Woken by text from IOE.  They ring me shortly afterwards. All paperwork which I had very efficiently filled in is lost and gone forever. I have to pay my own way and claim it back.  As I have so often said, for most of us, Higher Education means endless excruciating lessons in the value of self esteem.
Load up with the usual heavy breakfast then head to the Ideation room (yes, really) for my presentation. All goes off well, even though I did my slides in Widescreen (stupidly).  And from my audience of 14 there is even a laugh in the right places and a smattering of applause at the end.
Then preside over three-paper session. Then do the embarrassing paying for myself at the conference thing.
And then…lunch before more sightseeing back down in Charleston (including the lovely art gallery) which culminates in an evening with Judith E and Sarah Y and Marylin L.  Charleston has really grown on me.


We were sitting in a cafe when a couple started to assemble a series of strange musical instruments -ukeleles, penny whistles, duck callers, a friend joined them on guitar then they started to play some bluegrass, and Gershwin and the woman did tap dancing on a couple of numbers as percussion.  They are called the Amazing Mittens. Was magical.  Had a nice dinner and some red wine. Then cab to hotels ending with me dropped off here the good old embassy suites…
Typing alone in the atrium of the hotel to the horrible piped music of anywhere but enjoying a final glass of red wine. A "pinot noir" in honour of Sideways.  Can anyone drink Merlot again? 
Home tomorrow. Missing everyone very badly.

Tuesday afternoon – take John Cuthell’s hire car down to Charletson city centre.  Walk down King Street in brilliant sunshine.


Struck by weird European echoes through the town mixed up with memories of Fremantle.  As we approach the battery and the harbour the houses get older, rising on stilts with their Hugenot windows, palms in the gardens, porches and rocking chairs, confederate memorabilia of the “great unpleasantness” (what they call the civil war down here), rainbow coloured stucco dream houses, with the painful southern bliss evident everywhere you look.


The townsfolk we encounter are unfailingly polite and keen to advise…
Eventually reach the harbour and glimpse Fort Sumter where the first shots of the Civil War were fired.  See sailing ships and an aircraft carrier off in the distance. Old and new wars.


Take hundreds of photos.
Back up at the visitor center is an account of the slave trade and where these houses came from (along with many in England of course, so many great houses were built on profits from this). I realize I am at one of the other points of the slave triangle. Only have to collect west Africa and I will have the set to add to Charleston and Liverpool  (and Bristol and London).


But it really is beautiful here.  This is the “painful southern bliss” that Kurt Wagner writes about…
Head back to the Embassy Suites via Wal Mart where John buys himself supplies for breakfast.  Into the room and rest for a while, then there’s the Hawaiian Shirt reception.  Talk with nice people from Midwestern universities but then all the 20th birthday celebration for SITE leave me a little out in the cold – I don’t really know any of these people. Eventually meeting with one or two other friends the evening gets a little better.


Head down into Charleston again afterwards with four really nice New Yorkers, ex Columbia State  – and Judith from the ESRC play series a few years ago.  It’s a nice combination of people and we have a good time and a nice meal and then head back to out respective hotels.  Again struck by massive portions (should be used to it by now surely!).

MONDAY
Spend most of the rest of Monday in the house working and checking on the progress of the storms.  New York is very badly hit with a foot of snow.  It quickly became apparent that taking the train down there would be a very bad idea indeed.

Instead I take a flight out of Albany down to Charleston via Charlotte. Bernadette and Aunt Sheila take me out to the airport later on in the day.  V cold.  Traffic heavy.

Flight down to Charlotte is two hours.  Spend most of it talking to the guy next to me – about teaching, children, lucid dreaming, karate, music, conferences, travel, autism, brainwaves, back pain and so on.  V curious by the end of the flight about what he does – turns out he and his family run carnivals out of Orlando but mainly based in New York State.  Carnivals.  With rides and games and entertainmnent and livestock shows.

The next flight is delayed by lack of staff. Nothing open anywhere.  V hungry at Charlotte airport.  Onto a crowded tiny jet which seems to take forever to get airborne in a big queue of planes and then takes only 30 minutes to get to Charleston.  Am in the hotel and convention center by 1 a.m.

TUESDAY MORNING – LUNCHTIME


Breakfast in the massive atrium.  Begin to hear buzz around me about iTunes, web two point zero, technology assisted learning (teachers are still needed etc etc).  Yes, I am in an IT in Education conference.

Walk over the Skyway into the center and join a queue to register.  In fact, the IOE hasn’t paid so I am sent along to the “Payments Due” queue.

Ah, Higher Education, endless lessons in the value of self –esteem.  The business manager has seen it all before. She lets me in anyway and I sit down immediately and email home where Neil gets on the case straight away and Gyta from the Knowledge Lab emails the business manager here.


