Blowing & Drifting

Julia’s fascination with the Magic Tree House books has reminded me of treehouses I have known. Growing up, lots of my friends had tree houses that ranged, in later elementary school, from a wooden pallet temporarily nailed to some low pine-tree branches to, in early elementary school, an elaborate room permanently fixed high in a [...]

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Though I knew that Cinco de Mayo commemorates a victory by the Mexican army over a French one in the 1860s, I didn’t know much about the actual battle, at Puebla, in 1862. In sketching out the context of the Battle of Puebla and its significance, Wikipedia offers up a few choice bits of history, [...]

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Tonight, the moon is waxing toward a full moon on New Year’s Eve, which makes this as fitting a moment as any to note that almost exactly four hundred years ago, between November 30 and December 18, 1609, the Italian scientist Galileo Galilei used a hand-made telescope (and other tools, as shown in this excellent Smithsonian article) [...]

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On my way back from a bike ride the other day, I saw something surprising and impressive: hundreds of pieces of farm equipment lined up in a field on the farm of Palmer Fossum, a well-known Northfield farmer who died in 2007. The whole lot of them will be auctioned off next month, and could pull in [...]

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For the first time in our four summers here in Northfield, we ventured as a family to the town’s famous (or at least well-known) Defeat of Jesse James Days, a huge celebration centering on the town’s counterattack and defeat of Jesse James and his gang when they tried to rob the First National Bank of [...]

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Walking across Carleton’s campus, you don’t have to look hard to see 9/11. Carleton’s Olin Hall of Science was designed by the prominent modernist architect Minoru Yamasaki (who also designed four other Carleton buildings), built in 1960-61, and opened in 1961. (The building currently houses the departments of psychology and physics & astronomy.) A webpage about [...]

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Here are my two girls standing in front of the lockers at preschool… Julia on the first day of preschool on September 6, 2007 (For what it’s worth, she still wears this shirt.) Genevieve at preschool orientation on September 8, 2009 (For what it’s worth, Julia wore this dress to preschool orientation, too.)

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The Hudson: A History by Tom Lewis My rating: 5 of 5 stars I picked this book up a week ago, just after seeing a northerly section of the Hudson – near Saratoga Springs and the Saratoga battlefield in upstate New York – and hoping that the book would offer a decent history of the [...]

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I skipped tonight’s conference-organized social activities (a chi-chi dinner and the New York City Ballet) in favor of a little drive down to the Saratoga battle site, which is just a few miles southeast of town. (My friend Rob recommended this outing, but I initially thought I wouldn’t have enough time. I was as wrong [...]

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Today was the full-on conference day, from the breakfast chit-chat at 7:30 a.m. through the cocktail hour and dinner, ending at 9 p.m. In between, we had four good sessions (and a lunch!). Throughout, I caught up with some colleagues I’ve met before – including a hilarious staffer from Barnard who is, and knows she [...]

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I was surprised this morning to discover that a blogger on the Motley Fool personal-finance website quoted me – or rather, an article I wrote a few years back on the US economy during World War II – in an op-ed on the need to move to renewable and green energy. This would be gratifying [...]

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The Mirror, the Window, and the Telescope: How Renaissance Linear Perspective Changed Our Vision of the Universe by Samuel Y. Edgerton My review This is a mind-bending book that blends excellent history of science with excellent history of art. The core of the book is examination of the origins and early use in visual art [...]

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The events in Iran are gripping both as they roil that country and possibly alter the world and as they are reflected in the social media, including especially Twitter. I’m confident that in four weeks – and in four years – we’ll know a lot more about the role of Twitter in facilitating the protests [...]

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As a native Michigander, I have a sad interest in the state’s continued decline, which is most evident in Detroit. On a far smaller scale, my hometowns in the Upper Peninsula experienced in the 1920s through the 1950s what Detroit has suffered since then. A building like this – from the incredible and shocking collection, [...]

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Perhaps as a way to distract myself from the colossal meltdowns that occur regularly at our house each evening between, say, 7:30 and 8:30, I’ll here post about two fantastic articles by Michael Lewis – the author of Liar’s Poker, Moneyball, and some other good stuff – on the financial meltdown: “The End,” Portfolio, December [...]

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