#retirement chronicles

[theloniousbach]

REFLECTIONS ON TEACHING

My teaching career is winding down. No more fall classes. I do look forward to an upper level gen ed class in Spring 2027. But, after that, maybe, but only maybe, will I do it again in 2028 or 2029. I’m going to be 71 this year, so this isn’t EARLY.

I am not an AI catastrophist. Poor and mediocre students have always taken the available shortcuts like the gentleman’s C when college education was available primarily to the sons of the rich. So, AI is merely the latest iteration.

Faculty always struggle to convince students that what we value should matter to them. And it rarely ever has.

But, we keep doing it until it stops being fun. And/or it’s not worth the effort to adapt to the shifting reality. That is what’s happening to me.

Last spring, in my half again as large as ideal class, attendance was spotty. Actually on most days, I had a little over the ideal number in the room. Among the slightly more than half who were there all the time, as many as two thirds of them did amazing things, delighting me with their work and the ways they helped me look at the material. But, the absences and the usual bland/routinist work, much of it certainly AI generated, was more discouraging than usual.

On reflection, I had about 1/3 who fully bought into the adventure, 1/3 who tried, and a 1/3 who were disengaged. That’s about normal. Oddly, I didn’t really have the usual “problem child” as such types probably checked out rather than rebelled. Those aren’t bad numbers based on past experience.

Were I younger, I’d figure out how to adapt and motivate students. For this (next to) last class, I’m not going to just blow the dust off my notes and hope for the best.

It will be an upper level course and I’ll get some repeaters who know and like the drill. I will risk higher expectations and try it a time or two more.

As for getting faculty to retire at normal retirement ages, that’s not a bad thing for the “industry.” Sure, administrators will use it to shrink the faculty, but it will open up room for younger folks to give it a shot.

https://www.chronicle.com/article/these-professors-are-retiring-early-ai-was-the-last-straw?utm_source=Iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=campaign_19310237_nl_Academe-Today_date_20260810

[theloniousbach]

RETIREMENT CHRONICLES 3.3

The semester is over!

SCHOOL

I attended a final meeting of the general education program that was such a high point of my university career that I continued as a volunteer these past three academic years as part of the asterisk in my retirement*. It was innovative, exciting, and transformative; we really built a movement providing a training ground for young faculty who are now Deans, department chairs, and Faculty Senate presidents while opening up space for advisors, librarians, and faculty development staff. Such projects are usually tacking against the wind anyway, but we caught some wind for a while. I’m proud of what we did.

My classroom experience this semester was odd. I had about half the class right with me and the other half, some of whom still did impressive things, attending on a strictly voluntary basis and seeing homework as optional. So, while I don’t think I’ve lost my touch exactly, the real successes were tempered with as much frustration as Fall 2024 where the international students came in planning to transfer.

In any case, I’m not teaching in the fall to see how much I will miss it. And, I know I’ll miss it. I’ll keep in touch with the Honors Program even during our extended stay out of town.

SUMMER

We have spent lots of energy and bandwidth on preparing for that extended stay Up North. We have been typically methodical and are well prepared.

It is going to be exciting to set up and become part of a new community. But we will once again have community baseball, chamber music, cooler temperatures, and water to look at.

Ahhhhh.

Plus I’ll just transport all my usual activities up there. Like,

WRITING AND READING

I look forward to launching the work on the fourth volume of my mash up of Sherlock Holmes and Charles Darwin. I wrote very little, one time for 475 words, but I identified the three stories and researched the first one which allow me to use Ralph Vaughn Williams to explore my interest in English traditional folk music. The research into RVW and finding a song to pin my story too has been rewarding already.

