AppletonTrip-Day Five

I am back home in Rochester as I write this. Sunday was a day to have brunch with Harry, get packed, and travel home. Brunch with Harry was enjoyable. He is doing much better this year and seems to be well settled in at Lawrence. He is a member of a fraternity and is enjoying the companionship a great deal. I forget the name of the fraternity but he explained his interest in it because it was not a univocal type--jocks, partiers, scholars, etc.--but sort of a bit of all. At any rate, he is living in a residence on campus provided for the fraternity and seems to be working hard and keeping organized. He is now majoring in Russian--both language and culture--and both enjoying it and doing well. He may well be spending a term in the fall of his senior year at St. Petersburg. A grandparent visit might be in order.

As I was leaving Appleton, preparations were underway for a playoff watching party at the house on Rankin. This was going to be a real cheesehead event complete with deep fried cheese curds courtesy of good friends across the street. Sadly the results were not what the attendees anticipated or hoped for...except perhaps for the one lone Giants fan. So the football season is now over in Wisconsin but on a positive note it is now becoming frigid enough that ice fishing will finally be safe, not that the lack of safe ice has kept slightly inebriated denizens of the cheese state from setting up shop on the ice!







The trip home was uneventful. I watched All Quiet on the Western Front on my iPad. While I was gone I watched Battle for Algiers, Valkyrie, and Full Metal Jacket as well. I have had quite enough of war movies for a while. It is hard not to see that they are all the same movie in many ways, in many important ways.

View the photo album of the Appleton trip.


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Appleton Visit-Day Four

Meg with a future constituent

Today I spent a couple of hours canvassing with Meg. We went door-to-door in her district. She is introducing herself to the votes and getting to know the issues they have for city government. Two things mentioned today were snow plowing that socks in driveways and requires re-clearing of sidewalks after the plows and salt truck pass by and a problem with neighbors not taking care of their dog's waste deposited on another neighbor's lawn. Did I mention that the wind chill was in the single digits? No? Well the wind chill was in the single digits. Hopefully her potential constituents were suitably impressed.

Harry as young gentleman

When we got home and warmed, we watched part of playoff game and waited for Harry to come over. He is quite the young gentleman as you can see. He is having a good year and keeping busy, very busy. The four of us then went out for a very nice dinner at Wild Truffle Bistro. It was a very pleasant evening with fine desserts all around except for young Harry, perhaps the only sensible one among us.

View the updated photo album.

The gang out for dinner

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Appleton Visit-Day Three

Meg making a point during class discussion

Friday was a campus day.  I went with Megan to her office and finished watching The Battle of Algiers in preparation for sitting in on her Freshman Studies class.  They are finishing up Milgrim's Obedience to Authority before moving to the movie.  This is a very serious and innovative program that in many ways recaptures the experience I had at Rockhurst college in the late fifties.  since our curriculum was highly structured with almost no electives, we were all taking the same courses at the same time.  It created, intentionally or not, a sense of intellectual community which was subsequently lost when "liberal arts" requirements shifted from specific courses to distribution requirement in areas of study.  This freshman studies program is an attempt to recapture that sense of intellectual community.  The works are diverse and include not only written works but other performances:  movies and music.  For example, in addition to the above mentioned works, this quarter will consider Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, The Collected Fictions of Jorge Borghes (an Argentinian writer), and Stephen J. Gould's Bully for Brontosaurus.  Megan will assume the directorship of the program next fall for a two year term, clearly an indication of how highly she is valued by her colleagues here.

After class we went to Harmony Cafe for lunch.  Meg returned to campus to do some work and stayed at the cafe to finish reading A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan.  This won the 2011 Pulitzer for fiction.  It is obviously a good read.  It is a novel but very creatively arranged into 13 chapters that seem as though each is a short story but each is a window into a slice of time and life of a set of characters loosely organized around the music business from the sixties and into the near future.  Well worth one's time and effort.

