Many of you have already heard on the grapevine that I will be leaving my post quite soon. Indeed, I am retiring at the end of this academic year—September 30. However, I am leaving my office a bit earlier—July 19. From then on you will find me at the following address: Borgo 18, 52424 Motovun, Istria, Croatia (e-mail: ranko.bon@alum.mit.edu; web: www.residua.org). This is only an hour from Trieste, which is two hours from Venice. Come for a glass of wine!

I do not wish to bore you with too many words, but I know that many of you will be wondering about my decision to leave academia at the tender age of fifty-seven. Actually, I negotiated my retirement at fifty-five, but stayed a bit longer to make sure I do not leave too much of a hole in my wake. As many of you know, I am not too happy about the changes in the academic world. Now we are working for paper-pushers, who used to work for us once upon a time. This is so not only in Britain, it goes without saying. But the main reason for my retirement is that I am young enough to do other things. I write and paint, and the prospect of doing that all the time is most enticing, indeed.

Allow me a few wise words. Fight paper-pushers wherever you are. Fight them in the classrooms, fight them in the labs… They are the plague of our age. And there are ever more of the scoundrels.

But do come to Istria for that glass of wine!

Addendum (February 10, 2015)

I am hardly in touch with my former colleagues from the academic world any longer, but I still hear from a few of them every now and then. Judging by what they tell me, the paper-pushers are getting stronger by the day. The plague of our age is spreading unabated. Teaching and research are now dwarfed by administration. In short, my former colleagues have not followed my wise words, few as they were. Chances are that most of them have not even attempted to follow my advice, either. Be that as it may, I am so much happier to have retired early, at least by the standards of the age. Alas, if only I retired much, much earlier!