Conference blogging 3

We're back home now, but I have to share this. In one of the panels I met a Cuban musicologist who had been part of a team recording folk music on Carriacou back in the 1980s, just before the Grenada Revolution imploded and the US did their "intervasion," as some Grenadians called it.

So, here Rolando Pérez Fernández presents me with a copy of the record he produced from that fieldwork. I promised to reciprocate by transcribing what I could of the French and English Creole that might be heard on the record. But first, I have to find someone to convert the analog LP to digital. Wow!

Conference blogging

This week we're at the meetings of the Society for Caribbean Linguistics, in Barbados. Life is pretty good!  We arrived yesterday late afternoon, after being delayed for two hours in Miami. The two hours were spent sitting on the plane, first waiting for the arrival of a replacement copilot, and then waiting for a pretty vigorous thunderstorm to calm down.

Amazingly, although we're deep in the Tropics, it's cooler and more comfortable here than Jacksonville has been this summer.  We've been consistently in the high 90s or at 100, with heat indexes in 105-110 range. Here, today, it's in the mid-80s and there's a wonderful breeze coming in off the water, which is maybe at most 100 yards from our hotel room.

While waiting to board in Miami several conference attendees joined us, including the Society President John Rickford and his wife Angela, who have researched extensively on African-American English and its uses. More attendees appeared at breakfast this morning. It's always fun to meet someone you've known, and who has known you, from publications, but whom you've never encountered in person until a conference.

It should be a good time...