Back in the USA

I've made it back from Paris and am home in Maine. It's good to be back. The country seems to have done ok in my absence. We didn't start any new wars and there were no major infrastructure malfunctions or bridge collapses. Not a bad week for the USA, I suppose.

It also wasn't a bad week for COA. We've been named the greenest college in the US by Grist. I'm not certain that we fully deserve the honor. (My office certainly isn't green; I have a horrible single-paned window so it's tremendously inefficient to heat in the winter, I don't have access to a double-sided printer, and I have a high Wattage incandescent bulb in one of my lights.) But it's still a nice honor. And COA certainly does an admirable job at both having a green campus and a green curriculum. Being "number one" is a little weird, though, as I think there are lots of other schools doing excellent and original green things, too.

I didn't have internet access for much of Friday and all of Saturday and Sunday, so I wasn't able to post any updates from Paris. And today I've got a ton of stuff to do before Doreen and I leave for a few days in Pennsylvania. I'll try to post more of an update later today or perhaps from Pennsylvania if I have time. But the short version is that the summer school I was lecturing at was quite fun, and I really enjoyed meeting some of the students. I also enjoyed spending time in Paris. In particular, on Saturday I had an awesome time. I went toMusee L'orangerie and then wandered all over Paris.