In a column I wrote in June, I said that I was approaching a couple of significant chronological milestones, but I would save the details for a later column. That time is now.
I am retiring July 8 as a full-time employee of The Reporter-Times and the Mooresville-Decatur Times, part of the Hoosier-Times group. This month I become eligible for Medicare benefits — which in case no one told you is far from free after having paid decades for them.
Ronald Hawkins beginning his presentation July 2 at InConJunction. Photo by Kim Hawkins.
This ends my 10-plus years at the paper, but I am still going to be writing, including occasionally for the Reporter-Times and the Mooresville-Decatur Times, and starting a few new projects, including launching my own website. I also plan to continue making library presentations and I may eventually somehow become involved in video and film making, either in front of or behind the camera.
The Indiana Science Fiction Sojourns column will continue in some form in the future. I plan to write a review of the new Star Trek movie after it is released this month and cover the MidAmeriCon II for the Hoosier Times group in August.
While I’ve worked for the Hoosier Times for more than 10 years, chiefly the Martinsville and Mooresville papers, I’ve been writing the Indiana Science Fiction Sojourns column (initially called Science Fiction Sojourns) for nearly nine years.
The stories have included interviews with authors such as Catherine Asaro, Timothy Zahn, Cherie Priest, Simon Morden and Kevin Hearne and actors such as Walter Koenig, Lou Ferrigno, Rene Auberjonois, Morgan Sheppard, Tony Todd, David Nykl, Jeffrey Combs and Peter Davison. There’s been coverage of major SF events such as World Con and Dragon Con and local events such as InConJunction and Starbase Indy plus reviews of all the Star Trek movies, the last Star Wars movie, many other films and lots of TV programs.
Over the years, I’ve also kicked in commentary columns on particular networks such as SyFy (which seems have to taken many steps forward recently), the BBC, multiple U.S. networks, one on how to program your own science fiction network and another one with suggestions for scary viewings in October. The themes have varied from discussions of genre SF such as monster films and themes such as utopias/dystopias, class systems, artificial intelligence, wealth,end of the world scenarios, space and time travel, the “hero’s journey” and science fiction tales as allegories.
We’ve had lots of fun with central Indiana actors such as George Starkey (our George Lucas look-a-like), David Ross (the former Morgan County Public Library director) and several Indiana authors including Mike Mullin, R.J. Sullivan, Nicole Cushing and Jennifer Shea Peine.
We’ve talked to scientists and scholars for these hundreds of ISFS stories including Jonathan Eller, Tracy Canfield, Dan Goins, Daniel Dumbacher, Arthur Evans and Julia Whitehead. The column has visited the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies at IUPUI, the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library, the Marion County Public Library and the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum 
.
As an individual, I’ve given several presentations with videos at InConJunction, the Martinsville, Monrovia and Waverly libraries and have one more scheduled for the Mooresville library in October. By the way, I plan to give more of these presentations.
If you’d like to read more of the varied columns, there’s a search window and category listing at blogs.hoosierstimes.com/scifi .
While I’m dwelling on the columns I’ve written, they’ve actually been a small fraction of the work I’ve done. Over the decade, I’ve covered lots of politics (oh, have I ever), a major flood, changes in the Martinsville political landscape, the construction of a major bridge, new city fire station and the Martinsville Youth and Development Center, more than a thousand meetings and at some point worked every time of the day from 12:01 a.m. to 11:59 p.m.
During my time here, I’ve had my own issues such as a total hip replacement, a heart catherization, trigger finger surgeries, pneumonia and cataract surgery.
Probably the best thing though was meeting Kim Reece and being married to her last November in the Jimmy Nash City Park Family Pavilion. Coincidentally, the building of the pavilion was one of the many stories I’ve covered during my time here.
There have been some ups and downs, but overall it’s been great experience as I’ve learned many things and met many great people.
I hope to continue to see those people and others I’ve never met as I continue to live in Morgan County. I hope my stories have provided some information you needed, insight and, upon occasion, entertainment.
Thank all of you for your help in my efforts to do that.
