Where & When:
The Graduate Center, 365 5th Ave, Rm 9204
6pm-8pm

Jonathan D. Katz and the Omission and Censorship of Queer Art

Despite 30 years of scholarship from him and other experts, Katz says that most major institutions gloss over gay and lesbian sexuality in their collections – which is why Hide/Seek is such an important show. “Punishing the one institution that broke the blacklist will enable all the other institutions to sit on their hands,” says Katz. “My goal in doing the show was not simply to do the show, but also to make it safe for other institutions to do the show. We have been falsifying art history for decades.”

Here’s an interview with Katz, where he talks about the decision by the Smithsonian to pull the exhibit, & about the artists who have pulled their art and/or funding in response.

Exhibit Link

From the Smithsonian Newsdesk

I’d go if I were in NYC, that’s for damn sure.

To my left, a cocktail party of the heteronormative variety: men in suits, women in cocktail dresses, hose and heels.
To my right, blue haired, pierced kids; boys in cigarette leg jeans; girls in ties, starched button-downs; trans people of many types.

I stood there for a while, hoping I had Moses’ staff, or at least his gumption, to ask for a parting of the waters that would provide a third, middle path. My life has been spent on that landing, really, popping back and forth between groups, hanging out in one because it’s where I feel more comfortable, but hanging out in the other because it’s the way I desire. Like Superman, I had to change clothes pretty often, and often with my clothes, my gender; I still long for a heterosexual space where I could be a het woman in a suit & tie, or for a queer space where I could be a woman who loves sex with men.

Sometimes, in rare moments, that third space appears: in the music scenes of the late 80s in NYC was one. Fetish clubs are sometimes another. But mostly I have had to decide between being with my people as a queer woman or pretending to be more gender normative than I actually am when I’ve had boyfriends.

Unite+Fight EAA Midwest Conference
Friday, March 12th, 2010 at 7:00pm – Sunday, March 14th, 2010 to 10:00pm (CT)
Columbia College Chicago

Location
Columbia College Chicago
Various buildings.
600 S. Michigan Ave
Chicago, IL 60605

Hosted By
Unite+Fight Midwest Coalition
(list of participating organizations and their websites)
Contact Event Organizer

Event Details
Unite and Fight: Strategizing for LGBTQ Equality

Midwest Conference
March 12–14, 2010
Chicago’s Columbia College

On Oct. 11, 2009, more than 200,000 activists marched on Washington, DC to demand full equality for all LGBTQ people in all matters of civil law in all 50 states. Today, many of us who mobilized for the march are organizing to build Equality Across America (EAA), a national network of grassroots activists, starting with a series of regional educational and strategizing conferences.

On the weekend of March 12–14 activists from across the Midwest will gather to discuss and debate how to achieve full federal equality while forming a strong regional grasnetwork. Proposed topics include: Why We Need a National Grassroots Movement, Movement Strategy and Tactics, The ‘T’ is not Silent: Transgender History and Politics, Movement History: ACT UP, Lessons From the Black Civil Rights Struggle, Convincing the Democrats to Take Us Seriously, Taking on the Religious Right, and more.

In addition there will be artists performing and showing their work, music, dancing and lots of time to hang out and socialize with other LGBTQ activists and allies in the region. Don’t miss the opportunity to build unity and meet new activist friends in Chicago, March 12–14, 2010.

Featuring:
Lt. Dan Choi, prominent activist against Don’t Ask Don’t Tell
Staceyann Chin, Jamaican-born lesbian performance artist and poet
Adam Bouska, photographer and creator of the “NO H8″ campaign
*****************************************************************************************************************************************
Sponsors

In an effort to create a positive impact in the lives of our
community, our allies, and even our opposition, Join the Impact
Chicago has emerged. Our movement encourages the LGBTQ community not
to dwell on the negativity surrounding the mistakes of the past, but
instead, to look forward at what needs to be done now to achieve one
national and universal goal: full equality for ALL.

Through action-oriented events and inter-generational dialogue, LGBT
Change examines the core issues facing our community in order to
channel those priorities to our leaders. This grassroots initiative
focuses on capturing anyone voicing the ideas that continue to
activate change in the LGBT community.

The Transgender Symposium will offer an array of talks, performances, art, film, and a workshop to increase visibility and education about transgender identities and experiences, and to bring together the local transgender and ally community.

