En route

I ran into several interesting people on the unusual plane and cab rides from Boston to Chicago. There was a long line to get signed on to the plane and check luggage, at Logan airport, partly because of a group of young women with similar outfits and similar-looking luggage.

I spoke with a woman (Shanel Scott, it turns out) who played for what turned out to be the New England Riptide, one of six National Pro Fastpitch League teams. I could deduce from the fact that the team was traveling out of town for a weeknight game (against the Rockford (IL) Thunder) that team members didn’t have traditional day jobs. Instead, the team member said that many of them had school year-type jobs, including as teachers and coaches, and that playing professional softball was like a summer job. I talked a bit about my family’s support for the old (women’s) American Basketball League, which eventually lost out to the WNBA. (I didn’t ask her point blank how much they made – no information like that from John in “Arena football”). She said there has been a women’s professional softball league in the U.S. for about 10 years (probably going back to the success of the U.S. team in the 2000 Olympics in Atlanta, though – if I understand it right – the International Olympic Committee has eliminated women’s softball as an Olympic sport as of the 2012 London Olympics.) She said there are six teams in the current league (besides New England and Rockford: Chicago, Washington, Philadelphia, and Akron (OH)). (I remember Rockford was one of the teams that had a professional women’s softball league during World War II as “A League of Their Own” depicted.) Her team plays in a high school stadium in Lowell, MA, an old industrial town and now a suburb NW of Boston.

(New England went on to lose the game that night. But they beat Rockford Tuesday night, thanks in part to two runs Scott batted in when she singled in the fifth inning.)

I inquired about the team on the way to the airplane restroom. Because of the delays in our flight (see “Catastrophes”), I got more time to talk with the person sitting next to me, a Chinese-American woman who told me about visiting China and the Asian-American communities in Boston (which she was visiting, where she used to live, which my family and I visited when we lived nearby in 1971-72) and Chicago (where she lives now – though she’d just quit her job). She gave me some clues for my research on Korean American communities (look for branch of a Korean American grocery store chain) and for my office’s efforts to develop translations of the U.S. Congregational Life Survey (traditional vs. simplified Chinese characters, etc.).

I wavered, arriving at Chicago Midway airport, about whether to take a shuttle to O’Hare (and then a cab to my meeting site) or a cab straight to the site (the Lutheran Center). You might recall from “Catastrophes” that I had arrived at Midway about 2 ½ hours late. My meeting was supposed to start at 8:30 a.m. and I was slated to arrive at 8:37 a.m. (I had planned to take a cab and be 45 minutes or so late). But with the delays, I didn’t get to Midway until about 10:45 a.m. I agonized about whether to take a $70 cab ride or an $18 shuttle to O’Hare (and then a short cab ride to the Lutheran Center). But another passenger and I realized the 11 a.m. shuttle didn’t go the right place, and so we agreed to split a cab.

I soon learned that my fellow car rider (Nina) was a record producer for Columbia Records, and had been in Chicago for the three-day Lollapalooza alternative rock music festival (headlined – I’ve noticed since then – by Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead). The bands she’s behind are MGMT and the Ting Tings (the latter – a twosome – she compared with Blondie – it’s amazing how she felt compelled to pigeon-hole all the bands – in order for me to understand). She also produced the most recent Oasis album. She lives in New York City in the West Village and was headed home after an exhausting few days (I think her flight out of Midway – thanks to the AM weather problems – had been canceled, and she had found a flight that could still get her home Monday out of O’Hare). She implied she was getting a little old for this type of work (I’m guessing she was roughly my age).

