Learning Strategies

It was great to see my neighborhood featured on Channel 5’s Chronicle this evening! And no, it wasn’t because of crime, but because of diversity and the new transit-oriented development near Ashmont Station. The episode, called “Happenin’ Hoods,” included a segment on a “Boston neighborhood that combines the best of the old and the new”: Peabody Square, Dorchester. What came across was a neighborhood with lots of elegant old housing stock, an excellent restaurant, new condos and rental apartments, and — most importantly — a rich diversity in racial groups, ethnicity, sexual orientation, class, and income levels. In this part of Dorchester nobody blinks at an interracial gay couple, and that’s how we like it.

Labels: Dorchester

It had to come to an end at some point. The experience of listening to the audiobook version of In the Woods, by Tana French, was a constant delight that enveloped me for 21 hours over a period of more than two weeks. Much of the credit has to go to narrator Steven Crossley, who brings the entire narrative to life, including an array of a dozen major characters who all sound distinct and true-to-life in Crossley’s reading. It’s a total pleasure to listen to him.

It’s also a total pleasure to be captivated by the gorgeously poetic language of Tana French, whom I don’t otherwise know as an author. The heightened intensity of her words couldn’t possibly continue for 21 hours, and of course it doesn’t, but quite a number of passages read more like poetry than prose. All of this occurs in the context of a novel that looks like a police procedural but isn’t really. It’s actually a psychological novel about introspection, the effect of early experiences, and interactions among well-developed characters. Some reviews have missed the point and have criticized French for not following all the conventions of the mystery genre. But it’s unfair to criticize her for not writing a different book! In the Woods doesn’t follow the mystery genre because it’s not a genre novel. Like a number of other examples of serious literature, it adopts the framework of a police procedural but has an entirely different program. I don’t want to reveal any of the details other than to say that the narrative takes place within a homicide squad of a modern Irish police department. Definitely read it — but don’t expect everything to be nicely tied up at the end as you would anticipate in a conventional mystery!

Labels: books

Barbara and I went to Sel de la Terre to celebrate her birthday yesterday. As always, the food and service were excellent, though I found the entire experience a bit pricey: $200 in total, including wine (one of the least expensive bottles on the wine list!), tax, and tip. And then there was the parking, an astonishing $34 for anything over 80 minutes at the garage (which is shared by the Aquarium, an Emack & Bolio’s, and a Legal Seafoods restaurant). We hadn’t realized that valet parking would have been a bit cheaper, although the expected tip would eat up most of the difference. Maybe this won’t be an issue once Sel de la Terre moves to the new Mandarin Oriental Hotel. But anyway...back to the food...

For our first course, Barbara had giant white prawns, which came with spinach, creamy polenta, bacon, and greens. She reports that it was all delicious, as long as she could ignore the fact that the prawns came with their heads on. I had flatbread pizza with caramelized onions, spinach, lamb bacon (!), Comté cheese, fried capers, and créme fraiche. It sounds overly elaborate, but all the flavors melted seamlessly together to create an excellent dish.

Barbara then had steak frites with asparagus, cooked perfectly and very French. My main dish was described as follows on the menu:

Braised lamb shank with spring bean cassoulet, merguez, caramelized rhubarb and sweet onion compote.

I’m not sure how much merguez there was, but everything else was there in perfect balance — a great combination.

The service was wonderful. Perfect, you might say. The waitress was friendly without being intrusive, knowledgeable but never pretentious, and attentive without hovering.

Not surprisingly, we had no room for dessert and both of us even had leftovers to take home. I suppose it was worth the $200 for a once-a-year (or perhaps twice-a-year) experience.

Labels: food

Just got back from the Boston Trolley Meet (actually held in Somerville, not Boston). This event, sponsored by the Boston Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society, offered a combination of layouts, dealer tables, and field trips. The actual exhibit provided a good balance between “real” trolleys (mostly historical material on the prototype) and model trolleys (mostly layouts and rolling stock). Unfortunately the layouts focused almost entirely on the trolleys themselves, with very little in the way of scenery or structures, and the rolling stock was almost all very expensive, so I didn’t buy any. (I’m not in the market for a $300 trolley car.) It will still useful — and fun — to look through the various books, posters, maps, and DVDs, and to see how the various layouts presented working models of trolleys in tight spaces.

Labels: model railroads

No, this isn’t another one of those essays about the usefulness of technology in teaching math. This is a response to a fascinating post in Heather’s Comparative Childhood blog, in response to a newsletter from her daughter’s middle school. Here’s an excerpt from the newsletter:

Cell Phones, I-Pods, MP3 players, any other electronic devices are not permitted for student use at any point during the school day. If these items are seen or heard during school hours, they will be confiscated and a parent will have to pick up the device from your child’s house office.

This seems pretty reasonable, especially since the careful wording doesn’t prohibit possession of such devices, merely their use or visibility during the school day. And, of course, it is a middle school.

Heather’s post includes the following observations:

Is there ever a circumstance in which the presence and use of an iPod (or cell phone or MP3 player or digital camera or gameboy or fill-in-your-electronic-device-of-choice-here) is justifiable in a school setting? I guess I’m taking the perspective of the teacher on this one. There is nothing more annoying than someone’s cell phone going off during a lecture. And there is nothing more rampant in university settings than “creative” new ways to cheat during examinations. I can’t believe that the use of electronics for cheating begins at the college level.

My understanding on the ban of cell phones in public schools was that it was originally put in place to prevent drug deals going down on the school premises. But now cell phones could be used for anything from covertly cheating by sending text messages to voyeuristic photography in the ladies room to remotely setting off bombs. I won’t waste my space here, but we need only use of imagination to think of the ills of other electronics in the school settings. Nintendo DS’s create their own network within a local range.

These are eminently reasonable comments, but I need to take a different point of view, even though Heather is trying to take the perspective of the teacher. Of course she’s absolutely right that it is annoying and disruptive for a cell phone to ring during class, and she is also absolutely right that they need to be prohibited during tests, as they can be used for cheating (as Weston students know all too well). But there are also too many valuable uses of these electronic devices for them to be banned entirely in school — at least in high school, and I suspect in middle school as well. At Weston High School we ban cell phone use (or even visibility) in the classroom, but not in the cafeteria or outdoor areas; iPod use is left to the discretion of the teacher. Cell phones are a valuable way for students and parents to get in touch with each other, so students should be allowed to use them outside of the classrooom. And MP3 players may help many kids concentrate in noisy situations or just when taking a test; while I certainly don’t allow kids to shut out the world during a class discussion or lecture, I think it can be valuable to do so when trying to concentrate on individual work. I admit that there’s a small chance that a student may use an iPod for cheating, but that’s a lot harder than texting on a cell phone, which is currently the preferred method among high-school students and Boston firefighters. Of course a variant of the method used by the firefighters would be very difficult to prevent in school settings:

...a group of Boston firefighters took turns going into a men’s room at the Quincy middle school and sent answers via text message on their cellphones to colleagues in the testing room.