Reading mysteries is working on the project too, right? I am cycling through three series: Lindsey Davis’ second series with Flavia Albia taking over for her father Marcus Didius Falco; the psychologically dense and therefore rewarding Three Pines novels by Louise Penny; and, taking the place of Rex Stout/Nero Wolfe as palette cleansers, Donald Westlake’s Dortmunder capers. I also got caught up on Allison Montclair’s Sparks and Bainbridge mysteries. I will await new ones of those and the Elliot/Vesey Homefront Sleuth series. Over this semester, I worked through jazzer Ethan Iverson’s must read Stout/Wolfes and will still pick up one of those from time to time. I have some one offs in the pipeline—LeCarre’s A Perfect Spy (yeah, probably his best—done), a look at Oliver Twist through the eyes of Fagin The Thief, Len Deighton’s Ipcress File (another Iverson recommendation and a further exploration of spy thrillers), and Hamnet on which the recent movie is based. Mysteries, literary pastiches—all good homework.

MUSIC

If I didn’t write fiction, I sure did make a lot of my souvenirs of music performances. 53 of them for 73 shows, amounting to 27,302 words. I know that because in addition to posting them on FB and archiving them on Tumblr (because I’m too lazy to move to Substack), I have a running Google Doc. Obviously, these are productive writing prompts and also focus my listening. But, I really do like seeing music performed and do want to remember highlights like Roscoe Mitchell, the Miles Electric Band, Sean Mason’s Lift Every Voice and Sing, and Chuco Valdes. All of these were live and not livestreams, but Smoke Jazz Club continues to put together fine performances (standouts include Cyrus Chestnut and Fred Hersch) and Smalls Live is even more of a go to with Jazz Cultural now joining Smalls and Mezzrow. Again, I’m struck with how the streams allow me to have a feel for the New York jazz scene. It is a kick to tell folks I’ve seen on the streams (Sean Mason, Monty Alexander’s rhythm section of Luke Sellick and Jason Brown) how important those streams are.

Playing music often gets lost in the shuffle, particularly down the homestretch of the semester, so I will want to pick that up over the summer. But, I played the resonator and then the parlor in Drop D often enough to keep that fluidity and have some flat picked fiddle tunes still there after the gaps, both indicating some fixing of an intuitive sense of some scales on the fret board. I play piano even less (up north I want to get one and have it on the main floor), but I now seem to be playing more than the basic triads and adding the 7ths, be they major or dominant. That too gets at some getting deeper knowledge and theory in my hands. Finally, I will look into bass lessons up north.

GAMES

One interesting obstacle to playing music has been puzzles, thanks (or no thanks) to an upgraded NYTimes subscription. I confess to a bit of a compulsivity about them, particularly getting to Genius on Spelling Bee so that it can loom over the day. Sigh.

And thanks to a freebie from our cell phone carrier, I can see out of market baseball games via the MLB app. I still don’t have the patience for full games but a few innings here and there is very pleasant as I get to recognize players Joe Posnanski celebrates and see the little chess matches inside an at bat. My modest return to Major League Baseball is supplemented by a new service that sends old fashioned box scores and stats, the stuff of agate type and the Sporting News, as a daily email. But, up north, I’ll have Sunday afternoon games with the community league teams.

SELF CARE

Some evidence that the regular work outs are paying off is that a body scan indicates that I have put on about two and a half pounds of muscle over the past three years. Going three times a week adds up. I’ve had a run of pelvic floor physical therapy to counteract my completely benign prostate hyperplasia. Those core exercises are keepers and one impact is that my balance which was problematic in yoga (haven’t done that enough, so a summer resolution to do so) is much improved now that I have the core strength.

I’ll be able to keep all of these things going up north, plus, I hope, more yoga, playing music, and, above all, fiction writing.

[theloniousbach]

RETIREMENT CHRONICLES 3.2

Winter breaks, while they aren’t semesters and long enough to plan and project full blown projects, are still units of time and work worth chronicling. As breaks between semesters, they are chances to catch up and/or get to things that had been put off. I used to say they were rehearsals for retirement and they are even as my work commitments shrink. Indeed, they continue to as I will start teaching just one class tomorrow and don’t plan to teach in the fall. My 2026 will mostly look like this past month, so I’m glad for the rehearsal.

While it was and will be the good old familiar, there were some specific accomplishments to note:

WRITING

I did something everyday, just like the how to books say. During school times, I can do most days and mostly music notes. What I don’t have bandwidth for is my own FICTION; getting to that allowed me to add 7500 words to wrap up having Sherlock Holmes et al participate in the Dreyfus Affair. I have research, planning, and daydreaming to do to launch a new set of episodes for summer and fall writing.

