What astounds me about what I am about to say is that the last time I posted to this blog was July 24, more than a month ago. There are reasons for that, but in the meantime, despite the lack of new articles, this blog continued to find new subscribers—and their numbers just yesterday crossed the 20,000 mark. Already, the numbers have exceeded that threshold by a few dozen. I would have expected the increase to decrease until I wrote something new. I can only assume that past writings have continued to propel interest despite my lack of activity. That fact is profoundly humbling.

I wrote twice in July. The other post occurred on the July 4 holiday. It detailed my cataract surgery in June and offered some medical history concerning the procedure. What followed, in addition to two trips to Colorado and one to Washington, D.C., between mid-July and early August, was a mad rush connected to a fall semester course I teach for the University of Iowa’s School of Urban and Regional Planning, as an adjunct assistant professor. But this year, the decision was made to move my class online, which meant a great deal of added work to make that change possible. And just to complicate matters, in mid-August, my laptop suffered a hard drive failure that delayed my timeline. I then worked to restore course-related files, an odyssey I will not detail here. It would be an overdose of minutiae.

I have been teaching in Iowa City since 2008. After the massive floods that struck much of eastern Iowa and some neighboring states in June of that year, the planning program began an urgent search for a way to add curriculum related to natural hazards and to make itself more relevant and useful to communities in Iowa needing assistance with flood recovery. It was easier to import such expertise than to develop it among existing faculty, apparently, because they soon made an offer for me to teach beginning that fall. I am an alumnus of the program, and they knew me well. At the time, I was already co-instructing such a course at the University of Illinois-Chicago with colleague Richard Roths, although that ended after the spring 2009 class the following year. But the arrangement with the University of Iowa has continued. The course has grown and evolved over time, naturally, just as the subject matter for “Planning for Disaster Mitigation and Recovery” has also changed. Every year is a new adventure and an exercise in updating teaching materials. As I like to say, it is hardly like teaching Shakespeare. The script is rewritten with each new major disaster. Recent years have added multiple exclamation points to that statement.

Thus, while the subscriber count was climbing yesterday, I was preparing for and then presiding over the first online class session for URP:6280 last night, with eleven students in attendance. I still have work to do in reformatting PowerPoint files from past years and recording lecture videos that used to be presented in a classroom. But I discovered yet again that, from the first class to the last, my students are inquisitive and thoughtful and have very good reasons for choosing this course as an elective in pursuit of their Master of Arts in Urban and Regional Planning. As before, some make clear that they see this as possibly the most important class they will take. Some past students are now in leadership roles in the field of hazard mitigation and disaster recovery planning. They are not deluded about the challenges that communities will face under the influence of climate change, demographic shifts, and other factors. They want to do the planning that matters.

Although I have not written much for this blog lately, that will change very soon. I had to keep my priorities straight, however; my students had to have their materials ready on the course website by Monday, August 26, as classes started, and it was my obligation to make that happen. After Labor Day, I can gradually shift some of my attention elsewhere. My recent travels, to San Francisco in April, Manitoba and Cleveland in May, and to Colorado and Washington in July and August have supplied me with excellent subject matter for at least several future posts. I relish the prospect of making up for lost time with subscribers both new and old. Thanks to everyone for their support and interest.

Jim Schwab