I have bought my tickets -- bus tickets -- to go to Boston for the Landa Kongreso. I hate going to Boston. There should be decent wifi converage, at least, so I should be able to blog during the kongreso. We finished the schedule of events today. It still has to be converted into a document on paper, but I, thankfully, will only be tangentially involved in that. I sent out a note to all of the presenters, giving them a link to the program, so they could check one last time for problems. One of the presenters, who is organizing a meeting for an organization, was distressed to find his meeting not in the schedule. It turned out there was a typo -- I'd left an unmatched square bracket in that table cell. Unfortunately, this happened to be the one person who had had the most difficulty in getting his event scheduled: first he'd been unclear about the time he wanted. Then, when I had proposed the time the other organizers suggested, he didn't like that time and didn't clearly propose the time desired. At that point, I left for a vacation and then a conference. While I was at the conference, he was issuing dire imprecations to the organizing committee and we finally got him slotted into a not-unacceptable time. Then someone else came along a week later and got a time that seemed better than his time, which started another round of name-calling and finger pointing. To have his event disappear again caused him to go ballistic. For a language of peace and understanding, I find that Esperantists often have disagreements that result from misunderstanding. Partly I believe this is because, as good as Esperanto is, its still not as easy to express oneself (and to understand others) as in one's native language. Secondly, however, I believe its because Esperanto is as good as it is and people feel as comfortable with it as they do, that leads them to be overconfident about their ability to express themselves and understand others. After having been involved in several misunderstandings like this, I have tried very hard not to jump to conclusions about the intentions of others. Or even when the intentions of others seem perfectly clear, to remember that its not a contest, but an avocation.
The governor signed the budget, but vetoed the Commonwealth College honor's program.