Go and click on the Bolts of Silk link over to your left. Look! A spider poem by me. And so enjoy.
The conference in Louisville has wound down. D is out at the last session she wants to attend. Our own panel went pretty well; more people in the audience than on the panel, so that was good. I attended a session on how games--video and tabletop RPGs--can be exploited for the classroom. By this, they mostly meant that game designers think about gamers the way teachers should be thinking about students. What gets players to keep coming back? What stories do they tell away from the console? Games teach how to play the game, but not the content (you learn how to defeat monsters, not the lives of the monsters); thus, making games for the classroom might not be the best plan. So we go back to designers: What's the end of the game? What will you have learned?
And then there was Art Spiegelman. He spoke for about an hour and fifteen minutes and then took questions for another half hour. I wanted to ask him about the language in Krazy Kat and Pogo but couldn't figure out how to frame the question at the talk. So we left, got on the bus, and rolled back to the hotel. As we turned into the hotel, Art got out of his taxi. So we fell into step, told him we enjoyed the talk and then talked about George Herriman and Walt Kelly for a while as we rode the elevator up to the room. He was staying just around the corner from us; we kept assuring him that we weren't stalking him, but then kept following him. Still, it all worked out. Very nice guy. Oh, the talk he gave was fantastic. He had a Mac slideshow going that had images from the history of comix--strips and books. Very entertaining.
I have other stuff to mention. Fine bourbon. The hotel--which appeared in a recent movie set in Louisville. And the art show. But D should be back at any minute and we'll be zipping out to a museum and the rest of the day will be taken up by airplanes. And those are bulky.
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