She and I talked about the music industry for a while. I said Stephanie and I had quit buying CDs pretty much (no doubt for a variety of reasons) – but one reason was – after the Lilith Fair era in the 1990s that we were into – the turn-of-the-millennium pop world of Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys lost us (I only tangentially mentioned we’re actually “American Idol” fans, which seems a little inconsistent with this). (And so we haven’t bought CDs much in years. I also complained about an out-of-town concert we went to at which the sound was terrible, and so we had skipped these – which we can’t afford anyway – also.) I also mentioned that our son had odd tastes: dislikes country, likes Linkin Park, likes our generation music like Styx. She didn’t go into file-sharing, Ipods, and the Internet as a source for music. But she said we weren’t unusual as potential (and – currently – lost) customers of CDs/albums. I’m looking for my notes, but – in addition to her own bands – she also said Radiohead is very good and she touted a new 1970s-sounding band whose name I’ll have to keep hunting for. She said Louisville was lucky in that it’s got an independent record store which is more likely to play a variety of music (I think she got confused about the name – I think the store she mentioned is in Minneapolis- but in fact there are a number of prominent independent record stores in Louisville, and so she’s not wrong in that regard in general.) I confessed to mainly listening to classic rock radio stations (when I’m not listening to National Public Radio), which have very limited playlists. And she said even college/alternative/modern rock radio stations don’t play that many different/new songs. She sounded excited to go home though a little tired out by the event and the industry, but it was interesting to talk with someone inside the music industry. (I compared this with her to listening to Michael ? talk the day before about trying to get independent film distributed (see “Steam”) (as well as the challenges the newspapers currently face – see “Media challenges”).)

A long flight and somewhat stressful flight made entirely interesting/pleasant by chatting with these three interesting people.

P.S. A had a somewhat similar conversation two nights before at the annual Swarthmore dinner. I’ve only missed one of these in more than 10 years (and I was the first one). Every year the Alumni Office and/or the Swarthmore Department of Sociology and Anthropology (where I minored) pays for a group of Swarthmore alumni to have dinner at the American Sociological Review – a mix of people my age, grad students and new profs much younger than me, older profs, and a few ancillary people: researchers like me, profs in other fields, and spouses, etc. This year I went to the Science Museum with Jenny ’04 and her family immediate before the dinner (see “Animals”). Jenny was a biology major, but her husband is a sociologist. But it turns out it was Jenny and John’s wedding anniversary, and to they went to dinner on their own.

(The prof who taught my first Swarthmore sociology Honors seminar, Joy Charlton, is the big force behind this annual dinner.)

(I always have mixed feelings meeting the younger sociologists. They have a lot of energy and interesting research projects (though I don’t always envy them facing new assistant professor jobs – like my friend Darra does – but some of them are much more successful than I was or am as academics/scholars, so I can’t help but feel jealous. In fact, a couple of Swarthmore grads quite a bit younger than me are now much more successful than I in my own new adopted field: sociology of religion. Besides having jobs at prestigious universities they’ve usually also written well received books about hot/interesting topics.)

One of the more interesting quasi-interlopers like me was a Swarthmore English grad (Sarah) who’s now an associate for one of the larger academic publishers (Rowman and Littlefield). She talked about having wall-to-wall meetings with potential authors the next day – I suspect she also recently published authors promoting their books. She had been responsible for religion books and recently added sociology to her profile. How much decision-making power does she have? She said if she reads a proposal (or a manuscript?) and likes it, she’ll send it up the chain and promote it. Eventually, there are meetings – essentially of committees – and some the big whigs help decide. But she’s both a gatekeeper and then a promoter of good books.

We also talked a little about the vagaries of publishing and how books can make money (possibly) (I also talked about my Florida book): Libraries and if some profs pick up a book for classes students will buy academic books. She said it is very unusual that one could go into a Borders or Barnes and Noble and buy a real academic book. As I already knew, most books in a bookstore “Sociology” section are nonfiction books by journalists including some true crime books. (I’m not sure how many sell on Amazon.com.) We also talked a little about the publishing industry in general – digital books, etc. It was a little like my discussion with Rachel’s father (again, in “Media challenges”) and – again – my later discussion about the music industry with Nina.

-- Perry