We can easily prevent this precise method of cheating in school by allowing only one student at a time to go to the bathroom and by banning cell phone use in the classroom during the test, but how do we prevent texting between a student who goes to the bathroom during the test and a classmate who has already taken the test and is currently in the cafeteria during a free period? Temporarily confiscating cell phones at the beginning of the test is the method preferred by some teachers. That works well...except for kids who have a second cell phone hidden away.

And while I’m looking at Heather’s blog, let me recommend several of her recent posts, especially the ones entitled “Wow” and “What would Jesus do, indeed”.

Labels: teaching and learning, technology, Weston

Where can Dorchester kids get into college? Anywhere!

Some of my Weston students believe that they are entitled to go to Harvard and BC and Bryn Mawr, but kids who go to public schools in Dorchester and Roxbury certainly aren't in their league. If your parents are rich and well-connected and have provided you with every educational opportunity that money can buy, you deserve to get into Harvard, don't you? But if your parents are low-income immigrants who have sent you to the school formerly known as Dorchester High School, you don't have a chance.

Or do you? Well, admittedly the deck is stacked against you; the odds are in favor of the Weston student. But let's look at some of the 29 high-school seniors who have been attending the Crimson Summer Academy for the last two summers, starting with some of the most competitive colleges:

• Harvard admitted 3. That’s 10% of the class — can’t beat that at Weston.


• Smith admitted an astounding 5 of the 15 girls!


• BC admitted 3.


• MIT admitted 1!


• Brandeis admitted 1, Bryn Mawr 2, Johns Hopkins 1, Penn 1, Pitt 1, Syracuse 6, Union 2, Wellesley 1, Wesleyan 1; Barnard put 2 on their wait-list.


• Some of the remaining six may also be highly competitive schools (I just don’t know about all of them): Denison admitted 1, Lehigh 3, Mass Art 1, Northeastern 8, Regis 3, and Wheaton 3.

OK, they’re not all from Dorchester and Roxbury, but they all attend public schools in Boston and Cambridge, and this college admissions record would be the envy of any public school and even most private schools too. Well done!

Labels: Dorchester, teaching and learning

In Algebra II class today we happened to be talking about a certain prominent mathematician/physicist, and I remarked that he’s “the smartest living American, as he himself will be happy to tell you.”

“That can’t be true!” objected one student. “Bill Gates is the smartest living American!”

“What makes you think that?” I asked, being genuinely puzzled.

“Because he’s a billionaire,” replied one student. “He’s the richest man in the country,” said another. Several others chimed in with similar sentiments.

I told them that they had been living in Weston too long.

Labels: Weston

Highly recommended: Death Comes for the Fat Man, by Reginald Hill. This latest installment of the literate Dalziel-Pascoe series continues the high standards of its predecessors, though Dalziel plays almost no role in it. I won’t tell you what the title really means, because it would of course be a spoiler. Does Dalziel die, or is the title just a teaser?

Anyway, you should probably have read some of the earlier books in the series before tackling this police procedural, but that’s OK: if you’ve never read any Dalziel-Pascoe, go to the library and read some of the earlier ones! Then you’ll be ready for Death Comes for the Fat Man. But be sure to have a dictionary at your side as you read them, so you won’t be caught short by words like sempiternal. Every Reginald Hill novel is good for learning a few new vocabulary words. Of course they’re also good for plot and characterization, which are the real reasons to read them.

Labels: books

Check out the Lawrenceville School’s amazing math applets! They provide links to class-demonstration applets that range from the unit circle and the sine function through transformations and vector addition all the way to slope fields and Riemann sums — not to mention the ever-popular Generic Applet, from which all the others can be built. Here’s a screen shot of the Sine and Cosine applet just to show one tiny example of what can be done:

Labels: math, teaching and learning

Barbara and I just got back from spending a week in Elmira. Actually it was just five days, it only felt like a week. Mostly I played a bunch of computer Scrabble, took some walks in the surprisingly nice weather, and caught up on my reading. We also spent a very pleasant half day in Corning; I recommend the old part of town, recently renamed the Gaffer District. Oh, well, I guess I needed the vacation.

Labels: travel

On the whole I recommend Daddy’s Girl, by Lisa Scottoline. Formally it’s a mystery, but it’s mostly about families. Like many mysteries, it also carries a theme of law vs. justice, and Scottoline does an effective job of exploring this issue. Her protagonist’s relationships with her brother and her boyfriend are annoying, especially with the loud brother who talks in all caps — actually I listened to the audiobook version, so the caps were converted to shouting, as the author presumably intended, but I still kept wishing that Natalie would tell him to shut up. My other reservation was the implausible plot. But these deficiencies are outweighed by the convincing portrayal of the academic setting at Penn Law School and of Natalie’s large Italian family — perhaps similar to Scottoline’s? Who knows? Anyway, it’s certainly not the best mystery of the year, but it’s worth reading.

Labels: books

Yes, it was one night early for Passover, but last night Barbara and I attended the 2008 All-Dorchester Seder, which is held every year at the First Parish Church. A seder at a church? Well, yes. In the first place, it’s a Unitarian Universalist church, so no one should be surprised that they would be hosting a seder. And in the second place, this endeavor is deliberately an interfaith community-building activity, so it’s best not to hold it in a Jewish facility even if one still existed in Dorchester. (For those who don’t know, most members of Dorchester’s once-vibrant Jewish community have long since fled to the suburbs, although there are still a few left here, and there’s a fair number of us who have moved into Dot in the past 25 years.)

Like many other worthwhile all-volunteer activities, the All-Dorchester Seder needs more publicity. I give the volunteers full credit for their hard work and accomplishments, but there really should have been more than 38 of us at this event. Religiously it was a good mix — about half of the people sitting near me being Jewish — but racially it was hardly representative of today’s Dorchester, since almost everyone there was white.

