California Conference Connections

I had been inordinately relieved to have entrusted the conference local arrangements to Sarah Willoughsby.

Not only was she so much more detail-oriented than I, who could barely keep the simplest spreadsheet organized, but she was on the tenure-track, so motivation to do well would hardly be an issue.

"Oh, you're plenty detail-oriented Morris," she would tease, "just only for certain things."

"Right. Oxford commas, relative clauses, the Seventeenth Century. William Harvey. Everything else is a disaster."

She laughed, that silvery, running-brook sound that would be sure to charm some fellow's life somewhere along the line. I halfway wished that it would be me in the queue, but the university would take an entirely dim view of this, as any such connection would violate half the rules in the Title IX extrapolations the campus had developed. Imbalance of power, age differential, the fact that I would likely to be on her tenure/promotion review committee, all of that. And I was surely not her type anyway.

She was tall and lithesome, while I was just north of forty, head hair still there but fighting a rear guard retreat. She would wear long floral or pastel dresses and skirts to work, and the way her hips moved whilst walking would set the Aeolian harps to a trembling quaver. Our History department was tickled to have her.

Emerald College, three hours north of San Francisco in coastal forests a couple miles from the Pacific Ocean, was hosting the annual LAP (Liberal Arts of the Pacific) conference for the first time, and my whole department—whole departments, plural, across campus—were hoping for a good showing. So far almost seventy-five papers had been accepted, from seven distinct states and six international academics. A half dozen from our own tiny campus with its tiny faculty. As chair of the conference planning committee, I was thrilled.

Even the EC groundskeepers, with the spring rains just ending, were busy, and the college in late March would look as good as it ever did, the campus entrance road framed by redwoods, then winding past meadows green with fresh California grass and yellow splotches of rapeseed and grand clumps of California poppies.

The only big hotel in town, the Ozwald, would host the event and had given us a good deal on a block of rooms, where most of the visitors would stay. The local B&Bs were also pleased with the occasion, extra business for them well before the summer season.

And I would have my own chance to give a quick welcoming talk that first day after lunch on the topic of my own obsession. I'd given careful thought to the title: William Harvey, the Discovery of Blood Circulation and the Flow of Academic Discourse in the Seventeenth Century.

I'd speak of blood circulation, how Harvey, through dissections and empirical experiments, had upended the medieval medical canon, deduced that blood flow was a closed system and that pathways of exchange enriched the blood with oxygen from the lungs. I'd then extrapolate it all to academic research discussions, the broadening of knowledge, the value and rejuvenation academic research involved. I'd set up the conference attendees for a grand two and a half days of spirited interaction.

My early career monograph on Harvey had gotten me tenure and promotion to associate. The conference would be a stunning opportunity to further my ambitions, provide another feather in the old academic cap, and with some feedback from my talk, maybe give me the final motivation to finish off my next book on the "Sultan of Circulation."

The Arcata room, set aside for breakfast that Friday early April morning at the Ozwald, was just starting to fill. Dark wood wainscoting, high ceilings with tall windows overlooking the redwoods on the north side of the hotel, the Ozwald oozed 19th Century robber baron retreat charm.

I chatted with a group from Berkeley, then a pair of old manuscript guys down from the University of Washington. One of the aspects I most enjoyed about LAP conferences was the interdisciplinary nature of them. Historians, linguists, literature and rhetoric folks all congregated and shared their latest ideas.

After nabbing some sustenance at the buffet, I spied a side table where I might get a moment's quiet and sat down with my morning tea to look through the program. The printer had been so late in delivery that department chair Rothchild had thrown quite a fit.

I had barely taken more than a glance at the program, but Hixley on the review panel had said there would be some good offerings.

I began with the first day's list, spread the program out in front of me with my morning scone and a cup of Assam tea, strong and dark, right to hand.

The titles alone sent little shivers of anticipation through me:

Freudian Orthography: Conniptions in Unethical Epigrams

The Post-modern Polarization of English Faculty in Higher Education

Anti-semitism in Aquinas: Textual Ambiguities

The Colon in Academic Conference Paper Titles: Universal, Essential or Just Plain Pompous?

