Off to Cincinnati

I leave today for Cincinnati, where I'll be attending the annual conference of the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics (APPE). This is one of my favorite conferences, which I attend almost every year. I've taken many graduate students with me, over the years, and now many of them are all grown-up, established in faculty positions all over the country, and sometimes they bring their own graduate students with them to APPE. These are my grand-grad students, the grad students of my grad students.

This year I'll be having a reunion at APPE with Sara (now teaching at University of Washington in Seattle), Rob (now teaching at University of North Texas), and Chris (now teaching at Cal State, Sacramento). We will hear lots of papers, of course, but we'll also have lots of fun. Sara will insist on it.

Sara loves to find the kind of fun that is distinctive to each place we visit. So far, we have to admit, Cincinnati has proved to be, well, somewhat unsatisfying in the fun department. One year we went to a bar, on the Kentucky side of the Ohio River, where we thought we could get mint juleps, which we took to be a very Kentucky-ish beverage, but the bartender had never even heard of mint juleps, and the bar itself was . . . let me just say that you would be better off avoiding the Howl at the Moon piano bar. Another year, we set ourselves the mission of sampling Cincinnati's distinctive mix of chili and spaghetti, at Skyline Chili. We still dutifully have some every year, but it isn't really a HUGE treat.

This year our plan is to try Graeter's ice cream, reputed to be Oprah's favorite. Now, I don't think this will have the magical properties of the fairy dust I encountered in January at Alice's Teacup in Manhattan, but Oprah certainly has a magical aura of her own, and perhaps her favorite ice cream will have hitherto unrecognized powers. At the least, eating it should make for a pleasant half hour together with dear friends in Cincinnati.