Wine OR Philosophy

As you probably know, I presented that paper on Plato's Symposium at the Northwest Philosophy Conference last weekend. It was pretty cool, and I met some nice people and heard some good presentations. And Pacific University has a beautiful campus and some great seminar rooms.

Unfortunately, the conference itself is a bit of a mess. If you clicked that link up there, you saw the schedule: one day only, 13 sessions at a time! That's both way too much and way too little. Only one person came to my session, and there were a number of sessions without any audience at all! I was supposed to present comments on a paper about Aristotle, but no one came. Lame.


Fortunately, Pacific University is in Forest Grove, and Forest Grove is right on the edge of Oregon's wonderful Willamette Valley, where they make lots of wonderful wine! The picture up top was taken at Montinore, and I'd definitely recommend their Pinot Noir and their Gewürztraminer.

Ismail and Kari met up with us, and we managed to visit two vineyards and one tasting room. Yummy!

This is Kari at the Patton Valley Winery. We got a great tour, and learned all about their very small, sustainable Pinor Noir operation. Who knew that letting weeds grow was a great way to manage insects? Not me, but I like it! And the wine was good too!

Not only that, but they use screw caps instead of corks. Call me weird, but as much fun as corks can be, I'm a huge fan of screw caps...

Anyway, nice people, tasty wine, pretty countryside--a great way to spend an afternoon!

Grapes--about to be pressed.



Like I said, yummy!

Was and Will Be

Well, a few days ago I mentioned a great sunset on Twitter. A bit late, but here's the best photo we could come up with:

Kind of hard to see, but if you look toward the bottom, you'll see we weren't alone with our cameras. Saw cars literally stopping in the middle of streets to take pictures. Sunsets don't usually look like that here...


Also pretty--the Grizzly Bear show at the Moore:


Hard to convey, of course, but here's a clip of one of the weirder songs (from a different live show), which I really like:

Even weirder, perhaps: it's a cover of a song originally recorded by the 60's girl-group the Crystals.
I don't know about you, reader, but I think his voice is just magical. And beautiful.


Lastly, we only have three more months of waiting and then my article of Plato's Republic will be out!

Online table of contents--complete with an abstract of my paper!--available here.

SW

Okay, so I'm busy. I know you are too, so it's really no excuse...

Anyway, here's a photo Emily posted to facebook, for those of you not on there:

Caption: "My favorite street: SW Yancy"
Such a sweetie.


Have a great week, reader! See you soon!

What a Weekend!

Had a great Saturday: got up early, had a fun day, got some good news. In the evening we saw Romeo & Juliet at the Pacific Northwest Ballet, which was just amazing. ...Oh, and we went shopping & got some back-to-school (?) clothes. So that's always fun. Pictures (maybe) soon.

We'd heard and read good things about the ballet, but I never expected it to be this awesome.

A video that won't come close to doing it justice?
Sure:



Nice Sunday too:

Enjoyed the beautiful fall weather while walking through the park near the Dahlia Garden...


Oh, the good news? So one of the great things about my schedule is that we have time to visit lots of friends and family during the summer. And one of the questions that lots of those friends and family like to ask is: What do you do during the summer, anyway?

This past summer, or for at least two-thirds of it, I read nearly everything I could find having to do with the Symposium, by Plato. I must have read at least five or six full-length books, along with well over 30 articles and essays. My goal: to try to understand things a little better, and try to see if there were areas where I might make some contribution of my own. Nothing helps you understand a book or an argument like writing and working your way through it.

And now the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association (the big time!) has accepted my paper on the Symposium for the upcoming April 2010 meeting!

My paper has to do with the tension between what Socrates says about the ideal lover and what a jealous, drunken young man named Alcibiades has to say about being in love with Socrates.

If you'd like to take a look, the APA will post it online in January. Can't wait? Okay, I've posted a draft--feel free to give it a read! Let me know if you'd like to talk about it!