Yiddish Witticisms: Dark Humor from Degraded Communities

Strange 19th Century Book Titles: A Longitudinal Survey

Allomorphic Supersymmetry: the Collision of Physics and Linguistics

"This one looks good."

The voice arrived from my right, a hand extended about table height, an index finger pointing to a title on my program.

"Nabokov and Kierkegaard: Odd Bedfellows with Ontological Overlaps," I read aloud and looked up.

The voice did not go with the person. An alto clef register, confident and assertive, was matched to a woman in a blue blazer and lavender skirt.

Her wheelchair meant that her face was the same level as mine. Her companion was a small compact woman, round and Hispanic, maybe just over five feet in height, holding a tray with rolls and coffee mugs.

"Don't mind Ms. Intrusive," the companion said, "she'll point out the full moon to you on the off chance you hadn't noticed it."

"I don't think I ever would have put Nabokov and Kierkegaard in the same title, let alone the same sentence." I am sure I sounded skeptical.

The wheelchair woman's smile was wry and sideways.

"It's not the only odd-sounding paper in the mix. A lot of neo-post-realist textual criticism here, seems to me. Do you mind company?"

I hadn't even begun to issue a welcome before the companion was pulling away the chair next to me to make room for her friend slide in.

"Clare Smirkov," she said, extending a hand, firm for any woman, not quite Texan in aggression. "This is Angela Dominguez."

"Morris Finkelstein," I answered. "Pleased to meet you." Eyebrows went up on both woman.

"Ah, the conference planner himself," said Clare. "Should have read your nametag before barging in on your morning coffee." They squinted at my badge as if verification was needed.

"No trouble," I waved a hand, hopefully not in a patronizing or self-aggrandizing way. "It's actually tea, never could stomach the black-belt grade of caffeine."

Clare gave a thin laugh, and as I involuntarily replayed my last sentence in my foggy morning brain, I wondered if I sounded as lame as I feared. Was this awkwardness just early morning nerves at the start of the conference?

"Where are you both coming from? I'm not on the registration group and the printers only just barely got the program out in time." I did not recall either of their names or affiliations.

Clare answered. "We're rivals, Arizona State for me, University of Arizona for Angela. Not quite Oklahoma-Oklahoma State or Ann Arbor vs. Michigan State for sheer institutional rancor, but you get the idea. I'm the blue collar, academic unionist in Mesa, she's the Ivy League wannabe in Tucson."

Angela made a face. "Just another way to claim you're an overachiever."

"So why this paper?" I glanced at the abstract, which included themes of ontology, juxtaposition, aesthetic frameworks. "Nabokov and Kierkegaard?"

"Why not?" said Clare. "Can't you imagine a nice, friendly fireside discussion between the two?" Was her smile provocative or just ironic?

"Hardly. Nabokov hated the theater, Kierkegaard would attend every show he could manage. Completely different mindsets, arenas. Fisticuffs would break out between the two halfway through the first brandy snifter of the night."

Clare's eyes gleamed. "Right. You know more about the two than many. What's your area?"

I looked at the program again. Clare's name was listed as the author of the Nabokov/Kierkegaard paper. Of course. She was pointing out her own efforts. Cheek.

I eyed each of them more carefully. Clare's wheelchair was a sleek, pared-down affair, a gun-metal gray and black chariot with flashing silver spokes on her wheels. Her skirt was narrow, tucked in under her legs. Her face was moon shaped, a haircut out of French cinema, bangs and shortish, barely down to her shoulders, dark and wavy. Pointed nose, easy smiling lips.

"I'm history, intellectual history. Specializing on the scientific revolution in the 17th Century. William Harvey to be precise."

I found out a bit more about them, Clare was the more talkative. She was two years out of grad school, in the philosophy department at ASU. Her specialty was Kierkegaard not Nabokov, and she taught critical thinking courses every term. She complained about the limited funding opportunities for research.

"Welcome to the Humanities." I hoped I sounded neither cynical or pessimistic.

"I don't know how it is for philosophy folks, but you're not a historian proper until your first monograph is out. Luckily, one can do that without much funding, mostly you just need access to a good library or a suitable archive. Maybe rework your dissertation into a marketable book."

