So maybe mathematicians don't make the best party planners. We rode our bikes to the festival, the day warm and clear, air like velvet. When we arrived, the first thing we had to do was sign a photo release, then go to another table to get a name tag, a smiley face on the tag revealing our consent to be documented, then we could sign up for events with alluring names like Linguistic Challenge, Solving a Cubic, and Triangle Inequality. No eye contact yet. On the up side, the kids got cool black nylon string bags.
We then needed to enter one of two rooms, both crammed with long tables and people huddled over polyhedrons, tessellations, and graphs. The air in the rooms is stuffy. The man selling books in the back of the room we'd chosen won't look up from his book. He sits like an uncomfortable statue. Still no eye contact.
On the table near the human statue, I found a fat book about mathematics at Berkeley with a tiny postage stamp sized image of Julia Robinson on the cover. She was my teacher for abstract algebra the year before she won the MacArthur fellowship. Five years of income to free her up to be the genius that she was. When I read about her winning, I thought that must be the greatest prize in the whole wide world. Naturally, I wanted one. She had begun to solve Hilbert's tenth problem. What could I do?
So far. . .nothing.
Still no eye contact. We left the festival and toodled home on our bikes.
I still like geeks, but wouldn't recommend one to plan a social event beyond perhaps a late night cup of coffee.
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