Boulder, CO February 16, 2010 — The University of Colorado at Boulder’s GLBT Resource Center will be presenting its fourth annual Transforming Gender: Transgender Symposium March 5 and 6 at the CU Boulder campus. Offering an array of formats – including talks, performances, art, film screening, and a workshop – the Transgender Symposium seeks to increase visibility and education about transgender identities and experiences as well as to bring together the local transgender and ally community.

Presenters at this year’s Symposium include local transgender Reverend Malcolm Himschoot, local transgender award-winning artist and author Dylan Scholinski, and Tristan Taormino, an award-winning author and sex educator. Among the various topics that will be addressed at the Symposium are the intersections of gender identity and race, transgender sexuality, and the ways people respond to different expressions of gender. There will also be an art show featuring local transgender and ally artists.

“We are very excited to be able to offer such a diverse and interesting mix of formats and topics at this year’s Symposium,” noted Steph Wilenchek, Director of CU’s GLBT Resource Center. “Hopefully, people will be able to find at least one session that appeals to them and can also find something that will challenge them, engage them, and help them think about gender identity and gender expression in new and thought-provoking ways.”

The 2010 Transforming Gender: Transgender Symposium is being co-sponsored by the Women’s Resource Center, the Office of Victim’s Assistance, Jewish Affairs, and the Center for Multicultural Affairs. All Symposium events are free and open to the public. The full schedule of the Symposium is available on the GLBT Resource Center’s website.

About the CU GLBT Resource Center:

The mission of the GLBT Resource Center is to promote equal opportunity for successful academic, social and personal development for all GLBT students, staff, faculty and their allies in a safe and supportive environment.

Contact:
Kevin Correa, Assistant Director
GLBT Resource Center, University of Colorado at Boulder
303-492-7218, kevin.correa@colorado.edu

For a detailed schedule, please visit http://www.colorado.edu/glbtrc.

I suppose I don’t need to mention that I didn’t go.

I hate marches. I hate rallies and protests. Hate ‘em. I’ve taken part in plenty of them – against CUNY funding cuts, against the RNC occupation of NYC, & I’ve even been to big gay marches on Washington, too (& a very long time ago, now).

But what bothered me about this one is the whole issue of putting pressure on Obama, who I think is under quite enough pressure, if you consider having to defend, again, social spending and The New Deal 80 years later enough pressure. He’s got – rather, we’ve got – two wars, a global leadership that refuses to believe homosexuality exists (see Iran), and the biggest bunch of dumbass right wing morons who prefer an electorate that doesn’t know medicare is a government program. It’s sheer stupidity he’s/we’re up against.

And now that I’m in the so-called heartland (which I say because Brooklyn is, as well, the heartland, but not seen that way by the majority), what I see is a lot of sophisticated LGBT people hanging out in the big coastal cities.

I am curious to hear what people thought might come out of this march, and whether or not it did. I did not, I’d like to point out, say a damn word for or against the march before it happened, because I don’t believe in raining on people’s parades, and if a groundswell did indeed happen – I don’t think it did – it’s because we are still out of touch. What we got was Obama delivering the message, to HRC of all groups, that we already know: this shit’s going to take time. If he doesn’t have our support on the umpteen other progressive issues – like, say, a public opion for health insurance – his own power will be muted and our goals will be impossible to reach.

Okay, done now. Tomorrow, perhaps, I will talk about the term “bio girl” and how much I hate it.

Transgender people face pervasive discrimination, harassment and violence. Leslie Mora and Carmella Etienne—victims of hate crimes in two separate incidents in Queens—are witnesses to the violence that is perpetrated against people because of their gender identity or expression. In its most extreme form, such violence can turn deadly, as it did in the case of Lateisha Green, a young African American woman who was shot and killed, and whose death lead to New York State’s first hate crime trial and conviction stemming from the death of a transgender person.

On Wednesday, October 7th, at 7pm, TLDEF clients Leslie Mora and Carmella Etienne will join Lateisha Green’s family in speaking about their experiences as victims of hate-motivated violence. Michael Silverman, executive director of the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund, and Andy Marra, senior media strategist at the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, will discuss the status of gender identity and expression in federal and state hate crime laws, as well as strategies to educate the public through the media on issues of gender identity and expression.

