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'The Story of the Story: Ethics, Therapy, and Life Writing'  Conference, 28th September 2009 at Flinders University, Adelaide. Three intense days of intimate, revealing presentations. However, to their credit,  the organisers allowed plenty of time, not only for questions, but for the delegates to chat over coffee and cake. This conference was so different to the large scale and constant rush of Illinois. I'm also pleased to say that this time we had access to computers and could augment our talks with PowerPoint presentations. I'm sure my five 'picture' slides, were enough. I didn't want people to suffer from PowerPoint overload. The masterclass on ethics with Margaretta Jolley was thought provoking even though many of us will contine to grapple with thorny ethical issues

Sunday was a warm sunny day and Endendale Community Farm at Eltham an excellent venue for this festival run by the Eltham Bookshop. What a title, World Matters: End of Certainty: Celebration of new questions, of fresh alternatives: history, politics, philosophy, international relations, gender, social/cultural studies. So many interesting debates and the opportunity to showcase the work of many authors.

I'm back from the fastest overseas trip ever. In one go I traveled from Melbourne to Los Angeles to Chicago and finally arrived at Champagne Urbana in Illinois. I've been finger printed, xrayed, checked for swine flu, oink, oink, and passed all scrutiny. This time it was travel-on luggage only and I was amazed how well I managed with everything I needed for 16 days weighing only 7 kilos. I'm convinced that is the way I will travel in the future, fast and lean. 

I could write a book about the Fifth International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry at the University of Illinois and how wonderful it was to have the support of Barb Biggs and Susan Bardy. Wonderful, generous women. Susan introduced me the the gurus of autoethography, Carolyn Ellis and Art Brochner. I came away totally inspired and relieved that my paper was well recieved.

A highlight of this trip was visiting my pen friend of 35 yrs, 93 year old Martha Bogert. We had four wonderful days together and Patt, her daughter even drove down from Santa Fe, picked me up at Albuquerque, drove to Portal Arizona, cooked delicious meals and took me back to Albuquerque. We've arranged for her and her partner to visit us here in Australia in February for a trip down to Tasmania. But that's another story....

I haven't been posting. I've been up to my ears in research. Starting a PhD is certainly a challenging adventure. It is also time consuming and the biggest learning curve of my life. On April the 22nd I have to present my Proposal Review at Swinburne University's Colloquium. My presentation is at last taking shape and the Power-Point done. Here's hoping all goes well on the day, and the USB key works, and my papers stay together, and it's a sunny day (always uplifting to the spirit) and....