Blowing & Drifting

Exactly one year ago – on December 23, 2010 – I skied for 45 minutes in the Carleton Arb. According to last winter’s training log, I’d skied a total of 12:27:48 by then, beginning on November 14. So far this winter, I’ve skied one hour, a couple weeks ago, just after we received our only [...]

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Friday afternoon, I rode home through the Arb, which wasn’t unpleasant:

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With the opening of Carleton’s new Weitz Center for Creativity, the College gained several great new spaces for the display of art and other visual materials. The crown jewel is the Perlman Teaching Museum, which is right inside the front door of the Weitz Center and which has two excellent inaugural shows running right now. [...]

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The girls were VERY EXCITED about Halloween – Vivi way more than Julia, but still. They had a blast on Friday at the Halloween parties at school, and we had fun on Saturday carving pumpkins fun on Sunday at Carleton’s big Halloween carnival (despite this “I won’t smile for you” portrait) and fun today trick-or-treating – [...]

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I spent pretty much all of Friday serving as a handler – like the security agents who keep tabs on journalists in North Korea, only with less authority. Rather than preventing the subversion of the state, my job entailed managing the campus visit of two staffers from a foundation to which we had recently submitted a [...]

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Yesterday, Carleton dedicated its second wind turbine, a gift from two alums that will significantly cut the College’s energy costs and reduce its carbon footprint. In true Carleton fashion, the dedication ceremony was neither too formal nor too casual – a low-key gathering at the turbine (a mile or so east of campus); some remarks [...]

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What are they trying to do by digging up the sidewalk in front of my office building? Putting in a nice bed of begonias. Using up surplus “Warning! ¡Cuidado!” tape left over from other summer construction projects. Adding 5-10 seconds to the walk from the parking lot to our office. Finally winning the war against the [...]

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A few weeks ago, my colleague Nancy Braker, the director of Carleton’s Cowling Arboretum, sent out a message seeking volunteers for the Arb’s yearly tree inventory. I’ve been waiting literally years for a chance like this, so I asked about the time commitment, which turned out to be quite manageable. Since my office work is [...]

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In going out of town for a conference last week, I took the opportunity to track my email messages at work over the days I was out of the office. By the end of the day before I left for the trip, I had emptied my inbox. I let everything pile up while I was [...]

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This morning, I went with the girls to Carleton’s McKnight Prairie, one of the only extant prairie remnants in Minnesota – or the Midwest. Though I’ve explored every part of Carleton’s Arboretum, I’ve never actually made the short drive out to McKnight. I talked the girls into going by explaining that McKnight looks the prairie probably did when [...]

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I was busy today. How busy? So busy I didn’t have a chance to update my social-media status until after I got home. A day without a couple updates is like a day without coffee – hardly worth the trouble. In an effort to partly rectify this horrible situation, here are six status updates I [...]

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Driving back yesterday from seeing friends in Rochester, I realized that it has been a damn good week – probably one of the best “usual” weeks ever. Last Sunday was a pretty uneventful day around the house, but I got to spend some great time with the girls and enjoyed a nice 90-minute ride in [...]

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These posters are up all over campus right now. Let’s just say that I’m not exactly scared to run in the Arb at night, but that I’m carrying a pistol loaded with silver bullets.

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Yesterday I sat for the final exam for the “Jazz History” course I’ve been taking this term, a course taught by Steve Kelly, who is about to retire after a long, distinguished career at Carleton. I took the course because I wanted to learn more about the history of jazz, a musical style that I [...]

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I have no idea why this frozen towel hung from a bike rack on campus for a week. You can’t tell from this picture, but it was frozen solid, and sometimes seemed to be waving in an invisible, frigid breeze.

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