There's been a breathing space in the research-scape, but it's passing.  

At midsummer we had finished 50 interviews on a project about framing national security issues in progressive terms.  By the time that was written up we were doing elicitations in New York about "disconnected youth" -- talking to both regular New Yorkers and policy-makers.   And ramping up into a set of 20 interviews in Ohio about people's conceptions of "the arts."  While I was looking after the elicitations projects, Joe and Axel were also focusing on smaller consultations with Demos and the Union of Concerned Scientists and some internet surveys for the Ford Foundation on government accountability.  

As the reports have passed over to clients there's been a lull, at least for the Research Director.  Time to do some overdue maintenance on the subjects' panel.  And go sniffing around the academic job market to see if there's anything there to tempt me to jump back.

But now we are wading hip-deep into some fairly complex research about communicating on global warming.  So, break's over . . . .