I've been a social butterfly lately. On Saturday, I attended David Wolff's birthday party. It was a bit of a drive, but a very nice party. There were 30 or 40 people there at the peak. The esperantist contingent was well represented. I had a good time chatting with people, but left relatively early, since I had a long drive home.
On Sunday Buzz and I went to a local bar, 
The Moan and Dove, that was having a Belgian beer festival. We tried a handful of different kinds of better. My favorite was Bitter XX. We tried a variety other beers. One called "cezanne" (or maybe "saison") was pretty good. One called "3 philosophers" was extremely nasty -- it reminded me of anisette: syrupy and horrible. We tried "fantome", which was kind of sweet and sour. Another was even more sour -- almost like wine vinegar -- with a strong pinkish color. That was way too weird for me. It was nice to try new things, however, and to have a bartender who knew what he was talking about. We'll have to go back again.
Today there was a meeting of the "contract" (ie non-tenure track) faculty and the bargaining team that is negotiating the new contract. Until last year, there had been little effort by the union to reach out to contract faculty, but with the university currently hiring as many contract faculty as tenure-system faculty, the union has begun to come around to see the importance of representing the non-tenure system people. It's nice to see our issues being addressed. At the same time, it's interesting to see the people who are resistant to unions because it doesn't directly benefit them: their department is supportive and they have enough independence to be willing to advocate for themselves and negotiate for good circumstances. It's hard for those people to identify with a community and recognize the value of making sure that the community doesn't allow anyone to be mistreated by the system.
StevenBrewer