« A Sound of Thunder | Main | The Village »
August 2, 2004
Interstate 72 Revisited
Returned late yesterday evening from visiting friends in Champaign-Urbana for the weekend. I had a great time, and now I'm finally in front of a functioning computer with a working modem for the first time in days, so here are some basics about my weekend. I got to spend a lot of time with Jim, Renee, and Rowan. It was terrific to catch up with JR&R, especially Rowan, who is now aged 10 months.
Before taking the Brittain Fellowship at Tech, I taught for two years at the University of Illinois in a non-tenure track position, a job I deeply enjoyed. NTT's at Illinois often get the chance to teach upper-level film and literature courses, which is pretty rare, and C-U is a fairly cosmopolitan college town (and getting better). While in C-U this weekend, I had the chance to revisit some of my favorite C-U haunts, including Cafe Kopi, where I wrote and revised countless pages of my dissertation, and the coolest video store I've ever encountered, That's Rentertainment, where I rented most of the movies I discussed in my dissertation. It was also very exciting to see the improvements in the New Art Theater, and I enjoyed visiting the C-U Farmer's Market, something I was too lazy to do when I lived there before (my antipathy towards mornings is well-documented). The only "negative:" I was bummed to learn that I would be missing a Barack Obama speech in Champaign by two days (he'll be speaking, I believe, at the Champaign YMCA).
I also had the chance to catch up with one of my dissertation advisors, who now teaches at UIUC. Over coffee, she made some great suggestions about my Capturing the Friedmans paper, including the observation that CTF might be compared to An American Family, the pioneer 1970s PBS "reality TV" show about the Loud family. More details on the paper (and that comparison) coming soon.
Posted by chuck at August 2, 2004 11:55 AM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.wordherders.net/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.fpl/2190
Comments
Glad you had such a good trip, Chuck. I wish L and I could have been there to visit the trio, too.
Posted by: George at August 2, 2004 1:45 PM
George, I wish you and Lara had been there. Hope you're settled in after your trip to the UK and France.
Posted by: chuck at August 2, 2004 2:38 PM