he might see the occasional Pope process but otherwise not moving around too much (there are exceptions), would be rather sedate and easily pleased. Wrong on both counts.

Tiny was not at all happy that we took Southwest airlines to Detroit, mainly because they do not offer first class seating. In fact they do not offer much besides a small package of small peanuts, which they lob at you from quite some distance. Tiny didn't like it either when the a nearby wailing baby attempted to use him as a pacifier. In the photo to the left you will glimpse Tiny sourly contemplating some cumulus clouds, wishing for an airborne martini.

Things didn't get much better when we arrived in Detroit. I'd reserved a compact car, and it turned out to be an ivory colored PT Cruiser. Tiny kept calling the car the "PT Barnum" because (he says) it is so small that it must be a clown car. I reminded him that clowns are in fact significantly larger in their dimensions than he is, and that a Jestermobile would in fact offer plenty of space for him. My observations failed to improve his mood significantly, especially because it was now getting late and he had had enjoyed no lunch, no dinner and so far no drinks. When he seemed about to have hissy fit about the lack of a Mercedes or Lexus, I threatened to attach him to the "PT Barnum" as its hood ornament. He sulked but got inside, and we commenced the two hour drive. Do I need to add that we fought over which radio station to listen to? I was intrigued by an NPR story about six year olds who believe themselves born into the wrong body, "gender disorders" versus "transgenderism." Tiny wanted to listen to some inane Top 40 station blasting Celine Dion. I considered abandoning him in a hay stack.

So we were both in pissy moods when we finally arrived in Kalamazoo. Imagine our surprise when the ordinary hotel room we reserved at the Radisson was upgraded -- for no particular reason other than Tiny flashed his winning painted-on smile in the check-in line, and I mentioned to the woman at the desk that she was doing an admirable job of remaining cheerful despite an onslaught of guests more high maintenance than Tiny. So now he and I have so much space that we might never see each other while rooming together. Click on the picture and see if you can spot the Shriner.

Tiny has had a long day and is very tired. Here he is trying to find his sleep number in a bed that could fit all the ITM co-bloggers. I'm not sure I have the heart to tell him that there is a BABEL karaoke party tonight.

Please bear with us as we relocate.

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