The other day we dropped our ballots in the mail, as this wasn't going to be my first election since 1980 that I didn't vote. The nice lady at the post office gave an appropriately Sicilian non-committal shrug when Janet asked if they would arrive in time to be counted, but we should be fine.
Here's a picture of my lovely wifey. I don't need any other reason that that to post it, but it's also a nice shot of the path that runs from the area around La Sirenetta up to our Via Trento, the street of our current apartment. We almost always take the more direct trek along the road, but then we remember that if you go around the other way you get a lovely view of the ocean.
Well, that was a challenge, but we made it. Actually, we arrived here in Terrasini on 13 August, it just took a month to get wireless set up. But, much more on that later. It's enough right now to mark that we're here safe and sound. Many, many more stories to come.
Yesterday I pushed a book to the front of my queue, one that I purchased several months ago, but which seemed oddly timely at this moment. Previously, I've championed the New York Review of Books series, which features so many books that have somehow slipped under the radar, and which the editors there feel should get more love. They have almost universally proved to be great choices. I picked up Domenico Starnone's The Old Man by the Sea, before I even realized the almost cinematic joke I was playing on myself.
Of course, it seems particularly appropriate for this moment as we plan for our upcoming move. The process has been challenging, and doesn't seem like it's going to be any less challenging in the near future, but we do have a place to live lined up (not the apartment we wanted) in a sea side town (not the town we wanted), but it's still a seaside town in Italy, which makes my statements above the very definition of #FirstWorld Problems.
A dozen years ago, Sanford and I made our famous drive from Vermont to Oklahoma. The general structure of the class was his design (in that he wanted to visit a town in Oklahoma, which I eventually figured out had originally been named Sanford - although to this day he still denies that he knew anything about that), but I did much of the day to day planning. Hence, we included stops at the Creation Museum, and the Dental School Museum, and Holcomb, Kansas (at the time he had never read In Cold Blood, but I had and it was very moving). In that vein, we also stopped in Terre Haute, Indiana to visit the Eugene V. Debs Museum. Sadly, we arrived just when they were closing for the day, and thus I had to wait almost a fifty of my long life to make it back. This time I arranged my entire trip so that I had plenty of time. As every right-thinking individual knows, the greatest Hoosier of all-time is Eugene Victor Debs (two through four are: Booth Tarkenton, Theodore Dreiser, and Kurt Vonnegut). When I walked into the museum, which is free, by the way and easy to find since it is essentially surrounded by Indiana State University, I was greeted by Allison, a very nice and incredibly knowledgeable young woman. She had also led the tour of the museum when Bernie Sanders stopped by, and she shared pictures of him from her own phone (Debs is a great hero of Bernie as well). Allison asked why I was visiting, and I told her the truth: Debs is a great hero of mine. This made her very happy, and freed her up to skip some of the basic information and devote more time to a deep dive. I ended up more than two hours touring the museum, and it was an extraordinary experience.
This summer sort of reminds me of the stretch right before I took off to spend a year in Abu Dhabi in that I seem to be, quite rightly, spending a lot of time with friends (that summer featured my drive with Sanford from Vermont to Oklahoma, and the trip Steve and I made down to New Orleans to pester Andy). This year features four CFL games (in four different Canadian cities), but I'm also planning to drop down into the Midwest after this Hamilton trip to see family and friends before we head out of the country. Here's a picture my cousin Nick snapped of some utterly ancient guy in an epic Bo Levi Mitchell jersey at a little hole in the wall Mexican place in Hamilton.
As I mentioned earlier, yesterday was an emotional day, mainly in a wonderful way, but also more than a bit elegiac. Yesterday I emptied out my office. Everyone knows I'm retiring - and I'm filling out a lot of related paperwork - and there have already been two retirement parties - but seeing the desk sitting there cold and depersonalized carried a dreadful finality. Every time I've sold a house over the years and I walked out of it for the last time, I've always thought back to an early Japanese poem, which says (I may be paraphrasing): "Someday someone else will celebrate the Festival of Dolls in your house." That is, your house is your home because of the people, your loved ones, who are in it. I reflected upon that yesterday when I looked at my desk, a desk that could be used by literally anybody next year - sitting in an office that could be used by literally anybody next year. Any remnant of who I am and how hard I worked and what I accomplished will dissipate in a few months, if it lingers that long. I told Janet that one of the strangest things about retirement so for is that for the first time in over forty years I don't have another space. When I was in graduate school at UC, I shared the history graduate TA office and even managed to carve off an unused office for my own purposes when I ended up teaching a year-long large western civilization class. I did the same thing when I was teaching adjunct classes at Franklin College while I was finishing my dissertation. During my nine years at Georgia Perimeter College I had two offices. Throughout twenty-nine years at Champlain I've had six offices (one in Joyce, one in the library, three in Aiken, and finally one in Wick). I even had offices when I taught in India and the UAE. When I was offered the job at Hong Kong University they went out of the way to show me my office and where my staff would be. The point being that I always had a separate secondary space, and now I don't. For some reason I find that very unsettling. I'm very happy at home, certainly much happier than I've been for the vast majority of those forty years, but you get used to the existence of those other spaces and the freedom and tangibility that they represented.
