Bill Davis, NESAD’s long-time chair, joins & Then as a guest blogger. If you are interested in writing a guest post, please drop me a line at makin@suffolk.edu.
Since officially retiring at the end of June I have mostly been occupied with adjusting to some very positive changes in my family. Our first grandchild, Nathaniel Davis Tower, arrived late in August, weighing in at 8 pounds, 5 ounces. The son of our daughter, Mackenzie, and her husband Jonah, “Nate” has managed to keep four adults (his parents and grandparents) mostly focused on him. I have taken on the role of surrogate father to Mackenzie’s Golden Retriever, Benny, and we can often be found wandering through the Medford side of the Middlesex Fells Reservation.
Late in October Patty and I will be traveling to France, where we will spend several days in Paris, followed by a week-long cruise down the Rhone from Lyon to Arles, with some serious wine tasting along the way. We will end our trip with three days in Barcelona. Hopefully we will be able to do some extensive traveling over the few years, as we have not had many opportunities to do so over the past 40 years. It’s hard to make time for traveling when you’re up reading emails at 3:00 AM.
I have also been catching up on many years of lost sleep, walking pretty much every day, reading biographies (I’m half way through the third volume of William Manchester’s biography of Winston Churchill) and novels (most recently “Plainsong” and “Benediction” by Kent Haruf), drinking good wine (mostly Pinot Noir), and generally enjoying being alive.
I miss my many NESAD friends and colleagues, but I do not miss the pressures of the corporate approach to higher education, which Suffolk has embraced. At the same time, I am enormously proud of all that we were able to accomplish and I am hopeful that in the future NESAD will again get the recognition and support that it deserves.