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Eight
Three months combining research, teaching, and seminars at four universities in the State of Sao Paulo
I was asked by Professor Douglas Franco at the Instiuto de Quimica de Sao Carlos, Universidade de Sao Paulo, to come to Sao Carlos and help them with developing the use of their new Electron Spin Resonance (ESR) Spectrometer, and to teach an advanced graduate course in ESR to their students and faculty. He managed to get me a Fellowship with all expenses paid.
Sao Carlos is a city of 100,000 that is a three-hour drive north of Sao Paulo (if you drive at at 140 km/h). Although the temperature is in the low 30's during the day, it was quite bearable due to a constant breeze. It always cooled down in the night.
THE CITY IS SURROUNDED by sugar cane fields and orange groves. Orange juice is a major product and they really make out when Florida has a freeze. Large bags of oranges were being sold for $1 at road-side stands.
I gave nine seminars at four universities in the State of Sao Paulo. Mathilde came down for the last two weeks and we travelled to Foz do Iguacu, (the falls there would swallow five Niagaras), Rio, Belo Horizonte, and Ouro Preto. I have agreed to return for four months in October.
THIS SUMMER we will be attending conferences in St. John's and Vancouver and travelling around both places. My NSERC grant was also renewed for another four years, so I guess I won't be fully retired for several more years. Bruce R. McGarvey: beprm@uwindsor.ca
A true Westerner, Walter says cold weather is a small price to pay for the "constant sunshine" of the West; he too is keeping active in his research.
Here's an excerpt from a communiqu‚ from Romanow, a member now living in Edmonton.
ALL'S WELL IN THE GOLDEN WEST. The sunshine is a constant and manages to make up for any temperature deficiencies. In a way, I appreciate the weather here. It's possible to dress for the cold; but how do you dress for the heat? The bicycling possibilities, except in the months when there's deep snow, are almost year-round (not quite, but almost).
JAKE* manages to keep me going; last week I received my complimentary copies of an updated second edition edition of a text that he and I wrote earlier. As well, we're still trying to hammer out papers on election negative advertising. This sort of activity keeps an old man off the streets!
*Jake (Walter) Soderlund, Walt Romanow's collaborator in several research projects, is currently Head of the Department of Political Science at the University.