2015 - Another fine year shot to heck! Year end musings

What's a tree worth? This interesting thought came to me while watching the chainsaw pros quickly clean up the ice storm tree debris.  As TPP watched a nearly 20 foot limber pine zip through the chipper, you know you only paid $130 for the tree plus the cost of delivery and planting (too big), but even if someone were to give you $200 for a replacement, you can't get back the 8-10 years of growth. That begins to tell you how much a really big tree is worth, they're really priceless and they should not be taken down without damned good cause.
So instead of a tree limb mess there now exists a 15 foot wide 20 foot long empty space although TPP's Sinocalycanthus appears to have escaped tree fall damage.  Good thin it'd be pretty tough to replace.  So the Phactors get to rethink this border garden and maybe try something different; it was a bit too shady for the limber pine. 
This ends TPPs first full year of retirement and the most surprising thing has been how busy his life has been. So no daytime TV, no shortage of chores, no shortage of gardening jobs, no boredom at all. On the positive side, he cooks more Italian food and shops more for groceries. Further he resolves to clean up all of the kitchen messes he creates. 
This blog is also almost 8 years old. Although very few people noticed at first, readership has been pretty steady for the last few years. Hope you all appreciate the total and complete absence of annoying popup ads or pathetic bloggers begging for donations. Heck, TPP hasn't even tried to flog his real life counterparts book; hard to do when writing under a pseudonym. The assumption is that readers appreciate these efforts.  Hard to know what my readers think because - in general silence. TPP admits that the primary purpose of this blog is to get things off my mind, to blow off steam, and lower the blood pressure in a semi-constructive manner.
Politics is so very bad this year that TPP can hardly write anything at all because it all comes out sounding so very pessimistic that it doesn't help the old state of mind at all. Seriously thinking that candidates should be asked if they garden, and if not, then we should forget them completely. Hoe some weeds, mow some grass, grow some tomatoes and then we'll talk.  Maybe 2016 should be the year of Gardening for better government, then we sharpen our hoes and weed out all of the baddies.
Send your local politicians some seeds and see what they do with them. Maybe we can grow some better government, a real grassroots effort.  Tell the blogger what you thinks. Time to cleanup the kitchen.

Retirement update

Quite a few people have been asking TPP how his retirement is going.  In answer: It's going well. You see everyone's big worries are money and boredom, having nothing to do and having nothing to do it with. Neither of these is a problem at all. Disciplined saving, investment, and Mrs. Phactor's watchful fiscal eye have paid off. Saw today that 29% of people in the USA have no savings at all, and this is actually impossible for TPP to imagine. Scary. Even as grad students the Phactors had some money socked away. Boredom just isn't an issue. Fortunately a big dividing line between what TPP did for his salary and what he did because he liked doing it never existed. So this was a retirement from being a professor, but not retirement from being a botanist. Why would you retire from botany? The young fellow in the next door office just turned 85 and he now has been an active retired biologist for longer than he was an active professor, a very difficult feat. Without the distractions of teaching, faculty meetings, and the like, he has published more research articles in the retirement portion of his career. So, yes, TPP still has some active research projects. He is helping master naturalists organize some "citizen science" projects. He is an emeritus curator of the university's herbarium. And of course his historic house and expansive gardens all scream for his attentions. Finding things to do is not the problem. TPP doesn't miss the stress of dealing with deadlines and fixed schedules. Going with the flow and not feeling like you're always rushing towards a deadline is quite relaxing.  As Douglas Adams once said, "I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as the rush by."  So, on the whole, the retirement thing is going quite well. Thank you for asking.

February - tough month for gardeners and recent retirees

The most recent snow missed us (too bad), and now another cold front has settled upon the upper midwest. It looks grimly cold outside. This is a tough month for gardeners psychologically, and physically with limited exercise, but things are even worse for non-gardeners. As a recent retiree, people keep asking if TPP is OK, enjoying retirement, and keeping busy? Yes, yes, yes. There is a great thing about being a plant-loving, gardening botanist which is that you cannot actually find the demarcation between your work and personal life. So, when gardening is bleak and impossible, TPP turns to curation work and plants growing in the glass houses, and other things. And even now arrangements are being made for the purchase of a new Scaidopitys to replace the one that died from the summer drought in 2013. And of course, sort of conflicting with gardening, field research continues, although at this stage its just preparing for the field so seeds are being vernalized and seedlings have been brought out of cold storage. Lastly when you get stone cold bored, you can always blog, or cook, or do home improvement projects for you know who. So, no question about it, TPP finds plenty to keep himself busy and amused. An encounter with an unfortunate colleague demonstrated the problem some recent retirees have. He doesn't garden, cook, or do anything domestic; his research was expensive and the grants dried up, and students did all the work anyways, and someone else will be assigned the lab space. He said he found himself sitting at home watching TV and he realized how pathetic that was, but still hasn't found anything to keep himself amused, which is why he was hanging around the dept office talking with people. The lesson here is that everyone should garden; you always have something to do even if it's just reading seed/plant catalogs and browsing through nursery web sites waiting for February to pass.