Recently I signed up for an online Italian class, because, well, it's time to get serious about beginning to learn Italian. It's time partially because we'll (if the Italian government and court system play nice, which is probably a big if) be in Italy in a few months, but also because I'm now retired and am more in control of my time from now on (although I have lots of projects lined up, although I guess they're more my personal projects, and I will doubtless prove to be a more harsh tyrant than Champlain). I've tinkered with Duolingo, but I don't think it's really a system that's going to effectively teach you a foreign language, but it's OK for those stretches of five or ten minutes when you have some free time and you want to do something other than doom scroll. Over the last year or so I've also paid for Pimsleur, which I like and don't like. I certainly get more out of it than Duolingo, which may only partially relate to the fact that I'm paying for it, and it has less video game content. What I don't like about it is that you have to listen to a half-hour discussion all the another language before you can begin to get text. I understand that it's just a different way to approach learning a foreign language, but it just doesn't seem to fit with how I learn. Essentially, I need to see the text earlier, which relates to simply not being very good at foreign languages, but also because I'm increasingly hard of hearing. So, if I just listen to it the first time without having access to the text, I simply don't pick up the words. I'm going to keep it, at least through the end of the current term, because it might be useful to hear a different approach, especially during down times in my Italian course. My first course in the online class starts on Monday, and I need to get used to the idea of sitting in a chatroom, and this fills me with dread. It's exactly what I need to do, but I know I'm going to hate it at the beginning because it's going to inspire a ton of embarrassment. That said, I'm not going to survive in Italy by just reading text, I need to be able to chat, so I'll just have to plow ahead. I was watching a video today and how to prepare for our first chatroom discussion, and one of the first important phrases was "sono in pensione" or "I'm retired."
So here's a picture that I snapped on Thursday night after the students in my last final have shuffled out of the room. I just felt I should record the moment, even if I couldn't quite capture the emotion of that moment (although, as my friend Sheila opined, there's no place lonelier than an empty class room at the end of a class). I sat there for a little bit and soaked up the moment, and cried a few tears. It's been a long run, that began in October, 1982 when I gave my first college lecture. I was TA'ing for a professor and he headed out of town, leaving me to give a lecture on Sparta to a class of 130 students, who were essentially my age (twenty-two). Later I'll have more to say about my feelings as I process this transition, and also my reflections on the state of academia and our students.
The news is so routinely horrible - and my students are so overpoweringly disinterested - that even writing seems like fun by comparison. Actually, one of the things that is making the transition to retirement easier is how much I'm enjoying writing.
Which is not to be confused with The Secret History. Here's a not particularly exciting picture of a pile of books (all Shahnameh-related) that keep me company in my little loft office. Now, if you look closer, you can make out a poorly stacked pile of papers. That's half of my Epics manuscript. Long ago I stopped referring to it as my book (someday, inshallah, I will be able to refer to it as my book) and started simply calling it my manuscript. While I would prefer that it's published someday, obviously, in other ways the key is that I set out to write it - and I wrote it. My goal is to have to have it completely finished (as much as a book, uh, manuscript, is ever finished) by my last day of this last semester. Being able to turn my head and see the stack, growing larger week by week, gives me resolution to keep pushing grinding away.
