dispatch from salt lake city

(photo of the Cheney protest at BYU -- note the sign that says "Enter to learn, go forth to TORTURE")

So, thanks to Brayden's invitation to give a talk at BYU, I can now cross Utah off my list of states from which I've blogged.* I'm staying overnight tonight at the airport Hilton in Salt Lake City, and the temptation to go rent a car and drive to the Wyoming border is almost overwhelming.

Turns out my talk was the same day as apparently the biggest protest in recent years at BYU, against the forthcoming appearance of Dick Cheney as BYU's commencement speaker. About a half hour before my talk, Brayden and I went downstairs to check out the protest. I left my bag inside the open conference room where the talk would be. Brayden hesitated for a moment before leaving my bag there, but then decided it was okay. Me, I thought, "Come on, what's there to worry about? This may be Crazy Civil Disobedience Day, relatively speaking, but this is still BYU."

Anyway, I got back to the conference room and discovered my laptop was gone. So then I was simultaneously panicked about my impending presentation and thinking that this would make a pretty good cocktail party anecdote. As it happened, I was just confused and had left my laptop in Brayden's office, even though I had no reason to have hauled my bag down to the conference room in the first place except it contained my computer.

The talk went okay, especially considering how little sleep I've gotten the last few days. Perhaps I could have used some caffeine beforehand. The person who gave me a ride from the airport graciously asked if I had any caffeine needs to be taken care of before entering BYU's campus (which is a caffeine free zone), but I passed with the idea that if BYU was nice enough to bring me in to speak, I could caffeine-fast for the day. That lasted all the way until the off-campus lunch.

* Updated list:

Alabama	Alaska	Arizona	Arkansas	California	Colorado
Connecticut	Delaware	Florida	Georgia	Hawaii	Idaho
Illinois	Indiana	Iowa	Kansas	Kentucky	Louisiana
Maine	Maryland	Massachusetts	Michigan	Minnesota	Mississippi
Missouri	Montana	Nebraska	Nevada	New Hampshire	New Jersey
New Mexico	New York	North Carolina	North Dakota	Ohio	Oklahoma
Oregon	Pennsylvania	Rhode Island	South Carolina	South Dakota	Tennessee
Texas	Utah	Vermont	Virginia	Washington	Washington, D.C.
West Virginia	Wisconsin	Wyoming

dispatch from the grassy knoll

(the view of the book depository from what turned out to be the wrong grassy knoll--the real knoll is across the street. you can see the cardboard boxes in the window where they have set up in the museum an replica of what how the boxes were actual corner where Oswald sat)

Yes, that grassy knoll. I am in Dallas for a conference and am sitting here waiting for Sal and Megan, who are still working their way through the museum in the book depository.

I wonder if, in addition to blogging from all the states and from all the planets, if I should start a thing where I blog from the sites of all four presidential assassinations. Perhaps then Sarah Vowell will finally take my repeated marriage proposals seriously.

The states list, updated to include Texas:

Alabama	Alaska	Arizona	Arkansas	California	Colorado
Connecticut	Delaware	Florida	Georgia	Hawaii	Idaho
Illinois	Indiana	Iowa	Kansas	Kentucky	Louisiana
Maine	Maryland	Massachusetts	Michigan	Minnesota	Mississippi
Missouri	Montana	Nebraska	Nevada	New Hampshire	New Jersey
New Mexico	New York	North Carolina	North Dakota	Ohio	Oklahoma
Oregon	Pennsylvania	Rhode Island	South Carolina	South Dakota	Tennessee
Texas	Utah	Vermont	Virginia	Washington	Washington, D.C.
West Virginia	Wisconsin	Wyoming

Sal and I both have colds, his worse than mine, so the planned Tulsa trip is off, so Oklahoma will remain unblogged.