We chatted briefly until it became time to make my departure and prepare for the conference greeting. I excused myself and as I made my way across the room, I caught the usual snippets of conversation from each table of attendees, some energetic, some quiet, some pointed. Almost like hearing an orchestra tune up before beginning a concert.

"I think you've confused 'close reading' with 'convoluted analysis.'"

"Intersectionality theory applied to Dostoevsky is a recipe for disaster..."

"Verb modalities vary so widely across languages as to to defy categorization."

We began at 9:15 sharp. I did a short introduction and overview of the conference, gave them the essential ground rules, bathroom locations, etc, before we broke for the first round of papers.

I attended Clare's paper, it was in one of the first groupings of the day, in the Humboldt room. It was good. Some of the nuance on Nabokov went over my head, but the bit on Kierkegaard's aesthetics was spot on. If nothing else I gave her credit for putting these two unique intellectuals together.

Afterwards at the mid-morning coffee/tea break I wandered over to where she was sitting and holding court. There were four or five folks at the table.

She had said something about life cycles, how metaphysics tended to shift with age amongst academics and anyone, really, who was reflective.

I had to say my piece.

"So, okay, in Either/Or, which you mentioned, Kierkegaard sets up two stages of human life, the aesthetic, which he develops nicely in the first part, and the ethical in the second. My memory, which your paper corroborated, is that the duty of the ethical man is to reveal. It always troubled me why aesthetic man couldn't do the same thing."

"Here's where I think Nabokov has it different. He wasn't a great revealer himself, in either his fiction or in his memoirs. Yes, there is plenty that is revealed, but almost more that isn't. The hint, the tiny detail, mattered more to him than the precis, the broad brush, the heavy duty revealing. I almost sense for him that their was honor in reticence, keeping something back."

Another figure approached the table.

"Forgive me for barging in, if you don't mind."

We turned to look up. A heavy-set man in a tweed coat and overly abundant eyebrows had brought his cup of coffee over to our table. His owlish glasses outlined two close-set eyes punctuated by a bulbous, pock-marked nose.

"I really enjoyed your paper, Dr. Smirkov, provocative even pugnacious." He was deferential, almost ironic by employing her academic title.

I disliked how the fellow forced his alliteration, as well as high-jacking my own comment. I might have muttered "pompous" under my breath. Of course it was Norman Bletchley.

Norman the rat from Pepperdine. Every academic conference session always has someone at the back of the room, ready to spring at the first Q and A opportunity. Their question is always highly technical, rarely relevant to the paper presented, but designed to highlight their own expertise. Obnoxious to a high degree. He was the one.

"But why the dichotomy? There is integration between stages, seems to me, Kierkegaard doth protest too much I would say. I think you've taken a position too extreme to be borne out by the evidence."

Clare shot me a glance, one eyebrow cocked.

Norman not only did not notice, but characteristically plunged on with his polemic, whether there was a gate to the corral or not. At least he hadn't done his bit during the question and answer period and saved the audience from his execrations.

"Have you read Kierkegaard's unpublished works?" There was challenge in Clare's voice.

Norman tried to assert that he had, but a few questions from Clare put paid to that claim. She was clearly accustomed to the maieutics of academic arguments.

Sarah had appeared at my elbow and pulled me away to attend to some conference business. I tried for a graceful exit, but only got a fairly disgusted look from Clare, although I did see her give Ms. Willoughsby a long appraising look.

The conference lurched towards noon, and food. With notes in hand I launched into my speech.

It went okay, not perfect, although I detected some background sniggering from the UCLA crowd, who knew my penchant for using "circulation" as a metaphor in academic settings.

Only once did my focus waver, but a quick glance to Sarah restored my composure, and we broke for another array of panels.

The day oozed by in smeared, broad stroke colors. I attended a few afternoon papers, one on John Locke's time at Oxford (which overlapped with Harvey's.)

I committed one gaffe, which troubled me more than I would have thought.

In between afternoon sessions, I was speaking with a colleague and saw Clare wheeling towards the door that led to the hallway for the restrooms. I held it open for her, in what I considered to be a careless, unobtrusive manner, but she shot me a glance that said "patronizing pig" in capital letters, yet kept her mouth tightly compressed.

