ANNIVERSARIES

Today I should like to celebrate two anniversaries.  The first and far and away more important of the two is that today, January 16, 2013, is the eightieth birthday of my wife, Susie.  Faithful readers of my autobiography [of whom there may be one or two] will know that Susie and I met sixty-five years ago as high school sophomores, at Forest Hills High School in Queens, New York.  I fell in love with her then, and we "went steady" [as one used to say] for five years, until, at about the time I was graduating from Harvard, we broke up.  Fast forward thirty-five years.   When my first marriage ended, I went looking for her, we found we were still in love, and in 1987 were married.  This is a rather bittersweet moment because a week ago, while taking a walk, Susie slipped on some wet leaves and fractured her shoulder.  She does not need surgery, thank heaven, but the injury is very, very painful and doctors say it will be six or eight weeks before she is healed.  Nevertheless, by late Spring, she will be fit again, and we shall set off for Paris.

The second anniversary is not pegged to this day, but rather to all of 2013.  It is now just fifty years since I published Kant's Theory of Mental Activity, the first of what would eventually be twenty-one books.  One is always somewhat soft on one's first born, and I still think, after all these years, that it is a good book. 

There are several events scheduled today with Susie's children and grandchildren to celebrate her eightieth.  No events have been scheduled for the book.