For three of the last four years I’ve spent time during the summer working at my former employer, Educational Testing Service in Princeton, New Jersey. I still do freelance work for ETS’s Test of English as a Foreign Language, and my stints back at the mother ship help to keep me “calibrated,” as they say.

Although I spent most of my time working, I did enjoy my trip. The area from Princeton west to the Delaware River Valley is a wonderful part of the country, and summer is a nice time to be there. This is a place that has managed to retain some of its rural character, even though it sits in the most densely populated state in the country.

How did they do that? I don’t know for sure, but I do know that some of it came through open space initiatives that involved land purchases by government; private trusts and zoning ordinances probably played a role as well.

I stayed in Princeton, not far from the university, and was rather awestruck at the building they’ve done on campus in the last several years, most of it on the southern edge, including Whitman College (named for Meg Whitman of eBay fame). This is what money will do for you.

During my trip, the high price of fuel was on people’s minds. I got a feel for high gas prices when I filled up my rental car near the Philadelphia airport and paid $4.13 a gallon. Perhaps prices will come down, but with higher demand around the world it feels as though we are crossing some kind of historic watershed and moving into unfamiliar territory, to use a geographic metaphor.

Now it is good to be back home in Minnesota. Our baby boy is six months old now and can sit up on his own - though he is still prone to toppling over. He is cuter than ever, of course. And I’ve been getting lots of hugs from our daughter, who says she missed me a lot. It is nice to have been missed, and better to be home.

I recently traveled for work to the East Coast, flying the thousand miles from Minneapolis to Philadelphia, then driving to the Princeton, New Jersey, area. I lived in Princeton or its environs for eight years, first in grad school and later working there and marrying my wife, and I’ve returned there several times since then. So it’s familiar turf for me.

My first stop after leaving the airport was South Philly, just south of downtown. I was happy to find it’s much the same since I first visited 20 years ago.

If you appreciate the urban Northeast or are interested in experiencing it, this is one place to get a feel for its teeming streets. And what streets! I approached the area from the south, first driving up South 10th Street, then 9th Street. On 10th Street I saw tiny, tiny one-level brick houses, and on 9th Street I made my way through a narrow one-way corridor, cars parked on both sides of the street in front of small row houses, apartment buildings, shops, and restaurants. To my eyes, accustomed to a small town in the Midwest, the density of the place, especially its buildings, was remarkable. The people, meanwhile, were out on the sidewalks or their front steps and porches, enjoying the evening air and the sights and sounds of the neighborhood.

I made my way north to the Italian Market, an Old World-style area of shops and sidewalk stalls that was featured in scenes from the movie Rocky. South Philly is still largely Italian, though today it increasingly includes Hispanics and Asians.

I stopped at Geno’s, famous for its cheese steaks and cheese fries, and ordered “one American with” - a steak sandwich with American cheese and onions. Though busy and vital, Geno’s seemed to be desperately trying to hold the area’s diversity at bay. It proclaimed its patriotism and nativism through displays of the American flag and signs proclaiming the necessity of speaking English. Just as prevalent were pictures of local police officers, nearly all of them white.

Meanwhile, across the street, Asian and Hispanic youth played basketball and seemed uninterested in the greasy fare that I was consuming. The future is ours, they implied with their quick movements and bouncy steps.

I was left wondering what would come of this tension of cultures, what would happen to Geno’s and the descendants of the Italians, to the newer kids jumping for the rim on the other side of the street. Some kind of truce, I hope, some kind of kind of blend that is born of acceptance.

While any hope for a federal response to climate change this year died today in the U.S. Senate, I’m at least somewhat encouraged by the fact that my wife has located another resource that catalogs the many claims made by climate change skeptics and offers responses to each. It’s in Grist, the environmental news and commentary web site that’s based in Seattle, and it’s titled “How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic.” I don’t know what you’re community is like, but mine has plenty of skeptics, and I need all the help I can get.

I’m not a regular reader of Grist, though my wife is. They take a lighter approach to environmental issues - lighter than yours truly, for example. I like their slogan: “Grist: it’s gloom and doom with a sense of humor. So laugh now - or the planet gets it.”

See also their commentary on the carbon footprint of biking versus driving, in which they run some of the numbers and, as commonsense would indicate, find that biking comes out ahead.