It took two days and two airlines to get me to Lexington, KY, for this year's meeting of the College Language Association. US Air, having cancelled my flight, handed me off to Delta, who cancelled my flight and then put me in a cab for the two hour drive to Harrisburg, where, back to US Air, I finally got onto a plane. I arrived a mere five hours after my panel. (I had better luck years ago when I drove from DC to Lexington through the snow for a wedding.) At any rate, with my late arrival Tony Bolden and I didn't have time to compare sartorial notes and thus appeared wearing the same jacket. I did make it in time to chair a lively panel and to hear some quite good papers. I was sorry to have missed poet Tony Medina's keynote at the Langston Hughes Society luncheon, which everybody tells me was a high point of the conference. PSU grad students Susan Weeber, Earl Brooks and Laura Vrana attracted many favorable comments for the papers they presented, one of which I actually got to hear. My colleagues Lovalerie King, Shirley Moody Turner and Iyun Osagie also presented, making Penn State one of the larger contingents at CLA, along with Howard and Kansas. I had a rewarding, though foreshortened, time; maybe next year I'll actually get to present my paper. Speaking of which, next year's CLA will be in New Orleans. You really want to be there --
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