It's about Time . . . and Space . . . and People . . . all of the these factors.

As for my time at work:

8+ years in the Anthropology Department

17 years before that in the Geography Department across campus

and counting the 16 years before that of workin' for the legal tender,

I've been at this clock-watching exercise for a total of 41 years.

As for home time:

17+ years of raising our dear daughter Sarah

33+ years of marriage to my darling wife Mary—can it really have been 40 years ago this coming February that we had our first date?

As for the spatial element:

I grew up in the flat township/range geographic gridwork of Lake Wobegon (er, Bayport) Minnesota

Leaving after high school to the very urban and intimidating University of Chicago (my first of four UCs that I would encounter on this long and winding road) and meeting Mary the beginning week of Autumn Quarter, 1966 across the seminar table of our 1^st year Humanities class.

A few years later I was spending a self-imposed solitude in Hawaii, until one day when Mary arrived on the island, got into my taxi, and back into my life (we eloped there much to our family's chagrin)

Returning to California (northern Sacramento Valley) and finishing up at my second UC school: the state University at Chico where I became fascinated with cartography and mtn biking (I had to build up my own mtn bike in 1976, since they weren't on the market yet) while Mary started her first teaching position.

We returned to the Midwest to my third UC school: U. of Cincinnati, where I mastered in Geography: with a cartographic assistantship and Mary again immediately found a teaching position across the river in Newport, Kentucky—a town which we were to learn had a very colorful reputation.

Once again we reversed course back to California in 1979 and settled down in the suburbs of San Diego, my working in an aerial surveying company while Mary once again taught in the local school system. And then came that fateful evening while sitting in the living room, reading in the Am. Assoc. of Geographers Newsletter of a staff position opening here at my fourth UC school . . . and Mary realizing we were once again going to uproot our lives to a beautiful but financial forbidding place--where we were told we never afford a home nor would Mary find a teaching position. Well, leave it to Mary to rise yet again to the occasion, as she scored a faculty position at Santa Barbara City College within months of moving up here!

And this is where the people element comes in:

I remember Geographers Reg Gollege and Waldo Tobler, who interviewed me for the staff cartographer job back in 1981, Meryl Weider, the office manager there who was so encouraging of my career—just the thing for a dreamer like myself. Later, Rick Church, as Chairman, would encourage me to try for a PhD., alas, it proved too all-time consuming to juggle it with a fulltime position.

Letters & Science Academic Analyst, Teresa Everett, who when she was still in Geography started power walking with me at lunchtime beginning in January of 1989. We think we've put in enough miles in the ensuing eighteen years to have walked from the Pacific to the Atlantic coast and back!

Anthropologist Michael Glassow, who would drop by Geography's Cartlab and ask my opinion (which flattered the heck out of me), and fellow Anthropologist Mat Mines who listened to boastful tales of racing my recumbent to work (we had gym lockers near each other) and finally Leslie Edgerton, Anth's office manager who called me one summer day in 1998 to come in for a job interview here (another bit o' flattering)

And after Leslie moved up to Earth Sciences, my present office manager, Susan Cochran, who “trusts, but verifies” what I do (which is good for me, right?) and who's taught me the energizing power of an occasional SCREAM-M-M-M-M-M-M when it's called for.

Beyond my life at work is my family: and I'm fortunate to have both a very loving mom and an industrious father (who only completed his second post-retirement job last year at age 82!) who are here from Minnesota this week to witness the long-awaited completion of my schooling. And now to go out and do work in the “real” world, right Dad?

And daughter Sarah, who's getting closer each day to “fledging” from the “nest” to begin what we are all sure will be the start of her beautiful career in the fields of music, medicine, and much more . . .

Finally, to my main squeeze and support: Mary, who'll continue teaching, counseling, and assessing at City College for years to come.

To her I'll paraphrase a poem from W. H. Auden, which brings together these three elements of time, place, and people:

(You're) my North, my South, my East and my West,

My working week and my Sunday rest,

You're my noon, my midnight, my talk, and my song,

And you're the woman whose love I'll treasure on and on . . .

Thank you all for being here to celebrate this happy occasion in my life . . . and for not retiring before I did!