Sensei’s Big Illinois/Ireland Adventure

Post by **sensei** » Mon Jul 14, 2008 8:49 pm

Tuesday, July 1: All day prep for travel. Ran off handouts and papers, organized and reorganized clothing: one set of hot-weather clothes for Illinois, another set of cool-weather garb for Dublin. (Sensei spots one last enticing lot on YJ, regrets that it will come due while he’s on the road, puts down a strongish bid on it anyway so as not to live with the lingering regret that he just let it just go by.)

Wednesday, July 2: Up early, drove across the Bay Bridge to Baltimore, flew to Chicago. There I found that my flight to Peoria had been canceled. Scuttlebutt had it that United was about to go under financially and to make payroll they were having to cancel every commuter flight they could make an excuse for. Took a bus to Peoria. Got there about 10:30, found that my seminar was nowhere nearby, but was further west, in the middle of nowhere. My ride went by the airport to get 3 more seminar participants. I griped politely until I found that one of the others had come from Berlin, and had been on the road nearly 24 hours. Arrived at the Days Inn at Macomb, Illinois, about 1:30 AM.

Thursday, July 3: Up early to prep. for my seminars. The venue, so far as I could find out, was the Midwest’s biggest music festival devoted to heavy metal Christian music. As a side feature, they have something like a Chautauqua, with eminent theologians and religious historians giving little hour-long talks and workshops in tents. I was slated to do six of these, three in the morning on folklore and religion, three in the afternoon on conspiracy theory. Worried over whether to begin with a word of prayer. The first two go pretty well, though the tent format is totally unfamiliar to me. Seeing Totoro in the back of the tent set me at ease however (someone did a series on anime last year, and this was a prop). Back early to the Days Inn for a decent night’s sleep.

Friday, July 4: Up early again, did a better job on the folklore and religion talk until someone challenges me on whether traditions of faith healing are “folklore” or not. Interesting issue: Is it “magic” or “prayer.” People start to get very thoughtful, and I settle into the “let’s begin with a word of prayer” bit. I wander a bit more during the day and sample the bands, who are everywhere they can plug in an amp and draw a crowd. To a group, they are enthusiastic and totally incomprehensible but blissed out. (Sensei realizes that this is what “folk music” sounds like now.) I stayed for part of the festival’s main concert, which includes several bands that took the words seriously enough to flash them on a huge screen by the stage. (Sensei liked the one that stressed that “God is not contained by religion.”) Still, when the Christian rapper came on, I called it an evening and went back to the Days Inn (surprisingly nice fireworks show at Macomb).

See Sensei’s Cornerstone snapshots!

Saturday, July 5: Up early again, finished off the seminars. Good participation, people seemed to be genuinely happy with the talks. Several people said, “See you next year!” After the last one, off to Peoria again to catch a plane to Chicago and then back to Baltimore. Picked up my car and my other bag, went to the Merriott where I sorted everything out and repacked for Dublin.

Sunday, July 6: Up in time to catch the motel shuttle to the airport for the connecting flight to New York. (Sensei resists the temptation to run down to the business office to look at the auction.) The airlines people (now Delta) are very canny about when it’s actually going to arrive or depart. Finally, the plane comes (an hour late), then it sits with us on the runway for another hour awaiting clearance to take off. An hour and a half later we’re on the ground at JFK, where we sit on the tarmac for another two hours waiting for the ground controllers to direct us to the gate. I had four hours layover planned into my travel plans before the Dublin flight loaded, but in the end I make it to the gate just as my area is called.

They seat me in the very last row in the plane. The two other people in the row tell a flight attendant that they want to be reseated, no matter what it takes. So it’s not so bad: I get a little suite of my own, right by the lavatory, where I can nap, practice my paper, and work on a book review I need to write. We land in Ireland about 7:30 AM, and I get to the conference hotel just in time for the beginning. (Sensei’s paper is scheduled as the last morning presentation.) Woozy but in pretty good shape, I get through the paper (on the WMD argument as a classic contemporary legend) pretty well, then check in, get a tiny nap, and make most of the afternoon papers.

Afterwards, we adjourn next door to a traditional (est. 1649) Irish pub called “The Bleeding Horse,” where people ply me with pints of beer and I have a satisfying Guinness-and-beef stew.

See Sensei’s photodocumentation of The Bleeding Horse.

