Back in the USA

First time since the Spring of 2001. Last time, I visited Webster in Chicago (to talk about involutions), and Kaufman at Urbana (to talk about the Zygmund class).
Apart from those luminaries, the high points were the ride on the City of New Orleans to and from Urbana, with Arlo Guthrie's rendition of Steve Goodman's song playing in my mind, and the amazing Art Institute of Chicago.

Various little things went wrong, mostly due to some rather bad winds in the midwest. My connection from Chicago to Madison was cancelled (that's how I spell that), and my bag went missing for a couple of days, but it all worked out. I found as always, how very easy Americans are to get along with, and encountered much kindness and good humour. Apart from various airline employees and hotel staff who just did their jobs efficiently and with exemplary courtesy, I met Tom and Loretta Dichraff, a retired couple from Madison, who went out of their way to the extent of offering me a lift to the University from the airport.

Funny the things that affect you. I had a plain sugared doughnut at O'Hare yesterday morning, with a cup of weak and gratuitously-sweetened coffee, and the first bite of the doughnut brought a rush of recollection, and tears to my eyes. It wasn't that it was so good (it was fine), but that it was exactly the same as always, and they never make a doughnut just like that at home. You taste it, and you know you're in America.

On the plane across the Atlantic, I sat with a young man from Iran, who was going to San Francisco to get married. Security and immigration at Dublin took me seconds flat. The only intrusion was that they recorded my index fingerprints at immigration. (I recall that they took my thumbprint many years ago, so that's 3 digits down and 7 to go.) They gave him the third degree, strip-searched him, and took about an hour going over his story. They explained that it was required for people from Iran, among other places. He found it harrowing. Being picked out like that always raises hackles. I remember how it felt when the British police used to pull all the Irish people out of the ferry queues, in the seventies and eighties. At first, you had some sympathy, but eventually you got tired of it.

Hackles are feathers, on a bird's neck. I've now become very interested in hackles. They are exactly what you need to make those ruff-like arrangements you see behind the head of a
dry artificial fly. You wind them round the shank and they splay out perfectly.

The only fishing going on here in Madison at present is ice-fishing. They are forecasting snow for this evening.