The Foreign Service Journal, February 2006

when my cell phone rang. It was an old colleague from the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs. “Jim,” he said, “how would you like to go to Kiev?” I replied that I’d love to, but I had kept in touch with my friends out there, and no jobs were available. “Unfortunately, that’s not correct,” he replied. Our ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe office in Kiev, David Nicholas, had died tragically a few days earlier of a heart attack. Though not a career officer, Amb. Nicholas had been widely respected in the Foreign Service, and he had done heroic work during Ukraine’s Orange Revolution. And now, only two months later, he was gone. I thought about the offer for a mil- lisecond before replying, “When do you need me?” I was on the next plane to Washington, and a few weeks later, found myself carrying on my predecessor’s work at OSCE Kiev. These are exciting days in Ukraine and, once again, I’m having the time of my life. I have no idea how long I will be here or what comes next, but such questions have ceased to matter. I have found that all that really counts about a job is whether the work you are doing fulfills a worthy purpose. After all my travels of the past few years, I may not be planning my per- sonal future any better than before, but I have learned at least one lesson: the respect of one’s colleagues is worth more than the decisions of any promotion panel. Good work will eventually be recognized. James F. Schumaker Kiev How Did I Ever Have Time to Work? I am happily and truly retired, and often wonder how I ever had time to go to work at the State Department. I spent the first four years of my retire- ment as a dependent spouse at Embassy Rome, where I got back up to speed on the Roman archeology, archeometry (archeological tests and measurements) and history I had studied as an undergraduate and graduate student in Chicago in the 1960s. Back in Arlington, Va., after the Rome tour, I fell in with a number of former State Department employees and other interested folks who had just organized the Arlington Learning in Retirement Institute as an affiliate of George Mason University, the Arlington County Board of Education and Elderhostel ( http://www.arling tonlri.org) . ALRI is now three years old, has over 500 members and offers about 30 courses in each of two 10- week semesters each year. Member- ship is open to anyone over age 50, and there is no Arlington County res- idence requirement. The courses are university-level, but with no exams, no papers to write (or correct) and no academic credit. It’s a real joy to teach people who are not trying to ful- fill a degree requirement. I’ve taught one course each semes- ter covering ancient Rome, medieval Rome, Renaissance Rome and, cur- rently, Vesuvius and the destructive eruption of A.D. 79 (Pompeii, Her- culaneum and all that). Some of the courses have been repeated. My classes generally run for two or more hours, once each week. In Septem- ber 2004 I took my ancient Rome class on an eight-day field trip to Rome, where I served as the guide and instructor. Another trip is being planned for June 2006 to Florence and Venice, after a spring course that I will teach on the history and art of those two cities. In conjunction with my teaching, I maintain an Internet site, dealing mostly with Roman history (http:// www.mmdtkw.org ). The site now runs to 2,100 pages and attracts over 700,000 visitors per month (although that goes down to about 400,000 dur- ing the summer academic off-season). A smaller part of my time is spent as a member of the board of directors (and webmaster) of a multinational nonprofit organization called Scien- tific Methodologies Applied to Cul- tural Heritage ( http://www.smatch- international.org ). SMATCH is heav- ily involved with archeometry, but we are trying to broaden our scope. So far, the group has sponsored or co- sponsored research, seminars, pre- sentations and exhibitions in Wash- ington, Pittsburgh, Rome and Venice in association with the Smithsonian, the municipality of Rome, the Vati- can Museums, the Gemological Insti- tute of America and other Ameri- can, Italian and Brazilian museums, universities and cultural institutions. As you can see, it’s not difficult for a truly retired FSO to stay busy — even while resisting department blan- dishments to come back as a WAE or as a contractor. I’ve always said that my previous experience as a historian and archeologist informed my work as an FSO rather than the other way around. My State Department expe- rience was certainly valuable, howev- 46 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 6 It’s not difficult for a truly retired FSO to stay busy — even while resisting department blandishments to come back as a WAE or a contractor. — Tom Wukitsch