Chapter 14
IT’S BEEN A WHILE since I’ve driven through the state
university campus at Albany. Whoever designed the place back in the late
sixties must have had a grudge against anyone who enjoys knowing where they are
going. In a word, the place is a confusing maze of parking lots, white,
post-modern concrete, and glass and steel buildings that look like they were
constructed more for the set of a Star Wars movie than on behalf of
educating the youth of the world. The campus wouldn’t be so confusingly
intimidating if it were made up of only one type of each building. But instead,
the planners decided to create four sets of identical buildings laid out in
identical fashion on four identically sized flat-land parcels which, when
combined, form a perfect giant square. It’s confusin