Cannot decide what to do, where to go, what to see, it’s so huge here…See a session advertised with an IOE speaker – someone I’d never heard of.  Joined 10 other people in one of the many meeting rooms listening to someone talking about VLEs.  The IOE speaker wasn’t there.

Eventually run into an old friend in the form of Judith Enrqiquez with her colleague Lin Lin from University fo North Texas.  Have lunch and catch up.  She has, of course, finished her PhD (we knew each other as a gang of four PhD students on an ESRC seminar series on play, creativity and technology about four years ago).  I tell her that I won't be joining the Hawaiian shirt reception later…

Need to tinker with slides etc…

Still not sure what my plan actually is but I know what it no longer involves.

I won't be going back to New York on the train today to pick up a flight to Charleston from La Guardia. It's been cancelled. A huge snowstorm has hit the north east.  A foot of snow in New York City. Snowing up here in Albany.

Have booked on a flight from Albany down to Charleston via Charlotte in North Carolina.  If it still flies that is!  Won't get in until 11.30 at night going that way but fingers crossed I will get there.

Last night was great – dinner at cousin Sheila's house with Grace, Dessy, Marisol, Aunt Sheila, Bernadette, Isabella, Gabriel, Dan and three cats and a dog!  And a hamster.

Today – anxiety about the storm mainly – also managed to get some work done…

At least the local snow plough is out and about…

Saturday morning

Sit for a while and go through family things with Bernadette. Hear about life in Dundalk and Dublin for the family back in the day. All sharing information…Bernadette is really the archivist of the family. She has a file on her computer with the information! I fill in some gaps in info about Bernie and our side of the family.

In the afternoon to the mall – looking for presents with Denise and two of her boys, Bernadette and Sheila…

Home and walk the dog. Icy weather, cold and clear. Talk with Bernadette – even more family stories and then home again. They go out to mass. We are to eat out at Castleton’s restaurant = Scarnatto’s – drink red wine and eat pasta but the portions defeat me (this is why Americans are fat Bernadette tells me)

Cousin Sheila is with us – in fact she drives me there in her truck. In the front she has Half Nelson on DVD, turns out that she works in a school like that in Albany – lots of issues and students who need motivating and taking good care of…

From there – home. Basketball has overrun so previous plan to meet in the HIllcrest Inn is off and so we spend the evening in with a DVD (Ghost Town – Ricky Gervais)

Friday morning

Breakfast meetings downstairs…quiet hushed conversation except from guy holding forth in the corner about the good old days when a $50, 000,000 loss was the worst that could happen.

Check out then Step out – bright sunshine, down 6^th avenue to W34th Street look up at Empire State Building on the left, turn right past Macys and left again to Penn Station right next to Madison Sq Garden.

In the station, waiting area with actual seats (not like London) and then you get called in a mad scramble (much more like London) down to the train.

Hurtle under most of Manhattan and emerge in small town America! Hudson to the left. Bright sunlight, ice on the water…more frozen the further north we go.

Sunshine also fades and the clouds have an ominous look. Hillsides have occasional mansions on them. Towns we encounter are commuter ones at first, then past Hudson New York State seems to own the places, not the city…

Friday afternoon

Reassuringly familiar now, just like in London, the train stops for inexplicable signal failure just outside Albany Rensselaer.

Bernadette is there to meet me with Aunt Sheila. Ridiculous length of time has elapsed and there are more stories to be told and to hear than the human head and heart can hold.

The dog. Sam. Huge, Not sure about me, barking and snapping away at me!

In the evening we go to Denise’s house for a family get together…so many people

Denise Michael Vincent Dominic Philip Dante Deirdre John Bridget Nolan Corby Dennin Michael Mary Dessy Isabella Emmett Sandy Liam Lila friends of the boys after a Basketball game –

So much food, Denise has cooked for all of us, we’ve bought some things, it’s great, a huge family get together. But I do realize that I can’t retain the depth and complexity of the information at hand – I need a written record of it all – try to make notes in the notebook at the start of the day but get sidetracked by more information –am aware that I need to get email addresses and so on for everyone but it is really difficult.

It's a blur of really nice people – great company that I haven't seen for years.

Thursday evening

Just about muster energy to get up 7^th avenue as far as 56th – 57th streets and have dinner in Tratorris del Arte. Reasonably priced and fast and friendly service just as it said it would be in the Rough Guide. It’s a good place for the human on his or her own – a real mix of larger than life characters amongst waiters and customers. But the dÈcor is just plain weird. In the photo people appear to be eating under a giant breast.

Back to the hotel, asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow.

Have had a very full New York day of it…
Absolutely shattered tonight.  Will find a pizza place early on. Feed and then sleeeeep in advance of my journey tomorrow.