Tuesday, July 8: Wait! What happened to Monday, July 7? (Sensei thinks hard for a long time.) More legend papers (good ones on “Gassed and Robbed” and “Drugged and Raped,” plus an interesting survey of Japanese contemporary legends). Played hooky from the last set to do shopping downtown. Managed to get most everything on the list my wife and daughter gave me, including the authentic Guinness glasses and the Celtic earrings. Had a quieter evening at the “Café Bliss,” which had an interesting Irish cheeseburger that went well with a glass of Spanish red wine. (Sensei finally checks his auction -- 0_0 -- I won the lot for WHAT??? -- feels even more satisfied that he won’t have any lingering regrets over this one.)

See Sensei’s Dublin and Legend Conference snaps.

Wednesday, July 9: More legend papers, including a really interesting one on the legend/antilegend status of debated photographs, including the one of “Looter Man” from the Katrina flooding and “Flat Fatima” from the Mideast conflict. I take off one session to walk back downtown (in a misty chill rain) to see Christchurch Cathedral. The highlight is seeing the famous medieval tiles of the “Pilgrim Fox” (now part of the church’s logo) marching in a circle under the crossing of the transept and nave.
See Sensei’s snaps of the Cathedral!

Then back to finish up the conference and have supper again at “The Bleeding Horse,” where again Sensei compromises all of the merits he got with his “words of prayer” by means of Guinness and “bangers and mash.”

Thursday, July 10: Free day. A bunch of us legend scholars decide to see some of the Irish countryside by taking a tour to the Newgrange Stone Age monument and nearby sites. This turns out to be surprisingly interesting: Newgrange is an artificial cave that was laid out in a row of massive stones, then buried deep in a man-made hill. You go in through a claustrophobically twisting shaft, trying not to get your fat rear wedged in a tight passage, then end up in a surprisingly large inner chamber, with three side chapels evidently used for religious services. At the Winter solstice, the rising sun actually casts a beam of light directly from the horizon down the long narrow passageway, where for 15 minutes it naturally illuminates the inner chamber. Sensei leaves now firmly believing every story he ever heard about people being taken inside “fairy hills,” not to be seen again on earth for 200 years. The rest of the day is spent more bucolically, with a traditional farmhouse lunch and a tramp over Tara Hill, once the seat of Irish power. (Now, alas, the conservators keep the grass trimmed with the help of a resident herd of sheep who litter all the paths with wet, smelly booby traps.

See Sensei’s snaps of the Irish Countryside!

Friday, July 11: Up at 6, off to the airport, back to NYC, back to Baltimore, get the car, back over the Bay Bridge, home by 10 PM (plus 5 hours, for a travel day of 21 hours). Only tragedy was getting a small bottle of Bailey’s Irish Cream at the duty-free in Dublin, then not fitting it into the check-through bag in NYC before returning it. The airport security folks, naturally, find the bottle in the carry-on bag and expect me to open it on the way to Baltimore, pour it all over myself, then strike a match, shouting “Erin go braugh!” so they confiscate it. Sigh. Sensei buys a replacement at the first liquor store he finds over the Bay Bridge. Very happy to be home.

Gonzai · Post by **Gonzai** » Mon Jul 14, 2008 9:32 pm

Peoria!!

Now that is close to my neck of the woods.
I can't believe I actually just admitted that.

Sounds like you had a great time!!

I have always
wanted to go to Ireland. Sounds like you were too busy
to enjoy it as much as I am sure you would have liked
to, though!!

Why is it I find it hard to believe that United is going
under??!? Argh - there goes those 350,000 miles!

miz ducky · Post by **miz ducky** » Mon Jul 14, 2008 9:53 pm

Sounds like a great adventure.
I'm glad you had some fun!!

Belldandy16 · Post by **Belldandy16** » Tue Jul 15, 2008 8:47 am

nice! always wanted to visit there. it looks just incredible!
congrats for getting to go!

RoboFlonne · Post by **RoboFlonne** » Tue Jul 15, 2008 12:53 pm

Wow! I love adventures! I bet that was lots of fun!!

rallihir · Post by **rallihir** » Wed Jul 16, 2008 11:20 am

Wow, that was a grand adventure. I think it would be fascinating to attend a heavy metal Christian rock concert. The two philosophies seem dimetrically opposed, but I guess that God can make anytime happen. If you have a chance, you'll have to make a pilgrimage to Japan. If you wanted to teach ESL, there is always an opening especially for high level talent.

lcatino · Post by **lcatino** » Fri Jul 18, 2008 7:59 am

Very nice pics Sensei, thanks for sharing!

