Beautiful day

Very breezy and with a high around 80 degrees on the last day of June - already one of the longer days of the year - and with a cooling shower in the morning - this was easily one of the most beautiful days of the year. Even walking through my colleague through the downtown, near the Ohio River, was beautiful. So also was walking around Clifton, off of Frankfort Avenue, after dropping Vincent off for sushi with his friends. Later in the week it will get sunny and hot, and then later it will rain hard, and then August will be very hot and wintertime will be cold. But, today, during a lunchtime prayer with my colleauge, I didn't forget to give thanks for a stunningly beautiful crisp, sunny day, and at least a few moments to enjoy it.

After 131 blog entries for the month of June, that's it. I'm signing off for tonight and for this month. See you in July.

Another possible mate

Last week my friend Guy promoted as a possible Barack Obama running mate a person I had not really considered, partly because I thought he was too old: 2004 presidential candidate Wesley Clark, a former general, one of "Clinton's generals," who had commanded part of our military activity in the former Yugoslavia and who had endorsed Senator Hillary Clinton. With Clinton out, Clark now supports Obama. Responding to a direct question from CBS News' Bob Schieffer, earlier today Clark went just a little further than he had before, saying by flying a plane and surviving as a prisoner of war Senator John McCain didn't necessarily gain command experience - like Clark has - that might give him a big leg up on Obama in terms of national security credentials. (This may harken back to the 2004 presidential race, when talking heads said that Clark and pundits forgot about the labor/management/class conflict in the armed services - that enlisted people don't generally like admirals and generals (like General Clark), and therefore it was not surprising that veterans didn't flock to Clark's campaign. If this were true, Clark's new line - that the fact that McCain's military service did not involve him serving in high command - may not help Obama - and may connect with conceptions of Obama/his allies as elitists.)

The McCain campaign quickly came down hard on Clark - going after - with prodding - what most people have seen as a core of McCain's character/experience claims - his military service in Vietnam and POW experience - and within hours Obama had also distanced himself from these comments. While on the whole I think questioning McCain's war record is a mistake - though I'm impressed that Clark - if even making a mistake - has quickly jumped on the Obama bandwagon - this is exactly what the Swift Boat ads did to Senator John Kerry's war record - largely unfairly, I think - and - even though I doubt it will work here - it just scratches the surface of what the left has started on blogs, etc. Even Noam Chomsky suggested that McCain is a war criminal, for bombing North Vietnam civilian targets and then caring - as he probably did - and these folks draw a direct line between McCain's wartime activities in Vietnam and his support for the Iraq war - and also point out that - after a time - McCain succumbed and - after being tortured (despite antiwar activists' claim at the time that no U.S. soldiers were tortured at the "Hanoi Hilton") - appeared in anti-U.S. propaganda films (something I'd never heard). McCain has explained this in his book - "Every man has a breaking point, and I reached mine" - and also pointed out that he never went for the ultimate prize: early release. Still, it's interesting to hear about the left trying to "Swift boat" McCain, even though I suspect it's not particularly fair. We'll see if General Clark has - implicitly - put himself forward - or taken himself backward - of the vice presidential running by making these comments.

Guy said Clark's biggest negative for running for vice president: he doesn't appear to want it, and he hasn't ever indicated he was interested. But I'm now intrigued, even though I disagree with Clark's anti-McCain strategy today.

Incidentally, I am not a big fan of Governor Romney as McCain's running mate, something that may be in the works, although an alternative mentioned today- 2000 Democratic vice presidential candidate Joseph Lieberman - is intriguing as a possibility.

Vincent's back

Both Vincent and we were just barely time to join other returning Brown School Danish exchange students and their families at the Louisville airport at 8:30 p.m. Saturday night. Vincent seemed jet-lagged - and probably sleep deprived in general - as it was 2:30 a.m. in Denmark. He obviously had a good time - maybe even more than we had realized - as after a while it was pretty clear he'd rather have stayed (and he was already plotting ways to return). There was no need to opine - perhaps somewhat optimistically - that part of it was being in this pure vacation mode - with kind strangers apparently taking care of you, almost no homework or chores, etc. - somewhat like our Guatemala mission trip the year before - and somewhat like the 2-2 1/2-week National Latin convention/bus tour adventures that my sister and I used to go on every July in high school - plus this intense experience with several dozen other people - in this case, Brown School folks and Danish folks - much like our bus tour folks (this is the second time in the past week I've reminisced about the Latin convention expreiences with Penny and Mr. Gilpin - and both without parents.) Vincent also seemed a little depressed - just as he was after another intense group experience - the Ten-Minute plays - were over - but maybe more so than that. We also opined that he was going the some of the same sort of withdrawal from living with a buddy - as he did after Simon and after Jon, after two different Danish exchange students - left - and, in this case, perhaps also now separated from a young woman or two in Denmark.

