Miscellaneous Thursday Observations

Not motivated enough for actual paragraphs. So some bulleted items, instead:

• Spring is definitely here. Trees and flowers are blooming, and the leaves are almost out. There are gold finches and house finches at our bird feeder, and I think I will need to mow the lawn this weekend.
  
• The weather has alternated between beautiful, so that all I want to do is sit around and savor the warmth and the green, and cold and rainy, so all that I want to do is sit around because it's cold and rainy. So it hasn't been a record-setting week of productivity.
  
• Tim Burke visited COA earlier this week. I've been a fan of his blog for a long time, and it was great to get to meet him in person. He gave a talk on Monday titled, "Long Tails, Network Hubs, Creative Destruction: How to make a Liberal Arts college in the 21st Century without trying (much)." His presentation was interesting and thought-provoking. Faculty and students found it to be a very accurate and illuminating view of the challenges and opportunities facing COA. Some of Tim's reflections on COA can be found in his current blog entry, generously titled Brains in Maine.
  
• Conversations with Tim and others have highlighted for me some of the challenges and intellectual bottlenecks COA is experiencing at this particular moment in its history. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it is tiring sometimes. But at least we're not giving Phyllis Schlafly an honorary degree. Ug.