What
Transgender Hate Crimes: Victims, Their Families & Advocates Speak Out

Where
Brooklyn Law School
Forchelli Conference Center
205 State Street, Brooklyn (map)

When
Wednesday, October 7th
7:00 pm

Co-Sponsors
Anti-Violence Project, Brooklyn Law School, Empire State Pride Agenda, Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), Make the Road New York, New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy (NYAGRA), and Queens Pride House.

Dinner and refreshments will be served.

I met someone at TransOhio who writes the Midwest GenderQueer blog.

& Of course there’s TransOhio.

& The Big Gay Conference (2009′s site is here, but I haven’t found 2010′s yet).

But I need more: give me your midwest queer resources, peeps. Thank you!

Please gather on Friday, August 28th, at 209 Q ST NW, 6:30PM.

Please forward, re-post, and Tweet this info.

The press release is below the break.

New York, NY, August 5th, 2009: Engendered is proud to announce the line-up and schedule of films to be screened at I VIEW FILM 2009. I VIEW FILM will provide audiences with a compelling lens with which to view human rights in South Asia, through bold, contemporary cinema that provokes newer ways of seeing in order to understand the changing landscape of intimacies, desires, genders and sexualities. The Film Festival runs from Friday, August 28th through Sunday, August 30th at Lincoln Center and The Asia Society in New York. A complete list of films is available at www.engendered.org.

This cutting-edge festival ranges from independent features and films from Bollywood to ground-breaking shorts and documentaries from India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, as well as from the Diaspora in the United States and Australia. With a mission to engage, uplift and transform viewer perceptions around women’s issues and the LGBT community, I VIEW will showcase a collection of films from established directors such as Mira Nair and Shyam Benegal to emerging directors like Atul Sabharwal and Ram Madhvani, and from successful mainstream Bollywood directors like Tarun Mansukhani and Zoya Akhtar to critically-acclaimed independent directors like Mehreen Jabbar and Parvez Sharma. “I am really excited to have ‘Luck by Chance’ close the festival. Engendered is an important platform for Indian cinema in the U.S. and it’s great to be represented and featured with such gusto,” says Zoya Ahktar, director of “Luck by Chance.”

The Festival’s programming kicks off on Friday, August 28th with a red-carpet reception and plenary discussion, followed by a party at the Stanley Kaplan Penthouse at Lincoln Center. This dynamic evening will bring together Bollywood celebrities, academics, and journalists, to share the stage and offer in-depth conversation and a lively debate regarding the role of cinema in gender and sexuality issues and within the larger framework of human rights conversations. Confirmed speakers include Mira Nair, John Abraham, Shyam Benegal, Zoya Ahktar, Parvez Sharma, Tarun Mansukhani, Boman Irani and Kirron Kher. “It’s been my endeavor to promote an understanding of our sexuality, our preferences and the reflection of society upon us for those choices. Coming from India, where only a month ago homosexuality was decriminalized, I feel proud that this film played its part in the battle of changing prejudiced mindsets and its consequent persecutions, something that Engendered stands for and represents,”says Tarun Mansukhani, director of the opening film “Dostana”.

Other Festival highlights include the Paper to Film series, which focuses on the how a novel becomes a screenplay and the screenplay a film. “Thanks to Engendered, I VIEW FILM presents a refreshing opportunity for New York audiences to engage in meaningful conversations about the complex ways in which gender and sexuality are portrayed in South Asian cinema, and I’m honored to be a part of the conversation, as it pertains to the evolution of my novel to screen. It’s a fact that a film is written at least three times – in script, photography and finally, editing. ‘Ode to Lata’ has technically had five incarnations when you consider its former lives – its basis in fact and as a novel – before becoming a motion picture. I hope our evening together will give us a unique, unfettered chance to map this creative journey and celebrate a deeply personal project,” says Ghalib Shiraz Dhalla, author of “Ode to Lata” and “The Two Krishnas” and writer and Associate Producer of “The Ode”.