That being said, it was still a little hard to take, Vincent saying he was unhappy to be home and would rather be in Denmark. Usually he goes off with his father and he comes back tired and sick, and subconsciously a little relieved to be home. Plus, if he says anything we obnxious, we can chalk up to his father's conniving. But this time we can't chalk up to any conscious conniving by Carrie and Tim and Tim's father, mother, and stepmother.

Vincent and Tim spent half their time with his mother and half the time with a father, stepmother, and stepsibling. As we'd expect from our experiences with Danes here, much as at Brown, the Dane young people's lives there are relatively unstructured. Vincent said that all of the Danish students smoked, almost all of the Brown students tried alcoholic beverages, and even our second exchange student, Jon, got kicked out of the music and theater festival Vincent's last week there for doing drugs. Vincent also clearly had no bed time.

But besides eating lots of meat, Vincent also picked up some peculiar good habits. With no bedtime, Vincent apparently spent lots of time marauding through the Danish countryside on long nighttime (though he said it was only dark from 12 midnight until 2 a.m. - so mainly by "day"light) walks, and tonight he walked mostly home from a restaurant, almost two miles - which is good for him except if it gets too dark on roads with no sidewalks (Vincent also had no cell phone and no parents checking up on him apparently.) (Somehow - with help from Tim, who accompanied him most of the way, Vincent made it on his fourth day in Denmark to take the SAT at the Copenhagen International School. He's already got an e-mail with some information, but - since the SAT now includes a written essay - it'll be some time before we get his score. He had just completed taking Algebra 1 again (this time on-line) for review, and hopefully this helped his score. He didn't actually take the final for the on-line class until today (his score probably dropped after a month doing no math, but he got a B). We hope he'll take Geometry on-line for review before taking the ACT again.) Vincent also has decided he's against eating trans fat and so he may have picked up a Danish version of some of our Weight Watchers habits (though they do eat lots of beef).

As when Vincent comes back from his father's, we're going to have to work to incorporate back into his life things like following bedtimes, cleaning his room, chores, doing homework (or the equivalent), going to martial arts class, not using bad language, etc. Vincent will head off Sunday morning for nearly a week of Presbyterian church camp, after doing some volunteer work for his senior project this week. Once he's gotten his 20 hours of volunteer work in, we'll have to negotiate with Vincent and his father about him possibly going up to Ohio for part of the time between mid-July and early August, when he has to be back in Louisville in time for an orthodontist's appointment and recuperation time for school. My planned-for late-night movie reintegration activity failed - we were all to tired. But we did go to a movie yesterday (Sunday). Stephanie took Vincent to downtown 4th Street Live - just minutes after my colleague and I had left - after he passed the final, and they may go to an amusement park later this week. Vincent had sushi tonight with two of his Brown classmates (not on the trip) before the two-mile walk tonight.

(We did cede to Vincent's request and go to a nearby Waffle House with his classmate Alex and his parents (pictured in the bottom two pictures. And we paid back Vincent's teacher Carrie and a parent who had gone on the trip - described in "Prom night" - who had both lent Vincent money - and we chatted with the family of Vincent's classmate Nathan, with whom we had occasionally exchange e-mail about the trip. They had talkd with Nathan by Skype half a dozen times, while we had gotten three short e-mails, telling us he was Ok but focusing mainly on money. I'm not seeing we didn't enjoy aspects of a month off - though I was mainly gone - but I thought even he would come home at least more implicitly homesick and not quite so sad. Already, we've done stuff with him, he's started to catch up on sleep, and he's re-connecting with his friends - remindingi him of nice things about him - even if he won't return his prom date's phone call.

Art, music, and memories

Vincent and classmates in Denmark were to spend most of the last week in a three-day Music and Theater Festival/camp-out - involving partly a group of private schools - near the town where Vincent stayed (Roskilde) and then at a last day of school events including graduation for 10th grade (regular high school ends there in Denmark - including our second Danish exchange student, Jon) and promotion to 10th grade of the 9th graders (including Tim, with whom Vincent stayed) - all of whom will be coming to Louisville in October. Thrown in the last week in Denmark also was a trip to another art museum. Vincent was to leave the next day, Saturday, June 28.

