Well, I'm packing and still plugging away at my presentation for the annual Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture conference, this year's topic being Modernity: Yearning for the Infinite, and my paper topic being called either "The Idea of Modernity in Gaudium et Spes" or "Vatican II: Gaudium et Spes and the Idea of Modernity," depending on where you look for the title.

The opener tomorrow, being the annual Josef Pieper Keynote Lecture, will likely be a high-energy event with the famed philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, of the University of Notre Dame, speaking on the topic of "Islam, Modernity and Us," which could hardly hope to be more timely. What other adjectives might be applied to it will remain to be seen. Given the self-confessed MacIntyre fans that were making a bit of noise on this page a week or two ago, I might try to make a digital recording of the lecture for you lot.

So is anyone going to be there? Last year, it was practically a LiveJournal meet-and-greet, which was great fun, with even the oddity of having lost_romanov attending my paper, before we "met" on LiveJournal. This year, it sounds like a lot of people who wanted to be there just can't be, for one reason or another. Myself, I am fascinated by the historiographical and cultural questions involved in identifying and contrasting Modernity and Post-Modernity, so I'm guaranteed oodles of academic fun. But it would have also been fun to see people, too. I might get a chance to see some of my former high school students, but as far as I know that's it. In fact, one of my former students – the best guy we ever had in Theology at Saint Joe – is the moderator for my session, being some kind of budding philosopher/intern for the Center. He also got married last summer, which boggles my mind....