working vacation

the wife, boy, and I are off to the big city for two weeks. For them, it's just a vacation; for me, it's a working vacation. My favorite kind of working vacation: it'll be spent at various archive libraries (NYU, Columbia, Yale, and the Ford Foundation) poking through old papers. My anti-NYU prejudice was fueled last week when I spoke to librarians at all four institutions. Three were helpful, friendly, and went above and beyond what might reasonably be expected of them (traits I find common to librarians); one was monosyllabic and rude. Some institutions really know how to infuse their personalities into every one of their employees.