A couple of times a year, I get invited to participate in a Liberty Fund colloquium. The Liberty Fund was organized by a wealthy industrialist who liked to read books and eat good food. So, basically, a group of about 15 academics sit around in a hotel conference room discussing books and eating good food. The participants are generally very nice and interesting and it feels like a swanky vacation, with plenty of intellectual stimulation thrown in. I'm always game -- though most of the time the conferences aren't quite like the one I attended last weekend in Indianapolis.
To begin with, I was upgraded to first class. Both ways. I guess no other frequent flyers opt for the 5:00am flight? I love being the first one on the plane, sipping my orange juice and looking down on the poor schlubs who don't get prime space for their carry-on bags.
I was picked up at the airport in a sedan driven by a man who had just found out he was to be the personal driver for late-night star Jimmy Fallon for the entire next week. Because, of course, next week is the Superbowl in Indianapolis. In his joy and excitement and hometown pride, the driver gave me a tour of the entire downtown area where all the Superbowl festivities were already taking place. Very cool.
We finally arrived at the hotel: the Conrad. As in Conrad Hilton. As in the fanciest hotel this side of Chicago.
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| Yes, the beds really are that soft. |
On Friday afternoon, I missed out on what turned into a personal tour of the Superbowl stadium and the Colts' locker room. I went shopping instead. The shopping was pretty great (40% off clearance at Banana Republic? Yes, please. Austin now has a whole new wardrobe). But I was determined not to miss out on any more fun, so the next afternoon when a trip to the Indianapolis Zoo was suggested, I signed up.
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| We rode in a limo to the zoo. Serious. |
One of the participants in the conference was a journalist and writer from Wyoming with a particular obsession with lions. He was interested in seeing a lion cub sent to Indianapolis from the Denver Zoo a couple of years earlier. The zoo director and lion keepers met us at the gate and ushered us right to the lions. Next thing I knew, we were being invited into the lion "barn" where the animals are fed and sheltered. Only keepers allowed -- and, apparently, a random handful of professors. We became closely acquainted with the lions. Very closely. As in, a couple of inches and some rather thin fencing.
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| No zoom here. I was sitting this close to him. |
Later that night, after a lovely dinner at Indy's finest steakhouse, discussing poetry and nature writing of the American West, the Wyoming guy leaned over and told me he had decided I was worthy to know the final resting place of Edward Abbey. Whaaaaat? Abbey, a famously-curmudgeonly environmental anarchist, wanted to be buried in his sleeping bag in an unmarked grave in the eastern Arizona desert. His friends obliged. This journalist became acquainted with one of the friends, who took him to the spot a few years back. I now have a topo map and GPS coordinates to the place -- and have acquired an air of extreme coolness among all my many friends and family that are with me on the periphery of the cult of Ed Abbey. Pilgrimage tentatively planned for this summer.
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| Wish I could do that to my TV too, Ed. |
Not bad for a weekend otherwise dedicated to discussing the essays of T.S. Eliot. Who would not have approved of Edward Abbey.
