A Day of Rest (Sabbath) for our Minds; and A Brilliant Mind

Today we needed some downtime, so we rested for much of the day. I hung out reading in the Rockefeller Library on the Brown campus (nicknamed “The Rock”; yet another rock in our pilgrimage – a theme emerging?). Then we went for a walk around the Brown University campus and surrounding College Hill neighborhood.

Photos: First Baptist Church in America (founded by Roger Williams in 1638); Van Wickle Gates (main entrance to Brown; opened twice a year: once inward at Convocation when the new freshman process through them, and once outward at Commencement when the graduating seniors process through them)

Photos: The Sciences Library ("SciLi"); Students playing Frisbee on the Green

Photos: Sayles Hall (1881) has the largest surviving (3000 pipes) Hutchings-Votey organ in the world (installed 1903). The John Carter Brown Library (1904) holds a world-class collection of rare books and maps relating to the European discovery, exploration, settlement, and development of North and South America.

Photos: University Hall (1778), the oldest building on campus, houses the administrative offices. It was appropriated as a barracks for American troops during the Revolutionary War. Manning Hall (1835), which originally housed the library and chapel, was inspired by the temple of Diana-Propylea in Eleusis -- twice the size of the original.

Photos: Carrie Tower (1904), a memorial to the granddaughter of Nicholas Brown ("Steering freshmen to the corner of Waterman and Prospect for a date with Miss Carrie Tower used to be a favorite sport for upperclassmen"); Robinson Hall (1878), formerly a library, the nation's third "panoptic library" -- where the librarian could see all the books from his 360-degree view of the stacks

Photos: The inside of St. Stephen's Episcopal Church, a very high church which was getting ready for a Solemn Evensong for the Feast of Michael All Angels. Me standing in front of my old freshman dorm, Archibald House, in West Quad (now called Keeney Quad).

Photos: Two classic College Hill houses.

Photos: Me standing in front of Fulton Rehearsal Hall, where the Band (which I was a member of) still practices. Henry Pearce House (1898), Romanesque architecture similar to Henry Hobson Richardson's style, houses the Applied Mathematics department.

Photo: Me standing in front of the old computer center where I used to spend hours (all night sometimes) at the terminals in the basement working on my programming projects.

In the evening we went for dinner to Andréas, a Greek restaurant on Thayer Street, the little business street that runs through campus – one of the few establishments still there from when I was a student. After that, and some ice cream at Ben & Jerry’s, we took in a film at the Avon Cinema, a classic Art Deco movie theatre opened in 1938. We saw A Brilliant Young Mind. Wonderful film about a socially awkward teenage math prodigy who finds new confidence and new friendships when he lands a spot on the British squad at the International Mathematics Olympiad. Brought back memories of my days at math camp.