The Best of Congress 2013

I knew I had landed into the lap of what would be a wonderful time in Victoria. I had been feeling badly that I wouldn’t get to Mak’s PHD Convocation Ceremonies next Wednesday, but I did go to his talk here at the Congress, which was a close second choice to celebrate his achievements.

... grabbing a notebook to use for the day ...

Mak pointed out to me again that I am in that small percentage of people who like to take notes at lectures. He is correct. On days when I left my notebook home, I was scribbling madly on the back of programmes or on the flip side of association papers to make sure I could remember what I was hearing.

I pretty well went crazy when I went to a session called “History under Harper: Federal identity initiatives in Conservative Canada. A roundtable of several historians and political scientists discussed in ‘micro-lecture’ format how history and historical events have been marshalled in the service of Canadian identity in the Harper years. I am about as fast with a ball-point pen as I am with a typewriter.

... must write, must write, must write ...

Fantastic notes! Enough to make me feel like getting political again.

The lecture theatre was full when I got there. I was squeezing past people, trying to find a small niche in a window where I could stand for the 2 hours of the session, wondering on the other hand, how I was going to do that. A participant on the panel offered me his chair, since he had another waiting for him at the front of the room. I lucked in on that account. A good seat.

The chair gave everyone 3 minutes to make their points. Those academics know how to keep to the 3 minute rule, though one of them who had supervised the chair looked him right in the eye and said, “There will be no ringing that bell on me.” I could see there was still some fear in his heart.

Three minutes is not much time to make a point.  At least not the point a person might want to make.  Alain Noel of the University of Montreal was succinct . "In the spirit of the times, I will cut short on evidence and go straight to conclusions," he said.

All week I have been going to the Big Thinking Series -- big name lecturers – and one of them was talking on "Advancing the Right of Disabled People". I was telling Mak that of all of the “isms”, feminism, ageism, racisms, etc. – that ableism is the one that I hear least about. And this was underlined when on my way to go to that session the people coming towards me in the hall were saying, if you are going to hear Judith Heumann, that session has been cancelled.

George Dyson was the last speaker in the Big Thinking Series – “The first five kilobytes are the hardest”. He flew through the digital history of the universe, most of which has been made in my lifetime, which is sobering to me. His book, Turing’s Cathedral: the origins of the digital universe, was at the heart of his talk. I have linked to the NY Times review of his book. I will always remember this sentence for what it captured about the age we live in. He said in 1953 there were 53 kilobytes of information in all of the world. Now there are that many kilobytes in a one-sentence email, ... which probably says nothing, he added.

I will spend the evening looking at my notes – cleaning them up, just as though they mattered or as if I am going to be test on them in the future. There are pages of scribbling many sessions from the Women’s Studies talks I heard, as well as from Film Studies. I was so busy I didn’t have time to blog. How fun was that!

Arta