Savannah is overcast, misty, hazy and smells of the sea. Aside from this being April and Savannah, it is a nice combination. It isn't cold, and the initial look prompted the fear of wilting humidity, but the day was mild in the day's early going.

This was good as I parked some seven blocks from the primary destination. Seven blocks is nothing, of course, unless you're doing it in humidity. That would have laid low tourists from different climates, but everyone seemed to be in fine form. At the hotel hosting the Southern States Communication Association conference one presenter offered the disclaimer that he wasn't himself in this most punishing climate. He is, you see, from the west Texas desert and all of this moist stuff was hurting him.

I gathered he was staying in that hotel, along with most of the presenters, but was still having difficulties. The humidity dipped below 80 for the afternoon, but even when it surged into the 90 percentile range and up toward "Hey, you're standing in a pool and don't realize it" the heat was never truly oppressive. The evening had the decency to be clear and bright. The afternoon looked luxurious from inside.

At the conference I missed a few presentations I'd hoped to see due to parking difficulties, but found the pleasant surprise of still other presentations that had otherwise escaped my notice. And here is my review of the day spent in academia, followed, by a mention of lunch (featuring the best restaurant on River Street) and the evening's fun on said street. There'll be bold text to mark the next segment should you care to skip the politics, rhetoric and journalism research ...

I caught the end of the last presentation and Q&A from the first panel I'd hoped to see. A pair of doctoral students from the University of Alabama were examining politeness theory in political debates. They studied down ballot campaigns from Florida, Tennessee and Rhode Island during the last election cycle. Between those three races there was the bizarre Florida Senate race between Katherine Harris and Bill Nelson, the bitter race in Tennessee featuring Harold Ford Jr., Bob Corker and Johanna Goldsmith. The moment that ad aired that nasty race was over. The other race they considered was the vitriolic Lincoln Chafee-Sheldon Whitehouse contest from Rhode Island and the part of the presentation I heard only made me wish I'd caught the rest.

One of the other presentations was about new media bias. The presenter, a professor from Virginia Tech, had plenty of things to say about new media, but it was all fairly tired talking points and not surprising. It turns out that new media is biased where the old guard never has any prejudicial bias, institutional nor individual. Apparently he also just recently realized that photographs can be altered to reflect a story or perception (What? Bias?) and ... honestly, that tidbit was enough to make you not care; we're all human and biased, to some degree or another, about most everything. The more that bloggers, citizen journalists and professional journalists come to terms with that the better off we all are.

After that panel was lunch, at Boar's Head, which has become my favorite restaurant on Savannah's tourist trap River Street. Try the burger, or the veggie burger. Or anything else really. Seems like this is a regular stop now each trip and everything on the menu has been tasty. Some of the Alabama people were coming into the restaurant as The Yankee and I were filing out.

Back up the street at the conference I ran into a professor from my time in graduate school at UAB. She's teaching at Alabama now. You can't get away from the scholars around here these days.

The second panel I attended for the day featured the conference's top papers in political communication. My thesis advisor, Dr. Larry Powell, was the panel respondent, meaning he offered praise and constructive criticism to the presenters.

He had three good offerings to discuss. The first was from a professor at Hardin-Simmons University. who discussed the morality of video games in a post-Columbine world. He did a fine job, despite having to combat the humidity. There's an interesting point in there about how video games condition their players, but we all became enamored with Columbine as a watershed moment and the self-regulation of the video game industry.

A Mississippi State professor and an LSU student offered similar papers on religion and rhetoric in modern American campaigns. One focused on President Bush's second inaugural and the other on the last two presidential elections. One of those events talks to the electorate and the other, inaugural, talks to the contemporary but, just as importantly, the eventual audience.

The presenter made that point with an offhand comment about how people view inaugurals as "He's elected. OK, moving on," but inaugurals are just as importantly speaking to history.

I think it was just about the time that I jotted this note down that I decided I love conferences. And I'm not just saying that for the many fine booksellers out hawking their wares between conference rooms. There's three days of panels here and I'm only catching this one, crashing the party as we are during a vacation. Even still there's a full slate of conversations to listen to, and I'm sure there would be more tomorrow if I looked through the program with more than a passing glance.

The next session featured Powell in the roll of presenter, so I followed him over there to see a panel discussing local publisher influence over content, the rhetoric of the Virginia Tech murder (the research offered by two members of my thesis committee), a discussion of columnist Molly Ivins by an Auburn journalism professor and a uses and gratifications study on global news from local media.

Powell discussed the manifesto that came from the Virginia Tech killings as something that fell under the Rhetoric of Sacrifice theory found in "Holy Murder," book he and Dr. William Self published two years ago. Essentially the theory is simply stated as "I'm not going to, but I wish you would." More often than not this is steeped in some religious context, but in the Virginia Tech instance all of the justification came as a self validation, with the reward being the media coverage payoff.

If they get another book out of this we shouldn't be surprised.

