Happy Memorial Day

It’s a real holiday.  What are you doing today?

Moving towards the Village and other stuff

Hi again from the home office.

Time does fly.   The university is still here amidst what seems to be an unusually low key spring term (IMHO).  It’s Buffalo Creek weekend and Memorial Day weekend.

More important, my older son is back from Boston College via a brief stint in Madrid with his brother and grandparents.  (My wife, Prof. Ruiz, is in northern Spain with Prof. West-Settle trekking the Camino de Santiago.  So, we dropped #2 son with the grandparents.)

So, my house is half full.  Never, ever underestimate how happy your folks are to see your faces when you come back home.  Why, I happily threw on a load of his laundry just a few minutes ago this morning.

I’ll get over that, but still…

You had to love Roger Kubarych.  One of the things I like about getting away from the university is how we shed a bit of the formality of the classroom.  Also, we moved from a small, sorta southern, rural town (“bless your heart”) to New York (“whaddaya want?!?!”).  You have to like the non-nonsense approach to things that Kubarych had.  He was very impressed by your papers.

The Council on Foreign Relations really is an outstanding outfit.  Irina’s overview gave you a nice sense of its resources.

More to come from the home office later.

Give my regards to Broadway….

Just a quick note to say that after a day of hauling boxes and scraping dried Cheese Whiz off a whiteboard (I wish I was making this up), I’m off to see “West Side Story” on Broadway! The 1961 film version is one of my all-time favorite movies, and the actress playing Maria was just nominated for a Toy, so I’m very excited.

Asssignment/Meeting with Roger Kubarych

All–

Please trade notes among yourselves so that everyone knows about this.

I forwarded the email with links to readings for Mr. Kubarych’s talk.  Since most of the readings are links, it was simplest just to forward instead of downloading and reattaching them.

Here is the assignment as I emailed it to you:

As an assignment for this visit, I would like you to prepare a one-page commentary on/criticism of the reading, along with 2 or 3 questions for Mr. Kubarych. I will forward these to him in advance of our visit, so please get this assignment to me via email no later than 11 PM on Wednesday 13 May.

Essentially, I’d like you to regard this meeting as a “briefing.”  In this spirit, we’d want Mr. Kubarych to speak to our questions as well as offer his independent insights into the financial crisis.  Therefore, to maximize the briefing’s efficiency, I’d want to pass our questions on to him in advance.

Living it up in the Garden State

Since last Tuesday, I’ve been on the set during the taping of “Mad Money.” My role is generally acting as an assistant to the assistant producer. But basically, if anyone tells me to do something—grab this piece of paper or that prop— I run and do it. And there’s always something to be done.

I have arranged tables of junk food and gardening products for Jim Cramer to talk about them on air. I’ve put hundreds of archive tapes in chronological order. I’ve made cardboard cutouts of bears. I helped make a “Milk-amid”—a pyramid comprised of 50 gallons of soymilk and butter. Every day is different than the one before, and the day after will be different too. This kind of atmosphere is exciting and invigorating to work in.

To get to CNBC, I’ve been walking about a mile to the upper east side to catch the free shuttle for CNBC employees every morning. I tried it the first morning in flip flops, but have since switched to sneakers. I feel a little silly trekking around in a dress or other work wear and my dirty sneakers, but it’s necessary. The ride from Manhattan to Englewood Cliffs, NJ takes a little under 45 minutes, depending on the traffic. We take the GW bridge and get a nice view of the city skyline as we head into New Jersey every day.

That’s when the heels come on. Carolyn, I tried to take your advice, I really did. But the heels are inescapable. Every female, even an eight-months-pregnant staffer, wears heels. Even if they’re wearing jeans and a tshirt. Since I’m spending most of my day in a prop closet, I indulged a little bit and wore flats today. My ankles are thanking me.