had dinner with terrence kaufman. his passion for unwritten languages, fieldwork and documentation rubs off for sure. the best part was him wanting to just drink beer. how cool to be that interesting, that important historically and completely average in some other ways. we talked about caucasus a little, but of course his love for the new world and anything latin was obvious. as most of us tried to impress him and make conversation, he kept ending up in the kitchen drinking with john, the only non linguist at lyle's house. it must be exhausting to be so well known in any field that everyone wants to talk just about that and assumes that is all you are. people like him make me love linguistics, because he makes me feel like that linguistics is raw, completely in progress as i write and so hands-on, real.