I watched even more jazz than usual and wrote at least 15 of those little notes and a summary of 2025 for my friend’s radio show. I did a couple of these summaries and a note on American art and the culture of small towns on my trip to Mt Vernon, IL.

I’m a writer in that that’s how I am in the world. That’s why I started to grieve Bob Weir by writing about it.

SELF-CARE

I met the goal to reincorporate yoga into my routine on the days I don’t go to the gym. Going back to having three days a week with 8:30, 9, or 10 am on my calendar with be a test to keep this going. We walked less due to the dark mornings and cold weather. That will improve.

MUSIC

I picked up a guitar virtually everyday for at least a little bit and made a point of picking up the dreadnought and resonator which I’d ignored for the smaller guitars. I can’t say that I added any new tunes really, but more of them are fresher in my fingers.

I played piano some, but less than I want. Having it upstairs is a psychological obstacle. I’m getting my left hand to be more sophisticated than simply basic triads, adding 7ths and even accidentals. There is something I sense, perhaps even know without having words for it, that doing that tells me about how chords relate to one another, the melody, and the way the tunes are put together. My piano has always been about helping me listen better and, though again I don’t have words for it, that’s happening.

READING

I read lots of mysteries, lots. My contemporary series is Louise Penny’s Three Pines; my historical ones are Lindsey Davis’ Ancient Rome (I finished Falco and am into the sequels with daughter Flavia Albia) and Allison Montclair’s Sparks and Bainbridge set in post WW2 London. I have used Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe books as palette cleansers and there are more of those, but, for similar purposes, I’m returning systematically to Donald Westlake’s Dortmuders for sad sack capers.

AHEAD

I have just one class and will be done by 11:30, so I have more days for lunches and more afternoons for walks, yoga, and being holed up in my music room. One prep and less grading will probably feel much lighter.

Hope so.

[theloniousbach]

RETIREMENT CHRONICLES 3.1

I’m turning in my grades and assessment later this morning, so the semester—external for teaching but also an internal clock to measure and adjust goals and aims—is effectively done. It is particularly for this internal check in that I write this chronicle.

TEACHING

It really was a strong semester with students doing remarkable work with a higher than normal percentage on my side and, even better, no one who really fought me (or, to be fair, equally true, that I fought with). The old standby course had even more thematic unity than usual which fed my and their engagements. The other course probably too much relied on the previous iteration’s template which was good enough but requires tweaking, but I fear I coasted more than I’d like. That said, they did as many magical things as the other class.

That said, I’m tired. While I continue to trick the kids into doing meaningful projects to personalize their learning instead of doing some AI paper, they are changing. They certainly keep me young minded, but the generational divide feels like it suddenly requires even more work. I’m willing to do it as the rewards are great, but it is tiring. Classes are also getting bigger, so I will only teach the old reliable in the Spring and be done by 11:30 meaning more lunch opportunities with friends. I am taking the Fall off to let even the old reliable course breathe a bit, but, more to the point, to see just what I’ll miss by not being in the classroom however many years from now that is.

I feel like I’ve become more efficient in my work with the honors college, getting more done both administratively and with the students in less time. There’s even more magic with them, so, when they are in my classes, things start at a higher level.

TRAVELING TO PIN DOWN THE FUTURE

We traveled to Davenport, IA, in early September to go to a baseball game at Modern Woodmen Stadium on the banks of the Mississippi. That Sports Illustrated did a feature on it and that the Figge Art Museum had an exhibit of Dutch Art from the 17th and 18th Centuries from the National Gallery warranted a trip. And we went to Pittsburgh Thanksgiving week. Together that would have been enough disruption, but, as they say, “wait, there’s more.” We have found a very pleasant solution to our summer aspirations to be Up North, but that took two physical trips and lots of daydreaming.

FICTION

I had virtually no bandwidth for my own writing, though I see 1500 words three days running in late October. But I should be able to finish this novella and, with it, the third volume over this break.

