Report on the Fifty-Sixth Annual Meeting

Abstract

REPORT ON THE FIFTY-SIXTH ANNUAL MEETING Berkeley, California 15-18 September 1993 And so the masses came—some 350 when all were counted—to Berkeley, to attend the annual meeting of the Association of Pacific Coast Geographers. While everyone, including AAG Executive Director Ron Abler, who showed for several days, had a sense that this meeting was, in some way, a practice run for the AAG San Francisco meeting upcoming in March 1994, the Berkeley APCG meeting quickly developed a distinctive flavorentirely its own. The turnout was spectacular, and the number of papers at least approached, and perhaps surpassed, a record: the abstracts volume included 112 different papers. A number of high points came at the gathering, with only the occasional subterranean low. Among the pleasures was a truly urban meeting, and those who attended took to the evening streets of Berkeley with pedestrian brio. Assignations for catching up, roaming Shattuck, cruising Telegraph, or simply retiring to local pubs were set up right and left, and the net result was an APCG meeting that left many with a sense that it could well have gone on for several days longer without ill effects (except for the meeting organizers, who, as is customary, barely survived the meeting and the reckoning with their entertainment and bar tabs). In particular, Gray Brechin’s Wednesday evening walking tour of the Berkeley Hills, including an hour-long visit inside Carl Sauer’s long-time home at Arch and Rose, was sanspareil. The meeting was astonishingly intimate for a gathering of so many. The rooms bustled, noises ofthe city from time to time intruded, and mini-conclaves began like wildfires in niches of the halls and stairwells. As the noise level rose, clusters of people decamped to Original Mel’s, Eddy’s, or any of about 250 other restaurants within a 3-block walk. Sessions can adequately be reconstructed from the abstracts included in this Yearbook. As is traditional, field trips abounded. Bill Crowley warmed the cockles of meeting-goers’ hearts with his copyrighted sojourn to drink deeply of the Sonoma Valley Winescapes; John Parsons showed some of the accomplished cartography coming out of his Eureka Cartography offices; Ann Macpherson led a delegation through some of the geographical treasures of the Oakland Museum; Dave Larson took a busload of folks to examine the power and water infrastructure of the Bay Annual Meeting Report 185 Area; and finally, Norm Hetland overnighted a group into the Sierra Nevada foothills, on a most memorable trip. On the low side, meeting participants were too busy getting reacquainted for the Bay cruise to come off. And there were inevitable glitches; for example, some were unable for a time to find the Shattuck Hotel. Since the main entrance wasn’t actually on Shattuck Avenue, this was not an entirely surprising problem for the literal-minded,butmeeting organizershadlongbeforelearnedthat, withgeographers, getting lost almost anyplace is possible. Once arrived, most attendees marveled at the Shattuck’s ornate elegance and the rich historicity of an urban hotel. It was not a postmodern experience; in fact, while the turnout of Berkeley Geography Department graduate students was impressive, and a number of the Cai faculty, from several departments, did participate, the postmodernists were sadly absent. (Perhaps after the Revolution, meetings will be outlawed, and we were being subtly so informed. The absence, while noted, was not felt.) And, of course, the Shattuck Hotel closed its doors, permanently, just a few days after the meeting ended. Any cause and effect here was too attenuated to establish. Aside from the impedimenta of papers and presentations, which were in general of a caliber high enough to be memorable, there was much else going on. The extracurricular activities, as usual, contributed much ofthe rich meeting flavor. Events included what was, by acclamation, the mostpublic and successful gathering yet of the APCG Women’s Caucus, thanks notably to Joan Clemons and Susan Hardwick, and the Wednesday evening soirée proved a fitting occasion for rendering tribute to Margaret Trussell, who had trained or inspired so many ofthose assembled. Friday afternoon included a one-two punch, leading off with the University Library Reception, which inaugurated a map exhibit, curated by Paul Starrs, David...