One of the most brilliant prof. I've been fortunate enough to work with.

Below is an email from my professor, Dr. Thursby. A fascinating, amazing professor. I am better for having met him and I wish I could've been his student for longer. Read the end..the measure of a truly remarkable person.

"Seminar Colleagues,

'Tis the season to be jolly, and you may be happy to know that our last class meeting for the Junior Seminar is this Thursday (December 4th).

We meet in two groups (last names A-L at 2pm and last names M-Z at 3:30pm). [If you cannot get to one because of commitments that cannot be changed, then please attend the other.]

Some historians see this season as equipped with a surplus of traditions -- many (or even all) of them "invented" at some time past. Among obviously invented traditions in the USA holiday calendar is Festivus ( see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Festivus ) which was invented in a script for the Seinfeld television program a few years ago.

Online commentators -- so many of them, and not restricted to professional historians -- have noted that there may seem to be one multi-part festival that runs from late October through the end of the year that we could call Hallothanksmas ( see http://inmedias.blogspot.com/2005/11/on-holidays-and-other-invented.html )

So-called postmodernism (along with historicism and most forms of Buddhism) tends to reduce everything to brief blips or bits -- short-term processes with beginnings and endings, generated out of some well-guided or misguided interest -- including the most cherished realities on which we may rely. For me, a cherished although shorterm process is the Fall 2008 Junior Seminar, soon to end. My enjoyment because of the opportunity to meet you and work with you this term could be represented fairly accurately by the figure of Christopher Walken as featured in the music video for Fatboy Slim's "Weapon of Choice." Walken starts out a just another old guy slumped in a chair, and then something happens that gets him moving! For me, it has been this Seminar.
See you, probably for the last time, this Thursday afternoon,
Gene Thursby"