You Can't Get There From Here

I am on the train, returning home from AAR. Previously I mentioned that I would perhaps do some sort of liveblogesque posting from the conference but I was not going to pay the outrageous $13 per day they were asking for internetsitivity.

There are things I will pay too much for- booze... um... I guess that's it. Oh- a house in California- The Bean (shortened) and I will probably end up paying too much for that. So, there are things I will pay too much for- booze and real estate- but not the internets.

Though now that I write that I realize we are all paying too much for internets. I mean, it's the same internets we're all paying to have poured into our homes individually. We could just as easily have a big pile of internets in the middle of the street and share the cost with our neighbors but the prince of the power of the air has such a hold on us we mostly think that's stealing. So I guess I do pay too much for the internets. And from that, it looks like I/we will sell our souls for too little. But that's not as bad as it sounds. After all, we only really use our souls at Christmas. So... whatever.

Anyway, no internets this weekend and hence no experiment in online-diarying, but I can still share with you the highlights from this weekend. I stalked academic celebrities. I dazzled Emilie Townes with my wit. At various points, I felt what I imagine other people must be feeling when they raise their hands at church. I made some excellent connection$ for my dissertation work. The most important thing, though, was my trip to the Institute for Creation Research in Santee.

The Institute for Creation Research is exactly what the name suggests. It's an institute where they do creation research. Duh.

It's interesting to me that the title suggests creation concretely or abstractly and that the research that is performed and produced concerns the act of creation or that which results from a creative act. That struck me as particularly honest. They're not like those liars at the Discovery Institute who want to call creationism some type of science or give it some fancy name that makes people think they're doing something like science. These folks at the ICR make it clear from the get go that they are not doing science, rather they are doing creation research.

So, like I said, it struck me as particularly honest. Then I learned that they will award you an advanced degree in science.

An advanced degree in something called science.
Really.
Not so honest and a little silly.

Whatever- as fufilling as my time at AAR was, I felt the trip would be incomplete without a trip to the relatively nearby ICR. Even though it meant I would miss at least one session, a discussion of cultural identity in shifting environments, I figured I might be able to take something valuable from a visit to The Institute.

The Institute is as far from the AAR conference you can get on the San Diego Metro System- it is literally at the end of the line. Well, literally about a mile and a half beyond the end of the line. I guess we'll say that means something. It's also probably something that of all the religious events AAR hosted beyond the seminars, panels and receptions themselves, not one included even a mention of the ICR. You could go on an AAR affiliated visit to see the Dead Sea Scrolls. You could tour historic religious sites in San Diego, including the many nearby missions. You could even go to the zoo with AAR. I was the only one going to ICR. Go figure.

So I made the journey from the relatively cosmopolitan and somewhat manufactured urbanity of the San Diego Convention Center region swarming with its Gaslamp hipsters, downtown anti-hipsters, moneyed hotel and waterfront condo dwellers, resident homeless folks, tourists, conference attendees, other drunks of all stripes, and the rest of the cacophonous mix of people, languages, stinks, and colors all the way out to the soft pink stucco and tile roofs of Every Other Suburban Development, Southern California.

At the Santee Transit Center, I was supposed to take Line 854 a brief way and then walk a bit to the ICR Museum. At least that's what all of the Metro Maps indicated. Instead, when I arrived at the transit center I found that Bus Line 854 no longer existed- No- Wait. I'm sorry. It still exists as Bus Line 854- only it went to none of the places that it went to in its previous incarnation. In fact, no bus goes by the creation museum, even though the Metro Maps say otherwise and it lies near the heart of pink stucco Santee.

Thanks, jerks.

Really. Thanks. Even if it is pretty jerky of YOU to not make sure YOUR maps reflect where I can actually go using YOUR busses (or buses- both are correct). YOU helped me realize something that I may not have known had I easily visited the museum and snarkily took pictures and conversed with employees.

This can't really be something that means anything to me. If I took them seriously, I likely would have walked another thirty or so minutes to the museum. Even if I took them seriously only as some type of academic investigation, I probably would have walked the rest of the way. I would have trekked with my suitcase and computer bag up the hill to the storefront graduate school and museum. I would have spent time pretending this means something to my faith. As I disagree with it, find it confused and shallow, and fret over its influence in THE CHURCH, I would pretend there was something worthwhile to engage there. I guess I really just don't care that much. At least I don't care enough to go that extra distance. Or the there there is not worth the effort to get there.

There are many much more important things to deal with.

I guess.

So I went back to the conference.

And now I get to return home with and to what really does matter to me.