The two days of screenings touch upon major themes of Gender & Sexuality. The thematic programs are:

Saturday, August 29th, 2009: “Sexualities: Choice & Identity”

* OPENING FILM: DOSTANA directed by Tarun Mansukhani

9:30am-12:30pm at the Walter Reade Theatre, Lincoln Center

* SHORTS & DOCS I: a program of experimental shorts & powerful docs exploring Queer Sexuality & Identity

11:00am-3:00pm at the Stanley Kaplan Penthouse, Lincoln Center
- A Jihad For Love, directed by Parvez Sharma
- Searching for Sandeep, directed by Poppy Stockell
- Two Men In Shoulder Stand, directed by Paul Knox
- Beauty Parlor, directed by Mehreen Babbar
- I Am, directed by Sonali Gulati
- Madhuri Girl Star, directed by Ayesha Sood

* SPECIAL SCREENING: LET’S TALK, directed by Ram Madhwani

4:00pm – 6:30pm at the Stanley Kaplan Penthouse, Lincoln Center

* PAPER TO FILM I: An Evening with Ghalib Shiraz Dhalla: From Book to Screenplay, Screenplay to Screen, “Ode to Lata”

7:00pm – 9:30pm at the Stanley Kaplan Penthouse, Lincoln Center

Sunday, August 30th, 2009: “The Second Gender”

* SHORTS & DOCS II: a program of experimental shorts & powerful docs exploring women in conflict and war, women’s sexualities, sex work and the issue of choice.

9:30am-1:00pm at the Stanley Kaplan Penthouse, Lincoln Center
- Ek Qiamat Aur, directed by Mazhar Moin
- My Daughter the Terrorist, directed by Beate Arnstad
- Midnight Lost & Found, directed by Atul Sabhawal
- Burnes Road ki Nilofer, directed by Mazhar Moin
- Tumhari Bina, directed by Mehreen Babbar

* SPECIAL RETROSPECTIVE SCREENING: MANDI, directed by Shyam Benegal

1:30pm-4:30pm at the Stanley Kaplan Penthouse

* PAPER TO FILM II: MY OWN COUNTRY, directed by Mira Nair

1:30pm-4:30pm at the Walter Reade Theatre

* SPECIAL SCREENING: BARIWALI, directed by Rituparno Ghosh

3:00pm-6:00pm at the Asia Society

* CLOSING FILM: LUCK BY CHANCE, directed by Zoya Ahktar

6:30pm – 9:30pm at the Asia Society

Dialog and discourse form an integral part of I VIEW FILM. All screenings will be followed by panel discussions with the key cast members, film personalities and academics.

Festival screenings will be held at the Stanley Kaplan House and Walter Reade Theatre at Lincoln Center on Saturday and at Lincoln Center and The Asia Society on Sunday. A complete list of films and Festival programming is available at www.engendered.org.

The films include:

Opening, Closing & Special Screenings:

DOSTANA (Director: Tarun Mansukhani, Duration: 142 minutes)
It is the first Bollywood blockbuster where mainstream, straight actors play gay characters. Kunal and Sameer (John Abraham and Abhishek Bachan) are two straight guys who pretend to be a gay couple so as to secure a posh Miami apartment. However, the plot takes a hilarious turn when both men fall for their adorable roommate Neha (Priyanka Chopra).

LUCK BY CHANCE (Director: Zoya Akhtar, Duration: 156 Minutes)
It is a biting satire and insider’s look at gender disparity in India’s highly competitive film industry. This is the story of a struggling actor who arrives in Bollywood to become a movie star. His journey to fame is juxtaposed with that of an actress, who is also his love interest. Because of blatant gender inequity in this particular microcosm of Indian society, his love interest is forced to experience everything from the “casting couch” syndrome to losing lead roles because of her age and looks.

BARIWALI (Director: Rituparno Ghosh, Duration: 148 minutes)
Baariwali explores the gender roles of widowed women living without a man’s support in Indian society. Banalata (Kirron Kher) is a lonely, middle-aged woman living a solitary existence after her husband-to-be died the night before their wedding from a snake bite. All this changes when she agrees to allow a film production crew to shoot in a wing of her sprawling estate. Suddenly, her house is filled with movie stars, including the beautiful actress Sudeshna (Rupa Ganguly) and charming director Deepankar (Chiranjeet Chakraborty). Though she knows that not only is Deepankar married, but that his former lover, Sudeshna, still holds a torch for him, the lonely widow finds herself drawn to the director. The director flirts back and even persuades Banalata to appear in a bit part in the movie. Yet once the film crew decamps, things at the estate return to the same grinding tedium as before. The letters that Banalata writes to Deepankar go unanswered, and her bit part in the movie ends up on the cutting-room floor.

