I’m at the 2026 Pacific and Modern Language Association conference this weekend, and it has been great. People are smart and lovely, I presented my first-ever paper on a panel and it went well, and today the sun came out for little bit.
The conference is in a very tall hotel, and my room is on a rather high floor, so there’s lots going on in the elevators. Here’s the highlights:
- The place to go for biscuits and gravy is Bitch Biscuits, a 10-minute walk from the hotel. When you enter, they greet you by saying, “Hey, bitch!” which, according to my fellow passenger, was apparently confusing to at least one man who walked in after her.
- This person’s cute pants, black with a little white pattern, came from Gap and they are very comfortable. The leather folder/briefcase thing another person was carrying can hold an entire full-size laptop plus notebooks and everything else, a feat of engineering. My own leopard-print shoes came from the Adidas employee store.
- After the doors opened and closed at a random floor without anyone getting on or off, my elderly fellow passenger in a cowboy hat recited the first stanza of “Antigonish,” because this is indeed an academic conference for people who love a text.
Antigonish
William Hughes Mearns (1899)
Yesterday, upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
I wish, I wish he’d go away…
When I came home last night at three
The man was waiting there for me
But when I looked around the hall
I couldn’t see him there at all!
Go away, go away, don’t you come back any more!
Go away, go away, and please don’t slam the door… (slam!)
Last night I saw upon the stair
A little man who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
Oh, how I wish he’d go away…