The Year of Our Lord 2004 was a busy one.  For one thing, it was the year of Atlanta.  I spent the fall semester as a visiting professor at Morehouse College there.  Morehouse is a Historically Black College; Martin Luther King, Jr., is its most famous alumnus.  Morehouse is building a telecom program and we at the McClure School at OU have been collaborating with them for several years.  The folks at Morehouse were great to work with – they made me feel welcome in many, many ways.  I’d love, in fact, to poach a few of my Morehouse students for OU.  Atlanta is a wonderful city.  Why, I might easily have returned broke and fat without getting any work done.  Family and friends came to visit: we did the Braves, Stone Mountain, the Chihuly glass exhibition at the Botanical Garden (outstanding!), van Gogh at the High Museum, the King Memorial, and more restaurants than you can shake a stick at – Thai, Japanese, Mexican, traditional Southern, trendy contemporary, Caribbean, greasy classic fast-food, Chinese. There’s a lot going on in Atlanta, more than I could afford to indulge – financially, dietetically, or time-wise.  Pictures on the web site, URL below.

2004 was the year of the empty nest, well, the emptying nest.  Rob moved into an Athens house with several of his friends.  Greg moved into an OU dorm.  Cindy’s friend Danette came and stayed with her for most of the fall while I was in Atlanta.  The new year will see Cindy and me living alone together for the first time since 1983.  I’ll have to take the trash out myself.  The Sargasso Sea of shoes will disappear from the foyer.  We might actually converse. 

This was the year of patio construction.  Well, it seemed like a year at the time, but Greg and I persevered back in June and July and finished the stupid thing just in time for me to depart.  It’s nice, though, and I’m looking forward to leisurely summer evenings on it.

Es war das Jahr von Deutschland.  Rob, visible in shades in the middle of the third row, spent the spring quarter at the Ohio – Leipzig European Center. He’s taking more German classes next quarter and plotting to return to Leipzig and, of course, to Salzburg, Budapest, Amsterdam, Berlin, Wrocław, and Dresden.  He and Greg continue to crank out heavy metal “music” with their buddies.  Greg made the Dean’s List in his first quarter in the School of Visual Communication .

Visit our '2004 - The Year in Pictures' web page at www.CivilizationAsWeKnowIt.com to see a photographic record of the past year.  Well, as I write there aren't really any pictures to speak of, but keep looking – there are a lot to be scanned.  There is a version of this letter with hypertext links. 

That's the news from beautiful southeastern Ohio.  May 2005 bring you good health and happiness!

Phil