University of Arizona

 

The campus of U-of-A is much larger than Caltech in Pasadena.  At first it seems less important, more technological, with laboratories for pratical pursuits. 

It has buildings for strange studies like the Strategic Alternative Learning Techniques Center and the building for Modern Languages.

But like Caltech, it has two small telescopes and a library, though the library here seems more architecturally pleasing.

It has sororities where girls have girls’ bicycles and ride on the campus bike trails.

And I give you the Helen S Schaefer Poetry Center where students learn proper poetry.  

Unlike Caltech, there is a massive sports stadium, and a small Mathematics building.

Under the stadium is the world renouned Mirror Lab where all of the recent eight-meter mirrors for the world’s telescopes were and are being made.

I wonder, after walking the U-of-A campus, which is more important: theoretical physics or the making of telescope mirrors that give the data.  I wonder which matters more: the making of a big telescope or the surveyor who spent hours in cold nights at 14,000 feet on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, determining true north for its alignment.

This evening I met Julian M Dombrowski (left) and the poets who meet at the nearby Coffee X Change.  He’s the Stephen Hawking of poetry here in Tucson.