2023 – Looking Back

January 3, 2023 I officially retired. So it kind of makes sense to look back from January 3, 2024. 

So lets’ go for some highlights:

Highlights

January 3. I officially retired. I was on a cruise. We docked in Jamaica, and mostly I stayed in the touristy port area and ate a bunch of chicken patties.

Late January. Back to school! I started graduate courses in mathematics at Queens College. Apparently they thought I was a masters student when I did coursework there in 2013-14 (my sabbatical), so a little paperwork got me reinstated, and presto, I was studying point-set topology.

February was my birthday! I organized a walk in Van Cortlandt Park. Do you remember how mild last winter was? Sure you do. Do you remember though, one, completely out of nowhere, frigid day? That was my birthday. A crowd of 20 dwindled to five hearty souls. We walked 3 1/2 miles, visited the Van Cortlandt Mansion, and then got Vietnamese food. Everyone left, and I walked over to my barber. And he cut my hair and shaved me for my birthday!

May 12. I gathered some folks to mark my retirement. Nothing fancy, but felt nice to be surrounded by friends, colleagues, alumni, retirees…

Late June. I traveled upstate for a Juneteenth trip. National Abolition Hall of Fame (outside Syracuse). John Brown’s Farmstead (Essex County, near Lake Champlain), George Thomas’ grave (not really abolition, but adjacent), and the WEB DuBois historic site in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.

In July I got work! Math day camp for middle schoolers. Five weeks. Exhausting. But fun. We did the Pirate Problem and Ghost the Bunny and lots more math.

August was quiet… I went to Chicago for a weekend… spent other days hiking… And finished the month by starting two more graduate mathematics classes. It was also in August that I started preparing for the Retiree Advocate electoral campaign – we will be challenging Unity in the spring 2024 Retired Teachers Chapter elections.

In September I went back to Maine, to the same pond where I went the previous September so I wouldn’t be in New York when school started. Very peaceful.

In September I also started doing two math enrichment classes on Saturdays. Not test prep or homework help – just purely off-curriculum math with kids who, I don’t know, like math? Are curious? It was good. I’m doing it again in the Spring

October. In October it felt like the world turned upside down. I used to go to protests and demonstrations when I was younger, but not so much lately… until October. I think I’ve been in the streets more in the last three months than in the previous – I don’t know how many years.

October I also started a youtube thing with Arthur: State of the Union. We are up to once a month.

Honestly, the movement for a ceasefire seems to have overwhelmed the rest of the year. November and December were Thanksgiving and Christmas and calling for, if not peace on earth, at least an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.