New Year's fireworks spectacular

One of the reasons to travel is that you learn new things.  And so far the most surprising thing TPP has learned is that at midnight on New Years, you basic steady, rational German becomes a pyrotechnical maniac!  Yes, everyone rushed outside and after a toast, and maybe a kiss or two, the world erupted into a massive public display of fireworks that puts USA's 4th of July to shame.  It was truly something to behold as the sulfurous smoke began to take on dimensions more like Ulm's famous fog.  Who knew?  Surely such a display will keep the dragon from eating the sun, or something?  These were not professional displays; this was not a town's or neighborhood's display, this was everybody, and based upon size and number of the skyrockets, some very heavy ordinance was available to every Tom, Dick, and Franz.  The street in this nice residential area became totally littered with the debris of dozens of diverse fireworks and choked with smoke. Now should you be a bit drowsy and tired, nothing like fireworks to reawaken you, and judging by the next reaction, setting off pyrotechnical mayhem is hungry work.  BOOM!  Happy New Year everyone from Germany!

Out with the old

New Year's has never been much of a big deal; what's the point?  OK so you start a new calendar.  Mostly the New Year is just one of those sign posts or markers to indicate where you are, like one of those mileage signs along a highway.  And here the New Year will start some 7 hours earlier than at home making 2014 seven hours longer for us, if indeed, this is remembered a year from now. Resolutions are sort of lame; if you want to do something different, OK, then change, but why now exactly?  New Year's is a good excuse to have a party, to eat some food, drink some wine, and socialize, in this case with family and friends of our German students.  TPP once found out the official date in Thailand was based on a different calendar that is several hundred years older and offset from the Gregorian standard by a couple of months, but actually this is one of those things, how the calendar we use got to be the way it is remains unknown to this author. Somehow it never came up as a topic.  Shows us just how arbitrary the whole situation is especially as the new year is not pegged to any particular celestial event like the solstice. New year's works for many people as having a time to wipe the slate clean, an excuse to try something different, and maybe something to look forward to is all a survival mechanism, a personal jedi mind trick, something to keep us plodding forward.  So that's how it will be. TPP will keep putting one foot in front of the other and marching into the new year. Tonight's party should be fun, and not the usual party fare either. Staying up to midnight will be easy with a bit of eastward jet lag to help out. It will be fun to see how other people treat the new year celebration. and with fire works, so say the natives. So happy new year all; enjoy yourselves, and we'll see what comes. Tomorrow.

Impending travel

In times now long past, the Phactors always traveled for the holidays because all of our relatives, and many old friends, lived in New York State.  This involved running a gauntlet of potentially very bad winter weather from Cleveland to Buffalo NY, and this was a long drive even when the weather was good.  As the family dispersed the frequency of our visits declined.  Sometimes Mrs. Phactor's family would gather in their adopted state, North Carolina, but that was a long drive for us too.  So now quite a few years have passed when the Phactors have been home-bodies for the holidays, but this year, something different happened.  So the Phactors find themselves finishing up Christmas in a hurry, and in somewhat of a surprise to ourselves heading off to visit friends in Germany and Switzerland.  This is the first time TPP has packed to travel bereft of Hawaiian shirts and shorts, so his normal packing strategy is just not going to work. At any rate it has been a long time since the Phactors began the new year in another country. The best news is that this involves no driving, and especially no driving in the vicinity of Lake Erie. But the dread has already begun; TPP likes going places, but hates travel.  Stoic endurance is the practical state of mind.   

August, the academic new year

Those of us whose lives revolve around academia, especially those of us who actually do the work of educating, which almost universally means faculty on nine month appointments, march to the beat of a different drummer, the academic calendar. My point here is not to criticize the calendar, or the 2nd associate assistant vice president whose pitiful job, even though certainly making more money than yours truly, it is to construct this dictatorial beast. So, no cheap shots will be taken. Besides if you start criticizing the calendar twerp, then the monkey who does the campus directory, the one that requires that you know the university's complete organizational chart to find anything, would take a drubbing so severe that it would actually generate sympathy for them, and that would detract from my postitive energy.

Although August is a funny time for a new year, it deserves some celebration, just like New Year's Eve revelries on the Georgian calendar, and most certainly we celebrators of the academic new years often have a drink or three on this hallowed eve. Actually the Phactor likes these beginnings because everyone starts out in anticipation of so many good things happening, and it takes several weeks, about the time of the first exam for the rosy glow to fade a bit, when both parties begin to face the realities that success takes some effort and that not everyone expended as much as required. But that is part of the job.

Ah, but that's then and this is now, and the energy and excitement are something to be enjoyed, although the week immediately before classes is something to be avoided altogether, if possible, because our small city becomes a mad house, as would any municipality whose population increases by 50%, and only in the 18-22 year old category, virtually overnight.

So come next Monday my students will be told that they start my courses fully able to grasp an A, and that my expectations are that they all will. And that is the wonderfulness of new years, a time to set aside the certain knowledge of what will happen, and to hold out hope that this semester will be THE semester when all my students achieve what they are fully capable of achieving if other things did not get in their way. The sad reality is that even reality shows can be a higher priority for some than the best botany course ever. Still some of them will achieve this, even to their own surprise, so the Phactor can still be optimistic and still look forward to new beginnings with new people after so many years in the business. Happy 41st new fall semester from the Phactor. Let's hope it's a good one.