A Day in San Antonio

Interesting to be in the lobby of a downtown hotel very early in the morning (5:15 CST):  the music is wincingly loud; I could hear it even with headphones on. But the kind hotel staff turned it down for me. Every TV is tuned to sports coverage, which is fine, since there's no sound--but why have them on at all? I assume they've been on all night.

I will resist the urge to launch into a lecture on the waste of electricity and other resources.  It's been the kind of trip where I'm aware of every cough and sneeze that I hear.  I'm also aware of all the waste that's around me, even as I, too, drink out of plastic straws.

I am thinking of conferences, as I often have, and how much it takes to bring a group of people together--the airline travel alone must take a huge toll on the planet.  I don't often think of the other types of hard use of the planet.  Let's return to straw use.   Yesterday, I used 4 or 5 straws--most weeks I use no straws.  Multiply that times the 10,000-15,000 who may eventually make their way to this conference, times 3-4 days that we're out here.  Because I almost never use straws, I didn't think to bring my own reusable straws--in fact, I don't even own a steel straw that I could bring with me.

Yesterday we had no trouble getting our registration materials.  It's one of the reasons I wanted to get to the conference site early.  We spent time looking over panels, circling them--and then later finding out they had been cancelled.  Sigh.

Happily, there are still some good panels left.  And in some ways, cancellations make it easier.  I am always astonished at how many panels are offered.  And also, how many of them seem to be covering the same territory--this year there are at least 3 panels on being a fat poet.  But as with previous years, not much on theology or the writing of theology or using the symbols of theology.  There's one on theology and children's lit and one on subverting the symbols used by religions.

Yesterday was also a day to do some exploring of San Antonio.  We walked up to a place that advertised itself as a market square that would take us back to old Mexico; we had heuvos rancheros for breakfast and bought some beautiful pastries for later.  

In the way of beautiful pastries everywhere, they looked more beautiful than they tasted.

I loved the festive decorations of the restaurant more than the food:

We stopped at a cathedral that may have been the first cathedral in Texas.  It held the remains of Bowie and Crockett and other heroes of the Alamo:

We stopped at a place that celebrated the first settlers that came to San Antonio from the Canary Islands.  

Until I came here, I didn't realize/know that there were settlers from the Canary Islands.  And to be honest, I was grateful for a sign that told us that the Canary Islands are off the coast of Spain--my first thought was Indonesia, but I was pretty sure that couldn't be accurate.

We went on a quest for a steakhouse advertised to remind us of an old Texas farmhouse.  The very nice hotel valet parking guys told us that it had been closed, but they recommended another one.  It was on the River Walk, but up off the walk, so we weren't jostled by people walking by.

We ended the day by looking at AWP panels again; were there more cancellations by the end of the day than at the middle when we got our registration packets?  It felt like it.  We watched the sun set over the city and the light of the buildings come on:

It was a good day.