After trekking all over Boston yesterday, today was practically a sedentary day! But with much fodder for the brain! I spent a significant part of the day at a conference–the American Literature Association “umbrella” conference, where a lot of individual literary associations have panels to present research on their themes or authors. This was the first time I have ever presented at the ALA (my academic background means that I am a newcomer and practically an outsider here, but because of my research on the African American writer Charles W. Chesnutt (1858-1932), I’m part of the Charles Chesnutt Association and co-presented with my “boss” at the New School, Stephanie Browner, on a story that is part of the edition of his short stories that we are completing. This is why we traveled to Boston at this time of year, and took advantage of my conference trip (self-funded since I no longer get a conference budget) to come here. But I really just set aside this one day for the conference.
So we got up, I ironed & put on conference gear (nobody’s favorite activity), and then we took a lovely 20-minute walk along the Boston Common, the adjacent City Park, and eventually across Copley Square to the Westin Hotel where the conference was being held. Mark dropped me off, I headed to the seventh floor for my conference panel, and Mark spent the morning in the reading room at the Public Library (right across the street from the hotel) and also finally got a shot from far enough away to make its palatial dimensions clearer.
(Triangular buildings make for very confusing conference room layouts)
After we presented, Stephanie, Mark and I walked down to nearby Newbury St. (the main shopping and restaurant street in this part of Boston, called Back Bay), and found ourselves a lovely lunch place, outside and under a shade umbrella. That was definitely needed because it was getting quite warm and we again had brilliant blue skies. I had a really good hamburger–the kind that made me think spending $20 on a burger when the going rate for a bad one is still over $10 in Boston was really a good decision–and Mark had an excellent Caesar salad. After lunch, Stephanie went back to the hotel for a bit, and we went for a walk down to a long strip of park, the Commonwealth Avenue Mall–really not much more than a median strip, but for many blocks, and with wonderful mature trees for shade. Have I mentioned I love the green spaces here? Stephanie had recommended checking out the “Boston Women’s Monument,” three sculptures of Abigail Adams, Lucy Stone, and Phillis Wheatley. Naturally, my favorite was Phillis Wheatley, the Black poet whose book of poems was the first American book by a native African (we saw a copy of the first edition at the Museum of African American History yesterday). But the sculpture group was not super exciting, all told.
We then made our way back to Newbury Street and then to Copley Plaza (with a stop for ice cream and affogato, i.e. coffee with an espresso poured over it, since I never even had a morning coffee). I then headed back to the conference, and listened to three more people giving great papers on Chesnutt, and then chatted with one of my fellow Chesnutt scholars, a young woman just about to get her Ph.D., in the library courtyard for an hour. The conference wrapped up with a very exciting “new things are happening” business meeting of our Association (I think I might have become our “webmaster”?) and a quick check-in and goodbye at the farewell reception of the conference. This is where Mark caught up with me-he had wandered around a bit in the afternoon and managed to capture a few more of the things that have been fascinating us both: the amazing number of old fire escapes down many stories, and the “public alleys” between main streets, which seem to go on forever–there are so many of them that they have 3-digit numbers.
We then made our way back to our quarters, I changed out of the conference clothes (whew!) and we headed towards Chinatown (only about three blocks away from us) and after some rambling around found ourselves some very humble but yummy ramen and rice bowls at the tiniest “food court” I’ve ever been in–four street-f00d places in a store front that was really only big enough for one (ramen and dessert crepes, sushi, dumplings, and a mochi ice cream stand). It really hit the spot and we might go back another night! We heroically refrained from more ice cream and headed back home at about 8 pm, just as the sun was going down. It was good to be a little less active today, because tomorrow will be a big museum day!