Union activities weekend (1 of 2): Friday conference.

So, the other weekend I had a weekend of union activities, with a Friday conference where I was presenting, and then a Saturday barbecue at a local faculty member’s, for faculty members who are unionizing across town.

At the post-conference reception on Friday, I met some interesting folks.

One was a (younger) (Puerto Rican) (Ph.D.) guy who worked for a union, who was up from Florida.

At some point during the group conversation, he started asking if marijuana had been “decrimmed” up here yet.

Later, I spoke with a (Canadian) woman who lives in the States and was in town from Pennsylvania. 

When I mentioned that I taught on cults, she opened up to me about being the grandchild of a Holocaust survivor whose entire family then turned Quaker, and who grew up around commune-like retreat centers.

And, as a teenager, she found herself at a dinner with Baba Ram Dass, and he gently suggested that she maintain her virginity and come look them up at eighteen so that she could travel around with them.

“I’m fascinated by cults,” she was like.

“It’s interesting,” I was like, starting out on a schtick of mine that I think about every once in a while for some reason.  “People who are interested in cults also tend to be interested in serial killers and the historical Jesus.”

“What?!”, she was like, so I repeated myself.

“But I’m not interested in the historical Jesus at all,” she was like.  “Though, serial killers, a little bit.”