Seen at Berkeley on a Friday afternoon…

28 August 2009

I'm really at home on the Berkeley campus and I've long realized that it is a wonderful place to study and to work. Blogging here and posting photos on TrekEarth have pushed me to see the campus with new eyes. It's fun!



New-student orientations took place this past Monday. Wednesday was the first day of classes for the Fall 2009 semester. After typically cool conditions early in the week, a high pressure system set up and today was steamy warm. The temperature in my south-facing office climbed into the low 80s. In the late afternoon, it became tough to concentrate at my desk and so I decided to spend a bit of time wandering around campus with my camera to check out the scene.

I don't know the total number, but UC Berkeley has a surprisingly large collection of sculptures scattered about the campus. Some, like this one of "The Last Dryad" are tucked away in pretty obscure locations and so don't get much attention.

Football season is just about to begin and hope springs eternal. The statue shown at right commemorates Pappy Waldorf, the coach of Cal's football team that most recently went to the Rose Bowl — in 1951!

Maybe it fits well with the stark contrasts that one finds in Berkeley: the "The Last Dryad" and Pappy Waldorf's statue are situated in the same area, the "Faculty Glade," about 100 m apart. In fact, Pappy is positioned so he looks in her direction.

Yes, this is Berkeley, capital of the left coast. Home of the free-speech movement. The place where no assumption goes unquestioned. In Berkeley, it is always fair to ask, as this guy did, "How's capitalism working for you these days?" I saw him crossing Sproul Plaza after returning from an afternoon of tabling somewhere in the neighborhood.



Berkeley is also a place where a few hundred students can gather on Sproul Plaza, in front of the main administration building, for afternoon practice as part of a jazz hiphop club.



The final photo shows Davis Hall. The windows of my office can be seen here: look to the second row of windows from the top. On the left, there is a set of six windows in a group. My office is behind the three windows on the right side of this left-hand group.

The photos at the top and the bottom of this post were taken from the balcony of the 10th floor of Evans Hall, the math building. The tricky part is that windows reach up about nine feet from the floor of the balcony, so to shoot the photos without reflection, I had to stand on a chair and hold the camera up over my head!