With the incredible terrorist threat posed by people carrying tubes of chapstick in their pocket, going through Las Vegas airport security requires that you normally arrive at the airport at least 2 hours in advance. Hence, I left for the airport at 8:30 a.m. on Thursday, went through the now standard body cavity search (hey, they said it was an essential part of the war on terror -- and I'm not going to give comfort to our enemies, so don those rubber gloves and search away), got on the plane, and didn't arrive at the hotel until about 8 p.m.
In other words, for a dinner meeting on Friday night, I have to leave on Thursday.
I pretty much hate traveling without my lovely wife, but I will admit there is one place that I enjoy going which she can't stand...
Yes, a nice, albeit overpriced, sushi bar for dinner in the hotel lobby.
By the way, speaking of overpriced, look at this bottle of water in my hotel room...
$3.50 for a small bottle! You'd think that the drought wasn't in the Mohave Desert where I live but in Boston with water at those prices!
The one nice thing about arriving early is that I had a chance to visit my alma mater, Tufts University...
After a dozen year absence from the campus (and some 15 years since graduation), this is the second time I saw my beloved Tufts this year. Cari and I were here in April and we posted some pictures on our blog back then.
Well, while I did stop by the bookstore to buy more junk with Tufts logos all over them, I found myself driving around the campus with an old friend Jen Bevins and looking at things that had little to do with my actual educational experience.
Consider what is now Yoshi's Japanese Restaurant...
The parts that say "Japanese" and "Cuisine" on the sides are the same, by the awning is new. When I was at Tufts, it was "Chico's Authentic Japanese Cuisine."
Go figure.
I think I spent thousands of dollars ordering Chinese food from this place...
It seems like Chinese restaurants always create some dish specifically rooted in the characteristics of their city. I used to always ask for an order of "Peking Ravioli" from this place.
Seriously, that is what it was called!
Of course, for lunch, we had to go to Nick's...
Veal parmigiana sub, toasted, with cheese, light on the sauce.
Mmmm good!
I also remember this building which used to house the student employment services...
Mostly it just contained books filled with listings of jobs both on campus and around the local area for students. I think I visited this building on my second day at Tufts because I needed a job.
I remember that this girl was reading the book of listings and then put it aside.
(On an aside, I use the word "girl" deliberately because all these college students look like children to me! I cannot get over how young they all look -- just like little kids. Of course, when I think about how old I must appear to them, well, let's not go there...)
Anyway, this girl was reading the book of job listings and put it aside. Being the polite boy (see, this isn't a sexist thing, we were all just kids) that I was, I didn't want to grab it without asking.
So I said, "Are you pau with this?"
She replied, "What?"
I repeated myself. "Are you pau with this?"
She again said, "What?"
Finally, in my most condescending tone imaginable, I said very slowly, "ARE YOU PAU WITH THIS?"
And it was then that I remembered I was no longer in Hawaii and she wouldn't understand the word "pau."
On a side note, it was walking down the street about two buildings down from the one pictured above that snow first fell on my head.
I was walking down the street and these little white things started fluttering around my head. I thought they were an insect of some kind. Hey, I grew up in paradise, not snow.
Of course, another right of passage for a growing young man was a trip to this place...
Which I visited on my 21st birthday with a classmate by the name of Scott Clarke.
We filled his car with more liquor than I could imagine, then drove back to campus. There I was, hanging out the window during my junior year of college, yelling out to any freshman by which we would drive.
"Hey, are you 21 yet," I would yell.
"No," they would inevitably answer.
"Sucker!" was my response, bottle of tequila in hand.
I was going to delete that lest my eldest daughter view this blog, but then I realized that I was of the legal drinking age of 21, I was NOT driving, and Scott was already 21 and was sober.
I was just being a silly, stupid kid in college.
And of course, I never had a single drink of anything anytime in college prior to my 21st birthday. So there, it's settled.
My hotel is right near the Boston Public Library...
Founded in 1848, the Boston Public Library is the first free municipal library in the United States. It was dedicated to the simple premise that an educated society was essential to our future as a nation and that our collective knowledge and history needed to be preserved and available to all.
At that point in our history, books were the only means through which information could be conveyed broadly and thus the Boston Public Library was established by the City of Boston.
It still remains the third largest library in the nation and served as a model and inspiration for local libraries everywhere.
Inscribed above it's entrance is the following...
"Free To All."
I took these pictures because as I walked back to my hotel, one inescapable truth entered my mind.
If there were no free public libraries in the United States today, and someone were to propose that we create such a system, the result would be obvious.
Politicians would be accusing the proponents of "socialist libraries." They would be screaming about the tax burden and say that the free market can handle the distribution of books just fine. Others would proclaim that if people want books, they should pay for them. There would be a powerful book manufacturers lobby in Washington who would hire Jack Abramoff to make illegal campaign contributions. They would defend themselves by saying that someone needed to fight against this anti-American socialist idea of "lending" books rather than allowing hard working companies to sell books for a fair price which create jobs for real Americans.
Then of course, when the advocates for free public libraries were humiliated and branded as "liberals," the giant multi-national book companies that bought off congress would then start manufacturing those books overseas and "outsource" those jobs to China.
Maybe I was born 200 years too late. Wait, I'm the wrong color for that...
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