We had a dinner to celebrate Sally’s birthday, and also to celebrate the conclusion of Deborah’s editing of her professional development materials. Roast lamb and potatoes and carrots and a spice cake with coffee icing. And rather too much wine.

Deborah told us of her family reunion in Washington last October where she tried to tell her family about her life since Alan’s illness, her psychiatrist sister who couldn’t cope, her youthful trip to Israel when she fell in love with an Arab to her father’s shock and horror, Alan’s driving (awful apparently, even when he was well). The time she and Alan visited an old cousin of her father’s in Florence, only to discover that her father had been disowned by the family when he married a gentile.

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It doesn’t seem that long ago that we took a similar photo of Nell as she headed off for her first Winter formal. But I guess she was a junior then, so it is only four years ago. Sally went to IHOP with a group of friends afterwards. Abby, who was working, dropped her off there and picked her up around 1:30 am. Sally laments that she doesn’t have a tight-knit group of friends. She has individual friends that she spends time with—Emily, Carissa, Jessica—but no social group like Nell had. Abby had many acquaintances, but floated between groups.

Sally is discovering the world of intellectual enthusiasms in a way that I remember from my own childhood: languages, political argument, science (Darwin), reading, painting, introspective walks. There’s one conservative boy in her Spanish class who drives her crazy, wakens in her the urge to debate. I so well remember the tension between rebuttal and dismissal buzzing around in my head for hours.

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I was in New Orleans, but Abby made this cake for Amy and Sally delivered my present, the photo book of 25 years of marriage.

In New Orleans I had a nice hotel, the Omni Royal, in the French Quarter. It was much nicer than being out on Canal Street in the conference hotel. There was a rooftop platform with a nice view, and an exercise room which I used a few times, a quiet bar, a sunny room with view of the river … a good place to get some work done. The restaurants were expensive, but we found some good ones, in particular Cochon, with memorable ham hocks and grits, and August, very fancy, where I had oysters served three ways and duck with its liver.

We had the consortium meetings before the joint math meetings this time. Yet more talk about what to do with the algebra book. There seemed to be a fair amount of buzz about the Institute at the joint meetings. Whether it will last who knows.

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