A still (vaguely) alive post.
I am back at this point. If you weren't in the know, I spent a little over a week in Russia, in the great big city of Moscow. I had net access at the conference, but not otherwise, and thus you hear nothing. I've also been simultaneously scrambling to get my first grant proposal together, which is a completely different note.
They say, among other things, that travel broadens one. Which is true, to the extent it goes. But at the same time, when you travel, you pick up your self, your professional apparatus, and are dropped into strange places, with strange people, and strange languages. And the one constant in all of this is that you're still the same, at least at first. And you're stuck with yourself, even if you go halfway around the world.
More later. I also still owe some sort of coherent review of "Omnivore's Dilemma" though I very much enjoyed Paula Poundstone schooling Michael Pollan on the radio this morning.