Was "Annie Hall" brilliant because of Woody Allen's appalling sexual behavior, or in spite of if? Does the beauty of the blues justify 400 years of slavery and Jim Crow?

It's one thing to know that terrible circumstances can result in amazing works of expression. It's another to believe they are necessary, and accept crimes against humanity as the price to be paid for those works. And it is still another to admire or even protect people who use other people as objects or chattel because we like their music/art/athletic ability/writing/politics/comedy. 

​That's where I am this morning.

In the last six months, three of my closest friends have moved away. Carol and Sara moved in July; one went north (State College, PA) and one went south, to Raleigh, NC, each about five hours away. The final blow was Katie's slo-mo move to northern California, which commenced last Friday. She's visiting family and friends along the way (she's retired, too) and as soon as I heard her plans, I said "ROAD TRIP"!! The general idea was that I 'd ride along until I needed to head home, and Katie would plan an itinerary that would intersect with an Amtrak route.

Everything depended on weather, of course -- winter road trips are like that -- so it turned out that I could only manage the first leg, from Maryland to Raleigh, North Carolina. TO SEE SARA!!! Katie and I had a great day: light traffic, gorgeous weather, and lunch at a brewpub in Richmond where we practiced our posing skills.

Arriving at Sara's ****awesome**** coworking space in late afternoon, we enjoyed a tour of the "neighborhood" (a huge warehouse), which included a brewpub and a neon glass studio. 

The glass studio is inhabited by some of the most interesting human beings I have met in a long time, but I am giving a special shoutout to DJ, a recent MFA in jewelry design, who is apprenticing with Nate Sheaffer, the owner of Glas, learning glass blowing and incorporating their new skills into all sorts of art. Take a look at the jewelry! And the glass! Stop by when you are in Raleigh, visit the Loading Dock (pat the dogs, take the tour), enjoy the beer, and BE SURE to look at all the amazing neon/glass work.

Katie left the next morning after breakfast (snif), leaving Sara and me to gad about Raleigh and environs sampling beer, eating great food, and going to dog adoption events. Her parents were looking for a pooch to fill out their cat-heavy menagerie. Success was achieved with the arrival of Winston, a lively Pekinese mix. Meeting families of friends/students/colleagues is always interesting; it adds another dimension to the person you think you already know. In Sara's case, it was easy to see where she got her love of animals, sense of humor, and sweet hospitable nature. 

I also got some good work done with my brain, but it is still cooking and not ready to serve yet.

I had an interesting conversation with a visiting journalist from India not long ago, in which she asked about how I had organized my research career. The short answer is that it was not exactly organized; in retrospect, it seems more orderly than it was. Here is how I see it now:

What was particularly helpful for me personally was realizing about forty years ago, as I was starting my PhD, that my goal was not to understand fashion, but to use fashion as a lens to understand gender. That freed me to use other lenses as well, while building my specialized expertise in fashion. So while my research and writing focused on clothing, I read far beyond clothing, and read less of the fashion literature that did not incorporate gender. What I have learned about toys, food, film, and other cultural products that also reveal gender has helped me understand fashion/gender better. Within the last twenty years or so, I have expanded this frame of reference to reflect my realization that gender is itself a lens through which I study culture. I wonder how my work would have been different if I started out forty years ago focusing on culture, then narrowing to gender and then to fashion. But evidently that is not how my brain works.

Although my last official day at work was June 30, my emotional last day was over a month earlier, when I attended my last graduation ceremony as a participant. Since then, I have been on a sort of pilgrimage, traveling to various places and gathering bits of my past, present and future to craft into my next life chapter. The word "retirement" holds no meaning at all; For the foreseeable future, I plan to read, think, and write even more than I used to. It's likely I will also be talking, listening, and discussing more than I was able to -- at least, I hope that's the case. Some of it will happen on social media, some of it over coffee, beer, or a meal, some of here. This is a catch-up post that also serves as a preview of some future entries. An appetizer, I hope.

Since late May, I have traveled to Portland, Maine, New York City, Baltimore (close, but it counts), Star Island (twice), and San Francisco by way of a shirt stop in Chicago. I have read more books in eight weeks than I had time to read in my last entire school year. I have sewn -- a little, not enough. I have watched dozens of movies (most of them Indian). I've played with my 4-year-old grandson and learned of the death of my youngest aunt, who was barely in high school when I was born. I have said goodbye to close friends moving away and hello to new people in my life. I have done much, much more than that, and promise to fill in some of the blanks later. Mostly, I have been filling myself up, refueling for the next leg of the journey.

This blog will continue to live up to its name -- everything else -- I have posts cooking away in my brain on my cross country train trip, the latest Shah Rukh Khan film, reading and "real books", beer culture, and other random topics. Watch this space. My more focused work on gender and clothing will be posted on Gender Mystique. (Yes, I am still working on that third book!) Local friends, feel free to pull me away for a chat; but no meetings, please!

