Cool End to April

Last week began with more work in the basement but progressed nicely to less toilsome and dangerous activities.

I drove down to New Jersey and met with old friends on Tuesday afternoon. Wednesday morning I met with another friend  at our scout camp in Mahwah.

I spent the afternoon at Ridge and it was great to see so many of my students from last year. It's nice to hear about how your lives are going and how well you are facing it's ups and downs. It's also nice to know you remember a teacher from as long ago as spring 2011, even if it's only because you need more rec letters.

After spending some time after school with my colleagues I headed back to North Jersey.

I spent most of Thursday at Columbia where we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Columbia Plasma Physics Laboratory. It was great to see so many of the faculty still vibrant and excited about life and their pursuits. It did remind that I missed a lot by not being involved in the experimental work at the lab, and it was a bit sad to be reminded that our country's pinch penny attitude toward funding fusion research has resulted in pretty slow progress.

I drove back home arriving 1AM Friday morning.  Later that morning I built a form for a concrete pad for a key post in the basement. We then drove to Lenox where we were interviewed to qualify as volunteers at Tanglewood this summer. We will be giving lunch to student musicians a few times ( I will not be the Cherdack who will be doing the cooking), and welcoming people in to the grounds at a few concerts.

From Lenox, we travelled to the Catskills, where we spent the next few days walking and driving around this area whose scenic beauty is very underrated. The Catskills have 35 peaks over 3500 feet high and well over 300,000 acres of forest lands. Here are a few poor photos.