Carnesale's Three Boxes

In an interview in his newly refurbished office this month, Provost Albert Carnesale spotted a distracted reporter eyeing his new furnishings and jotting them down in her notebook.

Carnesale has replaced former Provost Jerry R. Green's print of Old Harvard Yard with a vivid oil painting by Milton Avery. Fresh green plants hang in the windows of his Massachusetts Hall enclave, and three pine boxes bearing the words "In," "Out" and "Too Hard," sit awaiting the white-haired administrator's papers.

"I see you like my boxes," Carnesale joked at the end of an hour-long interview during which he discussed the duties of his new position and the strain of maintaining his position as Dean of the Kennedy School of Government.

Although Carnesale's "Too Hard" box was empty, the administrator seemed somewhat frazzled. A black overcoat button sat atop a cherry table in his office, presumably waiting to be reattached to the jacket of the busy provost.

"I'm running up against the fact that one can't be in two places at the same time," Carnesale said.