I wrote a longer entry with a thoughtful background description of why I’m excited about the upcoming meeting of Punk Scholars Network US, but WordPress saw fit to not save the draft and nuke it when I attempted to refresh the page. I’ve already been upset with WordPress’ user-unfriendly block-by-block interface and their desire to show all my site’s visitors often-disgusting ads that are often advertising third-party imported products of dubious origin. I know it may have been a bad-network feedback-loop on my end, but there’s still no reason for that to happen on a site with this many users for this many years. It’s upsetting that WordPress is becoming yet another front-row member of the worst-possible-version-of-everything-technological club. It all goes to show why we need small press, free/accessible conferences of critical thinkers, and punk rock more than ever right now!

So, how appropriate that next week will see the first ever (in-person) meeting of the Punk Scholars Network US! Like the IASPM meeting in June, they chose a Midwestern city that I love and will be able to reach via land. DePaul University’s main campus in Chicago will be hosting, and I’m very excited to be involved with two of the sessions: I’m slated to chair Session IV, which will be meeting at 10AM CT on Wednesday morning, and at Session V (11:30 am CT Wednesday) I’ll be presenting a retrospective on the DC Punk walking tour I led for AAG 2019. The timing is fortuitous, since the chapter I’m about to publish on the topic is finally about to see the light after a couple of years in publication purgatory!

I’ll re-post the schedule for both days below, but more information about how to “tune in” remotely to the conference should be available at their website.