Perhaps you think that Thanksgiving is all about food, but for many people there are other aspects to this day. What is especially nice about Thanksgiving is that it is celebrated by all Americans, and not just by a specific religious or ethnic group. Many people give thanks for their blessings in whichever way they see fit, whether it be by attending a worship service, helping the less fortunate, or just quietly and thankfully reflecting on things…the important people in their lives, health, shelter, food (the autumn harvest), peace, new opportunities, etc. This is really the main point of the day, but as often happens in the United States, the point often gets obscured by the trappings! Some of the trappings include:

Parades
On television on Thursday morning…fun to watch!

Football
High school football teams play each other in year end rivalries, and professional teams play in the afternoon.

Food, of course
The traditional items include turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing (stale bread with all sorts of things added to it, and often cooked inside the turkey!), harvest vegetables, and for dessert…pies, especially pumpkin! It is a very nice meal, and well worth the extra calories!! Turkey contains a chemical that is known to make people tired, so don’t be surprised if you feel sleepy or groggy afterwards! Sometimes it is good to take a walk after dinner.

After Thanksgiving, all attention turns quickly toward the holiday season of Christmas, Hanukkah, and New Years. The stores will bombard shoppers with all sorts of advertisements! While the Christmas holiday is celebrated only by Christians, it is very noisily celebrated, and once again…too often the true meaning gets lost.

There will be many parties over the next six weeks, and many opportunities to celebrate and overindulge in all things! I guess my advice is to observe as much as you can, and sample all of the special foods and drinks…but also try to keep things simple, and try not to get too overwhelmed by the way things get overblown here! This is advice I also try to heed.

At this Thanksgiving, I will be remembering you, with gratitude for the pleasure of meeting you this year. I have certainly enjoyed the times we have spent together thus far, and hope for good times ahead this coming holiday season and beyond. A very happy Thanksgiving to you!

According to one survey, 57% of all internet users have joined a social network, and there are many of them - beyond the big three. I learned that the first social network was Friendster (circa 1996), but these days Facebook and MySpace dominate the market with 70 million users each, and Twitter trails with 17 million. As one data point, I have an active Facebook account, which I very much enjoy, and spend more time on than I care to admit (at home). MySpace is just not for me (surely I’m too old!), and I don’t think I am concise or witty enough for Twitter.

So, what to do for the department? We are sticking with our blog, in spite of the nay-sayers, but we realize we need to make it more visible on our departmental website, so that dialogue can happen. I was thinking of starting a Facebook fan page for MIT EECS, but realize the importance of putting up fresh content with frequency. Running a targetted Facebook ad is something I might consider, if I needed to reach an audience of say, undergraduates at Boston colleges and universities. This is all up for discussion, so if you have any comments or suggestions, by all means, let’s have that conversation!

p.s.
If I was going to tweet, I’d definitely tweet about this and this.
Just wondering, does that make them of equal importance?

Sometime after this incident, and at a time when I was eager to get out of the cubicle and interact with humanity at noontime, curiosity got the better of me, and I became one of THEM - a food truck customer. I started off with the falafel truck on Mass. Ave., and quite enjoyed the falafel rollups, and eventually the baba ghanoush. Later I ventured over to the popular Vietnamese truck, with its intimidatingly abundant menu. Mango veggie salad remains a favorite. My latest love in the food truck world is the Clover Food Lab, located on Carleton Street, outside of MIT Medical, which promises that “everything will be different tomorrow”! That may be, but I’m not sure I can order anything ever, save for the chickpea fritter sandwich. Imagine this warm, soft wheat pita pocket, overstuffed with hummus, the delectably spicy fritters, tomato, cucumber, carrots, red cabbage, pickled onions, and the secret sauce. What a delicious mess!

Well readers - if you are out there, I’d love to hear about your food truck favorites, and/or those I should avoid on my next venture out from under the Dome!

p.s. Does anybody remember Andy’s pushcart, and his famous Frito Pie?

*        The first week of September was a complete yin and yang experience!  Our graduate orientation was in full swing, and our 100+ new graduate students were fully immersed in all kinds of activities planned by our Graduate Student Association, and MIT’s Graduate Student Council.  At the same time, students were handing in their masters and doctoral theses in time to be on the September degree list.  For doctoral students, submitting that thesis is literally the end of the road, and the culmination of 20+ years of classroom education and research.  Both our incoming and outgoing students are transitioning to the next phase of the journey, so maybe they aren’t so different after all.

*        September 11th, 2009 came and went with thankfully little drama (save for a bizarre reporting fiasco about Coast Guard cutters on the Potomac).  That Tuesday morning eight years earlier will never be forgotten.  I was at work that day, in an office in Building 5, when a coworker came in saying she had just gotten a call from her sister with the incomprehensible news.  It wasn’t until I got home that night that I could visualize those towers coming down.  Back to this year, as I came into work that morning, I noted a bagpiper atop a building in East Cambridge, and another ceremony at the Kendall Square headquarters of Akamai Technologies, where MIT EECS alum Danny Lewin was remembered.

*        Today is a sad day, as the last issue of MIT’s Tech Talk “hit the stands” (actually, it’s free)!  For 52 years, this paper has reported on the events of the MIT community as a whole.  It is being replaced with an online entity (?) called MIT News.  Also this week, another monthly print publication that I receive made a similar decision.  I know this is the way of the future, but I think I’ll always miss picking up a paper, getting that newsprint all over my hands, and being able to hold the news in my hands.  So, one last time, here goes!

*        And alas, my earthbox tomato garden, as referenced in an earlier post, is fading out…and today I wore a light jacket to work.  Autumn officially begins on September 22nd, but I’m afraid it has arrived early.

