I had a bit of time last week to start going through some of the photos that came in with the Tsanoff materials earlier this summer. (Before I go any further let me bless the memory of Corinne Tsanoff, who meticulously organized these images by date and place.) There are hundreds of them, mostly family scenes–vacations in the mountains, Christmas mornings, babies (including the future dean of undergraduates) in strollers–but many others are of particular interest as pieces of Rice history.

Among these are several that vividly display something I’ve only ever heard described (mainly by Katherine Tsanoff Brown, Marjorie Bray Chapman, and Ray Watkin Hoagland Strange)–the close friendships of the young families that comprised the early Rice community. The picture above, for example, shows H.A. Wilson of Physics, Robert Caldwell of History, Corinne Tsanoff, and several others I haven’t been able to identify yet with a swarm of their small children in the park on a beautiful sunny day in 1923, all looking happy and completely at ease with each other. What a wonderful world we live in.

So as I said, there are quite a few of these sort of images and I’ll try to space them out so nobody gets tired of them. But I’ve got one more that’s burning a hole in my pocket for later this week.

I have to be in Omaha for a board meeting this week so I may miss a day here but I’m still on the job and answering emails, etc.

Bonus: I just hope they’re not going to try to grow grass under there again.