So after Emily put me on the spot by finally doing her part of the Frankie Landau-Banks discussion we’d both been putting off for a million years, I explained my own delinquency in the comments thus:
My post about Frankie’s feminism is coming, but not tomorrow. All of my posts have been delayed somewhat by my being at the Population Association of America annual conference, for which I have created the Largest Demography Poster in the History of Posters or Populations. I don’t believe that this can end well, but I believe it may well be highly amusing.
And because I know you all read this blog for updates on my demographic display activities: Despite a tremendous comedy of errors involving misbooked (me) and canceled (my professor) flights, a realization ten days before the conference that we had failed to book a hotel room (me) or had booked one in the wrong country (professor), and other assorted mishaps culminating in an Amazing Road Trip Adventure, our excessively large poster arrived (only a tiny bit mangled) in Detroit and was bestowed with a poster award.
Now, I am convinced that we won this award because our poster had the best color scheme of the whole conference. I feel strongly about colors, and other people, too, feel strongly about color combinations I pick out, though not always in the way I would like. Here’s a sample snippet from when Emily and I were experimenting with options while setting up our blog:
EMILY: That is the ugliest, clashingest color combination I have ever seen.
ELIZABETH: What do you mean? I wear these colors together all the time!
EMILY: You… often clash.
In the creation of our poster, my professor and I went back and forth on many aspects of the content and design, but the one change I would not countenance was any alteration to our colors. Which stubbornness I felt was entirely vindicated by subsequent award.
And then, after all that, I looked at our blog and realized for the first time that the main visual feature of our poster — purple heading boxes fading from dark to light — is also the main visual feature of Underage Reading. Apparently, while I love all the colors, I do have a favorite. I do think our blog suffers, however, from lack of the green and orange accents that made our poster a winner.
Additionally: Emily and I realized too late that our blog’s purple-and-gray are also the colors of our high school. The less said about that, the better.
-->Feed me text
May 5, 2009 at 9:57 am
If I didn’t know you so well, I wouldn’t believe all those things actually happened. Hilarious. I and the rest of the readership are still waiting for a picture of this award-winning poster. Was the award actually for the poster, not the demography project itself? What kind of grown up conference bestows poster awards? Ahem. Sorry, I seem to have instinctually begun raining on your parade there. Erm, what I meant was, wow, congratulations on your poster award!
May 5, 2009 at 12:13 pm
I’d love to see a photo of your winning poster.
May 5, 2009 at 12:14 pm
ps. Congratulations! And I’m glad things worked on in the end with the conference.
May 5, 2009 at 1:22 pm
Thanks! I’ll have to ask my prof if it’s okay to put the poster on my blog. I wonder if my having written about his hotel-booking mishaps will alter his opinion of whether I can put the thing (which has his name on it) up — not everyone seems to admit to their incompetence as freely as I do; I believe this restraint is called “professionalism.” Hmmmm.
Emily: Yeah, it is a bit science fair-ish. But yeah, the award is for the poster, which includes its actual content as well as how successfully you’ve conveyed the content. It actually makes sense to me, because it’s a way that people can disseminate research findings to others who’re interested, in a setting where they can have conversations about it, without it taking all the time of a presentation (there were lots of presentations at this conference too, and I wished some of them had been in a format where they’d have more concisely told us what they did).
Like, I saw a great poster with information about who was actually lynched in the South (short version: usually Black migrants and others who didn’t have friends and family to protect them), and talked to the woman who’d made it for a while about what it all meant. Very fun and much nicer than just seeing an article someplace.
Plus, did I mention the colors?
May 5, 2009 at 6:58 pm
I get what you mean but I had to read a couple of times. Running the word fun so close behind ‘lynching’ is a psychological strain. Hope you enjoyed your time in the D.
And since I new to your blog, I’m completely lost about the your project and how it evolved. Glad to worked out well.
May 5, 2009 at 6:59 pm
And to prove my point about brain freeze, my first post has words missing!
May 5, 2009 at 7:08 pm
Susan: Fair enough about ‘lynching’ + ‘fun.’ I suppose I should clarify to those who don’t know me off-blog that one reason I was excited about the lynching poster is that I am, among other things, an anti-racist activist and deeply interested in both left- and right-wing movements. I was glad to see some actual data about who were predominantly the victims of lynching because it bears on debates about how to explain why lynchings happened. Some of which may be relevant in our new climate of economic disaster, with hate crimes against LGBT people, for example, rising dramatically. Hence: poster excitement!
Also, I don’t usually post much about what I’m doing at school, since what I’m doing at school does not usually involve teen romance novels, vampires, picture books, or classic television series (and more’s the pity). But I seriously did this dramatic double-take when I noticed the purple heading on our blog, so… point being, you’re not behind in the conversation so much as I took the conversation is a dramatic veer toward being, once again, all about me. Tomorrow, perhaps we will return to our regularly programming of children’s lit.
May 6, 2009 at 10:57 am
I’m right there with you. I’m a huge diversity advocate so I feel very strongly about the issues you’ve mentioned. I think creating links between your life and the blog would be a welcomed enhancement. I’m intensely interested learning what others’ passions are. Knowing that we have some common interests gives me more reason to come here. And if that sounds bias, then maybe it is. There are a gazillion review blogs. The ones I’m most interested in are those that broaden and challenge my perspective and those which connect me with like-minded folks.
Thanks for responding. And your color choices here are soothing. Some sights cause major eye strain. Even if I’m interested in the content I can’t hang because of eye fatigue.
May 7, 2009 at 7:06 pm
Ugh, did you attend my high school (purple, gray/silver, white, and black)? The only pro about that color scheme is that it wasn’t a rival school’s color scheme of maroon and yellow/gold.
May 7, 2009 at 7:10 pm
Um, I totally would have loved maroon and gold. This is what I mean about no one appreciating my colors.
Ours was just purple and grey (my college was also purple and white). The crazier thing was that until our junior year, our high school had no standing mascot. Instead, each year’s rising senior class picked their own mascot. Emily’s and my year was the Quantum Sheep, which was fully awesome, exceeded only by the choice I voted for, which won the election but then was overturned by some girls who didn’t want our year represented by a bug: the Gregorian Ant.