Reading however was a primary escape. I finished a series set in Door County, Wisconsin, and am up to date in one set in Wisconsin. I also finished Frank Tallis’ series set in very early 20th Century Vienna where one of the heroes is a protege of Freud. I rejoined Lindsey Davis’ Marcus Didius Falco series set in Vespasian’s Rome after 15 or more year hiatus with an eye toward then taking off on the sequel series where Flavia Albia takes over her father’s business. I also have taken up Louise Penny’s Three Pines mysteries, though the first two at least have been rereads. I also reread the first Janwillem van der Wetering’s series set in Amsterdam also from the past with an eye toward revisiting the Netherlands in that vicarious way. And since Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfes are so much fun and have no series arc, they are go to when I’m waiting for the library to deliver something on hold.

MUSIC

I always wish I played more and more systematically, but there are weeks where I don’t much. Still, I’m flatpicking fiddle tunes again to go with fingerpicking which wanders from blues to British Isle folk tunes to songs I grew up with. It’s a very welcome hobby/pastime but not quite a pursuit.

On the other hand, watching music performances, streams and in person, are very much both. I write better than I play, so I see that I wrote 44 souvenirs about 75 shows/sets over this fall, mostly jazz and mostly Smalls Live but also chamber music (Arianna String Quartet and Friends of Music), a memorable Americana show (Molly Tuttle), and a legend, Andy Irvine, at Focal Point. I owe my Toledo Jazz Spectrum host friend an essay on my year in jazz. He necessarily listens to albums, but I get to see what goes on at Smalls, Mezzrow, and Smoke. That’s what I’ll review.

SELF CARE

Getting to the gym three times a week is, by now, an established habit. I have a flexible regimen with lots of variations. I also have adding weights, not reps yet for some reason, so I’m not complacent. The added “vitalities” there too make a difference and, since they are administered by young people pursuing careers in nursing, audiology, nutrition, and physical therapy, I find that my interested conversations with them have a bit of the same rewards that teaching and especially advising give me.

As with playing music, I wish I did yoga on those other four days. But that slips too. I play guitar more than yoga but yoga happens way more frequently than playing chords and melody lines of jazz tunes on the piano.

THE MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN

While the travel interfered a bit, the Ethnobiology Journal Club remains a treasured community. They are very welcoming and keeping up on their scientific literature is rewarding. It is a community that adds to the “Ewan Lunches” I’ve organized now for much longer than Joe and Nesta did. Having an old Webster friend in the Library also makes the Garden, like the gym, a comfortable third place.

THE STATE OF THE ASTERISK

I am now into the third year not working the 9 to 5. I retired with an asterisk, I quipped, because I was still active at the University. I still am, but less so and at increasing remove from technological, curricular, and other developments. There are lots of new faculty whom I just don’t know. Institutions change as I well know as a historian. That knowledge and a fairly accurate sense of where/how I fit in means that I am not going to try to make the world fit me. There are ways that I’m aware it doesn’t fit me as well as it once did and that’s fine.

But so long as I can set up the conditions that make possible the wonderful things the kids did this semester, I am not ready to give it up.

[theloniousbach]

RETIREMENT CHRONICLES 2.4

The premise of this series is that the semester is a good unit for anyone to measure time in. It’s long enough to set achievable goals for and short enough to measure them and adjust. In two weeks, I will have been away from my office job for two years though my retirement has been with an asterisk as I continue to teach and work with a rewarding group of honors students. Away from the office, I know have real Winter (one month) and Summer (three) Breaks where the asterisk recedes.

So, here’s what I did on my Summer Vacation (groan):

FICTION WRITING was the retirement project I preciously took up over the last years in the office even. It’s what I started to do when my last Edgar Anderson paper was published. I am in the third collection of novellas, pastiches of Sherlock Holmes’ world with Charles Darwin’s. Imagining that world is huge fun and I’d rather do that than try to get them published, whatever that means anymore. I think they’re capable enough, as good things I read; if I were a musician at a comparable level, I’d rent some studio time, make a recording, and have, what?, some CDs?, some sound files?, something. The writing, the imagining is fun, so I do it when I have bandwidth. Summers are good for that and I added 13,482 words, about a third again as much for this installment. No more than a like amount will bring it to a close. I am not drawn to mystery plots, so the puzzles I set for myself are ones how to plausibly inject Holmes et al into historical events. It’s fun. Even if I don’t have the patience to turn it into “books,” I do like to be read. If you want to, send me a message. Let’s see if I can make progress during the school year when students have a serious and legitimate claim to my creative bandwidth.

