After spending several days in Des Moines, IA, for the 2011 American Atheists Convention, I am trying to re-familiarize myself with an unscheduled life lacking excitement. Also, the obligations of having to keep the weekly articles coming. Though I will miss the city and spring air (believe it or not, I saw tulips in bloom) at least I will be able to retrace my steps and conversations as I organize the 30+ pages of handwritten notes I took during the presentations. If anyone is interested in reading them, I will likely post scans on my personal blog Philologos in the coming days.

Overall, I was able to get a wide array of giraffes including some by Matthew Chapman (great-great grandson of Charles Darwin), Paul Provenza (writer and comedian), Lawrence Krauss (theoretical physicist) and more. Unfortunately I was unable to get a giraffe drawn by David Silverman, the Pope President of the American Atheists, because he was “busy” doing more important things like “running a convention” and “talking to the police.” Such disappointment only stacks on top of “The story of Robert Bly, how I offended History and why beat poet Gary Snyder broke my heart.”

So be sure to subscribe to the blog (on the homepage) so you can catch all of the great stuff coming down the pipeline!

In other news:

• I’d like to say thank you to Manny Laureano, trumpeter for the Minnesota Orchestra, for being such a good sport about his article. As an GDBPWSNBDG administrator I have the ability to view the pages, “referrers,” that direct individuals to this website and was pleasantly surprised to see this forum on TrumpetHerald.com, which was interesting because I was ignorant of the fact that there were entire communities dedicated to trumpet players. Thanks again, Manny!
• I finally got my hands on the US Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI) giraffe, which means that I’ll try to get it up as soon as possible. Perhaps on the same day as US Congressman Keith Ellison (D-MN)?
• One of the faculty here at the University of Minnesota-Morris has entered a contest that, if she wins, would take her to New York City to do the audio book for one of Neil Gaiman‘s (author of The Sandman and a lot of awesome Batman comics) latest releases. Were she to win, there would be a pretty good chance we would be able to get a Gaiman giraffe – can you imagine? – but she’s not going to win unless she gets more votes. So please go vote for her and help us out!