Blake and 20th...

The American Association of Geographers (AAG) has divided the country into 9 regions of which K-State is part of the Great Plains/Rocky Mountain Region. Each of the regions holds an annual meeting at a school located somewhere in the region. For example, two years ago K-State hosted the regional meeting, last year it was SD, and this year Wyoming played host. I enjoy the regional meetings as most of the presentations are relevant to my areas of interest and accessible unlike the national meetings, which tend to be rather ‘high brow’ and, quite frankly, boring.

This past weekend I traveled to the regional meeting in Laramie to present a paper on the history of the logging industry in the Northwoods. As is often the case, I thought I did “so-so”, but received a lot of positive feedback with a number of people stopping me afterwards to ask questions or share their own stories. It was a quick trip, but a lot of fun.

I only spent Saturday during the day in Laramie because I wanted to make sure I made it back to Denver in time for the Rockies game that night (I stayed in Denver). A small group of my friends made it there for the ballgame: Chris, Ronel, Greg, and Branden—who had planned on traveling to a conference last weekend, but had his plans change at the last minute and decided to surprise me by showing up at the game! Great to see them all again!

I’m not sure what was better…seeing the Rockies shutout the Giants or telling stories of cat-eating-dogs. Both are so much fun.

Ps—Tonight a former student of mine, Crystal, spoke to my class about her trip to Kosovo this past summer. It was her first time speaking to a class such as this and she did great! I bring this up because if any of you out there should be reading this and want to put something together for my Human Geography class let me know…I’m always looking for a way to work in material like this. (Andy Taylor you are greatly missed)