Frenetic activity

I really enjoyed the road trip to UConn to look at the collections space they have. It was new, beautiful, and well-appointed. I took some pictures (posted at Flickr) and we spent some time grilling them about how they persuaded their campus to dedicate the space to the collections. UMass has never expressed much interest in supporting the collections and some administrators have been downright hostile. I always have loved collections -- it was what got me interested in biology in the first place. And I've spent a lot of time using and contributing to collections: doing a archeological faunal analysis at Michigan State, making herbarium cards for plant systematics, and building an insect collection when I took entomology. Unfortunately, due to the lack of support, we've already lost a number of the collections that got donated away when the people who were supporting them left and could see the collections might just get thrown out, given the lack of support from the administration. With the new construction going on and the proposed college mergers, its a good time to bring all of the natural history collections together and provide for their maintenance. I've started planting seeds and we're talking about developing a proposal to outline what we need.

Being away for a day meant that the first class using the machines I set up on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday had to run without me being here, so I was a little worried coming back that it would have been a catastrophe. But everything went swimmingly and we got a nice thank-you from Kate about how smoothly everything ran. Whew!

I've spent yesterday and today catching up, going to meetings, and wrapping up loose ends. I'm taking tomorrow off, since I worked all last weekend. That will let me go to Esperanto in Northampton, meet with Tom and Zane at Woodstars to work on a paper, and go out for dinner and drinks with Buzz in the evening. I'm definitely in need of some distraction.