One More Trip to Philadelphia

Today I took the train to Philadelphia after riding with Lisa in the morning. It was a lot of fun making jokes with my co-workers and talking about the kinds of things we will b doing when I get back. I also had a chance to talk with David Black, a teacher of both computer technology and chemistry who is in Philadelphia at Chemical Heritage Foundation for the summer as a visiting scholar. David teaches in rural Utah. He had to teach both chemistry and technology to students in a small school with little lab equipment, but the school had vans so he took the kids to sites where they could see chemistry in action. The students took video cameras and made podcasts about their visits to a glassblowing shop, a cement plant, and a berylium mine. You can learn more and see the videos at his Web site. Part of his time at CHF will be devoted to applying for grants to continue and expand his project for other school districts in neighboring states and eventually across the country. David and I will be keeping in touch over the next seven months while I am back in the Sandbox.

In addition to hanging out with my friends, I spent most of an hour wandering through one of my favorite bookstores, The Philly Book Trader at 7 North 2nd Street. For $30 I got an adapation of The Count of Monte Cristo in simple French. Aristotle's Rhetoric in French. The Rising Tide by Jeff Shaara, Solzhenitsyn's Harvard Address and his book First Circle, and a paperback copy of CS Lewis' Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature. My duffel bag is almost full.