Officially official retirement

TPP's academic alter ego retires - today, although there was a long, unpleasant discussion about that date with the university that eventually confirmed the faculty member could indeed retire on this date, but that's a rather long and boring story of administrative SNAFUs.  Hmm, just checked some online records and the long, boring record of administrative SNAFUs continues because a sum of money was to be deposited in my account today, and it has NOT!  Great, HR has a clear, unblemished record of getting nothing right on this one at all.  It doesn't feel any different than any other day, but that's because it's late summer and not a whole lot is going on anyways.  When classes start again is when it will really feel different, and there will probably be a twinge or two because teaching botany has been such a big part of life for so very long a time. Giving and grading exams; won't miss them for a nanosecond. Mostly the interactions with students will be missed except when those interactions were no fun at all, so mostly. Now let's be clear about this, The Phytophactor is not, repeat, not retiring. The world still needs plant pundits, and hopefully, TPP will not have to monetize this blog to keep the kitty-girls in kibble. The retiree is going to celebrate this event by swearing off margaritas for one entire month, as a change of pace, while residing in Italy.  Hello, negronis!  

There was a cake, so it must be official.

Over the weekend Mrs. Phactor and the F1 organized a retirement party for TPP, and there was a cake.  It said: "Retired botanists plant themselves" (in green frosting script!).  Not sure what to make of that exactly, but when they get you a cake, it must be official. The exact point of my retirement is rather hard to pinpoint.  When you work on 9-month contracts, every year you have 3-months when you aren't under contract, when you don't have defined duties, and when you don't get paid. And no, it's not a summer vacation! In fact, technically speaking, TPP has never gotten any vacation, ever. Yes, TPP engages in some leisure activities, which at times are very similar to his job, and travel, which always involves some botany, but it's your time to do with as you see fit. Some of my colleagues think of retirement as a long sabbatical, and perhaps that's not such a bad model. TPP has one youngish colleague whose emeritus research career is now one year longer than his regular academic career, which is quite a notable achievement. For the record, TPP will not, cannot, beat that record. The food for this party was most excellent starting with a fried turkey, injected with a chipotle marinade, and a watermelon, feta cheese, and arugula salad. The amount of food was pretty impressive, but 50-60 of TPP's close intimate friends lent a hand, and a mouth. They also drank some wine, an impressive amount of wine, but not very impressive wine, which is sort of symmetrical, somehow. And of course they had cake. Now TPP will have to adopt a more retiring attitude. Right.  Now, gimme a piece of cake!

Weirdly strange and strangely weird

TPP is suffering from some disconcerting feelings. Usually things just sort of happen and TPP tries to just take them in stride, but nonetheless today feels strangely weird.  Yesterday, Friday, was the last class day of the semester, another fine semester and academic year shot to hell, and rather than just a regular class (Friday 1 pm) TPP took his students to visit the Missouri Botanical Garden, always pleasant and educational thing to do. The seniors also enjoyed having a non-traditional last day to their college career, so a nice symmetrical situation. The weirdness arises because this was TPP's, actually his academic counterpart's, last class ever because he is retiring later this year. Of course the summer will be pretty much the same as always, but it feels quite strange to suddenly realize that this is the terminus of teaching even though the botanical career is not over by any means, and without question TPP, the blogger, is just getting started. So there it is. Somehow the semester and a very long teaching career (over 40 years), at least in terms of actually being in the classroom with students, has ended, and this proves to be sort of surprising in its abruptness in spite of the fact that this was not a sudden or last minute decision. TPP has plans to do something quite different this coming August, something to help his adjustment to not starting another academic year, but until then this will remain something for readers to wonder about. But somehow this actually happened; this is the end (1970), which is actually when it began.   

Dear Lincolnland

Over 30 years ago, the Phactor entered into a contractual agreement with the state of Lincolnland and in return for my services certain benefits were my due. Mess with this and it will be war. Why does the Phactor deserve these benefits? Well, having earned a below average salary for over 30 years might be one reason, and for that the state got two and half months of free labor every year because out side of our 9 month annual contract, my pay came from grants, or the research and student training, my attendance at and participation in professional meetings, was all done gratis, to maintain and further my professional standing, and by extension my university and state. For over 30 years this academic bargain has been your faithful servant endeavoring to improve the institution of my employment by keeping its administrators honest, recruiting the best students, delivering the best educational opportunities circumstances allowed, initiating courses and programs, and the like. For all of this the Phactor has received several nice pieces of wall candy (awards, commendations), but if it's all right with you what this humble academic wants and deserves is his pension, every stinking nickel of it! And if the Phactor is to suddenly have a lot of retirement time on his hands, every damned minute of it will be focused on making life unbearable for the politicians and state administrators that jerked me around. So glad we understand each other, Lincolnland. Lincolnland?

