Eastward Ho!

This the last of a series of photographs from Sunday. We were crossing the Lambeth Bridge (five wrought-iron, lattice-girder spans supported on cast-iron columns with ornate capitals carry two railway tracks across the river) and my image faces East; here is the same facing West from the Golden Jubulee Bridge (three flat ferro-concrete arches are faced with Portland stone). Otherwise, Sonnet at Jury duty for ten weeks on a murder trial which she refuses to discuss with me, per judges orders. Boooring. Last night I met Ruth Simmons who is in London raising shekels for student-aid. Simons being Brown University's 18th president and first black president of an Ivy League institution (I think also first female, but unconfirmed). I tell her my era was wonkish Howard Swearer who was replaced by the brilliant and loved Vartan Grigorian - who, though I had met him only once or twice on campus, remembered me with a big smile when I bumped into him on the Upper East Side ten years post graduation. Like Vartan, Simmons has amazing presences and instills confidence, though she is not as academically unusual and more administrative - like many Americans she is unafraid to ask for money and proudly announces her "Boldly Brown" campaign of $1.4B ahead of pace despite the climate with $1.32B in the bank. When I was a student, we were last in the Ivy and today our fundraising third after Princeton and Dartmouth. Just shows what leadership can do. So I tell Ruth (as she likes to be called) that Sonnet went to Smith and "we have been watching your career with great interest." I was tempted to ask her during a Q&A whether the 13 story Sciences Library ("Sci Li") still sinking, as every Freshman believed in '85. Probably best that I kept the smart-ass to myself.