LET’S TALK (Director: Ram Madhwani, Duration: 98 minutes)
Let’s Talk is largely a two character piece. It tackles issues of love and infidelity through an urban Indian couple portrayed by newcomer Maia Katrak and Boman Irani who provide riveting performances, with a realism and truth unsurpassed in Indian cinema. Radhika Sareen (played by Katrak) is pregnant and the baby is not her husband’s. If she tells her husband, how will he react? What will he do? The film looks at the possible reactions that her husband would have to her predicament.

MANDI (Director: Shyam Benegal, Duration: 98 minutes)
This classic film is based on an Urdu short story ‘Aanandi’ by Pakistani writer Ghulam Abbas. It deals with a brothel at the heart of a city, in an area that some politicians want for its prime locality. They rally up against the brothel and its inhabitants in the name of morality, and soon everyone in the area jumps on the bandwagon. The politicians offer to put up an alternative residence for the prostitutes, only this place is miles away, isolated from the city. The madam of the house has no choice but to comply, but by the end things take a (logical) turn for the better.

Paper To Film I & II:

MY OWN COUNTRY (Director: Mira Nair, Duration: 90 Minutes)
My Own Country tells the story of an East Indian doctor who settles in Johnson City, Tennessee. It’s 1985, and AIDS is spreading from the big cities to the rural areas. The doctor takes on the AIDS crisis as his personal crusade and is soon well-known for his compassion and non-judgmental treatment. The story explores sexuality from a hetero-normative perspective and exposes the myths and biases surrounding the disease in the early years.

ODE TO LATA (Director: Nilanjan Neil Lahiri)
A young, gay South African Indian flees to Hollywood, away from an overprotective
mother and memories of his father’s violent death. The film is based on actual events and the acclaimed novel by Ghalib Shiraz Dhalla, “Ode to Lata.” This film is a unique look at sexuality from an independent Hollywood perspective, and it is a no-holds-barred memoir of the despair and hope that is part of a young gay man’s life.

Shorts & Docs I:

JIHAD FOR LOVE (Director: Parvez Sharma, Duration: 90 minutes)
Jihad for Love is the first-ever feature-length documentary to explore the complex global intersections of Islam and homosexuality. With unprecedented access and depth, gay filmmaker Parvez Sharma (please fix the spacing here) brings to light the hidden lives of gay and lesbian Muslims from countries like Iran, Pakistan, Egypt, Turkey, France, India and South Africa. The international chorus of gay and lesbian Muslims brought together by Jihad for Love doesn’t seek to vilify or reject Islam, but rather negotiate a new relationship to it. In doing so, the film’s extraordinary characters point the way for all Muslims to move beyond a hostile, war-torn present toward a more hopeful future.

BEAUTY PARLOR (Director: Mehreen Jabbar, Duration: 18 minutes)
Four faces, four masks and four short sketches of lives, loves and desires from Pakistan, traced through visits to the beauty parlor. Two friends long for intimacies of a different kind, a to-be-bride longs for another while getting ready for her wedding, the ‘other woman’ struggles to define her existence via her relationship with her married lover and a physically challenged transvestite has dreams of a different kind. This short film explores themes that could not be expressed on mainstream Pakistan television at the time.

I AM (Director: Sonali Gulati, Duration: 10 minutes)
What do parents do when they find out that their child is gay? Having lost the opportunity to tell her mother that she is a lesbian, a young Indian filmmaker travels across India to meet with parents of other gay and lesbian South Asians in search of answers. I AM is a personal and revealing feature film that journeys to a landscape where being gay is a criminal and punishable offense. Can this documentary conversation offer any resolution for either the filmmaker or the parents she meets? With courage, determination and humor, families share untold stories that have thus far remained in the realm of secrecy and silence.

SEARCHING FOR SANDEEP (Director:Poppy Stockell, Duration: 56 minutes)
Despite living in one of the gay capitals of the world, 28-year-old Sydney resident Poppy Stockell is forced to go online in her search for love. When she meets 31-year-old Anglo-Indian Sandeep Virdi, she thinks she’s found the one. Through raw, incredibly frank footage, Searching for Sandeep follows Poppy and Sandeep’s tumultuous relationship across two years and three continents.

