Ok, I am back.

I have been out of town for a conference and then I have been playing catch-up with all the issues that piled up on my desk while I was gone. I still should be doing other things rather than writing here.

The conference went well and the weather in upstate New York was cooperative. It was nice to see the autumn colors and even nicer to spend time with Sara. Getting there and back was a long journey, though. Now I am tired and jet-lagged.

There is a big crisis in the field of American Anthropology. We were to have our meetings in San Francisco next month. Unfortunately there has been an ongoing labor dispute at the hotel we were the meetings were to be held. First the workers had a strike and now they are locked out. Anthropologists, being the progressive bunch that we are, were not about to cross the picket line. Moving the meetings is a complicated matter because we are talking about 5000 people here. The pressures were that the association has a contract with the hotel for a butt-load of money; the union, however, were inflexible in their demand that the meetings be cancelled. The association sent out an email survey to figure out what to do: keep the meetings, cancel the meetings, or try to move the meetings to San Jose. The decision? Move the meetings to Atlanta in December. Huh? That was not one of the options on the survey.

This new option is problematic on many fronts including: 1. The week proposed is finals week for most of us. 2. Most of us have already made our travel plans, including non-refundable airline tickets.

The mayor of SF stepped in to ask for a cooling-off period by both sides. So there was hope that we might be back in SF. The union agreed, the hotel didn't. So we are back to square one.

What makes this more stressful is that Sara and I made visiting plans around this stupid meeting.

Ok. Venting over.