I was excited last night at the prospect of visiting a new restaurant in Boston. Folks trickled into the lobby and then the woman who coordinated the event arrived. I asked her where we were planning to go.
"There's this great Chinese restaurant in Cambridge," she said.
"This wouldn't happen to be the Royal East, would it?" I asked.
It was. So we went to the one restaurant I've been to before (indeed repeatedly) in Boston. It was great -- it always is. And afterwards, we went to Toscaninis for ice cream, practically recapitulating my last trip to Boston (although we went to the Toscaninis in Cambridge, rather than Harvard).
I had some good conversations with folks. A new faculty member at UMass was interested to discover that I could speak Esperanto and wanted to ask me about Incubus. Was that really Esperanto they were speaking? Was it good? I had to admit that I thought it was a pretty terrible movie, but that they were speaking Esperanto -- imperfectly pronounced, but mostly understandable. She was really excited when I pointed out that there were Esperanto bits in Blade III. Another faculty member mentioned the 
Lowell Folk Festival.
Today the meetings kick off early with a Higher Education caucus and then the general business meeting recommences and runs, without a break, until the end of business or so many people have left that there's no longer a quorum (when someone calls the quorum).
I arrived home in the early evening from the MTA annual meeting. I'm glad I went, as I learned a lot about how the organization works and what it does. The higher ed caucus was helpful to get a preview of the motions people were going to present during the business session. One was a symbolic effort to try to get the organization to invest more money and effort into organizing, which failed, but stimulated a good debate among the delegates.
The other interesting motion today was a response to a controversial article that had been proposed and shot down the previous day. Yesterday, a motion was introduced in response to the request of an MTA delegate from a previous year who is currently serving in Iraq and had requested that the MTA to take a stand opposing the war. An objection was raised and the motion was shot down without even allowing any discussion. Today's motion asked that the MTA organize a forum for members to discuss whether the MTA should take a stand and, if so, what position it should take. An unfriendly amendment, proposed to gut the language of the motion and leave it a vague statement of "support for the troops", was narrowly defeated. Eventually, the motion passed, but barely. Had the original motion been allowed to be debated on the floor, it probably would have failed, because many of us supported this motion primarily out of disgust that so many in the organization were unwilling to even allow it to be discussed. I was glad to see the motion pass.
While some of the less interesting parts were going on, I finished my design for some ESNE bookmarks that we're planning to get printed. I'm pleased with the design, but would like to get some suggestion to improve them. Instead, people keep telling me they like them. I guess that's OK too.
StevenBrewer