“Next year in Jerusalem!” Well, not exactly. As the Seder leader observed, this wish is to be interpreted symbolically, not literally. Very few of us intend to be in Jerusalem next year. But maybe next year there can be more attendees, with more racial diversity. I’ll remind everyone again in eleven months.

Labels: Dorchester, life

Just finished reading J.A. Jance’s Justice Denied, the 18th novel in the author’s J.P. Beaumont series of Seattle-based police procedurals. Though it’s not one of her best, Jance clearly hasn’t gotten tired and can still write a taut mystery with interesting characters. She explicitly deals with recurrent themes like “Can you trust this woman?” without making the reader feel that it’s merely a formula. Family relationships, especially those between parents and their adult children, add an extra touch, especially since the families involved vary in age, race, and social class. The author perfectly captures the internal monologue of a male protagonist who’s intellectually smart but can occasionally be socially clueless, not that I know anyone like that. Justice Denied is well-plotted but stronger on psychology than on action, so don’t read it if you’re looking for an action-packed mystery. But if you’re interested in story lines and characters, do read it, even if you aren’t familiar with any of the 17 previous novels in the series.

Labels: books

Overheard this morning at Weston High School...part of a conversation between two sophomores:

“What can you tell me about John McCain?”

“Who’s he?”

”Oh, he’s some dude who’s running for President.”

Labels: life, Weston

I have just finished reading Double Vision, by Randall Ingermanson. This science fiction thriller has a great concept, but the execution is disappointing. On the plus side, the novel speaks effectively to those of us who have worked in the computer industry, especially if we have any interest in computer science and physics. Knowing something about RSA and factoring certainly helps, but it isn’t necessary. Knowing something about quantum computing might also help — but since I know almost nothing about that field, how could I be sure? Anyway, the idea behind the book is fascinating, and the fact that the protagonist is a computer programmer with Asperger’s makes it fit into my accidental recent theme of Asperger’s Syndrome. However, there’s also the minus side: implausible characterization, poor writing (à la Dan Brown), unbelievable plot, and excessive Christianity. Worse yet, there’s a subsubplot concerning Jews for Jesus, and if anyone can explain to me how that organization is distinct from Christians, please let me know.

Labels: books, math, teaching and learning, technology

According to an article in this morning’s Boston Globe, the average annual income in Dorchester 02124 (where I live) is $34,556. The average annual income in Weston 02493 (where I teach) is $531,374. That’s a ratio of slightly more than 15 to 1. No comment.

Labels: Dorchester, Weston

Last night the Weston High School Theatre Company put on a charming performance of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance. The acting and singing were strong; the scenery, set, and costumes terrific; the pit orchestra first-rate. Derek Kief’s portrayal of Frederic was suitably over-the-top, showing a gift for comedy that I hadn’t known was in him. In the other male lead roles — it’s always a tough task to fill these male leads in high-school productions — Quinton Kappel’s Pirate King and Ben Heath’s Police Sergeant were amusingly effective. Both did a fine job; but, of the two roles that stole the show, the male one was clearly Alex Engler’s outstanding performance as Major General Stanley. Strong acting and singing from females is usually not quite so difficult to find in high schools, so it was no big surprise that Erika Grob’s Ruth was convincingly multi-faceted, nor that the bevy of General Stanley’s daughters formed a delightful chorus. The other role that stole the show, the female one, was (appropriately enough) Natalie Birren’s Mabel, fulfilling the operatic expectations of this exceptional coloratura role. And the choruses of pirates and policemen provided amusing comedic touches in their well-coordinated ensemble work. Presumably because of the gender imbalance of available cast, many girls had to double up as pirates and policemen, and there was only a limited attempt to make them up to look like men.

This morning I had to consult two of the most treasured volumes in my home library: Isaac Asimov’s Annotated Gilbert and Sullivan and Martyn Green’s Treasury of Gilbert and Sullivan (an appropriate name for a treasured volume). Both works are highly recommended. Concerning the “orphan/often” puns, Asimov comments that “even the most devoted pun lover might feel a little uneasy at this sequence, and parts of it are sometimes cut in actual performances.” But fortunately nothing was cut from this sequence in the Weston performance.

Alex Engler brought down the house in his flawless, very rapid rendition of the famous Major General’s patter song. A second patter song was added, presumably because this format is such a favorite with audiences: the song from Ruddigore, “My eyes are fully open to my awful situation,” was inserted, slightly changed with substitutions such as Frederic for Roderic. Asimov comments on this song:

This is the fastest of the patter songs... Gilbert was an absolute fiend on having his words heard through and above the music (which must have bothered Sullivan who felt his music was being sacrificed to Gilbert’s words), so it must have cost the librettist a deal to indicate that in this song, at least, hearing the words was all but impossible.

Asimov is referring to the couplet, “This particularly rapid, unintelligible patter/ Isn’t generally heard, and if it is it doesn’t matter!”

And speaking of the Major General’s song, we math teachers always enjoy the various allusions to mathematics in it:

I’m very well acquainted, too, with matters mathematical
I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical
About binomial theorem I am teeming with a lot o’ news [pause to think]
With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse.

I’m very good at integral and differential calculus
...
In conics I can floor peculiarities parabolous...

A few other random observations:

• I am not sure why Ruth wasn’t made up to look older and less attractive, as Gilbert makes a point of contrasting her with the General’s daughters.


• Speaking of daughters, I’m not sure why they got changed into General Stanley’s wards.


• Asimov observes that Frederic’s 21st “birthday” wouldn’t actually come until 1944 rather than 1940 as Gilbert claims, since 1900 hadn’t been (wouldn’t be) a leap year! (This is true, despite the fact that the New York Times apparently printed an editorial on February 29, 1940, entitled “Frederic’s out of his indentures.”)


• As is traditional in G&S, a number of small changes were made to enhance the performance, such as looking up into the sky and “estimating” the time as 11:38 (11:30 in the original) — again something especially amusing to math teachers.

Anyway, congratulations to Director John Minigan and all of his fine cast and crew!