I will keep up FICTION READING, that is mysteries mostly. I have re/read a few PG Wodehouse stories which have their own conventions and are good impetus to write with a nice fizz. I am similarly dipping into Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe stories and was glad to discover what shouldn’t be a surprise, that they admired one another. But, Wodehouse and Stout are about as classy as I get and that my resolution to read 19th century British—Eliot and Trollope—and French—Zola, Balzac, Stendahl—fiction are solely aspirational. I do like good writing, but not all of my series (two set in Door County, one in Freud’s Vienna, a WW2 English Village version of the Thursday Murder Club) are that polished. I refound Lindsey Davis and her second Roman series where the detective is the daughter in the first series. I read most but not all of the first series, so I’ll get some way into the second one to figure out where I should go to get back into the old one. And, there’s a series where Giordano Bruno of all people is the detective in Elizabethan England.

The MBG’s Ethnobiology Journal Club was on summer hiatus, but I went to the Library often enough during E’s work hours. It’s a pleasant place and the new librarian, as was her predecessor, is an old friend. It’s been fun to see the potential she sees and to offer ways to help. It is far from the things she needs to do first, but I’ve revived an old idea, an anthology of Edgar Anderson’s popular writing. As I teach less, just one course a semester starting next Spring, the Garden may claim more of my time.

MUSIC remains central and I was pretty consistent with simply playing guitar. I have a few flat picked fiddle tunes in steady rotation which gives me a developing fluency with some scales which in turn helps with finger picking embellishments which have been employed on songs, folk and those of my youth, more than blues. On the whole, my repertoire—material and licks—is a little bigger. As for writing, I see that I have seen 70 performances—mostly streams—since school was out and written 45 of my souvenirs. This will only continue as I benefit both from the extended concentration/meditation of seeing the music made and from turning them into writing prompts. I may not write fiction for days on end, but I will inevitably have music to write about.

SELF CARE is equally well-established with going to the gym three times a week a habit, including some of the recovery practices that also have a meditative element. There are fine gyms in Door County, but in Marquette I leaned into yoga and was reminded how useful that is as a habit, a practice.

There’s another side to self care that I found myself developing over this summer, how to independently organize my time. Being Up North four weeks in 2025, not the nearly 11 of 2024 meant that there were things to discover about St Louis and things to prioritize Up North with “only” two weeks in Door and in Marquette for the last time for the foreseeable future. This exercise in homing in on what’s important will pay off as I start acting my age and continue to transition into retirement.

[theloniousbach]

RETIREMENT CHRONICLES 2.3

I’ll turn in grades tomorrow and declare that my summer has begun. I still measure time by the school year, so it remains useful to assess how I have used those chunks of time.

And I’m always looking for a WRITING prompt, particularly since my grand fiction writing project amounted to all of two days and 700ish words. Summer should change that. I did write dozens of music performance souvenirs and that won’t change over the summer. But my Going Dutch journal of my Spring Break class in The Netherlands was a unique opportunity. That class and trip took up lots of bandwidth and was completely worthwhile. The fiction writing is still there. So is travel/Europe and TEACHING, but I monitor both and am glad that I’m capable of both.

The Leiden class was a delight, a class full of teacher’s pets with the vast majority of whom are part of the honors college that is in my part time portfolio. They did remarkable work academically (a poem, a film, a magazine of drawings) and socially, caring for one another and the project. I increasingly see my job is to get out of the way and not limit student learning, asking them to demonstrate their learning in ways meaningful to them. I do get perfectly fine papers, but I am excited by what else I get. My good ol’ Science in the News class operates on the same principles and a good chunk of them drank the same Kool-Aid. I used that class to look critically at my experiences with functional medicine as well as complementary treatments and wellness generally.

