catching up: friday at SHARP

After giving my paper Friday morning, I had a good day, hearing a number of interesting presentations. I did receive several kind and helpful comments on my paper, and I feel confident now as I work on revising it into an article.

After all the sessions were finished, there was a very nice reception in the Margaret Fowler Garden, and then several of us walked into the Claremont “village” for dinner at Yianni’s Greek Restaurant. Sauteed calamari and ouzo: what more could one ask for?

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danger bees, updated

I’m leaving for the airport soon to head home, but I wanted to record one anecdote from last night’s trip to Pasadena.

As we were walking back to the bus, we had to step off the sidewalk into the street for a bit because there was yellow police tape blocking off a 20X20-foot square around a tree with a printed sign reading “Danger! Bees.” On the ground around the tree were thousands of dead bees.

I have three questions regarding this:

  1. What good is the sign going to do? If I’m 20-feet away from a swarm of bees, I’m probably going to get stung.
  2. They have pre-printed “Danger! Bees” signs? How often are they used?
  3. What good is the police tape going to do? Do the bees stay within the boundary of the tape?

Update: Heidi reflects on miller moths in Denver, confesses that the idea of a “Danger! Bees” sign gives her the “heebie jeebies,” and provides a link to a photo of such a sign along with an explanation that the bee problem in Southern California is with killer bees. Yikes!

SHARP book prize

The annual SHARP book prize goes to Forgotten Readers: Recovering the Lost History of African American Literary Societies, by Elizabeth McHenry.

the visible blogger

It’s one thing when I’m writing comments on the SHARP conference for an audience of readers who aren’t currently attending.

It’s something quite different when someone I haven’t told about my blog comes up to me and says, “I’ve heard you’re keeping a blog on the conference. What’s the address?”

SHARP update, ii

I haven’t been a very good conference blogger, have I? Now I’m faced with writing some notes on all the panels I’ve been to and the people I’ve met. Yikes! Well, I’ll give it a shot. Here’s a start:

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