In the midst of catching up with friends, I did speak on a policomm panel at SSCA today. The topic was the 2024 presidential election. I spoke a bit about about the campaign last fall.

Do you know that feeling where everyone at the table is a considerable expert, and most everyone else in the room is an expert, too, and someone looks at you and expects you to say something insightful? It was that feeling, for 75 minutes.

My main point was about how no one, pollsters, campaigns, media, really understand how things are evolving around us in terms of the modern election cycle and that’s going to eventually spawn some sort of reckoning. Also, I touched on how the Democrats changed their tone midway through their shortened run-up, and that might not have been a good thing for them, because they did not get the result they’d hoped for. This, by the way, is how analysis is done. Everyone else said much more thoughtful things than I did, I assure you.

We also got to remember Dr. Larry Powell, a friend and mentor to many of the people there, who passed away last summer. Powell was on my grad school committee, and my lovely bride’s, too. We met in that program, bonded over the lesser experiences there, but also over the genius of one of the giants of political communication. His was my favorite class in the curriculum. He was helpful, kind, patient and giving. He solved problems for me he probably didn’t have to, and he was able to do that with ease.

In 2013, he was the respondent in a session at a conference where she and I presented a co-authored paper. Powell offered everyone that presented “a gift” to signify their works. He worked his way through the presenters a Reagan reference for this presenter, an obscure thing for the next one, and so on. Finally, he came to us.

He pointed out that she and I met and cemented our friendship in his class. He noted that he served as advisor on both of our comps committees and now we are married.

“I think I’ve done enough,” he said.

Just a delightful man.

He’s the fourth of my grad school professors who has died.

Between the conference and our hotel is the berthing slip that is the home for the former USS Wisconsin, an Iowa-class battleship, which is now a museum ship. She put to sea in 1944, sailed the Pacific, in the Philippines and at the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. During the Korean War, the Wisconsin was on duty again, then decomissioned. But a modernization project in the 1980s brought her back into active service, and took part in Operation Desert Storm in 1991, which was the end of a 14 year active duty life. The sailors of the Wisconsin helped their battle ship earn six battle stars for service in World War II and Korea, as well as a Navy Unit Commendation for service during the Gulf War. She’s been a museum ship now since then.

You can, in the middle of the night, walk pretty close to it. But you can approach most museums with relative ease. There are some active duty vessels, or soon-to-be ships, in the waters around Norfolk. The security around those would, I’m certain, be more stringent.

We had Korean friend chicken for lunch today. Everything we tried tasted great, and I’d go back for that again. For dinner we went to a place we visited on our first trip to Norfolk in 2009, the Freemason Abbey. Some places are worth visiting over the years.

Tomorrow, I’ll sit on a panel about mediated fandom, and see a lot of other great work, as well. Conferences are fun!