on Election Eve, from our house to yours

I think that our curb-side sign should say it all - but in case there's any doubt, and you haven't yet voted, and you're eligible to do so - GET OUT THERE AND VOTE.  After an early evening watching the streaming of the Philly rally, and then an hour or so of MSNBC, I was feeling extremely upbeat.  Shifting channels to CNN - well, back to teeth grinding and anxious twitching.  I've even just seen a pro-Trump ad - a superPac ad - on tv which, in southern California, is a bit like seeing an ad for ice melter and snow boots.  So - WE'RE WITH HER.  GO VOTE!

heading to Phoenix airport

Let's just say that this was a very bright and glittery outfit for early on a Sunday morning.  Since the person is sitting down, you can't quite get the full effect of their shiny purple lurex mini skirt, nor the tall platform-soled shoes, nor, indeed, the fairly plentiful tattoos.  Alas, they weren't a NAVSA attendee - I was thinking, this year, how sober-dressed, how professional so many people looked, and I'm not sure what to make of this relative sartorial caution.

the urban jungle of Phoenix

One last piece of Phoenix wall art - which doesn't adequately represent the excellence of the 2016 NAVSA, nor, for that matter, the terrific art gallery, which I was so very glad to have made the time to visit.  The galleries included a wonderful exhibit of innovative and experimental contemporary photography, much of it with an environmental bias that fitted extremely well, as it happened, with some of the most exciting strands of the conference.  Onwards to NAVSA's 2017 iterations, with many, many, many thanks to this year's Sun Devils organizers.

another Arizonan wall

It's another wall in downtown Phoenix!  There are a good number of murals hidden up alleyways, it would seem (clearly, I don't want to speculate about the possibilities for murals along that great big wall that will never be built - whichever party wins - along the Mexican border).

walking the phoenix streets

... in search of a little gizmo to put an SD camera card in so that images can be transferred to my computer - not, it would seem, the kind of thing one can buy in downtown Phoenix (yes - I thought I had one safely packed ... but no ...). Indeed, one can purchase very little, unless it's Starbucks coffee, or a lottery card (I exaggerate - there's also an Urban Outfitters) - not even a CVS.  But pounding the sidewalks, I at least (courtesy of my cellphone) can offer you a club frontage.  But not, alas, this morning's stormy clouds, reflecting in shiny office blocks ...

I'm with her

Yes, my feet are tired - I was standing on them from around 3 p.m., half an hour before the ASU athletic field opened, with lines already snaking around several blocks.  And HRC was late flying into Phoenix, so it was a long evening ... 

She was inspiring.  Compared with her TV debate appearances, she was really fired up, passionate, gesturing, thoroughly into it with every cell of her body - whoever maintains she's not good with a large crowd (maybe 20,000 there, they were saying) is completely wrong.   She even managed to make very familiar stump speech lines sound as though she was saying them very freshly.  And the Arizona-specific parts were seamlessly interwoven (some good speechwriter at work, there) - inviting us to imagine the horror of Joe Arpaio as Trump's head of Homeland Security, for example; giving a large shout out to the Navajo Nation and the Gila Valley Indians - Pimas, that is - and above all, to Latinos.  AND - I've never before heard a politician give a check-in to university faculty before!  And to LGBTQ people.  And to the importance of not denying climate change, and sustainable energy (I wish we'd heard much more from her about this in the campaign, but better late than never).   She didn't disguise her loathing for Trump, his dishonesty, his complete unsuitability as a role model, his lack of tax paying, his failure to make money even from running casinos, his treatment of women.  Indeed, one of the things that struck me most strongly about the whole crowd, women (some of them self proclaimed nasty women) and men (some of them bad hombres) was the huge enthusiasm for Hillary as a woman - a sense that this was a fully embraced feminist moment.

Gosh - whoever thought that coming to a NAVSA conference would have this as a highlight?

And, as Hillary herself said - you don't want to wake up next Wednesday morning saying - oh, if only I'd done more.  But tonight - and I'm sure it was a long long day for her - she couldn't have given an ounce more.  It was terrific.

portrait varietals

This woman was a quite magnificent sight on the light rail at Phoenix Airport. All in black - including the elaborate saddle bag - including (almost invisible against the dark window) a fascinator, it was impossible to gauge whether she was headed for a very sumptuous funeral (probably with black horses wearing plumes) or to a grand Day of the Dead celebration.  One of the more mystifying things about her was the luggage tag that firmly read Crew.  I would have loved to have had the courage to ask her to pose - but this isn't bad as snatched iPhone images go.

Earlier in the day, I was so happy to be able to go to hear Robin Coste Lewis giving the Visual Studies Research Institute's annual Anne Friedberg lecture - a happy condition of the award of the prize, for graduate travel.  She spoke about this posed photographic parody of Oscar Wilde, "The Wilde Woman of Aiken," about which she's also written a terrific poem (in her National Book Award winning The Voyage of the Sable Venus) - and it was a talk that prompted so many ideas, in so many different directions ... but the Wilde Woman is, ultimately, and challengingly, and intriguingly, no more knowable than the anonymous woman on the light rail, whom I'm extraordinarily unlikely ever to see again ...