I cannot tell a lie. No, really. The best I can do is just keep my mouth shut and hope that people interpret my silence as agreement. That's probably why writing history comes easily for me, with its comforting foundation of dates, quotations, and artifacts. Whatever interpretation one wants to draw from the evidence, the evidence is there for anyone to handle and inspect. Boys used to wear dresses. There was no "girl color", pink or otherwise. Make of it what you will, but the facts won't go away. After he was forced to recant his claim that the earth orbits the sun, Galileo allegedly muttered "And yet it moves", because there really are such things as facts.

Yet all my life I have longed to write fiction and poetry. I usually explain my inability to make up stories in terms of my innate honesty; I cannot tell a lie, therefore I must write nonfiction. But over the last few years, a strange transformation has occurred in my brain. Whether I am in conversation, watching the news, or just planning my day, I become aware of a second, ghostlike consciousness telling the same story, but with a twist. The most vivid version of this has been in meetings, where "surface Jo" is listening politely or offering her measured opinion, but "alternate Jo" chimes in. Her voice getting louder and louder, she makes rude comments or imagines more and more fanciful variations of what is actually going on. I used to worry that her words would suddenly appear running across my forehead for all to see, like a movie marquee, until the day a few weeks ago when I said them right out loud. I clapped both hands over my mouth, but it was too late.

I take this as a sign. Either I am showing early signs of some kind of cognitive decline -- impulsive behaviors are associated with Parkinson's Disease, or various forms of dementia -- or my inner storyteller is trying to be heard. It could be both, but either way, it feels like it is time to pay attention to alt-Jo and transcribe those stories. 

I usually work at home on Mondays and Wednesdays, but the last week of classes is always special, meaning dotted with extra meetings. So I went to campus for a debriefing session regarding our capstone sequence, wherein American Studies majors plan and execute their senior projects. It was a thoughtful, fairly productive meeting, to I contributed two "fucks" and one "we've been diddled". A clear sign that it's time to turn in my chalk.

So I headed to the coffee shop to get my daily story done -- not my best, but the goal is a daily writing habit, not the Nobel prize for literature. and now, the week behind me, and nothing between me and sweet freedom but a pile of grading, one more meeting and two commencement ceremonies, it's time for a beer. Meet my new best friend, Chester Copperpot.

This day was the toughest one: my last day of classes. I fell in love with teaching from my first day in the classroom, despite having avoided teaching up to that point. So walking away from the classroom was hard. Hell, even thinking about it was hard.
The day was made easier by an unexpected email from my first office mate, now an emeritus professor himself, wanting to meet for coffee. He ended up hanging around for part of my 12:30 class, and entertaining them with a couple of stories while I ran around setting up and solving technical issues. Thanks, Vince. The student projects were satisfyingly good, even though the stupid classroom had more of its stupid audio problems. I would love to take a blowtorch to Tawes 0328; they need to start from scratch and do it right.

in my last last class, we did a simple mind mapping exercise while I played my "encouraging" playlist and they polished off the rest of my baked goodies. I wanted no part of a farewell speech or a formal good-bye, so I told them that when they finished uploading their mind maos, they were free to go. After a while, it was just Natasha, Eliece, and Dawson, then just Eliece and Dawson. And me.

Dawson has been reading this blog and asked if he could suggest a topic. Here's part of what he asked: What are three things I learned about myself by being a professor?

1. Like a shark that needs motion to breathe (or so I hear), I need teaching to learn. Most of what I have learned about writing and about research I have learned by teaching students to write and to do research. I worry about how I will learn "on my own" without my students.
2. I have good instincts, and can usually trust them. When I started teaching, I would script everything, absolutely convinced that if I didn't plan every phrase and every question, I would fail. But my best work has been improvisational, whether in a class discussion or mentoring a student one-on-one.
3. I once aspired to be a great lecturer. In fact, I thought you had to be a terrific speechifyer to be a professor. But that wasn't me, and never will be.

Yesterday was the next-to-last day of classes, and the day of my retirement party. I cleverly designed the last few classes to be either showcases (student presentations) or optional workshops, to save my energy to deal with the students who need extra attention and TLC at the end of the semester. This spring there seemed to be a bumper crop of students who have been sick, overworked, or otherwise not at their best. Frankly, the whole world seems to be in a constant state of trauma, so I just keep listening to my "Encouragement" playlist and humming along.

It's just long enough to get me from home to campus, and then I listen to bits and pieces as I walk between buildings and rooms. Always on shuffle, but it seems to know which tunes I need in what order.

The retirement party was such great fun. There were students and colleagues there from my days in Textiles and Consumer Economics, including Camy, who had been in my very first classes in 1976-77. There was a Costume Society buddy I swear I had not seen in a decade or more. My favorite co-teacher. My first office mate. The Irish Band I helped found over 25 years ago came and did a couple of tunes, and I sang a solo (sort of) on Parting Class with new, retirement-appropriate lyrics.

A few people got up and said nice things about me. The waiter congratulated me on retiring early, because he thought I was in my 50s. They gave me two growlers of beer, a gift certificate for more beer, and a very generous donation toward my next Amtrak journey. If they know me so well, the nice things they said must have been true! And my kids were there, being all grown-up and wonderful. ​