January 19-20 -- Williamstown

The book tour continues on into the new year in a trickle, an event every other week.  It is good to have feet on the ground, as opposed to on the gas pedal, though without knowing it, I seem still to be in a treading water phase of life, a bit constantly on the go.  Going to Williamstown is always a pleasure.

And so the third week of January, I went to visit old friends and to do a Museum Legs reading at the venerable Water Street Books.  This time the year before, I was living in Williamstown teaching Entrepreneurship as an Art Form for Winter Study.  Here are my students, in the art studio building (next to student Robbie's sculpture):

And at dinner with entrepreneur guest Rory:

I arrived into town on the train, catching a ride from Albany with the lovely Audrey Thier, whom I am lucky to know and consider family along with her husband Peter Murphy.  They included me in actual family dinner, and we had a celebratory meal out with their daughter Ruthie.  I was touched.  I didn't take any pictures, but here is Peter from the Elvis party the prior year:

Peter is properly an English professor, whom I know through his larger role as dean of the college when I was in school.  I have never taken a class with him, but you can't know him longer than five minutes without being struck by his command -- dry and spare and thorough and unshowy, and nicely complemented by things like a love of sport and an atunement to politics-- of the English language.  I was hugely complimented they both said it was well written.  Audrey said it in surprise, of a sort that brought peals of laughter from both me and Peter, as she good naturedly tried to dig her way out (of what was not actually a hole).  

The next day, I had coffee with Brooks, a patron saint of the book tour, who runs much of alumni relations at Williams and who had, along with Rob Swann, kindly put me in touch with lots of regional groups.  In honor of Brooks, here is a mini-photo essay of Williams showing up all over the country.  If memory serves, Northern California:

Wyoming, I think:

Hayward, Wisconsin:

I didn't take a picture with Brooks, but here he is (holding baby), at the 2009 Elvis party, with Matt Harris and Matt and Jess' Baby Campbell:

I met Mihai Stoichu and Ed Burger, of the math faculty, in the local Indian restaurant for lunch.  Mihai had kindly arranged and hosted us.  Ed, who had just won a very celebrated teaching award from Baylor, is also known for his study of creativity, and his propensity for teaching it as part of the math curriculum.  Click here to read about Ed's class.

On the topic of Mihai and creativity, I once went to an art show with him in London, Cildo Meireles at Tate Modern. We walked into a room of hundreds of wooden tape measures hung from the ceiling in a labyrinthine spiral.  The walls were covered with a thousand white plastic clocks.  On these, the artist had moved the numbers and minute hash marks so they were clumpy -- as in the real passage of time, some places time passed quickly, others it dragged.  Mihai looked at them, then at me, and said, "This is exactly like my research."

In fact, Mihai studies--at the point where physics runs tangent to math--things like the distribution of molecules of an alloy, so you can know something like the breaking point of the metal of an airplane.  As a convention in his field, people model the distribution of particles around a circle.  If the distribution is perfectly regular it is called a clock distribution.  More likely, it looks like the Meireles.

So, there we were, me and the two math luminaries discussing creativity over fritters, which was great fun.  

The reading that night included Mihai and his mother, who was visiting from Romania,

Also attending were Peter and Audrey, Jen and Tom and Maddie (of the book festival in Brooklyn), several others, including a few of my students from Winter Study the prior year, my friend Andie's son, and a woman who had interned in our office.  The Winter Study students had actually started a company, and showed me one of the ID cards from it.  I seem only to have taken pictures with Mihai:

Jonnie and his girlfriend Cindy were there, and they and Jen and I headed out for dinner at the local Thai.  Jonnie (aka Dr. Cluett) is a college classmate and was my host.  In the time since I had been there last, Jonnie not only got a dog but chickens. Jonnie's fridge contains a huge number of small, differently shaped and sized eggs, all shades from brown to white-ish. 


Dr. Cluett's chickens, in winter:

The next morning, I took a cab to Albany.  

The cab company booked me with another person without telling me.  On the plus side, I got a lens into recruiting in the economics faculty.  On the minus, I missed the train as we had to take the guy to the airport first and then the next train was delayed, but all was fine in the end.