Past Present

In 2014, the Development in Language Theory conference took place in the city of Yekaterinburg, in the Ural mountains of Russia. I used to live there. In Soviet times, there were no international conferences in the city. The whole region of the Urals was closed to foreigners. As I walked the streets of Yekaterinburg, I thought of my friends there and of Faulkner's lines “The past is never dead. It isn't even past.”