For pictures from the museum, festival, and final day activities, see Carrie's blog at: http://carriek-denmark08.blogspot.com/

Late June prayer request

My Mother has three younger stepsisters. Among the closest to her is Sandy, who''s the oldest. In Mom's absence and in a more stable marriage, Sandy has for 15 years been the one to take the most care of the family, especially of Grandma and Grandpa. Sandy moved back into their house more than 15 years ago. Although she lives in husband Don in Marysville now, for many years - especially after Grandma went to the nursing home and then died - Sandy - who worked nearby - spent the night one or two nights a week at the house. After she returned like this, when I stayed there I stayed in the basement.

For years now Sandy has been caring both for Don, who's disabled and has back problems, and Grandpa, who finally moved out of the Westerville house and in with them in Marysville. But several weeks ago Sandy - with Don at Camp Sychar, the church camp our grandparents always went to that Don and Sandy now help run - Sandy got hurt trying to hold up a heavy piece of equipment. Apparently aggravating arthritis she already had, Sandy has been forced to go to doctors trying to alleviate her back pain and has had to be very careful (much like I tried to be before and after my hernia surgery) lest she hurt her back even more. (Ssandy may get epidural injections, like what Stephanie hoped for during labor and like what my physical therapist and I talked about me getting for my neck/back/right shoulder pain.) Unfortunately, there's no one like Sandy there to take care of Sandy. My other two aunts - Barb and June, now living together with Dustin at Aunt June's place on the other side of Columbus, some 60 miles away, each have their own health problems, as does Dustin (as does Sandy's older sister, my Mom, recovering from knee replacement surgery). And Sandy's kids are spread around the region and busy with their own kids (and, in one case, with an incipient divorce). And we're not jumping to go up there.

We know caregivers who have in fact died before the person they are taking care of does. I don't Sandy is in that situation, but her back problems are very serious. July 9-10 she and Grandpa (who is slowing down and also losing his eyesight) have important doctor's appointments. We want to offer prayer support and ask those of you who pray to pray: for Grandpa/Marston, Don, Barb, June, Dustin, Lori, Robin, and Jon, and Mom/Martha - but especially for Sandy. Who will care for the caregivers? When it comes to Sandy and care by prayer, let us all do so. Get well soon, Sandy!

Painting

More or less each summer in St. Matthews Stephanie and I have painted one bedroom. This summer - with summer school compacted into two weeks and Stephanie planning to participate in no mission trip to Guatemala or summer school teaching in Macomb, Stephanie had planned for us to take on the biggest room(s): the hallway and the living room and dining room. However, both of our mothers required hospitalization. But Stephanie picked out a light/gray green and sanded and painted our little hallway (pictured above top), between the big room, computer room/extra bedroom, our bedroom, downstairs bathroom, and stairs (painting the ceiling first). Then, after coming back from visiting her parents Monday, Stephanie - apparently headed to Tallahassee two weeks thereafter - moved all of the dining room furniture and took on the dining room (with little help from me). She hoped to finish before Vincent returned from Denmark Saturday night.

Most of the downstairs room have ugly 1970s border, and one of the three dining room walls has border/wallpaper all the way to the floor. Stephanie quickly discovered as she peeled this away that underneath was another layer of wallpaper, this one painted over. So it's taken her an entire week to get 2/3 of that wall of wallpaper off. At this point Stephanie hopes to just get all of the wallpaper off the one wall before this weekend, when she will drive a rental car to Tallahassee (while Vincent heads down in a van to church camp in North Carolina). Stephanie has done almost all of this with no help from Vincent and me - just Frisco and the TV helping keep her company. The scraping and sponging the wallpaper off has caused her various aches and pains, particularly when she's on the chair reaching up.

The sanding of the hallway walls has sent lots of dust through the house, and taking the wallpaper off has sent little pieces of wallpaper and dust everywhere. I didn't help matters today by vacuuming without the filter in. I did dust and vacuum frantically to clean some of it up and to clean up the house for Vincent's arrival Saturday (me having returned late Thursday night). But now there is dust everywhere again.

Stephanie picked relatively unusual, bright colors for the two bedroom walls: green and yellow. This is a more subdued green. In the bedrooms, set-up and clean-up - and especially preparing and painting the white trim - has taken as long as painting the ceiling and walls - along with sanding and patching rough spots. We've gotten better at this - although Stephanie is increasingly doing most of the learning and work (when I'm not away or at work or cleaning, I've been downloading pictures/blogging or working on my American Sociological Association paper) - but she's still not great at forecasting how long it will take. Nevertheless, good work so far, Stephanie!

