I first met Arnold Rots at a bar. That was mostly empty. In a hotel. In the middle of the afternoon. And before either of us was an officer for PASTCF.
Okay: that sounds more sinister—or at least more disreputable—than it actually was. We’d both just arrived in Chicago for a PASTCF board meeting and had checked into our hotel. It was mid-afternoon, neither of us had eaten lunch, and the hotel bar was the easiest place to get food. As I recall, we shared a couple of flatbreads and, while enjoying quasi-pizza, we got to know each other a bit better. I heard about his work as an astronomer at Harvard and with the Smithsonian (which was pretty cool), a bit about life in the Netherlands (which fascinated me), and some about his time in Charlottesville—which, since I am a UVA grad, endeared him to me.
