Back to Real Life

I had a wonderful couple of days with Danae, spent playing board games, eating with family, and enjoying each other's company. I even got a little school work done somewhere in there. This coming week is going to be spent mostly in Chicago attending the Association of American Geographers annual meeting, so it's going to be a lot of time away from home again. Hopefully I can still get some work done in the evenings on my laptop.

For now, I need to get to bed so I can get to campus early tomorrow. I submitted my AAG posters for printing, but I need to get there early and provide updated versions with some errors corrected. There doesn't seem to be a way to update jobs online.

Before bed, I have one more picture to share with you that I found as Danae and I were going through a couple of sets of photos looking for something to use for another purpose. This wasn't right for that use, but I like it too much not to post it. I kind of get lost in all the lines and shapes and spaces here, looking up at the ceiling of the sanctuary of Gary, Indiana's City Methodist Church. One of these days, I'll get to posting the rest of this set.





G'night!

A Little More Done, a Little Less to Do

Question for you. When speaking of the varieties of ways in which a group of people tend to commute: would you say something about a variety of "transportation modalities", or is that just a grandiose way of saying transportation "modes" with no additional, worthwhile content?

When would you use modality as opposed to mode? Or is it a case like utilize vs use where, except in some highly specific situations, there isn't really a good reason to use the former?

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I wrote some of a draft paper and want to take a break before bed. I think I'm going to read something before getting sleepy. But I can't decide what. I kind of want to start on Robert Caro's "The Power Broker," which is a biography of Robert Moses concentrating on his role in New York City development. The back jacket has quotes like one from journalist David Halberstam saying "Surely the greatest book ever written about a city." (Makes me wonder whether he's read William Cronon's "Nature's Metropolis," but as a Chicago person, I may be biased.)

But this thing is a doorstop! 1162 pages, not counting end notes! I don't know if I can even hold this thing comfortably in bed! And maybe I'd want a computer running Google Earth next to me to consult while reading.

Maybe I'll go for the comparatively bite-sized "The City in Time and Space" by anthropologist Aidan Southall instead. It's 'only' about 400 pages. And it's a book about cities from pre-history to the present written by someone who's area of expertise is Africa. One can hope that will mean his text isn't euro-centric.

Geez. Maybe I need to look up some academic book reviews before I dig into things like this. And that's probably too much work to just decide on some pleasure reading before bed. I have an Ursula LeGuin paperback over there I haven't read yet....