The conference is over, and the APs duly collected me to continue our trip. The only reason why you're not getting Las Vegas and Bryce Canyon pic spams is that photobucket warned me I nearly maxed my monthly bandwith. Which is why further uploads must wait until October 2nd, alas.

However: some conference thoughts. It was great fun, full of lively debates, and quite international in ways that meant more than just Germans and Americans. We had a lecturer from Senegal and one from Seoul, for example, both female, which brings me to another point. While the conference, hosted by the International Feuchtwanger Society, is of course primarily about Lion Feuchtwanger, there have always been presentations on other exile writers as well. But this year was the first where as many of these others were women as there were men. What's more, the presentations in question were immensely captivating and entertaining. I'd say the one on Elisabeth Hauptmann beat the one on Brecht by a mile. (I didn't know she lived in Missouri of all the places during the war, due to her sister having married one of the locals, and wrote an essay on segregation which she observed first hand when taking a bus while she was there.) Salka Viertel I had known about as a legendary Hollywood meets emigres hostess and scriptwriter, but not that she actually provided the family income since both husband Berthold and two of her sons did not. Nor had I been aware of how much her outspoken fight against MacCarthysm cost her. A female writer I hadn't heard about before the conference but nust look up now is Gina Kaus, who in her memoirs had this scathing comment on many a male writers complaint about Hollywould: "I never had time to wonder whether it was undignified to write for the movies. I needed the money."

The red thread through this particular conference was the exiles ' "To stay or not to stay?" question after the war, and we got plenty of examples of both. At one point, a (American) man around 70 rose and said: "Well, I can understand people not wanting to return to the Germanies then, but what about now? Because I was born in Berlin before my parents fled, and let me tell you, the way things are going in this country I wonder whether I could return! Also, they have healthcare in Germany."

And on that note, I leave you to take my trusty camera and my parents to another glorious sight of nature, to be documented in this very journal as soon as photobucket lets me again!