Labels: Weston

Barbara and I spent a few hours yesterday evening in Jamaica Plain. First we walked to the Axiom Gallery, which is hosting an intriguing Math and Art exhibit through April 27 right next to the Green Street T station (confusingly on the Orange Line, not the Green Line). Most of the art is worth seeing for its own sake, but the special appeal for me was the large number of connections with some of the topics that my precalculus class has been studying this year. The sculptures of Bathsheba Grossman are particularly striking. For example:

The works of Kevin van Aelst were also vividly related to what we’ve been studying, as his Dragon Curve, Sierpinski Arrowhead (made of Triscuits!), and Cantor Set made out of a fractal egg all show:
      
I was also intrigued by the works of Keith Peters, which could readily be modeled in NetLogo or StarLogo, even though he apparently used neither, and also by the works of J. Michael James, whose fractal condor was especially beautiful as it swooped around on a large screen.

All in all, definitely a worthwhile experience. I just wish the exhibit had been more extensive, so that I could have justified recommending it to my Weston students. Barbara and I spent 45 minutes there, but I think most of my students would feel done with it after 20 — hardly worth the trip from Weston. But it would be worth the trip from Dorchester, even if we hadn’t already been in JP (where Barbara works).

Anyway, after visiting the gallery, we walked to Cafe D, where we had a pleasant and delicious dinner. Crispy calamari followed by a fish taco and salad for Barbara; arancini followed by duck confit with a cassoulet of braised white beans, portabella mushrooms, and pancetta for me. With wine, tax, and tip, it all came to just under a hundred dollars, which seems to be par for the course these days. It might or might not be worth the trip from Dorchester (on the edge, in my judgment), but, as I said, we were there anyway.

Labels: Dorchester, food, math, teaching and learning, travel, Weston

Take one part Raymond Chandler and two parts Philip K. Dick. Or maybe it’s two parts Dashiell Hammett and one part Aldous Huxley. Let’s try all four. Then add three parts of George Orwell. Mix them all together, and you get Gun, with Occasional Music, by Jonathan Lethem, a noir science fiction thriller that successfully carries off this odd hybrid. I listened to the audiobook version, and I’m not sure whether it would have taken more time or less time to figure out what was going on if I had read it in print. Anyway, this odd tale of California in the very near future portrays a world of humanoid (“evolved”) animals, near-universal legal drug use, and a totalitarian government, all with a definite gloss of science fiction rather than fantasy. The noirish atmosphere is palpable and unsubtle. Characters are fairly interesting, the plot is intriguing, but basically the setting is all. Do read it (or listen to it), even if you don’t think it’s your cup of tea.

Labels: books

I mentioned two days ago that I was going to watch N is a Number: A Portrait of Paul Erdős, a documentary that had been enthusiastically recommended to me by my former student, Kelly Mathislife. She writes that N is a Number is the “best movie ever” — although she does admit to a slight bias since Erdős is her hero.

So now I’ve watched it, with help from Netflix, which coincidentally delivered the DVD on Erdős’s birthday! This really was a genuine coincidence, since I had put it in my queue a couple of months ago with no idea when it would rise to #1. Anyway, Kelly knows that I certainly intend no disrespect toward her when I point out that of course she was exaggerating; N is a Number isn’t quite the “best movie ever.” It isn’t even even the best documentary ever. But it’s definitely a well-made, captivating documentary that should be watched by every math teacher, math student, and mathematician. It becomes totally clear that Erdős meets Paul Graham’s criteria that I discussed two days ago: absolute honesty and caring obsessively about his work.

Erdős, who died 12 years ago at age 83, was one of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th Century and certainly the most prolific; he is best known for his peripatetic life style, having had no fixed abode and collaborating extensively with hundreds of other mathematicians wherever he traveled. The movie is successful at vividly letting the viewer know the kind of person Erdős was, portraying him in person and through the eyes of his collaborators. Fortunately the filmmakers were willing to use subtitles extensively, since the accents of various Hungarian mathematicians (and others) could get in the way of ready understanding, even though almost everyone in the documentary was speaking English. As a math teacher, I thought there was a bit too much of an emphasis on anecdotes, but that’s a small cavil; I use anecdotes myself in similar ways, and I recognize that it’s the best way for the film to appeal to a general audience, who wouldn’t want to watch or listen to lots of mathematics.

I want to quote a couple of snippets out of N is a Number. One comes from Ron Graham — another Graham! but no relation to the aforementioned Paul Graham, as far as I know — who has a major role in the movie:

When mathematics appears in print, it’s theorem, proof, theorem, proof, but when we’re doing math it’s a completely different thing. It’s three or four people sitting around with cups of coffee, a pad of paper, throwing ideas back and forth, making a lot of conjectures, most of which turn out to be completely false.

That’s what should happen from time to time in our math classes, but it almost never does, even at Weston, except in last year’s Friday-afternoon optional after-school math get-togethers.

The other snippet comes from Erdős himself:

We’re trying to read the pages of The Book. We don’t create mathematics, we’re just trying to read the pages of The Book.

How Platonist can you get? This is clearly the right attitude toward the mathematical endeavor!

Labels: math, movies, teaching and learning, Weston

As I was reading Paul Graham’s essay, “Some Heroes,” it struck me that I’ve never liked being asked who my heroes are. In his second and fourth paragraphs, Graham reflects on the question itself:

I’m not claiming this is a list of the n most admirable people. Who could make such a list, even if they wanted to?

...

When I thought about what it meant to call someone a hero, it meant I’d decide what to do by asking what they’d do in the same situation. That’s a stricter standard than admiration.

I had never thought of that criterion before, but perhaps it would unstick me. Then I thought of the statement from one of my former students that Paul Erdős is her hero. [Brief aside: it’s tough to get the correct diacritic over that o. The natural tendency is to try for an unlaut — Erdös — especially since umlauts are relatively easy in HTML. But in Hungarian the diacritic looks like a double acute accent rather than an umlaut, producing a character with Unicode ID 0151. Thus you want “&#” followed by “x0151;” in HTML. End of aside.] So I wondered whether Erdős would fit the description in Graham’s next paragraph:

After I made the list, I looked to see if there was a pattern, and there was, a very clear one. Everyone on the list had two qualities: they cared almost excessively about their work, and they were absolutely honest. By honest I don’t mean trustworthy so much as that they never pander: they never say or do something because that’s what the audience wants. They are all fundamentally subversive for this reason, though they conceal it to varying degrees.

