Cuba! From May 16-20 the Canadian Anthropology Society partnered with the Society for Applied Anthropology and the Universidad de Oriente in Santiago de Cuba to host the annual 2018 CASCA conference. WOW!! What an experience! A week later and I am still processing what it meant to attend this conference. I remain incredibly grateful to have met so many amazing people here and to have had the opportunity to share work during a symposium devoted to arts-based research under the umbrella of "Ethnographic Hallucinations" co-sponsored by the Center for Imaginative Ethnography. However, the conference was not all that united us in Santiago de Cuba. On the Friday of the conference a tragedy struck Cuba. A Cubana airlines flight crashed in Havana on the way to Holgin and 112 people died. This was a profoundly sobering reality for those of us visiting as Cuba entered a state of national mourning for the remainder of our conference. To be united in grief for a country in mourning is a moment that I will never forget. To be in and learn from Cuba as a place, remains an experience that I am sure will come to shape all of our thinking in years to come. What a gift.
