Conference Vignettes

1) Undercover cop arrives bright and bushy tailed on day one and leaves defeated after one and a half papers. Admittedly the first was in Macedonian and the second so 'linguistic' it might well have been in another language. He judged that the Greek patriots might also not be lured out to hear about vowel contraction and the like in Macedonian.

2) Cut to the afternoon when a very bright and very young grad student is reading his paper on something intensely linguistic; one of those language phenomena that people use but deny using. He utters the following sentence just as two burly local Greeks (in workmen's caps, no less) enter the room -- "their very existence is questioned..." which is of course the raison d'etre for these two chaps' presence: the questionable existence of Slavic Macedonians.  A bit of a back and forth ensues during the Q and A as we insist that they have to ask a question relevant to the paper (impossible of course) and they content themselves with leaving some "literature" and making their exit.

3) Day two contained the most contentious papers. Anything with "Alexander the Great" in the title is like a red flag to a bull. This particular Alexander the Great talk was fascinating. By an anthropologist who showed how both the Greeks and the Macedonians who are fanatical about the name question have found themselves a Pakistani tribe who purport to be descended from soldiers in Alexander's army. Who knew? Each country now offers scholarships to their respective 'tribespeople' to come and study in the homeland. 

4) I took my charge to provide food for the conferencees seriously. The day before it started Craig said to me "Honey, why are there 36 eggs in the fridge." Because Macedonians don't like the steady diet of muffins and other relentlessly sweet carbs that form the usual American breakfast buffet. So I boiled lots of eggs and we had sliced meat and cheese and fruit and I received many compliments on my egg boiling skills...

5) All of this could have only been accomplished with the help of our stellar project coordinator, Addie, who has more poise at her tender age than I do now. OK, she did lose it at one point on Friday when the lunch cart she was wheeling over to our building got caught on a pebble and the vat of soup went everywhere.