Samurai Caesar

The past summers we have watched Kentucky Shakespeare Festival "Free Will" free Shakespeare plays in Old Louisville's own Central Park, in an amphitheater near where I also helped out with a Brown School PTSA walkathon. Hours before I was arrive and two days before Vincent was to return, Stephanie went for a pre-play picnic with our friend Sarah and a friend of hers. The picnic went well, but rain intervened and the play got rained out (but not before Stephanie got to talk with a creative writing prof at Western KY - where Vincent wants to go, but where we did not get to talk with people in the department he was most interested in - although unfortunately the busload of people had to go back to Bowling Green, KY having seen no play).

Friday night Sarah called back and asked us if (the now two of us) would like to see just the play (since the weather was OK). Stephanie and I missed the start but made it for most of a Japanese-themed version of "Julius Caesar." Stephanie has taught this play, and she and Vincent had watched an old black and white version of it as she prepared to teach. My high school Latin club each year on the Ides of March (March 15) had - in togas - killed Caesar in the cafeteria, then had someone playing Marc Antony read the "Friends, Romans, countrymen" speech from the top of the stairs (usually, Archie territory). Plus junior year our certamen team - including me - stumbled on the famous Latin line, "Et tu, Brute." (In Latin 2, we also read Caesar’s commentaries of the battles armies under his command fought in what is now France. And, of course, to study for certamen I learned that other famous Caesar quote: “Alea jacta est” – The die is cast – which is what Caesar said when he and his armies unlawfully crossed the Rubicon River, heading back to Rome and the greeting that awaited him in “Julius Caesar.) In addition, the first time I ever saw a Shakespearean play was a brilliant Japanese black-and-white version of “Macbeth,” on Saturday afternoon on TV in Tokyo – around the same time my sixth grade class started reading “Macbeth.” I was quickly sold.

Kentucky Shakespeare Festival productions typically only involve about eight or nine actors, and so some people play more than one role. But the actors are professionals, coming from theater schools and faraway cities. The sets are not lavish, like a Broadway production, but the beautiful outdoor setting – in the amphitheater half a block from St. James Court, site of the St. James Court Art Show, is beautiful. The Japanese outfits and swords and – as the night set in and the ghost appeared – a little Japanese-ish ghoulish, not unlike that movie in Tokyo. The combination of a good, relatively quick Shakespeare play with the Japanese motif may draw us to come back with Vincent later in the summer. Good play. Great production – even worth going a second time for Stephanie and Sarah.

Congratulations, Gradye!

While at General Assembly I met two of the other three Presbyterian Stated Clerk candidates - other than Grayde Parsons, with whom I had worked. Back at work Friday, I watched some of the Stated Clerk election on the PC(USA) Web site on live streaming audio. Gradye Parsons was already the nominating committee's nominee. But he won the seat - I suspect - in his responses to some of the candidate Questions and Answers. Gradye talked about his work with the Peace, Unity, and Purity committee (which he served like the review committees that we both served), when proponents and opponents of gay ordination finally accused each other of being indifferent to God's will and reached a place where they understood each other better and agreed on a path for the denomination. Asked about fear, Gradye also referred back to scripture he had already talked about - about the disciples being terrified as they sat in a boat in a lake during a terrible storm - and were surprised to find Jesus asleep. Gradye hinted that this was a metaphor for the denomination's situation, when every congregation - no matter what size - fears that they're a few months from closing. Gradye interpreted the story as an exercise in faith: Get in the boat. Cross the lake. There will be a storm. You will not die.

And Gradye (a former presbytery executive in Holston Presbytery, in far easter mountainous Tennessee) went on to win the Stated Clerk election on the first ballot, with more than half of the vote, and will succeed his boss of 10 plus years, 12-year Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick.

Unity

Blast from the past

The whole late evening Presbyterian General Assembly YAD caucus of young people scenario reminded me very much of the state caucuses at the four National Latin Conventions I attended in high school. We met after dinner and all evening events – usually in the lounge of whatever dorm we were staying in – with student and faculty delegation heads lead the meetings. In July 1979 at Michigan State University I was the incoming Florida Junior Classical League president and so I led the meetings (along with Bradenton Bayshore High School Latin teacher Joe Gilpin). There we debriefed about the day, made announcements, and made plans for the next day.

