The song, 'What About Now?' and retirement

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - The most frequently asked question (FAQ) about our impending retirement (19 days from today) is "How did you know it was time?"

Indeed...

Well, some people go to retirement planners - but I have never been that organized.

But what I did do about two years ago was create a file (on the computer and on paper) which we named Project Escape Velocity. PEV (not the best acronym, but what-the-hell...) consisted of retirement benefits projections, records of long term (and short term) debts, and potential post-university income.

Not being a graph or spreadsheet guy, I used my calculator every few months and looked at the debts, watched the potential retirement income go up, landed a few more writing contracts and finally in March we fed all the data into an analysis system I learned when I was a newspaper editor called SWAG

Sophisticated-Wild-Ass-Guess.

SWAG said: You have escape velocity.


Retirement liftoff

But besides all the $$$$ issues, there's lot of questions about leaving careers, even though we will be doing guest cameo teaching every fall here.

Which brings us to the headline: What About Now?

I've always been looking at the horizon and wondering what's beyond it. In 1970, I packed up a VW van and headed west from upstate New York. I would have done so on a motorcycle, but with a wife, a three-month-old baby and a cat, balancing would have been a helluva trick. I guess I could have considered a sidecar, but that would have seemed so, well, dorky.

And, of course, all the boats! I had thought when we sailed off to Mexico on Sabbatical in 2002 we were very close to escape velocity. But close is just that.

So in addition to making a file Project Escape Velocity, I started collecting music, much of which I put together on a CD for my amigos Ric Brown and Rosemary Papa, who, like us, are escaping Sacramento and headed for great new opportunities. The CD is called "Catch Us If You Can," with the first song an updated version of the Dave Clark Five song by the same name from the 60s.

But another tune that has been ringing through my brain for weeks (on and off, though mostly on) is by Lonestar called "What About Now?"


Lonestar - country singers without cowboy hats

The pulsing music of that song is almost enough to give you escape velocity:

What About Now

The sign in the window said for sale or trade
On the last remaining dinosaur Detroit made
Seven hundred dollars was a heck of a deal
For a four hundred horsepower jukebox on wheels

And that road rolls out like a welcome mat
I don't know where it goes but it beats where we're at
We always said someday, somehow
We were gonna get away, gonna blow this town

What about now, how 'bout tonight
Baby for once let's don't think twice
Let's take that spin that never ends
That we've been talking about
What about now, why should we wait
We can chase these dreams down the interstate
And be long gone 'fore the world moves on and makes another round
What about now

So, with the rockets roaring in the the background and the music on the CD, it's 19 days to retirement and Mexico. Fittingly, on our first day of official retirement, we will be flying to Puerto Vallarta where I hope by lunchtime to be toasting el futuro at the Cafe Tacuba with its owner Victor who serves tequila shots with every order he serves.

Followed by a siesta, of course.

A visit to a castle and journalistic dream

SAN SIMEON, Calif. - As the tag-a-long, luggage-carrying husband to the now-past president of the California College Media Association (aka, Admiral Fox), I've gotten to visit some interesting places in the past two years, but the Hearst Castle in San Simeon is the topper.

Once the home to the late William Randolph Hearst, whose name is still attached to his media empire, the castle is now a state park.


Hearst speaking to his reporters

My impression of media mogul Hearst had always been fairly negative. He is credited with helping launch the Spanish-American War by using his newspapers to stir up the nation. His famous quote: "You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war," is one every journalism student learns. His newspapers are credited with demonizing marijuana, perhaps in good part responsible for the continuing war on drugs that siphons off so many public dollars.

But after taking the tour and listening to the tour guide's rapid patter, I've shifted ground and think that perhaps Hearst, like all visionaries, isn't so easily pidgeonholed. A fairly recent biography of Hearst is making its way to me through Amazon.com. Amazon.com is just the kind of innovation Hearst would have loved, I believe. Of course, he would have created a competitor and tried to run Amazon out of business. He loved journalism - but he also was a businessman.

The castle grounds are fabulous, though it wasn't planned as a castle. It was Hearst's love of art (and acquiring it) that made the place turn into the huge expanse thousands of people see each week on tours. The famous architect Julia Morgan designed most of the place over a period of many years.


