'Zoo Day 2

Memo to self: If you plan to use the Treo as an alarm clock to get up in time to hit the treadmill before breakfast, remember to turn the ringer back to "audible" after the last session of papers.

Fortunately, I did wake up in time for breakfast on Friday. Friday's sessions were all DISTAFF all the time. (DISTAFF is the organization that sponsors textiles & clothing sessions, including the one my paper was in.) I'm trying to remember specific details at this point. A lovely paper on changes in high fashion reflected in ivory writing tablet cases, combs, and mirror cases. My mind's going blank on the rest of the papers in the other sessions, but I shared the last session with a presentation on hook-and-eye type fasteners in medieval Scandinavia, and one on a set of embroidered Sicilian undergarments. I got several compliments on my paper and did a boisterous show-and-tell session after the papers were over, pulling out my various engineering experiements on the different styles of shepherds' purses and showing how I used them to try to interpret the artistic representations.

Dinner was a great mass of DISTAFF folks going out to a Middle Eastern restaurant, then we adjourned to a room party with much computer geeking, squeeing at books and pictures, and consumption of alcohol. The party lasted long enough for people to wish me happy birthday (and sing various incompatible celebratory songs). As I was wandering back to my own dorm around 1am, I heard the sound of singing wafting out through the night air from one of the conference rooms. Through the window, a circle of people were sitting around a guitarist, energetically (and in many cases, drunkenly) belting out "Yellow Submarine". Now, it's not at all unusual to stumble across people singing or playing music at the Medieval Congress ... medieval music, that is. But this was more along the lines of "ur-filk" -- that stage when people gathered for another purpose are just singing for the sake of singing together and running through whatever repertoire the guitarist and most of the singers have in common. In this case, the source music seemed to consist of the entire Beatles inventory, significant quantities of blues and gospel standards, and a good sprinkling of '60s folk music. I stayed and sang for the better part of an hour before toddling off the rest of the way to bed.

'Zoo Day 3

Dateline: Live from the Pseudo Session pre-game show.

This morning I did manage to get up early enough to put in half an hour on the treadmill before breakfast. There weren't any sessions in the morning slot that were crying out to me, so I spent the time finishing my shopping in the bookroom.

( The book haul )

For the first afternoon slot I went to the Celtic law session. There was a very interesting paper on the function and nature of triads in the law texts (from a speaker who has a book coming out on the topic in the near future). Oh, and a couple of Irish papers. Then I went back to my scholarly roots and went to a linguistics session on grammaticalization, although there was only one paper actually on the topic of grammaticalization, plus one on vernacular grammar books and one no-show. But while listening, I started getting the urge to pull out my paper on yrof a Duw and see about working it up into something publishable.

Now I'm sitting in the Fetzer Hall auditorium in the midst of the academic equivalent of a tailgate party as people stake out seats for the Pseudo Session (spoof papers). During the years I've been coming, there's been somewhat of a resurgence of interest in it to the point where you basically have to grab a chair at least an hour and a half ahead of time. People bring take-out dinner (pizza features heavily). Fun is had.