The presentation on the importance of local publishers for newspapers was a study done on news content and coverage patterns of a Mississippi paper over the course of three publishers. The presenter made many interesting points, but didn't discuss the role of the editor in serving as a sometimes-facilitator and a sometimes-buffer between management and staff. More study is needed, as is always the course. And the circle of research continues.

A doctoral student from Taiwan discussed research on the amount and content of international news available on local channels and found it lacking. This surprises no one, for many reasons which also surprises no one. Local news in Texas, Alabama, Savannah or Minneapolis being local, it will more often than not be about those towns and neighborhoods, rather than her home country.

I understand her concerns, but then so does everyone in the news business. Outlets continue to go more and more local because they face less competition to cover issues and areas they know better. This focuses audiences on the hyperlocal. Follow this progression until, ultimately, this concedes the entirety of the news business to the online world as a medium and conduit for news. I suppose I could read wire copy from a south Texas television station about the latest news about China and Tibet, but I could also go to any of the Taiwan media outlets, or others, who have boots on the ground and can give me the gritty details. It has always been this way in terms of quantifying coverage, but now, of course, you can seek out the absolute best coverage with a mouse click.

Take that news at nine.

Syndicated columnist Molly Ivins was discussed in terms of how her tone changed from her mainstream articles to her alternative media outlet efforts. Jessica Armstrong, the Auburn instructor who presented the paper said that Ivins told her she'd never noticed a change in tone. Most would find that hard to believe. I've jotted down one quote, "Get people to listen to their own arguments." A good strategy for multiple circumstances always ends up scribbled in a notebook. Molly Ivins was passionate to the end it seems.

Lastly, I sat in on a panel reexamining the rhetoric in historical debates. The first topic was the Lincoln-Douglas debates and how they would later hurt the conciliatory tone of his first inaugural speech -- the part that was speaking to his contemporaries did not go over well with the South, of course. He discussed the famous Cooper Union speech, and brought up the slavery issue's external agitators in all their many forms. I'm currently reading about this moment in time in Goodwin's book, so the timing was perfect.

Also in that panel was a prominent speaker from the era immediately following the Civil War. South Carolina's Walter Hines Page was born in 1855, was raised during the war and educated during reconstruction. The presenter argued, "other than his Southern accent he is not what you'd call a Southern orator." He was, the argument followed, an American speaker.

I later picked up a copy of the paper -- the professor seemed taken back by my request -- for three quotes from Page:

Read for yourself the great speeches of Athens, then read Burke and Broughton and Erskine. Then read Calhoun and old Henry. It is the same fire they all have ... Calhoun and Henry are as immortal as Demosthenes himself!

It is a shame, by the way, that we of this generation are so ignorant of our great Southern orators. They made a literature for us which is among the richest treasures - whether you or I believe in their especial political tenets or not is a little question indeed.

Who are the stupid in every group? They who can neither speak nor write with grace.

Page said that in a commencement address to the Randolph-Macon Women's College. I'd quote some of Page's thoughts on writing, he was a powerful editor and later a diplomat, but lose the last bit of my audience.

Anybody still out there?

There was also a surprisingly entertaining account of 18th Century rhetoric regarding the war in the Philippines as a precursor to later limited wars. The professor delivering the paper noted, when quoting Augustus Octavius Bacon, a Georgia senator, "They don't name Southern politicians like they used to." Copy editors everywhere are grateful.

Discussion on Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's Sermon on the Mound and an overview of the Tallahassee Bus Boycott were also on the panel.

I picked up papers for three of these papers because they were offered and because I love rhetoric. It isn't something I'd ever want to study at great length, but historical rhetoric always just feels more charming and genial, even with the background information, than the modern version. It has probably always been as such. It is easy to look at the North Carolina/Vanderbilt argument over what the New South should look like and appreciate the way that Page felt as he did. Rhetoric over something in which you're emotionally invested in the nowness of an event always carries a different weight.

So I have papers to read.

But first, there's fun to be had.

Walking around downtown I caught the fading light on the newest aspect of Savannah to rise from the ground.

We had dinner at The Lady and Son's, because Friday night means low country boil on the buffet. Delicious as always, but not "Stand in line for two hours at 9:30 in the morning to get on the list for late that night" delicious. Need reservations to Paula Deen's place without the hassle? I know how to do it.

After dinner we walked back down toward River Street, snapping a few building photographs along the way.

The Yankee, Wendy and I walked down to River Street, where I met my new friend Creshema, who is also in the Ph.D. program at Alabama.

We watched the fireworks from across the river marking First Friday, a monthly Savannah tradition and sat and listened to the street performers for a long, long time on a beautiful, clear, crisp spring night.

See it for yourself, here are the fireworks. And there's also a little taste of the trumpet. Both videos are also found on the A/V page.

Tomorrow: More seafood, hoping the rain holds off and other spontaneous vacation adventures.