Also, when I got to East Oakland late and couldn’t get into Guy and Michelle’s house and so slept for a while in my rental car, I almost expected this because the exact same thing had happened to me 51 weeks earlier. A year last night (Wednesday night- by days of the week) I flew to the Baltimore airport, got lost and got to Chris and Sabina’s at 3:30 a.m., slept for an hour plus in my rental SUV, until sitting at their front steps doing work (just as I did on Guy and Michelle’s East Oakland steps) a little later. Then when Chris and Sabina (or Guy and Michelle) got up I had breakfast with them before they went to work. In VA/DC, however, I had to spend the whole day in a stressful passport effort and then drive to Charlottesville, then much of the night) (tonight a year ago) through West Virginia, to work to finish a big project (one finalized this past week), then finish packing with Vincent and Stephanie to get ready to arrive at the Louisville airport at 5 a.m. to go to Guatemala for eight days, before making two key presentations at work the next day. The past week has been less stressful than that, but – predictably – I still got less sleep that I had hoped. Still, there are bits of all of this that make for good memories (certainly, visiting with Chris and Sabina – and even Chris at work during the day; and with Penny, Serge, and Jacob in their new home; and the mission trip) that are good memories.

I was reminded of the anniversary because tonight (Thusday night) (as we speak) is the NBA draft (Buckeye first-year student turned Portland Trailblazer - and 2007 #1 draft choice - Greg Oden pictured above), and I listened to the draft and analysis of it a year ago tonight as I drive aimlessly through Manassas, Virginia, during my most unpleasant 2-hour turns into 4 ½-hour drive from DC to Charlottesville.

I also remembered the Guatemala trip because tonight I read an updated analysis of Guatemala culture, politics, and economics, partly in time for a 10 a.m. meeting of 3-4 church people Friday that will mark the one-year anniversary of our flight to Guatemala.

Here’s to good memories good and bad, stressful and not so stressful.

Winchester mystery house

Stephanie and my co-worker Susan are both fans of the TV show “Ghost Hunters” (see the April blog entry) and of haunted mansion tourism in general. They urged me to visit the Winchester Mystery House, while in San Jose, which I got in – going by bus – during my last few hours in San Jose.

Sarah Winchester was a New England high society woman who learned from a Boston psychic that her child, age 6 weeks, and her husband, age 44 years, had died at early ages because of the spirits of all of the people killed with rifles manufactured by her husband’s family’s company, the Winchester rifle company. At the psychic’s urging, Winchester took the $20 million she had gained when her husband died and moved – in 184? – to San Jose, then a very small agricultural community. Winchester bought a small house and was told by the psychic that, as long as she kept building onto the house, this would keep the spirits at bay and she would live forever.

Winchester consulted the spirits in a séance room in the house to figure out how to proceed with building. Over the course of 40 years plus, the house grew to 60 plus rooms, costing more than $5 million altogether. Winchester never employed an architect and reportedly had some doors and stairs in the house built to nowhere to confuse the spirits.

The fact that each room in the house was built a separate wooden foundation saved much of the house during the 1906 earthquake (that caused the San Francisco fire) but some of the top and front of the house was destroyed and Winchester nearly died. After this, Winchester had the entire front of the house closed up and built towards the back, with no back basement.

When Winchester died – as her will stipulated – all of the contents of the house were auctioned off and her fortune went to her niece, favorite servants, and mostly to what is now the Yale Medical Center. The house quickly an attraction – then –with more of its original fruit-orchard land around – called Winchester Park. Now the house is on a busy four-lane road and shares a parking lot with an aging late 1970s movie theater (with no high-density, mixed-use luxury building across the street).

I paid to go on a tour of about 120 of the house’s 160 rooms and a second tour of some of the grounds and the basement. The first tour – at 9:15 a.m. – had about eight people – all Anglo but me (in contrast with the bus, whose passengers were mainly Latino, African American, and Asian American). But later tours had more people – including some kids and international tourists. This is an old-timey attraction, much like those Florida attractions we've read about in "Dixie Before Disney" and I wrote about in "Back at the Capitol."

Nicks in the sheen

Potentially damaging news for Senator Barack Obama. The furor over Obama declining public financing for the general election campaign – which I don’t entirely understand, especially since it seems pretty obvious given the amount of money he has been able to raise – may now seem like old news.