Ironically, I had two separate colds that dragged out while I was teaching about WELLNESS. But working out three times a week when healthy and expediting recovery times is an advantage of not working full time. I wish I did yoga more frequently and I’m committed to fitting that back into the mix over the summer.

I can tell myself that I am working on my fiction writing with all the READING I do. Yeah, right. Still, I typically have my nose in a book. The main landmark is that I finished Patrick O’Brian’s majestic Aubrey/Maturin Royal Navy in the time of Napoleon saga, 20 books and even a little fragment more. They are both sprawling (and hence life-like with rich character development and plot intricacies) and well-crafted. I call them genre adjacent literary fiction. I have some unfolding mystery series going, though I’m not surprised to notice that I am drawn to historical settings—or at least the early 20th Century. Frank Tallis’ hero is a protege of Sigmund Freud while Kate Khavari places botanist Saffron Everleigh at University College London just after World War I. Finally, I find myself dipping into Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe yarns regularly if not systematically. Wolfe/Goodwin just are, so there’s no series arc, making them comfortable to visit again and again.

If writing about MUSIC was steady, playing it was up and down with travel and feeling poorly to blame. But my fretting and picking callouses are coming back and I’ve even played some piano recently.

So I head into a summer in St Louis until mid-July. Being here is a chance to enjoy our pollinator garden as I didn’t as much last year. Having our gym/spa and the piano at hand are some solace in the face of the heat ahead. It will also be easier to do the limited amount of school tasks that I will take on.

I spent my Friday mornings at the MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN’s Ethnobiology Journal Club which was stimulating and friendly. The new Librarian there is a long time friend from Webster. She is a skilled networker, but it will be fun to contribute to her settling in and beyond.

So, besides the MBG, my added assignments are FICTION WRITING, YOGA, and PIANO/GUITAR. Going to the GYM and MUSIC WRITING are long established habits that won’t go away.

[theloniousbach]

RETIREMENT CHRONICLES 2.2

Winter Break is effectively over. I teach tomorrow but I have the classes set up (syllabus, the first several days’ discussion threads published) in our World Classroom system and have communicated with those students as well as the Honors College students. I’m looking forward to it all—the class that spends Spring Break in Leiden and my good old science literacy class that will examine health care through an examination of the functional medicine/gym/services practice I use.\

So how well did I recover from the Fall?

I only WROTE FICTIONon three days adding just a thousand word to that project. Teaching remains a primary (and welcome) creative outlet and the Leiden course is a one off that draws on previous elements and Science in the News always fits new material into a comfortable framework.

Now I did OTHER WRITING: 13 musical souvenirs posted on FB and Tumblr reflecting 20 sets, a couple of year end messages to cousins, Retirement Chronicles 2.1, and a summary of my 2024 jazz listening. Writing, yes, just not much fiction.

But I had more success on reintroducing yoga into my FITNESS routine. I did yoga on about half the days while still getting to the gym about once every third day factoring in travel and show days. We were out of town for most of the time between Xmas and New Year’s and that trip encouraged walking, but the last week’s snow has made that form of exercise difficult. Yoga had slipped as I spent time in the fall with the very interesting posture/stretching exercises of ELDOA and interestingly I did less of that at the expense of yoga.

Early in the Fall, I’d recognized that I’d over projected a more focused approach to GUITAR PLAYING. But that also meant that I wasn’t playing recreationally even. Over break, I did play at least a little virtually every day. After blowing off the rust, I found that recreational playing resulted in practicing, in wanting to learn new things and refine/extend certain skills.

Going forward in Spring, I want to project

—a hybrid of recreation and focus to continue this repertoire/skills building with guitar;

—keep with yoga while seeing ELDOA as a complement; and

—a gentle curious attention to creating bandwidth for writing fiction, recognizing it as a complement to teaching as rewarding creative activities.

Fiction writing also complements fiction reading. I habitually have a nose in a book and I probably will finish two series over this semester, but I want to be gentle on myself on this front too.

