Along the road

I love Ohio because it houses people that I love, but otherwise, I am very glad that I don´t live there anymore. Apart from the political leanings of its people, it´s not a great fit for me, weatherwise. I actually quite like cold weather, because I like having four seasons. But the many gray days while I was there had me googling the amount of sun in various Spanish cities compared to those I had previously lived in. Unfortunately, I couldn´t find a site that used consistent units - how do I compare number sunny days in one city to number of hours with 80% or less cloud cover in another? I guess I will actually have to visit the cities I´m considering living in and experience it myself.

I spent lots of time with my parents and got to see an old friend from high school, H. But probably the coolest thing was visiting my former undergrad physics professor. I worked for J for several years while he was revising his textbook. It was a remarkable experience for me, because it started me thinking about how people can teach physics more effectively, and it also gave me the opportunity to feel successful in physics, something that I definitely needed to look back on when I kept failing my physics qualifying exam in graduate school. J and I hadn´t seen each other in almost twenty years. He was surprised that I had retired, and I was not-really surprised that he is still teaching and working extremely long hours, a decade after many people would have retired. One thing I was careful not to learn from him was a lack of wook-life balance...

My mother and I, on a day when we headed out to take a hike. On the way to the park, the rain steadily increased, so we aborted and did coffee and crossword puzzles at a local café instead.

I have now left the land of my progenitors, and moved on to (hopefully) sunnier skies. On the way, I picked up a few more attractions to add to my collection.

The artist Peter Wolf Toth had consulted with local tribes and then carved one staue in each US state. This one was in a rest stop in Pennsylvania.

The town of Indiana, Pennsylvania is really, really proud of native son Jimmy Stewart. I viewed the stature at the courthouse, visited the surprisingly extensive museum downtown (his childhood bedroom! His WWII medals! His favorite book from a Hollywood restaurant) and marveled at the crosswalk lights - when a pedestrian is allowed to cross, it´s Jimmy´s voice that gives you permission.

What do I need to say? It´s a gigantic coffee pot.