Walked east from the hotel first and stopped outside Rita’s old place.  Took a photo or two there.  Counted the floors up to PHC.  Brought back many memories. Round the corner opposite the UN building I stopped to look for Ferdi’s where they used to hang out  a lot and where I think the picture was taken that I have with me of Rita and Harry.  But it wasn’t there anymore.

Back to Grand Central station.  What a place!  Monumental in every sense, just vast.  Used my Metro card for the first time.  Subway noisy, cramped much like the Tube in London!  But very quick and efficient. Went downtown first to City Hall and wandered over to where the World Trade Center used to be.  Stopped first in St Paul’s Chapel on Vesey Street – tiny chrch that was just opposite but was unscathed.


 Here was the hub of the clearing up operation afterwards.  And a place where people gathered just to get over it.  Exhausted and traumatized emergency workers, grieving relatives everyone came here.  It’s got lots of displays of memorabilia, very poignant and atmospheric.  One of the 9/11 widows started up a self-help group after the attacks and she was one of those killed in the air crash last week in Buffalo.  Her picture, and that of her husband who died in the trade center are at the bottom of the memorial altar below. One of many shrines in the chapel.

In the graveyard all the names of those buried there in the last century were erased, blasted off by the dust when the buildings fell I guess.  Carried on to the actual WTC tribute center – again very low key, non-profit making –place to come and share memories.  Families tell their own stories here regularly.  The scale of it is well told.  And there’s a good short little video of the place before it fell which made me think of 1976 and 1978 when I stood on top of it.
Lots of building work now at Ground Zero as the new building goes up…

Wandered in the financial district.  Had a burger and fries in a small place on John Street!  Full of local people, some students from PACE University, some office workers.  Plain food but lovely and freshly made.  Have resisted all the chains so far esp Wendyburgers ad Macdonalds!


Walked from there to the subway and took a train over the water to Brooklyn…walked back over the bridge into Manhattan. 


What a view, stunning on both sides but especially looking back south towards the downtown area and seeing a tiny statue of liberty out there in the water…
Back on the subway – this time an express all the way back up north to the W 86th Street stop.  Wandered – almost – onto a film set. Didn’t recognise any of the actors but they were out on the sidewalk doing a scene – huge crew and lots of catering.  Police everywhere (although they could have been actors in it I guess).

Into Central Park, wandered right round the outside of the Metropolitan Museum and then went in.  Vast, monumental – largest art gallery in America!  Only had about two hours of opening time left.  But desperate by this stage for a coffee…stopped and had one – took stock of the scene.  Decided to focus on a few things – some beautiful Vermeer paintings, Degas ballet dancers (really reminded me of Alice’s work),

Monet’s Rouen cathedral with the light still shining from the stone façade from more than a hundred years ago, Van Gogh wheat field, a beautiful Goya portrait of a child…was all very beautiful…

Wandered down through the park as dusk was falling.  So quiet in there, even with cars traversing in the cut our roads an tunnels…joggers, children, jugglers, two old guys frisbeeing away, down to the southern exits near Wollman rink, thinking of the number of times I’d seen this in the movies and of the Joni Mitchell song lyric (from Hejira).  A stunning and surreal sight.  A mini hockey game going on dwn there with the skyscrapers n the background…

Walked back down to the hotel…
Missing everyone…so many things to share

Yes I don't think it's actually day 2 because there hasn't been a night's sleep in between times…

Anyway, flight was good even if I really didn't want to watch Beverly HIlls Chihuaha…landed an hour early and was allowed in after fingerprinting etc…

Got into the city via a scary "Iicensed" shuttle service run by some nice hustling sort of gentlemen and full of very scared fellow travellers from all over the world.  I have seen the traffic in Rome and driven in Lisbon and Bilbao.  But this was something else.  Lanes?  Who needs em?
Had forgotten how awful JFK was though -  sort of like Heathrow but not as good.  And that is saying something.
Anyways, as soon as we came out of the midtown tunnel – all breath was well and truly taken.
What a city.  I remember why this space is so special.  The scale, the sights, the sounds.
It turns out I am right next door to the famous Algonquin where Dorothy Parker and James Thurber and other people used to be witty to each other all the time!  My room is small but neat and perfect for me on my ownsome.


Had strange lucid dreaming two hour catch up sleep. Then had a serendipitous stroll in the surrounding environment which led me to the 70th floor of rockefeller building when the light was going duskish but not quite sunset.


Have decided it's better than the empire state building because you have the best view of the empire state building and everything else as well
I have met lovely people in shops, fellow tourists, travellign on your own you sort of drifft in and out of conversations and lives and then you keep going.  Talked briefly to a young couple travelling from Henley with their six month old.
Into Times Square – a mad, bright, shiny hub – like Shibuya in Tokyo – bright lights, projections, crazy colours, mad but totally different to how I remember it which was mad but also seedy and a bit scary –It’s not like that anymore…


Now off to meet up with cousin Ann Marie after thirty years