Actually, I’ve been back for a week, but I’ve been bed-ridden. Foolishly, I ate some chicken from the buffet during the conference’s lunch break and wound up with food poisoning. I’ve been getting over it all week and it is possibly the most sick I have ever been. However, I can now say that I have visited every bathroom at the University of North Texas and that all of their facilities are in order!

I delivered a paper on the 10th century monk Nilus and I was quite well received. It was my first time to read a paper at a conference, and I could have done it much better, but everyone seemed to enjoy it. In a few weeks I am reading the same paper at my alma mater, Dallas Baptist University, at their Paideia conference. I think. (I could almost justify publishing a “speaking schedule” on my blog so that I would look like a professional speaker, but it would peeter out after February for probably a long time.)

I notice that everyone is interested in Spain, these days. I can’t turn around without stepping on a theology student, art student, archaeologist, or anthropologist who spends every summer in Spain. (Honestly, I’ve met people from all of those fields, and more, who want to study Spain every day of their lives.) I guess I’m old fashioned, but give me Alfred the Great and the Vikings any day, but Muslim/Christian/Jewish relationship are a hot topic right now and everyone wants in on it.

It was a good conference and I learned a great deal about Spanish art, which is probably good since that’s what everyone wants to talk about. My paper will be published on their website soon and I will link to it so you can read it. (Because, I’m sure everyone out there is just dying to read a boring paper about a dead monk. It’s so boring that it doesn’t even mention Spain.)