MADHURI GIRL STAR (Director: Ayesha Sood, Duration: 8 Minutes)
Madhuri Kumari is a village ‘Pradhan,’ an elected village leader in Fakirpuri village, Bahraich District, Uttar Pradesh. Madhuri struggled to go to school when she was young; she was the only girl in a class of 26 boys. As Madhuri grew, she knew she wanted to stay in school though her father constantly opposed her, so she did odd jobs for her neighbors to be able to pay for her school supplies. Soon, with the money she saved, she opened a small grocery shop. When Madhuri stood for elections, she won and she was only 21 years old. For the past six years, Madhuri has been busy building roads, installing a drainage system in the village, adding new classrooms to the Government School and encouraging children to go to school in her village. If families cannot afford to send their children to school, then Madhuri quietly pays for their supplies. Madhuri is well respected in her village. Today, she is 27 years old.

Shorts & Docs II:

BURNES ROAD KI NILOFER (Director: Mazhar Moin, Duration: 40 minutes)
Nilofer is a precocious 16-year-old girl who lives with her hassled mother and disciplinarian father and eight younger siblings in a cramped flat in Karachi’s old city. Beguiled by the soaps on television, she dreams of true love but has little chance to go out and find it or even to express herself in the presence of her parents. Her only confidante is a neighbor, a young woman whose wiles her mother does not particularly approve of. When Nilofer falls for the young cable man who visits to fix her television connection, it sets in motion a series of half-comic, half-tragic events that encapsulate the constricting life she lives.

EK QIAMAT AUR (Director: Mazhar Moin, Duration: 60 minutes)
This is a tele-film looking at the psyche of a woman who escapes her loveless marriage and the monotony of her everyday life by weaving dreams. Soon the line between real life and dreams get blurry and threatens to jeopardize the equilibrium in her life.

MY DAUGHTER THE TERRORIST (Director: Beate Arnestad, Duration: 58 minutes)
This fascinating documentary is an exceedingly rare, inside look at an organization that most of the world has blacklisted as a terrorist group. Made by the first foreign film crew to be given access to the Tamil Tigers (LTTE) of Sri Lanka, the film offers important insights into the recently re-ignited conflict in Sri Lanka. Deep in guerrilla territory, two female Black Tigers train for the ultimate mission. Condemned as terrorists by the world, they regard themselves as their people’s last hope against a superior oppressor. This even-handed documentary sheds light on the reasons that the Tamil Tigers continue their bloody struggle for independence while questioning their tactics. Deep in guerrilla territory, two female Black Tigers train for the
ultimate mission. Condemned as terrorists by the world, they regard themselves as their people’s last hope against a superior oppressor. This film delves into the community’s reaction to women becoming part of the Black Tigers, a role primarily reserved for men.

MIDNIGHT LOST & FOUND (Director: Atul Sabharwal, Duration: 18 minutes)
Arvind (Deepak Dobriyal) spends his nights reading Batman comics caged
in behind iron bars at his lonely chemist shop in Bombay. A prostitute
(Geetika Tyagi) stops every night to buy condoms, until their conversations help Arvind break free and find the superhero within.

TUMHARI BINA (Director: Mehreen Jabbar, Duration: 60 minutes)
This film deals with the desires of an older single woman who lives by herself in the house that she shared with her deceased brother. Her only other companion is her trusted gardener and the pleasures of the internet through which she plays her sinister games. This film was produced as part of a series called ‘Mystery Theatre” that ran on Indus Vision, a Pakistani cable channel.

About Engendered:
Engendered is a non-profit, trans-national arts and human rights organization focused on exploring the complex realities of gender and sexuality in the South Asian Diaspora. Based in New York, Engendered presents an annual four-part festival that brings together the best in contemporary South Asian performance, music, visual arts, and cinema. Both a political and aesthetic festival, Engendered uses the medium of arts and culture to create change and promote social justice by initiating public dialogue around women’s issues, gender inequity, sexual orientation, and minority and health rights. For more information about the organization, please visit www.engendered.org.

They closed the online registration yesterday, but they WILL be registering walk-ins at the conference, so even if you haven’t registered yet, you can still come. They’ve made it very reasonable – $30, $20 for students, and that comes with lunch. Students can go for $11 but with no lunch & no me. Basically, it’s a tiered system, allowing people as much conference access as possible. There’s a meet & greet on Friday, 8/14, AND a brunch on Sunday. (The day-of registrations are more expensive, and may not come with a guarantee that there will be room for you at lunch.)

So yes, make your plans to come while I’m on a train to Pittsburgh!