More on Erdős after I watch the movie about him. But note that Graham’s characterization is not a definition of “hero”; it’s simply a comment on two of their properties. Graham’s twelve heroes are Jack Lambert, Kenneth Clark, Larry Mihalko, Leonardo da Vinci, Robert Morris, P.G. Wodehouse, Alexander Calder, Jane Austen, John McCarthy, the Spitfire, Steve Jobs, and Isaac Newton. Could I make a similar list (though surely not duplicating any of Graham’s)?

I don’t think so.

But it did make me think about the issue. Which people have influenced me to such an extent that I would consider them to be my heroes? Would I really “decide what to do by asking what they’d do in the same situation”? Would my list consist of people who “cared almost excessively about their work” and “were absolutely honest”?

I suppose Isaac Asimov, Socrates, Charles Darwin, and Bertrand Russell would come to mind first. And maybe Johann Sebastian Bach. And probably Martin Gardner and Noam Chomsky. And it’s a cliché to put one’s mother and father on such a list, but it’s a cliché for a reason, so I will do that as well. And shouldn’t Shakespeare and Ibsen be on the list? And perhaps James Joyce? Well, that’s twelve, but I’m not convinced. This bears more thought...

Labels: books, life, math, movies, teaching and learning

Two and a half years ago I wrote a brief negative review of Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions, by Ben Mezrich. I suggested that the account seemed to be fictional (even though it claims to be non-fiction) and that it “alternates between melodrama and tedium.”

Now they’ve gone and made a movie of it, 21. The plot outline on IMDb asserts that the movie is a “fact-based story,” But Drake Bennett’s article about it in the Boston Globe has this comment on the original book:

Bringing Down the House is not a work of “nonfiction” in any meaningful sense of the word. Instead of describing events as they happened, Mezrich appears to have worked more as a collage artist, drawing some facts from interviews, inventing certain others, and then recombining these into novel scenes that didn’t happen and characters who never lived. The result is a crowd-pleasing story, eagerly marketed by his publishers as true — but which several of the students who participated say is embellished beyond recognition.

I haven’t seen the movie yet, but the Globe article certainly makes me skeptical. Read the article, not the book.

Labels: books, math, movies

Remember the big kerfuffle in 1992 when Mattel released a Teen Talk Barbie that said “Math is hard, let’s go shopping”? (Actually, if you look it up, you’ll find some references that quote it that way, and others that quote it as “Math class is tough. Want to go shopping? Okay, meet me at the mall.”) The reason for the kerfuffle was of course the not-so-subtle subtext suggesting that teenage girls can’t do math — because it’s too hard for them — so they should go shopping instead.

So, yesterday I stopped at the Trader Joe’s in Cambridge on the way home, and I happened to get a chatty cashier. She asked me what I do for a living, and I told her I’m a high-school math teacher. Needless to say, I expected to hear the familiar reply: “I never was any good at math.” Sure enough, that’s pretty much what she said. (Actually, it was a bit more complicated. She told me that she did well in geometry but never understood algebra. Except for geometry she did poorly in both high-school and college math because she could never deal with formulas. But now she’s an artist... well, you don’t want to know the whole story, but the key line is that she finally realized that math and art are actually a lot more alike than she had ever guessed, since “math and art are both about patterns and relationships.” Yes!)

And then this afternoon I got a phone call from my dental hygienist who told me that we needed to change my appointment because she has to take four weeks off to study for retaking her dental school admission exams, since she failed the math portion. “I never was any good at math.” Sigh. As Jerry P. King put it, “There will come a time when mathematical ignorance, like public smoking, will become socially unacceptable.” But for now for some reason it’s acceptable to admit inability to do math but not inability to read.

P.S.: Speaking of Trader Joe’s, there are 16 Trader Joe’s in Masssachusetts, so why isn’t there one in Dorchester? The demographics are right. Pass the word to the Trader Joe’s management!

Labels: Dorchester, math, teaching and learning

On February 26, I wrote a mildly positive review of Nursery Crimes, by Ayelet Waldman. Because another novel in this series, The Big Nap, appeared to be more interesting, I decided (without great enthusiasm) to give it a read. I am pleased to report that this effort is distinctly more successful than Nursery Crimes, even though it has the same protagonist and the same basic formula: the Harvard-educated lawyer is still a stay-at-home mom, not the most promising premise for a story, even if she does turn out to be a (very) amateur detective as well, aided by her former prosecutorial experience.

Anyway, the most interesting aspect of The Big Nap is the interactions between the mainstream-Jewish protagonist and members of the Orthodox Jewish community in Los Angeles, especially the Hasidic subculture. As happens when reading many good works of fiction, I learned a lot from this novel (though I believe that the Verbover branch of Hasidism is an invention of Waldman and/or her husband, Michael Chabon, since I can find no references to it outside of their respective novels). While The Big Nap is still a light novel, it definitely has more heft than its predecessor and I found it worth reading. Maybe it would have meant still more to me if I had ever had the experience of being a mother, but (un)fortunately I haven’t. Nevertheless, I still recommend it to fellow non-mothers if you want an easy-to-read detective novel with a multicultural Jewish theme.

By the way, the significance of the title’s apparent allusion to Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep (or perhaps it’s to the movies made from the Chandler novel) escapes me. Maybe it would help if I read the book or saw the film...

Labels: books

Today was a very successful Career Day at Weston High School. I highly recommend the concept to other high schools — if you have a dedicated, highly organized team of people to take care of all the logistics. People who have served on the Local Arrangements committee for conferences and conventions will know what I’m talking about, but others might not realize how daunting it all is.

We started with a plenary session in which Alec Sulkin delivered the keynote address and Odds Bodkin provided entertainment. Actually, and fittingly, the keynote address was definitely entertaining as well as being educational, and the entertainment also had an educational component. Sulkin is a writer and supervising producer for Family Guy, so it came as no surprise that his talk was both engaging and amusing. Bodkin is a musical story-teller who is great at what he does, but unfortunately what he does isn’t a great match for a teenage audience. Sulkin’s talk, not surprisingly, is just right for a teenage audience — at least in their eyes. Adults may disagree.

Anyway, after the plenary, we split up into a couple of hundred breakout sessions. (As I say, the organization of this event was a staggering achievement.) Each student was assigned to four out of five sessions (to allow time for lunch); they made selections ahead of time, and they got their choices except if a session was full and the student had neglected to select alternates. If you read the descriptions of the speakers, you will see the huge variety offered. Here are excerpts, with one description randomly chosen from each of the five umbrella areas:

The Arts

When she was 25, Hilary Price was the youngest woman ever to have a syndicated daily comic strip. Her strip, Rhymes With Orange, appears in 150 newspapers internationally, and locally in The Boston Globe. Rhymes With Orange won Best Cartoon Panel last year from The National Cartoonists’ Society.

