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Many years ago, when the woman I worked for learned I was ending my first marriage, she questioned my decision with a comment: "Won't you be lonely?" I recall responding that one can be lonely even in a relationship, though I knew that her question reflected her own status as a widow.

This is the thirty-fourth column I have written as executive director, and readers who take time to visit this space know I frequently refer to my discipline of history, which always informs my worldview and thought processes.

I suspect 2020 will be known in reference books and commentary as the Year of the Asterisk due to the many disruptions created by the coronavirus. I don’t need to list them all for you – your Thanksgiving celebration last week was likely different due to travel constraints and cautions about the size of gatherings, your daily interactions impacted as well.

There are some advantages to a long commute. While traveling from my home in the Chicago suburbs to the downtown campus where I was working on my doctorate, I listened often to NPR, and one day in 1992 heard Fresh Air’s Terry Gross interview Derrick Bell about his book Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism. Using allegories to illustrate his point, Bell shared his story, “The Space Traders.”

As I write, it is late March, and we are in the early weeks of a new normal — learning to live a safe distance from one another in response to the spread of COVID-19 in the United States. I only hope, as you read this, that citizens’ collective observance of the guidelines on social distancing has helped contain the deadly potential of the virus.

Since its founding in 1897, The Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi has been a community of scholars committed to inclusivity and diversity, principles we believe are fundamental to democracy. And yet we recognize that those principles are sadly not universally embraced by all our fellow citizens.

A current advertising campaign uses the words “Life comes at you fast” as a caution or warning to be prepared. “Don’t blink” offers a similar admonition to pay attention lest you miss something. Both phrases presume an awareness of who and where we are as well as of who and where we were.

“Welcome home” is the ubiquitous greeting alumni hear when returning to campus for homecoming reunions. I’ll admit it felt odd to hear that when I returned to my undergraduate campus recently. It didn’t feel like home when I was a student — perhaps at best a home away from home? — and it certainly didn’t feel like home so many years later. And yet I have roots in that place, strongly influenced by the ethos of the university as epitomized in the honor code we wrote out and signed on every paper, quiz, and exam.

One of the words I’ve seen often lately is the word gratitude. In addition to blogs and books on the subject are regular reminders that it’s good for us to stop and remember those people and things for which we are grateful. On this #GivingTuesday, let me start by saying how grateful I am for you, our members. One of the benefits of my position is meeting Phi Kappa Phi members, whether in person or through correspondence or calls. Our membership is multidisciplinary, multigenerational, and multitalented, spread across the United States and beyond, yet what we hold in common is a commitment to the love of learning. We are proud that you are part of this community of scholars.

I didn’t grow up in a home with a lot of rules. Our house was a parsonage, situated next door to the church my father served as pastor. Embedded in the family culture was the religious tradition we practiced, but with less emphasis on rule-following than on what our tradition considered the ultimate commandments: love of God and love of neighbor. Honesty was central to what was expected of us — oh, and recognition that any misbehavior by the preacher’s kids would reflect poorly on the preacher himself.

When she was twelve, I took my oldest granddaughter to Washington, D.C., to see the Fourth of July fireworks. The next day, we were sitting on a bench in Arlington National Cemetery looking out over acres of white crosses that marked the graves of American lives lost in combat. As we talked about how many wars were represented there, Dana’s comment stopped the conversation: “There’s been war my whole life.” She was right, of course, there had been. Still is.

When he was 87, the year before his death, Michelangelo reportedly wrote on the edge of a drawing the words "ancora imparo," translated as “I am still learning.” I’ve kept those words on my office wall in whatever venue I find myself. They serve as a reminder that we can learn from every experience.

In the opening words from her essay, “Why History Matters,” in her masterful book of the same name, noted historian Gerda Lerner speaks directly not only to the work of her profession, but also to the work of each of us. At the same time she connects the theme of this issue of the "Forum" — story — to that of the previous issue — identity.

I’ll be traveling on #GivingTuesday – to install our newest chapter, #350 -- but that won’t stop me from hitting that iDonate button on our website. I encourage you to do the same, to take a moment wherever you are and consider making a gift to Phi Kappa Phi to support our awards programs.

Identity is one of those terms often taken for granted. Some say, “I know who I am, so I don’t have to dwell on it.” But let’s do dwell on for a bit. Identity is something we each have individually, but it’s also something organizations have. Identities change; history makes that clear.

Were you perhaps the slightest bit uneasy to see the word power on the front cover of this issue of the Forum? Did you perhaps pause before opening the pages to imagine how multiple meanings of that single word might be employed by the writers and columnists?

Some years ago, while teaching a women’s studies class, I noticed several male students looking through the window of the classroom door. They later said they were curious about what went on in women’s studies, since the enrollment was overwhelmingly female.

The late comedian Dick Gregory is noted for saying, “One of the things I keep learning is that the secret of being happy is doing things for other people.” Gregory admits to being a lifelong learner, a habit many Phi Kappa Phi members share.

Celebrations and food just go together. What Phi Kappa Phi chapter marks initiation without at least some finger food, cookies, or cake, if not a dinner or banquet?

We met in the basement of our organizer’s parents’ home to plan our protests. I’m not sure what we were thinking, as his father was a member of the faculty at the university where we were students, but we were young and it was 1968 and that’s what students did: protest.

I have a friend who is an inveterate gardener. It’s no surprise she grew up on a farm. She has a large garden on her property and tends it with care year round, and her household enjoys her garden’s harvest of fresh vegetables year round as well.

A friend once teased, in reference to my career path in higher ed administration, that I was collecting houses along the way. He wasn’t wrong — at one point, thanks to the burst housing bubble, I owned two townhomes and was renting a third. Ouch.

You’ve probably seen, or said in exasperation, the expression TMI. Too much information! That’s an understandable response in these days of 24/7 cable news and incessant email and text alerts.

Each year I am invited by a few chapters to speak at their initiation ceremonies. I always learn something on these campus visits — the diversity of higher education institutions assures great variety in the events.

The daily newsfeed Inside Higher Ed reported recently that, while two-thirds of students considered themselves adequately prepared to enter college, only 20% felt the same about entering the workforce upon graduation. The data, from McGraw-Hill’s 2015 workforce readiness survey, reveal a striking disconnect between students’ expectations and their experience.

Honor. Excellence. Impact. These three words served as the theme of the 43rd convention of The Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi this past August. But these words were not only prominently displayed on materials banners and material, they were embedded in all aspects of the convention program.

I have been known to refer to myself as a church brat. I grew up in a parsonage in the near west suburbs of Chicago, and, as a late child whose teenage siblings soon left home, the church next door felt to me like an annex to our house.

One place you don’t hear a lot of laughter these days is in airports. Between the necessary expectation of no joking in security lines to the increasing number of announcements regarding flight delays and/or cancellations, there’s not much joy in flying anymore.

In one of my favorite books, Their Eyes Were Watching God, author Zora Neale Hurston uses the metaphor of the horizon in introducing her readers to her story and her storyteller, Janie, whose life was a quest to go to the horizon and back.