Kim and I are back from the National Women's Studies Association conference in St. Charles, Illinois--nestled in "beautiful Fox River Valley." It's fun for me to be back anywhere near Chicago, even though St. Charles is really a small town with a suburban feel rather than an actual suburb.
Al Piemonte, White Hen, and other establishments that were part of the retail landscape of my childhood create a soothing environment for me, although almost all aspects of suburban sprawl frustrate and repel me.
I still love road trips and I love America--not to be confused with the US government.
We had a lot of great little Americana experiences...I'll include a few photos. We also got to view the long-awaited Grace Lee Project...which was smart, funny, and really excellent. Some highlights include a long segment on Grace Lee Boggs, one of my heroes who I also got to interview (in 2004) in her home, and a segment on a 40-something Korean adoptee Grace Lee, who is a remarkable woman--brave and insightful and inspiring. It's so great!
You can order the film for home viewing for $19.95--and it's more than worth it. It would also be a wonderful teaching tool, and it's available for institutional viewing as well.
Here are some photos from the trip, taken with my favorite robot friend these days, a Sony Cyber-Shot with a Carl Zeiss lens, 7.2 megapixels. It's dreamy and really small!
Here's Kim at the Super Target near the hotel (Pheasant Run Resort)...standing next to the LIQUOR room!
Here's Kim with "Snickers" at the Fireworks store in Wisconsin, where I bought sparklers for my children. 
The Fireworks store, an amazing place...
Hurray for...the Midwest? Anyway, to summarize, the conference was fine, our panel went off smoothly and (I think) smartly, we met some nice women and made some good connections (two Korean scholars! Huzzah!), went to some good panels, bought a lot of books at the book fair, plugged Outsiders Within a bit, and laughed a lot. I loved driving the rental car, which was nothing extravagant, but so much nicer than my old beater. There was minimal exercise (zero sidewalks in suburbia) but the weather was beautiful and we are lucky to be able to do work that engages our minds and spirits. It feels like a luxury, yet is a basic human need. I will be re-reading the conference schedule and pondering the big picture of women's studies and feminism in the academy (academe?) and in the world for a while to come.
Last thought, on adoption--it's a very strange feeling to be the subject of research, and a not significant amount of academic attention, and yet know that many of the white scholars (except for adoptive parents) probably know very few actual Korean or transracial adoptees (perhaps especially those who are working on literary analysis). This is just an observation, not a conclusion from any formal data gathering. There isn't any research on this phenomenon yet, but I would be interested in some meta-analysis of this aspect of the scholarship.
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