Continuing on the recap of my NYC trip. I woke up on Saturday morning (late) and rushed to subway to try to make it to an 8:00am session at the AAG. The subject was the meat industry and it was one of the sessions I was most looking forward to attending. The ‘L’ train was closed for maintenance, which meant I had to take a shuttle to another train. The perk of missing the train and having the detour was that I got to enjoy the lovely subway art at the other station. To make a long story short, I missed the session and landed in mid-town at 9:30am with nothing to do until noon. The conference was held at the Hilton and Sheraton hotels. I met up with Tish and Amy (geography friends from Seattle) and we went in search of a non-$25 breakfast. We found a little spot, had breakfast and shared our tales of travelling from Seattle and our first few days in New York.
My noon commitment was the annual board meeting for the geography journal I work for. I don’t think I’ve mentioned it here before, but my advisor is the managing editor for a geography journal, and my funding currently is for the editorial assistant position. It’s a great job and I enjoy it. This was my first time to attend the board meeting and it was being held at a nice Italian restaurant around the corner from the Hilton. There were approximately 20 board members in attendance at the luncheon all seated at one long table–all top geographers in their respective subfields. My advisor was seated across the table and a few seats down from me. I was seated next to a lovely woman from Capetown (S. Africa). We were chatting about our respective research interests and I began to tell her about my dissertation project. In short, I told her that I was interested in the lifecourse of the cow in dairy production and the various ways that different cows’ bodies are used (based on their biological sex and age). I gave the example of male calves being used for veal and then brought up the issue of adult bulls. These adult males are often kept on breeding farms and forcibly ejaculated for semen collection for the artificial insemination of cows on dairy production farms. At this moment in the conversation, Michael (my advisor) tuned into the conversation and smiled oddly at me across the table. I said (quite loudly I’m afraid), “Yes, Michael, I’m talking about semen!”. That, of course, drew the attention of all of the faculty at our end of the table. Michael said, “Of course you are. That’s my Katie!” I suppose that’s me…talking about semen at the professional lunch table. Whoops! On a more mundane note, I had a roasted beet salad (the only thing on the menu easily veganized), which was quite good and I’m going to try to recreate for the blog.
That afternoon, I went to a session at the AAG called, “New Directions for Political Ecology”, which was quite interesting. One of the speakers was another graduate student in our department. And another speaker on the panel was Joshua Muldavin, a professor at Sarah Lawrence College who was responsible for turning me onto Geography in the first place. I was all set to be a fiction writer and then stumbled into Josh’s class (‘Food, Agriculture, Environment & Development) and it/he changed the whole trajectory of my life. Thanks, Josh! This was the first time I had seen him since graduating from SLC, and it was great to reconnect for a minute and hear about the work he’s doing!
After the conference was over that day, Tish and I wandered out into midtown a bit aimlessly until we stumbled into Times Square. It had been a long time since I’d been to Times Square because I had always avoided it like the plague while living in NY. She wanted to take some video for her fellow back home, so we stood in the middle of Times Square for a while and took it all in. One thing I hadn’t noticed before, which Tish pointed out, was that Times Square really isn’t very noisy. For how much of a visual overload it is, it isn’t any louder than any other part of the city. It’s strange. From Times Square we were looking for a bar to sit down and have a beer. We were both a little overwhelmed by everything and found a little Irish bar where everyone seemed to have an Irish accent except for the two of us. It was kind of charming and we had a few beers and some french fries and laughed and cried and talked…The next day Emma and I headed up to New Haven to see our friend Gwen. I’ll tell you about that next time because Gwen’s interior decorating deserves a post all on its own, but I will share this photo for all the Doctor Who fans out there…It was on the train to New Haven:
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I love the semen story, that is hilarious.
So sorry to hear you missed that first session, but LOVE IT that you had academic semen talk at the table ;-). I’m guessing it’s about finals time. When the grading’s done, let’s get together, eh??