Two days in a row earlier this week the “New York Times” ran anti-Obama articles. The first noted that – as he criticizes Senator McCain for McCain’s pro-nuclear power, pro-drilling energy platform (which makes the oil and nuclear power industries happy) and touts alternative energy sources, Obama in fact very close to the ethanol industry, going back to when he was an Illinois state senator looking for support from the rural areas for his statewide run for U.S. Senate. (Obama also supported the farm bill, which may help him rural areas in his presidential election, even though Senator McCain’s opposition to this bill laden with subsidies for an agribusiness sector that is already having a banner year economically (much like the oil industry) is probably more admirable.)

The next day the “Times” noted that Muslim Americans had initially been excited about Obama’s campaign. Although then Governor Bush apparently won a majority of the Middle Eastern American vote in 2000, the government immigration crackdown and the war on terror has turned off Middle Eastern Americans. In addition, Obama’s father was a Muslim American. Unfortunately, I’ve noted first hand the anti-Muslim sentiment and xenophobia that Obama’s candidacy has fueled. Even before Obama operatives prevented two Muslim American women in headscarves from appearing behind Obama at a rally, Minnesota’s own Muslim Congressman, Keith Ellison, noticed that the campaign had spurned him and Muslim Americans had noticed with concern Obama’s extremely vigorous denials that he was Muslim (like there was something wrong with that).

Then at mid-week Obama indicated that he would support the Republican version of the domestic spying bill that protects phone companies from being sued for illegally turning over phone records to the federal government, after 9/11, and he came against the Supreme Court decision finding state laws that provide for the death penalty for child rape (without murder) unconstitutional. As Obama angles to the center for the general election (even as some polls that I don’t trust show him way ahead of McCain) and McCain occasionally flashes his old centrist self, we’ll see if they occasionally converge in the middle (as with their joint opposition to a federal constitutional amendment against same-gender marriage) (despite McCain’s general Karl Rove-style campaign – designed to woo back the Republican Right – so far). No doubt some of this angling to the center will continue to upset my friends and me even as I wish Obama was more competitive in places like Southern Indiana or Central Kentucky

San Jose State

One of my first memories of watching TV is from when I was six years old and my family and I watched the 1968 Summer Olympic Games from Mexico City (on ABC, of course, with the recently deceased Jim McKay). I don’t believe ABC showed the Mexican government shooting Mexican student protestors. But I also missed something the TV probably did show – something I’ve seen a TV documentary with sports sociologist Harry Edwards about subsequently – U.S. gold and bronze medal-winning sprinters Tommie Smith and Juan Carlos raising their fists in black power salutes (during the medal ceremony/National Anthem) and then shortly thereafter being stripped of their medals.

It turns out that both of these then sports/political figures were runners for San Jose State University – the commuter school and urban university where my Aunt Sally went briefly, soon thereafter – and where my friend Rachel is now chairperson of the Environmental studies department. I trotted over to San Jose State (where a former Western Illinois colleague of mine also now teaches - though I didn't get a chance to look him up) – which, it turns out, is really part of the downtown – at late lunchtime Wednesday – and took a look around the beautiful campus, with lots of green space, a mix of old and very new buildings, and a mix of Anglo, Asian, Latino, and African American students (probably in that order? Although Rachel says her department has recently received an influx of sorority members – probably Anglo – as majors).

A couple of years ago the university honored Smith and Carlos – who I bet were pariahs – much like Muhammad Ali was for some whites – for years – by erecting statues of them – in their black power poses (see above) – on a green space on campus, and they spoke at an unveiling (no doubt partly as way to reach out to real and potential students of color). The university has also reached out somewhat to the surrounding community. Not only is the school primarily a commuter school (although – like IUS – they have some fancy new dorms), but the brand new Martin Luther King library sits on the edge of campus – opening the campus up to the busy streets around it - and is a joint public library and university library.

Rachel and I ate there with her grad student Ariel (recently returned from studying grazing methods and insects for six months in Nicaragua and about to speak to her mother’s cattlewoman’s association) and her senior colleague Lynne (who was to take over as department head this summer and who helped spearhead a massive purchase of wetlands around San Francisco Bay – from Cargill – much like the purchase by the state of Florida announced this week of U.S. Sugar’s land in the Everglades). We ate in the library café, and then Rachel showed me their department’s digs. I visited the campus once before during Rachel’s first week – prior to teaching – as a professor there. And – now she has tenure and is completing a term as head of her exciting department.

Best wishes, Rachel and colleagues! Good statue/gesture, San Jose State!

P.S. I got back a tad late from all of this and then disappeared later to call home to find out how Mom was doing and to shop some more in the Global Marketplace and wonder how much this irritated my manager who had already let me go a little early to go to Santa Cruz the night before.