City from Below

The semester has kicked into high gear and I am drowning in a sea of reading, written assignments,map-making, and special projects. Once in a while, I manage to emerge and dock (I know, enough of the nautical metaphors) at a lecture – or as in the last couple of weeks – at aconference.  It is great to stepout of academia once in a while and hear what is going on in the realworld.  I had the opportunity to attend two conferences over the past month.  One of them – The City from Below Conference – I attended this weekend when I returned home to Baltimore for spring break.