Business

This speaker is currently in marketing/sales of high tech multiplexers, routers, WAN, LAN and IP Telephony. But, it’s the way he got there that matters. He has been a substitute high school teacher, worked for a private detective, in a textile mill in Maine, in a furniture store and a phone company and owned a bar. This speaker will give you perspective that there are many opportunities for you, not just one path to success.

Crafts

What is it like to work on innovative product development for iTunes, iPods or the present Macintosh product line? What does it take to be part of a company that encourages employees to spin off other companies and lead with innovation? This speaker, an account manager in the higher education channel, will discuss the variety of jobs at Apple Computer including sales, marketing, product development and technical support in the field. Discussion on Campus Rep jobs that are also available when you attend college so you can get an early look at life working at Apple will also be presented.

Science

Jill Downing is a cardiologist who practices at Boston Medical Center in Boston's South End. She is interested in preventive cardiology which involves working with patients to identify and modify heart disease risk factors. Currently she spends her time with clinical research at BMC. Her career in health care began as a registered nurse working in such diverse settings as Honduras, the Dominican Republic, and Boston. Her experience highlights some of the challenges faced by the aspiring medical professional in terms of balancing career and family demands.

Social Services

Alan Solomont has been a community organizer and an entrepreneur. He is a veteran of six presidential campaigns and teaches a college course on the American presidency. He is a philanthropist and trained to be a registered nurse. He is proof that a career need not follow a straight line, and that there are many ways to make a difference.

OK, so you may disagree with what goes under the Crafts category. And we note that some speakers chose to include their name within their brief bios, and others didn’t, but all the names are on the website. It was definitely a fine day. Of course it helps to have the kinds of connections found in a community like Weston.

Labels: teaching and learning, Weston

Every school will tell you that academics are more important than sports. After all, it is a school. Even the most sports-minded principal will ban an athlete from playing football if his grades are too low, but no one would ban a student from class because his athletic performance was poor.

But take a look at the pages where schools are mentioned in the newspaper. It’s almost all because of sports. (OK, there’s also crime, but let’s not go there.) Even in Massachusetts it’s really a joke to expect the same kind of coverage for the math team as the paper gives to the football team (or, in the case of Weston, as it gives to the swimming and golf teams). Yes, yes, I know that participating in an athletic team can build all sorts of virtues, from persistence and cooperation to sportsmanship and planning, but it’s still not what the mission of a school is all about.

And then we get to the arts. Weston has first-rate theater and music programs, an excellent Art Department, a very successful dance team, but what kind of coverage do they get? I was reminded of this issue in a post by Adam Gaffin in this morning’s Universal Hub:

Writing on the Herald site, Tai Irwin contrasts the Globe’s coverage of the Massachusetts High School Drama Guild Finals — which it sponsored — with its Sunday coverage of high-school athletes. The final tally:

Athletes: 16 pages of coverage.
Drama kids: Zero.

The excerpt from Tai Irwin is telling:

... The message is very clear: although Westford, Nauset, and Weston received awards, and many students were singled out for theatrical excellence, once again it’s sports that matter most, even to the exclusion of intellectual and artistic activities. What a great thing to tell our kids, over and over again. Never mind the brain pursuits — the science fairs and business/educational coops, and never mind the arts, dance, music, drama. The thing that is going to solve all our problems and nurture all our values best is sports. ...

I couldn’t say it any better myself. So I won’t try.

Labels: life, teaching and learning, Weston

Don McLeroy, chairman of the Texas State Board of Education, certainly understands cultural sensitivity with his global perspective:

“What good does it do to put a Chinese story in an English book?” he said. “You learn all these Chinese words, OK. That’s not going to help you master... English. So you really don’t want Chinese books with a bunch of crazy Chinese words in them. Why should you take a child’s time trying to learn a word that they’ll never ever use again?”

He added that some words — such as chow mein — might be useful.

Oh, well, it’s Texas. Weston is much too enlightened for such attitudes. We take our global perspectives seriously, as you can see from the list of current projects, which include Giant Chinese Dragons & Lions, Uganda Professional Development Project, Columbian Exchange, Rhythm Kids: An African Drumming Experience, and Bringing the Art Experience of Ecuador into the Classroom.

Labels: linguistics, teaching and learning, Weston

In one of those typical synchronicities, two of my students have just asked me how they can create their own blogs — a Weston sophomore yesterday, and a Saturday Course fifth-grader today. The Weston student suggested that I should post the answer in my blog, so here it is, short and sweet:

1. Go to www.blogger.com.


2. Follow the 3 easy steps displayed on that page.

That was easy^®, as they say at Staples.

Labels: teaching and learning, technology

What’s the matter with math education today? No, it’s not that kids don’t know the basics, despite what some people say. And it’s not that teachers are teaching “fuzzy math,” despite what some people say. Paul Lockhart has the correct analysis:

If I had to design a mechanism for the express purpose of destroying a child’s natural curiosity and love of pattern-making, I couldn’t possibly do as good a job as is currently being done — I simply wouldn’t have the imagination to come up with crushing ideas that constitute contemporary mathematics education.

This sentence comes from “A Mathematician’s Lament,” an essay by Paul Lockhart, a professional mathematician. The link to this essay was found in Keith Devlin’s regular column in MAA Online, a publication of the Mathematical Association of America. (Devlin is best known for his radio columns, Saturday mornings on NPR’s Weekend Edition, and is less well-known as the author of The Numbers behind Numb3rs, which will be the topic of another post in this blog. But I don’t want to discuss Devlin here; I want to discuss Lockhart.)

Every math student, every parent of a math student, every curriculum developer, and especially every math teacher should read Lockhart’s essay. It’s not that it’s perfect, for of course it has many flaws, but its point of view is so provocatively on target that it will provide essential fodder for critical discussions. It zeroes right in what’s important in mathematics and on the misplaced emphasis of the way it’s taught in school (or skool, as my friend Brian would write):

I’m not complaining about the presence of facts and formulas in our mathematics classes, I’m complaining about the lack of mathematics in our mathematics classes.