“Senator Kennedy, like his late brothers, inspired many of us to pursue lives dedicated to improving the world. As a public servant he was a tireless, eloquent and effective advocate for equality, justice and opportunity–ideals on which this country was founded. Many of his causes, including his unflagging efforts to expand educational opportunity, improve healthcare, catalyze research and inspire innovation, resonate profoundly with MIT’s mission and values. He will be very much missed and long remembered by all of us at MIT.”–MIT President Susan Hockfield, August 26, 2009

This week, our state and our country lost a legendary figure with the passing of Senator Edward M. Kennedy.  Ted Kennedy touched the MIT community as well, as he came to MIT to deliver the annual Karl Taylor Compton Lecture in April 2007.  I remember the story that a friend told me, after she sat directly  behind Kennedy at that event.  She told me that he had a folder that contained his prepared speech, and that throughout his introduction, he made his own notations in the margins, up until the very moment he was introduced.  The speech, when delivered, had his own distinct imprint, and felt not at all like the canned speeches that we’ve heard from politicians time and time again.  When Kennedy took questions at the lecture, he seemed to have a deep reserve of knowledge at his fingertips, and he brought considerable wit to the conversation as well.

This remembrance made me think of others I have heard speak over the years at MIT, and it is a diverse and mostly impressive set.  Of course, every June we have a prominent commencement speaker, which has included presidents and vice-presidents of this country and others, captains of industry and academe, the occasional baseball commissioner, senators and governors, and in a strange departure in 1999, Car Talk radio hosts Click and Clack (aka MIT grads Thomas and Raymond Magliozzi).

Early in my time at MIT, I heard Jacques Cousteau, the famous oceanographer, speak in Kresge Auditorium.  I don’t remember much about that, except that his French accent was really thick!  In April 2008, after he had bowed out of the presidential race but shortly before he became tabloid fodder, I waited in Kresge for a seriously long time to hear John Edwards talk about fighting global poverty.  Later in 2008, Tom Brokaw came to deliver the Compton Lecture, and impressed me with his humility and wealth of interesting life experiences.  In a kismet moment in 2002, I saw a flyer for an appearance by Survivor Africa winner Ethan Zohn, for that very evening.  Being a fan of reality TV, and that show in particular, I jumped at the opportunity to see Zohn, speaking on a panel about reality television, organized by media and pop culture guru Henry Jenkins.  I still have a sheet of notebook paper that Zohn signed for me that night, with the encouragement - “Janet, Keep Smiling!”

And so I will, at the memories of these moments through the years, and with gratitude for the distinguished service and humanity of our senator from Massachusetts, may he rest in peace.

Tomato Harvest

MIT started this new community garden this year.  There was a lottery to be part of it, and I won!  The garden areas are located nearby two of MIT’s large parking garages.  We plant in earthboxes, a very efficient container gardening system that you can read about here.

I am new to gardening, but this is gardening made simple.  Pretty much all I have to do is water my two boxes regularly, and with some help from my friends Cheryl and Bruno, now stuff is growing.  I’ve got scads of cherry and grape tomatoes, as well as some chives and peppers.  You can read more about the concept and the founders here.

Farmer’s Market

Speaking of veggies…one highlight of this summer at MIT has been the Farmer’s Market that comes to East Campus every Tuesday from noon to 6 PM.  I have been trying to get there every Tuesday.  It has become quite the gathering spot for many of us across the MIT community, and is a nice place to catch up with people who are normally sequestered behind their desks!  Since it is Tuesday, and I’ve just come back, I can report on the contents of my $10 haul - 2 cucumbers, 2 mangoes, 2 peppers, and a big bag of Rainier cherries.

MIT Endicott House

Tomorrow I am going out to MIT’s mansion in the suburbs (Dedham) called Endicott House, where the EECS Department will be hosting an event for our new students on Labor Day.  The purpose of the visit is to check out the property, talk about the menu, see the various sports and hiking facilities, and…gulp…consider the rain plan (but I hope not).  I love that MIT has a 1930’s French Manor House as part of its real estate portfolio!  You can take a photo tour here.

Farewell MSRP 2009

This week has seemed a little quiet, without the 60+ interns who have been part of MIT’s Summer Research Program (MSRP).  The interns are undergrads from all over the United States and Puerto Rico, who spend nine weeks on the MIT campus doing research, and learning about life at MIT and in Boston and Cambridge.  It is a program that has existed primarily in the School of Science for 20+ years, but was expanded five years ago to include the School of Engineering.  Colleagues in the Office of the Dean of Graduate Education, Christopher Jones an Monica Orta, run this program with great efficiency, and I am glad that they allow me to be involved, as I really enjoy meeting the interns over the course of the summer.

For Commencement 2009, I took a one year sabbatical from this assignment, to marshall the 50 year reunion class.  The 50 year class gets to march ahead of the graduates, wearing a uniform consisting partly of a red blazer - or red coat.  The class sits together in a special section in a prime area of Killian Court, listens to the speeches, and then leaves for lunch just as the first of 2200 graduate’s names start being called out.  The Class of 1959 is special to me, because my father is a member.  We had been looking forward to that day, June 5th, for a long time.  That morning we drove in to Cambridge together, and gathered with his class for a breakfast in Walker Memorial.  Just before 10 AM, we started the march down Memorial Drive to Killian Court.  The line moved slowly, and there were many photos taken and good wishes from the crowd.  Finally it was time to enter the court, where 10,000 people waited for the graduates, past and present.  With stirring music playing, and the court in its full splendor, I reflected on 50 years, and how quickly it must have passed by, for these men….for my father.  That moment contained the strangest brew of elation, pride, nostalgia, and even a hint of sadness, but there was nowhere I would have rather been.  Congratulations Class of 1959….good job Dad….GO TECH!