Fred wrote: <So the conference
> cost me about $6,000 more than I'd expected it to, because I
was there
> for six days on IV antibiotics. I guess it's true about depression
> lowering your immune response.
>
> - Fred C.

God, Fred, what an ordeal! These conferences are the pits. I
was actually very well treated at the one I attended recently in
Cambridge (although I was left at the wrong bed & breakfast and
wandered an hour in near-zero temperatures with my luggage
before finding the right one, the night before the conference - it
took me another hour to figure out where my room was and get
the door open), but the one before that, an Ulmer conference put
on by NYU and the New School, was a horror.

I didn't attend because I was ill, but I couldn't persuade them to
have my paper read. This was also my first contact with the
theory that people who do attend conferences pay their own way
and get reimbursed later - months later in some cases. A
teaching friend explained to me that this has become the policy
because too many people were pocketing expense advances
and not showing.

When I told the more competent of the 2 Ulmer organizers that I
was struggling to complete a new paper while putting in 8 hours
a day at a job, he told me not to bother, just to read a bit of
something old - the real point being, I gathered, to show up and
get paid (eventually). This was nice of him, but very depressing
when I thought about it. Maybe that's why I got sick, too!

The horror, the horror....