The Far Side of the Country

Having returned from my sojourn in the Land of Eternal Sunshine to find, naturally enough, a day in which thunderstorms are perpetually threatening in the Land of Intermittent Sunshine, it seems a good opportunity to note the events of the last 7 days which might be, but in reality probably are not, worthy of note.

The conference was really good.  Great conversations throughout and I learned quite a bit.  In the end, Hayek is a much more interesting thinker than I had thought him to be.  There are not many late 20th century economists who would merit sustained attention from non-economists.

Emma got her driver's license on Saturday.  Now the question of whether to buy a 3rd car heats up.  Janet and I have been talking about getting a pickup truck for what seems like forever.  I still have no idea if we will actually get around to acquiring such a vehicle or not.

In other Emma news: she was awarded the Mount Holyoke Alumnae Association Book Prize at her high school.  (The fact that her father works at MHC is a coincidence. (No, really.))  The award is for the best female junior at the school.  These awards are really interesting--I had not heard of them before.  It looks like the Alumnae Association solicits $25 from an alum every year to provide such a prize at a high school of her choice.  It's rather brilliant--an alum gets to award a prize to some deserving junior in high school and Mount Holyoke gets some good advertising aimed directly at the sort of student we would most like to think about coming to MHC.  If I were an alum, I would certainly sign up for a $25 a year cost to do something like that at my old high school.

In other Offspring News, Lily was just elected Vice-President at her school.  Lily is, as everyone (everyone!) knows, a rather social animal--if you haven't friended her on Facebook yet, you must be the last person on the planet not to have done so--and now she is reaching for her true calling of being a political animal.  I have all summer to persuade her she should advocate for lower taxes and reduced expenditure on wasteful items at School.  At present, her aims are slightly different--recycling bins and vegetarian meals---clearly I have a lot of work to do.

Clara 's team won all three of their games while I was away.  They were undefeated last year.  This year they lost once--in a game which was painful to behold--as Clara put it, the coach "flipped out" at them for playing so extraordinarily poorly--and, having witnessed the game, he should have flipped out even more in that game.  It was pretty pathetic.  Fortunately, since then, they seem to have returned to their winning ways.

And, I might as well throw in a book review since I still have not finished writing up reviews of the books I finished before my trip to CA.  One of my students who was graduating gave me a copy of Gary Larson's The Far Side Gallery 5, and so I was able to enjoy revisiting those strips  The Far Side was easily one of the best comic strips ever--indeed, there are not many comic strips even in the same category of greatness (Calvin and Hobbes, for sure; Peanuts in its best years; and I also like Dilbert, Bloom County and Doonesbury (at least the old Doonesbury--I haven't read it recently)--but I am not sure the latter three are generally brilliant (they may be simply idiosyncratic tastes).  The fact that Larson stopped when he was still going strong is really interesting to me--I have always wondered how many great ideas he has had for comics since he retired--I doubt you can just shut off creativity of that order.  Bill Watterson also stopped Calvin and Hobbes in its prime.  I have also always wondered if they both saw the gradual demise of Peanuts as a warning against carrying on too long.

Grammar Note:  Should the names of Comic Strips be italicized or in quotation marks?  Obviously, I am at present thinking it is the former.  But, I just spent some time looking it up, but it isn't at all clear. (The Chicago Manual of Style, for example, does not mention them.)