If your art teacher were to tell you that painting is all about filling in numbered regions, you would know that something was wrong. The culture informs you — there are museums and galleries, as well as the art in your own home. Painting is well understood by society as a medium of human expression... But if your math teacher gives you the impression, either expressly or by default, that mathematics is about formulas and definitions and memorizing algorithms, who will set you straight?

I could keep quoting thought-provoking excerpts, but I’m not going to do so; just read Lockhart’s essay yourself!

But wait! I can’t resist quoting his “completely honest” course description for the typical Algebra II course as taught in American high schools:

The subject of this course is the unmotivated and inappropriate use of coordinate geometry. Conic sections are introduced in a coordinate framework so as to avoid the aesthetic simplicity of cones and their sections. Students will learn to rewrite quadratic forms in a variety of standard formats for no reason whatsoever. Exponential and logarithmic functions are also introduced in Algebra II, despite not being algebraic objects, simply because they have to be stuck in somewhere, apparently. The name of the course is chosen to reinforce the ladder mythology.

Fortunately things aren’t quite this bad at Weston. But it’s still painfully close to the truth. Solutions, anyone?

Labels: math, teaching and learning, Weston

Novelist Elinor Lipman wrote an excellent essay in the Boston Globe the day before yesterday, entitled “If I ruled the admissions universe.” I would like all high school juniors to read it. I just wish I could agree with it.

The thrust of the essay was an attempt to reduce college admissions anxiety by pointing out that your future is not determined by where you go to college. You are just as likely to be successful and happy if you go to your local state college as you will be if you go to Yale. That bit may be true, although it’s very hard to tease out the statistics, since of course we’re not talking about equivalent populations. Let’s look at some excerpts:

...My mission today is to celebrate the safety over the reach, to say to high school seniors, “You who are waiting anxiously for that fat envelope, please know that you’ll enjoy the same success and happiness whether you end up at Bates, Bowdoin, or Ball State.”

When I was 20 an older friend predicted, “Ten years from now, no one will care where you went to school. In fact, no one will ask.” Ridiculous, I thought. She turned out to be right. Where you live between the ages of 18 and 22 won't define who you are. One day soon, the proud new college decal on your family car’s rear window will start looking a little uncool.

...

In 1987, a friend’s son wrote to admissions officers explaining that he had fallen in love and was therefore distracted, so could they please excuse the C in physics? They did. He went to Yale. If he hadn’t? I daresay he would be the same hero he is today, getting the wrongly convicted out of prisons through the Innocence Project.

...

If I ruled this new admissions universe, I would study the applications and sniff out the resume padders whose parents could afford the semester in the rain forests. I’d want good smart kids, including the ones who didn’t shine as brightly as the alleged stars at this moment in their high school lives... Maybe I would go with the lottery, or maybe just take the first 1,000 who applied. Studies would have shown that you are all excellent, and in the end, I couldn’t go wrong.

So how would this essay go over in a town like Weston? I suppose I should simply ask some of my high-achieving juniors to read it, and we’ll see what they say. As a graduate of Lowell High School and Simmons College, the undeniably successful Lipman must know what she’s talking about, but my prediction is that her essay won’t be persuasive. She makes some fine points, but...I’m not convinced. I wish I could agree with it.

Labels: teaching and learning, Weston

Today was the first day of disruptive MCAS testing. One of my sections of college-prep Algebra II was wiped out, the other was barely affected. There will be a repeat performance on Thursday. Somehow this is supposed to improve education, even though it takes away from learning time and increases student anxiety.

Speaking of which, take a look at pediatrician Dr. Gwenn’s article on MCASitis (thanks to Adam Gaffin’s Universal Hub for the link). Here is an excerpt:

Yesterday I saw a young girl in my office who had very bad tummy aches... Chatting with this young, pleasant child and her mom I learned she’s in third grade in a town near mine and facing the dreaded MCAS testing today — our State’s standardized testing that starts in third grade and goes all the way through tenth. Out of the blue she said, “I’m scared of the MCAS — my teachers told me that the graders are tough and we have to watch how we answer the written answer.”

Now I had my answer. This young girl had what I have come to call “MCASitis”...a form of performance anxiety brought on every Spring here in Massachusetts. You likely have a similar form in your State.

Test taking anxiety is truly real, even for young kids. And, with anxiety can come physical symptoms such as stomach aches.

But of course it’s supposed to ensure that no child is left behind.

Labels: teaching and learning, Weston

Today was Wellness Day at Weston High School — a day off for the students, and a day of professional development workshops for the teachers.

“Professional development”: what thoughts does that phrase conjure up? FWIW, let’s see what Wikipedia has to say:

Professional development often refers to verbal and tactile skills required for maintaining a specific career path or to general skills offered through continuing education, including the more general skills area of personal development. It can be seen as training to keep current with changing technology and practices in a profession or in the concept of lifelong learning.

Actually, that’s not bad, except for the bizarre reference to “verbal and tactile skills” in the first clause. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts appropriately requires all teachers to participate in professional development every year, and the town of Weston offers us a wide variety of opportunities, ranging from required curriculum-based seminars to optional workshops in the summer. Once a year we have Wellness Day.

So, what is it that makes me uncomfortable about this? I do recognize that all employers have a legitimate interest in keeping their employees healthy and productive. And I do recognize that a Wellness Day can be useful, fun, and intellectually stimulating. And I do recognize that it could also be an opportunity for community-building. Yet somehow it doesn’t add up for me. At least it doesn’t add up to professional development. Not to my eyes, at any rate.

And what, you ask, did I do today? We had some required activities, plus one session where there was a one-out-of-four choice, and two sesions where there was a one-out-of-many choice. During the day I participated in a “dumb game,” I listened to a very worthwhile presentation on bullying from a representative of the Middlesex County District Attorney’s office [!], I had lunch with my colleagues (a lovely make-your-own-fajitas meal organized and paid for by the PTO and prepared by the Administrative Council), I attended a session that showed a couple of movies about first aid, and I went on a long walk. I could have gone on the walk on my own, not on school time, but at least this way I got to have an extended one-on-one conversation with the drama teacher/theater director. I enjoyed that a lot, since I rarely get more than five minutes with him.

In fact, I enjoyed the whole day. But I’m still not convinced that it’s professional development.

Labels: teaching and learning, Weston

In yesterday’s post, I recommended watching the movie of Mozart and the Whale before reading the book. And then I got to thinking about whether this was the natural order: after all, in most cases a movie is written after the book on which it is baed, so why shouldn’t it also be watched afterwards?

