Going, Going Gone

And you thought the posts about mud here on Moose Mountain were exaggerated ;-). Don't know who this car belongs to, but we weren't more than 250 yards into our trip to JFK Airport yesterday when we happened across this abandoned car at about 7:45 in the morning. It's entirely possible someone went off the road the night before and had no choice but to leave the car and hoof it. For the past few days only that side of the road has been (barely) passable and this car gave it a shot. The thing about mud is, you have to go fast enough not to get bogged down – but not so fast that this happens.

The car was gone when we got home about about 10 last night. Better news: the road had been graded. Hopefully we are through the worst of it but I'm making no predictions. A year ago I was sure the mud was behind us – and said so – only to find the next week worse than the one before it.

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Our trip to New York City and back went without incident except for That Certain Hanover High Grad shouting from the back seat, "President Kim has been nominated for the World Bank," or something like that. Yup, she's the one in the family with an iPhone and she had been checking her email. When she read us the press release we had a discussion about the news that pretty much anticipated the headline that would appear in this morning's local daily:

A Campus Both Proud And Miffed

In case you've been in a cave somewhere (or like me refuse to have a cellphone) Dartmouth President Jim Yong Kim was nominated by That Certain Other President to lead the World Bank. There's a picture of PresKim with Hillary Rodham Clinton, President Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner '83, a video and all kinds of links about the developments on the Dartmouth Now page.

Green Alert Take: From the start I had anticipated Dartmouth would eventually lose Jim Kim to some kind of huge appointment. I didn't know when or what, but I told more than a few people over the past few years that I wouldn't be surprised to see him end up as Surgeon General. If everything goes as President Obama hopes, it will certainly be a huge loss to the athletic program at the college . . . and perhaps one less subscriber to Big Green Alert. (Although I'll keep his subscription active because I'm guessing he'll still check in from time to time ;-)

On a personal level, President Kim has been a friend of Big Green Alert, sharing the occasional email and gently chastising me for refusing to get a cellphone so he could get the occasional direct update ;-)

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Saying goodbye at Kennedy Airport yesterday was hard but the good news is there's a new blog in town (or at least in Barcelona). For some reason she has called it Eat Dessert First. Actually, I like her description:

Let's spend the afternoon. You can't take it with you.