Then I returned to campus for Happy Hour with the usual suspects from the faculty, dinner out at Rancho Azul, ice cream purchase, and then relaxing at home watching the end of Valkyrie and the entire Full Metal jacket.  Given that I have the original All Quiet on the Western Front loaded on my iPad for the trip home, I am getting my fill of war movies.

Go here to see the updated photo album.

And here is video of some interchange in the Freshman Studies class.  

Appleton Trip-Day Two

Today was mostly uneventful until evening when a lot happened.  I stayed at the house and worked on the common Good presentation and watched the snow fall.   I also watched The Battle for Algiers a French film of the 1960's which is one of the works being studied in this quarter's Freshman Studies Program.  I have never seen it but highly recommend it.  Although in black and white, it is very modern in its treatment of the Algerian War.

Megan, Bubbles, and Jennifer

When Meg came  back from campus, we had a quick dinner and then headed off to the roller rink for her second practice for the local Roller Derby League.  Due to the snow storm, only the newbies showed up so they benefited from a lot of personal instruction from the coach and player/coaches.  She is shown here with Jennifer on the right and Bubbles in the center.  Being taller and more slender than the others is probably not an advantage in this endeavor.  I told her she should concentrate on her skating technique!  A roller derby contest is apparently called a "bout."

Visit the trip photo site to see more pictures.

When we got home around 9:00, the electricity went out for a couple of hours and so I went to bed and am now posting this on Friday.  Three more days with plenty of photos and posts.

Oh, I almost forgot.  Here is a video of AstroBabe (tentative RD moniker.)   Actually this was her 25 times around the oval which is one of the skating skills test.  she was within striking idstance of the qualifying time.

Trip to Appleton-Day One

I am on my way, flying to Chicago on a vey comfortable Canadair Regional Jet. These are nice planes and United and American are using them for service to mid sized cities like Rochester to get passengers to their hubs.




Here is a photo from my iPad as I write this entry. Just before I left I noted that there is a winter storm watch for Appleton Thursday. Looks like an all day event with a storm total of about 8 inches. It will be the first real snow for me this winter. Looking forward to it. Also learned that Meg will have another Roller Derby practice/tryout Thursday night. So I will get to see that and get some photos. Should be a lot of fun.

On time connection in Chicago and I am on my way to Appleton. It is a short flight on another regional jet, Embraer 145. It is nice but not as nice as the CRJ. Beautiful day here, calm before the storm, I guess.

Arrived in Appleton. Meg picked me up at the airport and I am now at their home. Later will go out for some lunch and then to Meg's office during her lab this afternoon. Happy Hour at the Varsity Room later afternoon and then out to dinner with Meg and Lynne.

I spent the afternoon with Meg in her lab for Principles of Classical Physics lab.  They were doing the ballistic pendulum experiment.  You can see some pictures of that lab in the photo album for the trip:  Photo album of Appleton Trip.

Here is a video of one of the "shots" to test out the prediction of the range of one of the "guns."  

Trip to Appleton WI--Day Minus One

I am getting ready for my first trip of 2012. Meg is generously flying me out to Appleton for nice visit. I will get to spend time with her and Lynne. Also Harry, my oldest grandchild, is there beginning the second quarter of his second year. It will be great to see them both. It has been a year since I was in Appleton. Here is a photo from that trip.

 I have gotten a nifty keyboard for my iPad, Christmas gift from Marilyn. I am trying to get along without dragging the laptop along. Have been investigating how to best insert photos into my blog. It is a little complicated with the iPad but I think I have discovered a nice app that makes it a lot easier.

 I am currently at the Honda dealer getting some work done on the car and then have several meetings today. It shapes up to be a pretty hectic day but I intend to have everything completed and packed up by tonight so Marilyn and I can enjoy some time together, perhaps even watching a recorded episode of The Good Wife. - Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Panorama Trail S,Penfield,United States