You know, there are moments when I have to admit to a ever so slightly nerdy moments. Generally, I accuse many of my friends (for instance, Cyndi) of being much bigger nerds than me (well, Janet gets a pretty consistent accusation), but, maybe I may have an ever so insignificant, almost unmeasurably small, degree of nerd in me. No one should be so excited about the arrival of a thousand page version of the Ramayana. To be fair, I do love the Ramayana, but the arrival of a single volume is huge for my Epics project. I have been able to tie my research and writing to single editions of the Iliad (Robert Fitzgerald), the Aeneid (Robert Fagles), the Shahnameh (Dick Davis), and Journey to the West (Anthony Yu, although Yu's classic is four volumes - he did create his single volume The Monkey and the Monk, which I use every year). All of these are easy to track down and inexpensive to acquire. The outlier was always the Ramayana. There simply wasn't a single volume that featured the original text from the Indian poet Valmiki. There are several much shorter retellings, but I wanted my readers to experience the original text, and not a modern retelling. So, I tied my writing to Robert Goldman's massive Critical Edition, which is extraordinary, but something that would be hard to find unless you had access to a library at a research university. So, the arrival of The Ramayana of Valmiki: the Complete English Translation from Robert Goldman and Sally J. Sutherland Goldman is a godsend. I have my single, affordable edition that I can tie to my research (although lining things up to my original citations from the Critical Edition, and factoring in new translations, is a late challenge to my work) solves a big problem. Beyond everything else, I was simply way too excited to have the book arrive, and provide me yet another opportunity to delve into the Indian classic.
I've been reading quite a bit of Italian literature recently, which may be part of an unconscious transition to our upcoming life in Italy. One of the novels I read was Beppe Fenoglio's A Private Affair, which I liked quite a bit. In the introduction I felt a definite sense of communion with Fenoglio's comment on his writing: "I write for a great many reasons . . . but certainly not for fun." I'm in the process of putting final gloss on my Epics manuscript, and am also sending around proposals to publishers, with my goal to have the entire five-hundred page tome finished (obviously, it will be altered and amended when/if I find a publisher) by the time I teach my last class at Champlain. That will give me the summer to begin to transition to other projects, get back to the gym, and start packing. Beppe's words jumped out at me because I really don't like writing, I mean, I do and I don't. Like most writers, researching and pursuing mad flights of fancy is a ton of fun, but grinding your way through endless revisions is pretty tortuous. Having said all that, I do like it now in a way that I thought that I never would - and this is helping me get my mind around the thought of retirement, because I can now imagine a different and meaningful world when I'm no longer teaching. Still, groan, Beppe is spot on. It's exhausting and lonely and it completely eats away at your self-esteem. Groan.
One of my (many) peculiarities is my willingness (joy) at using literally anything as a bookmark. Janet is much more likely to gather up free bookmarks at bookstores (like the motherlode we picked up yesterday afternoon at Bear Pond Bookstore in Montpelier), whereas I'll make use of just about anything; favorites would include: foreign currency, tickets to get into the Taj Mahal, plane tickets, etc. Yesterday I was putting a final gloss on my Ramayana chapter when the following restaurant receipt fell out of my copy of the Ayodhyakanda. I suppose, as I fast approach a major bookmark, that is my retirement, it would make sense that I found it oddly moving. An Indian epic definitely deserved an Indian receipt.
This morning I got up early (which isn't particularly surprising) so that I could head down the hill to the Calais Town Hall by 6:45 to volunteer for the special election on the future of the Calais Elementary School. I've volunteered at several elections over the years, and it's something that I like to do - and to give back to this amazing community. It really hit home with me this morning, however, for a couple reasons. First off, obviously, is that the clock is ticking on our time here, and it's already filling me with these bittersweet emotions. Secondly, I didn't get home last until 8:30 because I was up late teaching my Monday Images of Fascism class. That's a jarring clash of ideologies and emotions. It also struck me that things like this are the present administration's nightmare, not because I'm important (because it would be difficult to imagine someone less important than me), but because that combination - people learning about Fascism and also actively supporting democratic institutions (and community) - is not what the authoritarians want. They would prefer an ignorant and disengaged citizenship, not folks who are paying attention and fighting back, even in quietly by getting up early to spread the de-icer and check people into the system.
And yet another birthday, and year, has flown past. Yesterday was a lovely day, despite my growing aversion to birthdays. Janet took gave me some lovely presents (my last remaining CFL jersey, two books on the CFL, and, best of all, a beautiful poem she wrote for me) and took me out to eat at Sarducci's (which was, as always, excellent). Along the way there was the usual couple hundred birthday wishes that made there way to me through various modes of social media from around the world. It's lovely to be remembered, all while I do my level best to be forgotten.
