I haven’t had Internet access since Friday morning, my longest period of being “unwired” for years (am posting this from my Blackberry, so not even sure if I will be properly online before I get home on Monday morning).

Anyway, it’s been a pleasant little conference, in the town just next to the other Belfast. I’m sorry not to have visited the town named after my birthplace, but you can’t have everything.

Most conferences I attend are organised by institutions which are themselves engaged in the issues; this one appears to be entirely staffed by local citizens, wanting to contribute to the cultural life of their community. They have flown me and a bunch of other experts way up to the frozen north, far from my usual haunts in this country. The speakers have almost all been of top quality, and the organisers very hospitable (I was billeted with a very nice Quaker couple).

Snow is still piled high here, in the front yards of the pretty wooden houses, with Penobscot Bay gleaming in the low winter sunlight. Intellectually demanding, but physically relaxing. Now it’s time to go home; leave Camden at 1130; home about 1000 tomorrow, so that’s sixteen hours of travel.

There is at the back of my mind some idea that Rockport, Maine, has an sfnal connection – some well-known writer associated with it, perhaps. Any ideas who I might be thinking of?
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