On the Hearst Castle tour


Pool drained for maintenance

The tour was part of a package of events for 120 journalism students from all over the state at the CCMA annual awards convention. At the awards dinner held at the Hearst museum, the chatter at the tables was about the awards, of course, but more than a little Hearst history was also being discussed.

But the film Citizen Kane (based on Hearst's life) was not shown and is considered by historians to be more of a cartoon than biographical film. Orson Welles, who portrayed Hearst in that movie, never met Hearst.

So no, there's no mention of 'rosebud' at the castle.


Students waiting for results of judging


General Excellence winners from Notre Dame de Namur College

It's official: the next adventure is underway

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - The papers are on file and I can already hear the sound of the first retirement check clinking into my bank account.

After several years of calculating, recalculating and then recalculating the recalculations, the lines crossed and the Admiral and I have pulled the plug on the California State University and made it official with the California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS). May 31 is our first official day of retirement. December 15, or so, we will be heading south to the beachfront in Tenacatita to start building a house.

For those people who have followed this twisted path in the last few years, yes, it is the second time I retired. I came back from retirement for one year to be chair of the Faculty Senate on campus - in itself enough to convince me that I really needed to get out.

Our connection with the university will remain for a few years though. Under a special early retirement program, faculty can collect their full retirement checks, but receive half a year's salary (in addition) for teaching one 15-week semester. We took it. It will make the transition to Tequilaville, er, I mean Tenacatita (where our beachfront lot is) much easier. And it will fund houses on both the beach and the small lot we purchased in the pueblo of Arroyo de Seco a few kilometers up the beach from Tenacatita.


CalPERS headquarters in Sacramento

The CalPERs building in Sacramento is a wild piece of architecture and houses some of the most efficient people I have ever dealt with. We were in and out with our paperwork in 20 minutes - 20 minutes! - and were given plenty of good advice about how to maximize all the benefits that the system offers. The staff said they have great jobs, in good part because very few of the people who come in - if any - are dragging their butts because they really want to keep working.


Retirement Gift

There's a fairly strong argument that college professors are already retired - even when they're working, I suppose. But what the last few years of semi-retirement (before this year's stint in university politics) enabled me to do was set up some writing projects & contracts that will follow me to Mexico or wherever adventure beckons.

We don't really consider May 31 as the beginning of retirement. Alternately we call it 'the beginning of our third careers' and 'Take the money and run.'

Still, I've been looking at books like the one below for some inspiration and ideas (as if I need anymore). I've been writing for more than 30 years. Maybe it's time to take up some new stuff to add to guitar & ukulele playing, fishing off the beach, sailing, kayaking and, well, who knows?

I know for sure we are planning on building houses that have lots of space for guests, though given the size of those CalPERs retirement checks, hammocks are as likely as beds for sleeping accommodations.

Just kidding.

Well, maybe.


Retirement jobs

New meaning to whirlwind day in Mexico

ARROYO SECO, Jalisco, Mexico - Some things in Mexico are done in ever soooooo sloooooow time.

Others are muy rapido, a fast-forward so fast you forget what you were thinking a moment ago.

Where was I?

Anyway, Sunday consisted of getting the four of us out of Santana's beachfront apartment and then meeting the architect at our beachfront lot in Tenacatita where she crawled through the brambles with her assistant and son to measure our lot. She drafted us a quick sketch of the kind of house she thought would be best for the lot while we all drank tea and coffee and ate chilaquiles.

That took us until noon. And her sketch is unbelievable - as in good-unbelievable.

But because the architect was on our clock for the entire day (at a price you would pay an architect in the states for a couple of hours), we dragged her out to Arroyo Seco to look at Lot. No. 2 where she repeated her magic, coming up with a good-looking design for that hillside property. Two lots, two houses. One-half budget available. Hmmmm....

For now, the future holds six-plus weeks of the semester at the university before we can return to Tenacatita and Arroyo Seco. But we have some sketches to be pondering while the clock runs out.


Measuring the Arroyo Seco property


Architect at work