Last August I attended the 2016 American Typecasting Fellowship (ATF) conference held in the Finger Lakes area of upstate New York along with about 50 other people, primarily from North America, but a few from further abroad. Here’s a photo of most of the gang, along with some of the hosts. This photo was taken after the closing banquet so a few people had to leave early and aren’t in the photo.
The conference was spread across several locations: Our central base of operations was in Auburn NY at the north end of Owasco Lake, with some opening tours in Rochester, a day at Wells College in Aurora on Cayuga Lake, and another day at Skaneateles on the north end of Skanealetes Lake.
I drove to the conference, with the air conditioner running full blast in the blistering heat that week, and stayed at the conference hotel in Auburn. The only real problem on the trip was the border crossing into New York at the Rainbow Bridge in Niagara Falls. There was a long wait, with the traffic being backed up all the way from the border inspection area across the bridge into Ontario. I still have to come up with a way of describing my trip in a manner that doesn’t send the border guard off in the wrong thought direction—somehow the word “conference” seems to set off their Spidey senses and I then have to explain them back to the mundane actuality of the situation. Perhaps next time I’ll call it an “informal conference” for which they will of course ask me to explain my hedge words: only 50 people, most of whom already know each other, no one is paid for anything, sort of like a big family reunion!
I’ll be detailing each day in a separate upcoming post.
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