Today, I've come to UMass Lowell for a Science Education Online "cohort" meeting -- it's a chance to meet with the students who are taking the on-line courses and hear the kinds of things they say about their experiences. Kathy got a van from the university and 6 or 7 of us rode over together. Buzz and I need to finish making the revisions to our course for this fall and this should provide some useful insights. Unfortunately, Buzz could make the meeting, but we're planning to have lunch together on Friday.
Whenever I think of UMass Lowell, I think of 
Aiola, an international language that a UMass Lowell physics professor created. I'm always rather puzzled by people who think that creating a new language will somehow be more successful than Esperanto was or will be. I believe that trying to improve the nature of the language really is a case of diminishing returns -- Zamenhof did a good enough job that he discovered 98% of the means of making a language easy to learn. The other 2% of marginal improvements that might be made by trying to make the language better aren't what's holding people back from learning the language. And by not working together, energy gets siphoned off that might otherwise be productive for Esperanto.
The Amherst Esperanto group met at a new place last night -- we've changed the meetings to Panera Bread in Hadley. I had gotten confused and had gone to a peewee baseball game of Daniel's. Luckily, I remembered in just time and, although I didn't have to stop home and grab my stuff, we managed to arrive for the meeting right at 6pm. Even better, Sally had brought two copies of Gerda Malaperis, so we were able to read another chapter. I'm really pleased that the group has taken off and done so well. I'm really enjoying it a lot.
StevenBrewer