In standard mathematical fashion, let’s see whether we can abstract from the concrete example of one movie/book pairing to the more general case. What happens with other such pairs? Sometimes the order doesn’t matter. And often I read a book as soon as it comes out and then have to wait for the movie, so the order is imposed artificially. What are the consequences of reading the book first? On the plus side, you have the freedom to visualize characters and scenes as you wish, and you can learn the necessary background that might be omitted from the movie. On the minus side, the movie is usually a disappointment, precisely because it can’t possibly capture everything in the book. Furthermore, my own view is that surprises and plot twists in a movie are more effective when one hasn’t read the book first. There are surely exceptions, but on the whole I come down on the side of always reading a book after seeing the movie wherever possible.

Labels: books, movies

On February 20 I reviewed Mozart and the Whale: An Asperger’s Love Story. After seeing and enjoying this fascinating movie, I decided to read the autobiography on which it was based. (Can I still call it an autobiography when it was “written” by two people, both Jerry Newport and Mary Newport? Not to mention Johnny Dodd, a writer for People who served as ghostwriter and who is duly credited?) I highly recommend reading this book — after you see the movie. Not surprisingly, the movie had to leave out lots and lots of material, and occasionally had to take artistic license, but it doesn’t actually contradict anything in the book, either in fact or in tone. The major difference is...well, I don’t want to reveal any spoilers, so let’s just say that the Newports’ relationship and Mary’s psyche turn out to be much more complicated than portrayed in the film. Again, no surprises there.

The only real problem with the book is that the first-person point of view changes without warning from section to section. Presumably Dodd interviewed the Newports extensively and fashioned the narrative out of their information with an attempt to capture their separate voices. But apparently he isn’t skilled enough to succeed at this endeavor, since it’s often impossible to tell who’s speaking except from external clues (like mentioning the spouse). Of course this makes me wonder whether he is actually capturing the voice of either Newport; probably what’s coming across is Dodd’s voice.

Labels: books, movies, teaching and learning

Another of the great ones is gone. Scientist, science fiction writer, and visionary Arthur C. Clarke died the day before yesterday at age 90. He is best known for the novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, on which the eternally rewatchable movie of the same name was based (though they were written simultaneously!). But he made so many more contributions than that. The Wikipedia article on him provides a fairly decent summary, including links to various obituaries. I particularly recommend the article about him by fellow writer David Brin, in the Daily Kos of all places. The NPR story on yesterday’s Morning Edition was an effective four-minute vignette.

I particularly remember Clarke’s observation that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” as well as his agreement with the late, lamented Isaac Asimov that each would refer to himself as “the world’s second best science fiction writer.” As Asimov wrote in his autobiography:

Arthur Charles Clarke was born toward the end of 1917 in Great Britain. He is another science fiction writer who has been thoroughly educated in science and he did extremely well in physics and mathematics.

He and I are now widely known as the Big Two of science fiction. Until early 1988, as I’ve said, people spoke of the Big Three, but then Arthur fashioned a little human figurine of wax and with a long pin.

At least, he has told me this. Perhaps he’s trying to warn me. I have made it quite plain to him, however, that if he were to find himself the Big One, he would be very lonely. At the thought of that, he was affected to the point of tears, so I think I’m safe.

I’m very fond of Arthur, and have been for forty years. We came to an agreement many years ago in a taxi which, at the time, was moving south on Park Avenue, so it is called the Treaty of Park Avenue. By it, I have agreed to maintain, on questioning, that Arthur is the best science fiction writer in the world, though I am also allowed to say, if questioned assiduously, that I am breathing down his neck as we run. In return, Arthur has agreed to insist, forever, that I am the best science writer in the world. He must say it, whether he believes it or not.

I don’t know if he gets credited for my stuff, but I am frequently blamed for his. People have a tendency to confuse us because we both write cerebral stories in which scientific ideas are more important than action.

Both Clarke and Asimov were science-based writers of science fiction; neither was a prose stylist, but both of them stuck to a transparent style that let the content of their writing shine through with great clarity.

Labels: books, teaching and learning, technology

I recently listened to the audiobook of Eye of the Beholder, by David Ellis. This work is a hybrid of two genres: the thriller and the police procedural. It’s definitely a page-turner — well, I can’t use that metaphor for the audiobook version, so let’s just say that it kept holding my attention and made me want to continue. But I’m not convinced that the hybrid genre has led to hybrid vigor. Perhaps that’s because of a continually jarring switch back-and-forth between a first-person POV and a third-person POV. The writing is clearly inspired by John Grisham and Jeffery Deaver, with an admixture of Ed McBain, but there are a lot of original aspects as well. In particular, the good guys aren’t completely good and some of the bad guys aren’t completely bad (except for one). In Deaver style, there are several plot twists whereby people aren’t who they seem to be. The major downside is that several scenes are extremely violent, enough so to turn off some readers completely. For those who can stand the violence, I recommend this study of lawyers, cops, criminals, and academe — quite a combination!

Labels: books

I guess Kalmbach didn’t have 100 fingers:

Labels: math, model railroads

Actually, I never knew you, sad to say. For 15 years now I have been intending to meet George Sanborn and talk with him about the MBTA (since my model railroad layout is based loosely on the MBTA of 1969). But I kept putting it off, and now it’s too late. Adam Gaffin’s remembrance, titled “Remembering Boston's train man,” links to Dirty Water and to Commute-a-holic. Read the comments to Gaffin’s post, and the various links in the original post and within the comments. As SwirlyGrrl says in her title to her otherwise blank post, “He will ride forever ’neath the streets of Boston.” Why did I keep thinking that I could always talk with him next year?

P.S.: I have just been told about the Globe’s article on George Sanborn. Read that too.

Labels: life, model railroads

This morning I went to the Spring Open House of the South Shore Model Railroad Club in Hingham, MA. Despite the excessive number of young children present, it was an excellent layout, with a reasonable but small quantity of vendors as well. The layout was well worth seeing, especially the structures and scenery. I especially liked the urban scenes, including a semi-covered track entering a city. The nearby harbor was less than completely effective, but water is especially difficult to model convincingly. I’m certainly not going to try to become a member, as their requirements include attending 18 meetings within a period of nine months! So I suppose it fits into the category of “a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.” I do, however, plan to return for a longer visit for their next open house in the fall.

Labels: model railroads