Lenore's Page

This page is, and will always be, perpetually under construction. It is also currently very out of date. Someday soon (ha!) I may have the time to update it. Welcome to life A.K. (After Kids).

But wait!! There is something new!!! Check out Philip Greenspun's fascinating article on the Larry Summers controversy!!

A Brief Biography

I was born in New York City. My interest in mathematics probably has to do with the fact that my father Robert Cowen is a Logician, in fact he was a doctoral student of Raymond Smullyan , who wrote those wonderful recreational math books like What is the Name of this Book?. My father recently retired from teaching at Queens College, CUNY .

My mother, Ilsa Cowen teaches English and Journalism and advises the student newspaper at Townsend Harris High School

My sister recently put up a webpage here

Life on the NE Corridor

I was born in New York City, went to school in New England, spent a semester in Minnesota, a semester in New Jersey, six years at at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore and now I'm back in Cambridge, Mass. Some of my good friends have webpages, look here.

While I Baltimore, I met and then married Bill Bogstad . There are a few Wedding pictures here. At our wedding our friends produced a wedding mummers play. I've put up a webpage about Wedding mummers plays here.

A Little Pop Culture

When I was in junior high school in 1980, these are the things me and my friends thought were cool: coffee, fantasy games, computers and the whole hacker culture thing, black clothes, apas, silver jewelry, and (of course) staying on line all night to get tickets to the opening of Empire Strikes back. There were not many of us back then, and people looked at us funny.

Guess what: pop culture in 1999 has about caught up to us. I realized this suddenly the weekend star wars, the prequel, opened, when I was driving enroute from Baltimore to Boston, and passed through NYC's airspace. For some reason I had the radio tuned to Z100, a "top 40" style station.. and they played what could only be called a star wars *filk*. On a top 40 station..

So me and my friends, we're now the technorati -- the cool people that you all aspire to be.. Just proves, you do something long enough, and you are eventually in fashion.. :-)

Hobbies and Interests

I am a classically trained violinist, and like many violinists, I have always known a few viola jokes; here is a large collection of viola jokes which has definitely added to my repetoire. When I was in graduate school, I crossed over into Folk music, and took time out from the thesis to play fiddle with the International Dance performing group called Mandala .

Under the excellent influence of someone who is Too Tall To Tango with (but not to tall to smile up at) I started Swing dancing when I came to Baltimore., and doing a little Ballroom dancing besides. While we are now in Boston, we remain incredibly fond of Baltimore's English Country Dancing group, which meets in Baltimore every Monday night at 8pm at St. Marks on the Hill on Reiserstown Road-- they are a wonderful group of people and you should visit them if you are ever in the area. I cannot explain my love of dance: when I was 9 years old I wanted to dance for Balanchine in the New York City Ballet -- by High School, I was sufficiently reconciled to my lack of potential in this regard that I was content with going backstage and catching glimpses of Patricia McBride because my then violin teacher played (and still plays) in their orchestra.