If I’m getting the hang of being retired, then maybe that means that fiction writing and yoga become as established habits as going to the gym, reading, and music watching/writing are

[theloniousbach]

RETIREMENT CHRONICLES 2.1

While I am not quite done with grading (some stragglers have until midday Monday), the end is in sight. I also need to summarize and assess where I put my SCIN 1030 class’ ethical reasoning in light of their semester with me. Still I am ready to have this challenging semester behind me.

After last summer’s limited academic activity and no fixed points up north, I entered the year feeling retired, not just working less. That judgment holds even though this fall, I worked hard teaching—as hard as any semester in recent memory. I had no bandwidth for writing fiction and, beyond recognizing as I did in mid-September in Retirement Chronicles 2.025 that I wasn’t going to be able to work systematically on particular aspects of playing music (flat picking fiddle tunes or Grateful Dead repertoire for fingerpicking or bass which was in the mix over the summer, much less piano), I also went long stretches without picking up an instrument recreationally.

Still, TEACHING had its rewards along with the challenges. I discovered and doubled down on a commitment to putting the students completely at the center of what I was doing. That meant reorganizing on the fly the course for first years to make Nepal, home to 11 of the 18, one of the places we studied. I got to explore my concepts and learn from them while keeping the attention of most of them and giving us native borns a unique experience. But I was teaching/modeling a cultural shift and that was a strain without the reward of seeing the fruits as 13 in my class are moving on. In the other class, I coaxed spectacular work out of several students by asking them to convey their knowledge in ways meaningful to them. So I got to see drawings, screen plays, proposals for documentaries, and a magazine with three articles on the octopus when one would have sufficed. One student turned in a very personal Museum of MEntal Health, so I invited them to help design the neuroscience unit. An excessively conscientious student protested an A-, so, after telling her in my head to chill out, I reassured her that we’d adjust to one another and that it would work out. But I also got her to respond to an article, “Abolish Grades,” which included reference to a curmudgeon who proposed inflated Registrar Grades and real Grades for feedback. To her credit, she wrote a very thoughtful, self-reflective explanation of her approach to grades. I was relieved to see that her pursuit of an immaculate GPA had not dampened her interest in real learning.

So I was busy.

Yes, too busy for WRITING FICTION—and I want to turn that around over this break. I did manage to escape into READING FICTION, reading a higher grade of genre fiction, including at least four volumes of Patrick O’Brian’s remarkable Master and Commander books and rereading the CJ Sansome Matthew Shardlake long mysteries set in the time of Henry VIII. I have settled into the Nita Prose Molly the Maid series as it launches, but otherwise don’t have a recent series going. Until I do, I will keep on with classics like Rex Stout—and then Agatha Christie and Raymond Chandler.

I am making a point of PLAYING MUSIC this break to at least get my chording callouses back and to remember some tunes. My goal is simply to play recreationally and get back to discovering some more systematic purpose. But WRITING ABOUT MUSIC has remained a fixture with some 60 souvenirs of performances—mostly streams from Smalls Live and Smoke, but also live jazz at Jazz St Louis and, magically, Mezzrow’s itself, but also Friends of Music for chamber music and some trad folk too. There were the very last Terrapin Clubhouse/DarkStarathons from Phil Lesh and a tribute to that departed hero.

So I kept up reading, writing about music, and EXERCISING three days a week in the face of the demands on my bandwidth. I would go to our cushy/bourgie fitness/spa on Mondays and Saturdays, the latter at least with Ellen. Midweek might be there or at the nearby Y. I have also restarted yoga this break as I have checked out a stretching/posture regimen called ELDOA after a French acronym that evokes traditional osteopathy. I plan to examine all of these self-care approaches in my SCIN 1030 course next semester.

Finally, I should acknowledge the place of the MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN in my retirement. The Ethnobiology Journal Club provides a stimulating weekly conversation and a community that has merged with my more regular now continuation of the Ewan lunches. At one point, I imagined my (semi-)retirement as being wholly at the MBG. I wrapped up the Anderson project before I wrapped up the day job school and found a role in the honors college. So my retirement with an asterisk has and will include Webster, but the MBG is part of it too. And that’s a discovery of this round of settling into retirement.