My first reaction was a sharp stab of annoyance. What had I done wrong? I held doors all the time, if someone had both hands on bags of groceries, or were elderly, or... I was aware of the unconscious implications of my action. But these marginalized groups were so touchy sometimes.

By five thirty that afternoon I was entirely grateful for the opening of the wine bar before dinner. Many of the papers had been predictable droning affairs, Clare's had been the best of the day by a fair margin. I found her sitting next to a table, sipping a red wine.

I figured I needed to get difficulties over early and took a deep breath.

"Look, sorry for the door business earlier. I suspect you took it for old-school male behavior, but I didn't intend it that way."

"That's okay." Her eyes met mine, not unfriendly. "I shouldn't have made the face that I did. It is just the continual offers of 'help' that get me going. Two things happen when folks see you in a wheelchair: one, your IQ drops thirty points and two, everyone figures you're so hopeless you must need help every moment of the day."

She looked at me evenly. "When your independence is abridged, what is left is ever more significant. I cherish simple stupid things, like opening a door under my own power. When someone does it for me, it tends to do two things: shifts the relationship into a power-differential footing, and shines a spotlight squarely on my own disability. Neither is wanted."

"I'm sorry."

The faint smile of forgiveness warmed my soul.

"You doing okay? Enjoyed any sessions this afternoon?" I was hoping, maybe fishing, for positives.

"Thanks for asking. Yes, fine so far. And whoever picked your wine did a nice job." She held up her glass. "Zinfindel it is."

"That's Sarah Willoughsby, the one who dragged me off earlier today, she's been marvelous, handled the local angle on the program, done a million things."

"She's at your college?"

"Even better, my own department."

"You're a lucky one then."

She asked about my own work, always a dangerous proposition to anyone with research interests. Crack the spigot open and you get a flood.

Harvey of course was amazing however you cast him. I talked about those early 16th and 17th Century medical pioneers, how they were light-years advanced from their medieval predecessors, all busy with their Galenic stratagems, leeching patients to regulate their "humors," possessing no knowledge of microbial distress agents, and attributing plagues and sicknesses to watery miasmas, all that.

And how Harvey had blown all of that out of the water with his magisterial De Motu Cordis in 1628. My whole skin got tingly just describing that milestone publication to Clare, outlining what he must have felt when he got the first copy from the printers, what it would mean for medical science and the intellectual fervor of that exuberant century.

Harvey had been just one of the earliest to go empirical. Understanding by observing, then taking things apart to gain knowledge of underlying structures. I told her how every morning when I woke, I looked at my hands with their veins and pink-white overall color, felt my pulse—that heart that lived even when I was asleep and which Harvey had been the first to identify as a pump in a closed system! Pushing blood through my body, into the lungs for fresh air, "pneuma" as Harvey called it, and ensuring that I was alive for another day.

Harvey defied easy analysis from just about everyone. He wasn't a classic empiricist, his stunning discovery, really no other word for it, of the circulation system didn't really alter his actual medical practice. Still did the same Galenic things, bloodletting, adjusting humors, all of that. It took further generations to put more power into clinical practices as a result of the better understanding of circulation.

And his network! I went on, describing the early origins of the Royal Society, Harvey's short but distinguished time at Oxford during the Civil War as a Royalist, rubbing shoulders with those practicing "chirurgy." All amazingly brilliant, it almost made me want to live back then, until I started to think about dental care. Or a ruptured appendix. Or kidney stones. The "cures" for all these ailments could kill. I stopped short, nearly out of breath. Of course I was talking to a person in a wheelchair. Probably she wouldn't have lasted a week in her condition back in those days. I suddenly grew embarrassed.

"Sorry, you got me going."

"No, no, that's fascinating."

I steered the conversation into other directions, and asked about her work at ASU. I was wondering how she managed in the desert heat.

I got a sidelong look.

"Spring semester is not so bad, but when fall term begins in August, it is frightful hot. The wheelchair rims are aluminum," she grabbed one for emphasis, "they conduct heat extremely well and get hot enough if they're in the sun too long they burn your hands. I've always worn gloves." She pointed to a pair of bicycle style, half-fingered gloves I had noted on her hands earlier, folded up neatly next to her on the table.