Yesterday, after our latest Unofficial Book Club meeting I decided that I wanted to head down to the Langdon Street Tavern to watch the last Vikings game of the year. I tried to convince my son to join me by texting that "I was heading down to Langdon to catch the 1:00 game of the team I no longer follow," with him, and most of the western world, knowing that I meant that Vikings. I told my friend Andy (another long-suffering Vikings fan) that if I were going to spend the winter complaining bitterly about how much J.J. McCarthy sucks I needed more evidence. Either way, I sat by myself, happily, relatively, (seriously, if you're 4-8 and out of the playoffs why not just lose the last five games and get a decent draft pick - as compared to winning the last five so that you can pick in the middle of the first round and draft another cornerback?), watching a win. So, why did I go? Beyond the pleasure of beers and wings and a game, I suspect there was something else going on. Here at the end of my career, and in these early stages of the inevitable slide towards the end of everything, I often joke about everything being the Last Something (semester, car, winter coat, syllabus, idiot student question, etc.), but I sort of thought of yesterday's game as the Last Game - or at least the Last Game at a Bar with Chicken Wings. Sicily is six hours ahead of Vermont, so with the exception of 1:00 p.m. Sunday games (7:00 p.m. Catania time) most games won't work schedule-wise (even if I could find a Sicilian bar that had the NFL package). I suppose I'm facing the same scheduling issue with my beloved CFL, although I'm used to watching them for free on CFL+ on my phone or laptop so my expectations are different. So, anyway, it just seemed important that I showed up one last time to catch a game in a bar. It was a nice time, although somewhat bittersweet.
Technically, the end of 65 won't be until next week, but at the very least it's a picture of me at the end of 2025. There's that old joke that if you think you look bad you should just take a picture of yourself today and look at it in five years, at which point you'll be amazed at how young and vibrant you were. I can't believe that this picture will ever convince me that the guy in it looks young and vibrant - and if I live long enough that the guy in the picture looks young and vibrant I'll be so senile that I won't know who he is. Having said all that, maybe I'll start a new tradition of including an end of the year picture, for history's sake. Janet snapped this one when we were down visiting her mother on Christmas day.
"You should understand, Mr. Blodget, that one thing I have come to trust is that people find what they are looking for, what they believe on some level that they either need or deserve. I think this is proven moment to moment, so I take it as more than mere happenstance that you are here. I take it as a measure of your will, which honors us and obliges me to be honest."
Blodget looked up from the Tibetan pieces to find the doctor's eyes directly upon him. "Please."
"Well. Something else I've come to trust is that truth is provided in precisely the measure and form appropriate to each of us individually. I find, more over, that the disposition of truth is not, as it may sometimes seem, to withdraw and then appear. That is a function of our concentration. The disposition of truth is to remain constant. That way, when a man chooses to look, directly at whatever happens to be surrounding him - whatever it may be - he will find the truth there waiting. Am I clear?"
Brooks Hansen, The Chess Garden
This morning I finish my latest, I'm guessing my fifth, reading of Brooks Hansen's The Chess Garden. As always, I sobbed. I didn't cry because the ending is sad, although it is in a way, but because of its almost crushing beauty. As I was saying to my great friend Sarah this morning, The Chess Garden is, to me, a remarkably generous gift. I mention Sarah mainly because she's the only person that I've recommended the novel to who has loved it like I do. Seriously, we can't talk about it without getting misty-eyed. Every other person I've recommended it to (and I've dragooned so many people into reading it) have either not finished it or tried to gracefully cover up how mystified they were by my love for the novel. It's on that short list with Dickens's Bleak House or Proust's Remembrance of Things Past or Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet (if that's actually a novel) or Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio for the designation as my favorite novel. I don't know if I completely understand it - or that I'm supposed to understand it - although I also feel that I come a little closer with every reread. Recently I purchased an Emanuel Swedenborg (his life and philosophy play a huge role in the novel) reader, hoping that will give me more tools for my next reread. In the spring I'm going to start my latest reread of Remembrance of Things Past, although this will be my first with the new translation, with the more appropriate title In Search of Lost Time, I recently acquired. My plan was to finish the reread so that I wouldn't feel the pressure to take all seven volumes in my suitcase this summer to Sicily. My logic was much the same with The Chess Garden, especially since my copy is falling to pieces. However, the thought that I would go anyplace without the novel is madness. Obviously, The Chess Garden is remarkably, impossibly highly, recommended, and I'll apologize in advance. I would like to point out that Doctor Uyterhoeven, who is talking to Blodget above, and I share the same birthday. Like Doctor Uyterhoeven, I plan on leaving my cane hanging from the apple tree outside the cabin when I head overseas.
OK, so Christmas is clearly not here yet, and I don't know exactly what form it will take (we might be down visiting Janet's mom or we might be spending it with Gary and Ali and some combination of her family or we might be spending it blissfully alone). So, I thought I would go ahead and post the beginnings of the celebration.
It's strange to think that next year we'll be celebrating the Christmas season in Sicily. I started doing some research on Christmas traditions in Sicily and I think it's going to be pretty amazing.
