One of the side effects of going to an historic university like Cornell is to learn a little of the local history. My host for the day, who also arranged dinner at a local, popular restaurant called Moosewood, educated me a little on the local history of Ithaca and Cornell. I was particularly intrigued in the story of Cornell’s namesake, a man who made his fame and money from his work designing a system to run telegraph lines and connect urban centers with the new technology. A farm tools entrepreneur, he found he needed to go and learn about the physical details of electricity in order to understand why his original design failed. He made a fortune as a founding member of Western Union. What became clear to me was that this area is an excellent representation of the fundamental exploratory and innovative spirit of this nation.
It was a pleasure to share my research with my colleagues at Cornell, and I certainly hope they enjoyed the experience as much as I did. It was particularly exciting to meet with students over lunch, have a little pizza and soda, and chat a little about the content of my seminar that day. It was also fun to go a little off topic and discuss other questions that they had.
Tomorrow, I am heading to Connecticut for a weekend with my parents before driving up to Boston for my colloquium on Monday.
