The research side of what I accomplished that year is embedded in my c.v., so I would like to share what comes to the surface from my private memory.
Chapter 1. The most valuable resource at CASBS was Kathleen Much, the book doctor. When I first met her, it was with all the prejudice a Steeler fan has to a Texas accent. So I didn’t engage. Then, I thought, what the heck, it’s free. Kathleen edited three books for me over the next fifteen years, in part as a deservedly paid consultant, and in part free-loading on a co-author’s privilege in his year as a fellow.
Chapter 2. I used a video projector connected to my laptop at my Wed. night talk. I showed some animations of the early DW-NOMINATE work with Keith Poole. These projectors cost about $30,000 at the time, and the Center had to borrow one from the Stanford campus. Fellow Paul Holland queried as the seminar started, “You have the guts to do this in real time?”. All went smoothly.
Chapter 3. There was a giant fig tree outside my office. The figs were delicious. For several weeks, I stayed late and took a dozen or two home nightly. By the time I returned to the Center in 1998-99, that tree had been cut down. I never asked why. And the statute of limitations for my crime had run out.
Chapter 4. My wife exited the labor force when she migrated to the US and had a child at age 41. At the time the Center had a sort of NGO that tried to bring together non-working female spouses of fellows. (Same deal back at Carnegie Mellon.) My wife had no interest in this. At the same time, she would, at times, feel disrespected by working academic women, feminists de rigeur, who felt superior to non-working women. Fortunately, there seems to have been progress over the years. There appears to be both more tolerance of non-working women and less of a need to organize their hours.
Howard Rosenthal
Politics Dept., NYU
19 W, 4th Street, 2nd Floor
New York, NY 10012
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