It looks like it was a fun trip!
The countryside looks amazing. Ireland has always been on my places to visit list.

BTW~ What's up with the guy carrying the Heineken bottles in two different pic's? Weird camera fluke or photoshop?

Post by **sensei** » Fri Jul 18, 2008 8:29 am

lcatino wrote:BTW~ What's up with the guy carrying the Heineken bottles in two different pic's? Weird camera fluke or photoshop?

Heh. I was hoping that someone would notice. One of the big hitters at the conference gave a great paper, well illustrated by PowerPoint, about the blog discussions that centered on the misleading use of photographs, some photoshopped, some simply posed for propaganda effect. One of the best parts was her survey of comic uses of these photos, which provide a subversive critique of the original political intention of the images.

She's Diane Goldstein of Memorial University of Newfoundland, the woman in profile holding the beer in the second photo, and in honor of her paper I pasted in one of the images she discussed, known online as "Looter Man." He was originally represented as looting the beer in the aftermath of the Katrina disaster but in fact no one ever established that he was doing any more than just sloshing down a flooded New Orleans street with a plastic tub of Heineken's. (But, just as Latinos in my part of PA routinely get hauled over by police for driving cars too expensive for them to actually own, the implication is that no Black person would ever have the money to buy a premium brand of beer, so he must be a looter.)

If you look carefully through the gallery, you'll also see "Flat Fatima" (used by Reuters in a series of anti-Israeli photos allegedly showing grieving Palestinians -- except that the same woman shows up over and over in impossibly separated communities) and the immediately recognizable "Tourist Guy" from the 9/11 tragedy.

Heh.

lcatino · Post by **lcatino** » Fri Jul 18, 2008 9:40 am

Very cool Sensei!

It certainly sounds like it was an interesting conference.

OK, I went back and believe I found "Flat Fatima"

I noticed it the first time around, but was unsure of what to make of it, lol.

I may need some help in pointing out the "Immediately recognizable" Tourist Guy though.

Post by **sensei** » Fri Jul 18, 2008 9:56 am

That's a virtually impenetrable in-joke, as the woman whose face I pasted in has been criticizing the conference participants for not really understanding what they are talking about.

Here's Tourist guy:

and in his original context:

I'm still waiting for most of the conference presenters to catch on (though Diane, as you can imagine, was fully in on it from the start.

lcatino · Post by **lcatino** » Fri Jul 18, 2008 10:09 am

sensei wrote:That's a virtually impenetrable in-joke, as the woman whose face I pasted in has been criticizing the conference participants for not really understanding what they are talking about.

Yikes! That must have made for some interesting discussions at the conference. ^^

Ahhhh.......I see now. Thanks for pointing him out, and adding the original pic. I thought he was part of your group, lol.

pixie_princess · Post by **pixie_princess** » Fri Aug 01, 2008 1:21 am

Wow, neat pics

Sorry they shafted you like that in Chicago. I've heard Macomb is pretty... well.... quiet for lack of a better term. I hope you enjoyed your trip^_^

Post by **sensei** » Fri Aug 01, 2008 8:22 am

pixie_princess wrote:Wow, neat pics Sorry they shafted you like that in Chicago. I've heard Macomb is pretty... well.... quiet for lack of a better term. I hope you enjoyed your trip^_^

Thank you, pixie. Your praise is welcome, as I know what a passion you have for photography. My new "toy" (Sony digicam) was really fun to try out. I think air travel increasingly is getting more and more grungy. Seeing the mess in JFK recently (American Airlines' computer crashed, and so everyone's luggage ended up in the same amphitheatre-sized room for a couple days) made me want to stay within walking distance of home for a long time.

Macomb was the bright city light in the area, about 40 minutes from where the encampment actually was. I was tempted to call it a "godfersaken wilderness," but then I remembered what it was all about. It really was an Otakon for Christian heavy metal rock enthusiasts. (They could hold it in Baltimore, I'd guess, but the sound would be deafening in that context -- you really needed 100 mi. of nothingness in each direction for it to really sound . . . well, actually pretty good at times. You did have to have faith that the lyrics being sung were Scripture-based.)