It's been two full years since I made my blogging debut here; almost 300 posts later, I'm going to be stepping away from Cliopatria. Not very far away, mind you: I'll still be an HNN assistant editor; I'll still read this blog and others, and probably comment incessantly; I'll still be blogging at the Frog In A Well projects. I'm not leaving because Cliopatria is a flawed project in any way: I've come to a point where my finite resources of time and energy need to be focused elsewhere, and I find it too hard to simply"take a break" from this wonderful soapbox/seminar/community for that to work well.

I think blogging can be a valuable professional activity, and I intend to continue to experiment to find new and better ways to make that true.

I want to experiment with class blogs. I want to make the Frog blogs one of the landmark sites in Asian historical scholarship and pedagogy, and the Asian History Carnival an engine of a growing on-line community of interest. I want Asian history topics to find their way into the History Carnival and Carnivalesque and even the Teaching Carnival regularly, and that requires that the Asian historical blogging community grow and make stronger connections internally and externally.

There are other things which need attention, as well: my work with ASPAC, for example, could definitely use more time and attention (especially since the Board has made it very clear that they'd like to have another conference in Hawai'i!), as could my peer-reviewed publication record. It's not just that it's a professional obligation, this research and publishing thing: I really do find my topic fascinating, with great opportunities to connect to other scholars and debates and big questions. I entered my Ph.D. program with a question it turns out that it was a good question, because I'm still asking variations on it. I have new questions as well, particularly about Korean history and its relationship to Japan, which need work (the course I was going to teach on Korea next semester didn't fill, so it's back to the drawing board).

I'm very pleased with Cliopatria. It's been an honor and a pleasure learning to blog here, and becoming an academic blogger, with all that entails. It's been fantastic fun blogging with all of you (and for all of you), and I will continue to do so, but from a distance and, if you'll pardon the stretched analogy, at more of an angle. Thanks for everything.

The title comes from Woody Guthrie's old Dust Bowl ballad, a jaunty retelling of a harrowing disaster. Not being one to limit himself by form, he did a dramatized radio version with Burl Ives, and not being one to blanch at recycling (being a serial plagiarizer of tunes, himself), he reused the core of it as one of his many WWII recruiting songs.

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