Predictions for 2011 – no retirement

For the eleventy-seventh time the Phytophactor has no plans to retire yet! Let me explain.
1. Age is not the issue. Although it seems to some that the Phactor has been around for long time, when you start college at a young age (17), complete 3 degrees in 9 years, it becomes possible to have had a long career and still be of a relatively young(ish) age. In particular although the body keeps reminding us of the mileage, the mind still feels quite energetic, if not downright juvenile at times, or is that creeping dementia? Oh, no. But at least if it gets bad you won’t really know.
2. Money is not the issue. It matters not if my retirement benefits equal a substantial percent of my working salary for three reasons: (1) unfortunately my salary is not all that impressive, (2) my career was not chosen for its financial rewards, and (3) more time allows me to stash more into my personal retirement accounts as a hedge on when (not if) the unfunded retirement fund administered ineptly, illegally, and unethically by our great and corrupt state goes belly up.
3. The job is not the issue. One definition of retirement is “removal or withdrawal from service”, to which the Phactor says, “What the .….?” Botany is more than a career or job, more an avocation than a vocation, such an inextricable component of my life that no line can be drawn between my work and play, between my professional and private life, and the day this botanist is “removed or withdrawn” from service will be his last day, period. One wonderful colleague so enjoyed attending fall meetings at the Missouri Botanical Garden (he’d never missed one) that he had his son arrange for an ambulance to deliver him and a private nurse to accompany him to one more meeting while nearly on his death bed. The Phactor is happy for all you people who did a job and earned your retirement. So please understand that some of us do not view what we do as a “job”. In spite of his occasional forays into despair about students who waste their opportunities to learn, he likes what he does. Besides it would be unseemly if the Phactor were to retire before his undergraduate mentor retires.
4. When you retire good old Cheap-skate U., a perennially underfunded, undersized institution has a tendency to want to use your office and research space to house some new, naïve, barely competent assistant professor, thus shoving decades of knowledge and knowhow out the door, along with my library. One legendary botanist acquired a library of such a volume and of so many volumes during his career that he actually bought the house next door and moved so he had room for all his books, an admirable course of action. The Phactor’s library doesn’t take up much more than 130 linear feet of shelf space, but he was educated while it was still the mark of a serious academic to have an impressive collection of books and journals, and now it’s just how many gigs of pdfs you have. Sigh. And my office is where I work; too many distractions around the house and estate. Never have understood these faculty who minimize their time on campus; fire ‘em and use THEIR space for new faculty.
6. The Phactor tends to get in trouble when he’s not busy and occupied. So as a matter of public service and safety, continuing to function as a botanist is a good thing. There should be a fund established for this purpose.
7. My current chair has begged me not to retire just yet. Now the Phactor has seen an impressive number of chairs come and go, on average about one every 4 years, and finally one actually thinks a botany is indispensible to biology, and who can argue with that. This does recognize that without the Phactor there would still be some botanists and some botany courses, but not enough to amount to a sequence, so until the employment picture improves somewhat yours truly may have some leverage!
8. A colleague in another discipline complained that he retired because he had been left behind. Well, whose fault is that? Sorry but one of the responsibilities of our profession is that you remain current, although it is true that young colleagues specializing in the topic du jour tend to consign more traditional areas to the garbage bin of academia and you can find yourself disciplinarily isolated. However, as a purveyor of what one might think of as more traditional botany, the Phactor makes it his responsibility to demonstrate the relevance and usefulness of knowing how to identify plants and name them correctly. This would be easier if they’d only leave families alone; now where did they put those maples?

Gray thoughts on a gray day

Today is a gray day following two days of rain that have done their best to wash away the fall colors, and it is on such days, especially after spending those days grading exams, that the Phactor is most aware that he is in the fall of his career and life. At such times, thoughts of retirement arise, inevitably and sadly so because my love and enjoyment of teaching botany have not diminished, and my personal interactions with students are still rewarding, as are my scholarly endeavors in spite of their slow pace to completions, but when you realize how little impact your love of learning, your accumulated knowledge and experiences, and your deep insights into certain botanical concepts and problems has had on so many of your charges, you become a bit discouraged. At such times you cling to those who are successes like a drowning person clings to a life ring because you wonder how many seats would be empty if you guarantied the uninterested-in-learning a “C” if they simply left you and the rest of the class alone for the rest of the semester. Of course the really uninterested seldom bother us with their presence anyways, so perhaps it would not be as bad as imagined on a cold, gray day when fading leaves carpet the ground.