Conference Style. . .

Day One top and bottom. Not visible, a light putty-colored trench coat with liner and one of my well-worn Borsalino fedoras.

Day Two top and bottom.

Day Three top and bottom.

Day Four top, bottom, and close-up of my UW-Madison socks.

3/4 of the knit silk necktie rotation during my recent travels. The perfect conference necktie in my opinion. Not too starchy, a bit more relaxed, and eminently stylish.

Contrary to expectations, the Northeastern Modern Language Association conference I attended in Niagra Falls, New York over the weekend went exceedingly well. My talk was received positively, I heard a lot of interesting work from other academics during the 2.5 days, picked up a few useful ideas to incorporate into my own work with students, and spent quite a bit of time talking to a publisher on Friday afternoon. I've also got a couple of ideas to propose for panels of my own in Boston next year.

When it comes to the travel and conference attire shown, ladies and gentlemen I cannot stress enough, and can attest, that people very much DO notice and treat you better when you dress well. And that is not a bad thing.

Many TSA, airline, hotel staff, and even a few other conference participants remarked very favorably on my attire and provided all kinds of extra small perks (including a free seat upgrade for the last leg of my return trip), which really made the trip there and back special. Hat, socks, neckties, suitcase. People noticed. Certainly more than I expected. It must have been the orange SWIMS overshoes!

Hey, it was wet and cold in Niagra Falls.

Of course, this flies in the face of convention. Wasn't it Brummel who maintained that a well-dressed man blends into the scenery without drawing undue attention to himself? Yet it's hard to dress better than average in 2023 without straying into sore thumb territory. I long ago made my peace with that however.

The verdict? Let's stop worrying quite so much about blending in with the terminally wrinkled, salsa-stained, flip-flopped crowd if or when we pull ourselves together and dress like adult males with even a modicum of grooming and sophistication. Pleasant experiences and opportunities arise when we look like we give a darn. About ourselves and those around us.

Why miss out on those possibilities?

-- Heinz-Ulrich

Comments

Up North Style. . .

Bad Dad makes a friend. YMP and Bad Dad on the shores of Lake Michigan. Or was that Crystal Lake? The Grand Duchess takes a selfie in her kayak. How NOT to impress the girls sunning themselves along the river. YMP and Bad Dad kayaking on the Platte River headed toward Loon Lake. J ust back from a week in Northern Michigan in a charming and spacious house on the banks of the Betsie River outside of Thompsonville. A largely pleasant seven days despite some challenging episodes with the Young Master, who has picked up some very questionable habits and language from his friends in the 8th Grade during the school year just ended. But otherwise, we enjoyed ourselves and contemplated remaining for a few days longer since the house was available. In the end, we decided to return home as planned originally since neither my wife, nor I wanted to spend the remaining days chained to our computers in Zoom meetings from our vacation destination. I actually managed to leave the laptop and ip

Mid-June Thursday Style. . .

A nother pretty typical variation on the theme for late spring, summer, and very early fall. I'm a huge fan of Madras and have several such shirts in the seasonal rotation. Lightweight, exceedingly comfortable, and even dressy when pressed and tucked in, which is the usual way of things here at Totleigh in the Wold. Now, if I had my druthers, I'd still rather be skiing the trails in the upper half of "The Mitten" (of Michigan), in the Upper Peninsula, or Ontario. But summers ain't so bad either, and I'd look pretty funny walking around in cross-country ski attire during June. -- Heinz-Ulrich

A Lazy Saturday at the End of June. . .

A sleepy first half of the weekend here at Totleigh. Warmer and quite humid ahead of an approaching cool front here in Mid-Michigan. Perfect for yet another pair of chino shorts an a seersucker shirt -- tucked in of course -- with the usual leather deck shoes and ribbon belt. Otherwise, not much accomplished beyond a page or so of writing and monkeying around with audio settings for an upcoming podcast episode. However, I was not completely useless yesterday! I made a huge fruit salad for dinner, which the Grand Duchess and I enjoyed a short while later at the table on the back porch. The Young Master, as is his wont on Saturday evenings, took his dinner on a tray in the TV room upstairs where he whiled away a couple of hours on Flight Simulator, flying some sort of commercial airliner to some destination across the Atlantic or Pacific. I would have loved that sort of technology at about nine or 10 way back during the late 1970s, aka The Stone Age. As it is, my sister and

Classic Style

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