 Joe and Gay, hello, and congratulations. I'd like to thank Professor Chiapa so much for inviting me to your retirement dinner and for letting me send my love by video since I'm on vacation the week of the big event. I know you've done a tremendous amount of good in your years teaching writing at MIT. In addition to guiding students with their projects, you've demonstrated the way a working writer lives his craft, getting the job done day after day after day. As I should know, because I just checked and found out that I have been your editor since 1997. And I'm luckier than MIT, since as far as I know, you're not planning on retiring from writing. I hope that you and Gay are having a wonderful evening full of people who love and value you, which you completely deserve. Congratulations, Joe, and have a wonderful retirement. Hi, Joe. I'm really sorry that I can't be at your retirement dinner. And I really wish that I could be there to give you a hug and say best wishes on your retirement. Since I can't, I'll say it from here. Joe, you're one of my favorite writers. You're one of my favorite teachers. And you're one of my favorite people. And I feel like it's a great loss to MIT that you're leaving them, although I'm sure that it's going to be great for you to have more time for your writing. To MIT, I'd like to say you guys are losing a treasure. I'm sure you already know that. And the only comfort that you have is that you still will have Joe's terrific works. I'd recommend that if you start missing him, you go read, oh, say, Graves or None So Blind, or The Hemingway Hoax, or The Forever War, my very favorite novel, and one that I think about all the time. So you still have those works. I'm sorry you won't have Joe. Best wishes to all of you. And again, I'm really sorry I couldn't be there. Bye, Joe. Hello, Joe. It's a great pleasure to be able to talk to you. On the occasion of this great celebration, I'm proud of you as everyone is. I want to say that I had one of the greatest conversations of my life with you at a convention in which I responded to your query about my well-being with the sentence, well, Joe, my whole life hurts a lot less now. And I want to mention The Hemingway Hoax, which is my favorite of all your books, so beautiful, so complex, and yet so clear, I cried at the last line. I just wanted to thank you because the debt I owe you cannot possibly be expressed. Or if it's expressed in words, it's expressed in the words that I've written ever since then. I had a story this year that was a finalist on the Stoker ballot for what they refer to as long fiction that was published in Asma's last fall. I've landed on ballot after ballot after ballot for my fiction. And I really appreciate that. And I also think that I teach fiction at Swarthmore College and other places, in part because of you, because I think you instilled in me a kind of sense of you have to pay it forward, that you show other people what you know. You work with other people. You get other people published. You do everything you can for them, even quietly, even bribing the Clarion staff. And I taught at Clarion this past summer. I taught the first week at San Diego and loved it once again and feel like, in a way, I've come full circle because of you, gone from being a student at Clarion to having now taught at Clarion four times. So anyway, I wanted to thank both of you for everything, for years and years of friendship that doesn't need to be repaid, does it? Certainly, I don't know what else to say about that. I love being your friend. I will continue to be your friend, even when you don't drink anything anymore. And we're both sober. I thank you for everything. And that's really about all I have to say, I think. Yeah, so thanks. I hope both of you are having a really good time. And finally, I just want to note because of the way your screen thing works, you don't realize that I'm, in fact, not wearing pants. Thank you, and good night. Hey, Joe, happy retirement. You may think you're retiring, so you'll have a lot more time to sit in the sun in a hammock and play guitar. But we're all hoping that it means you'll have a lot more time to write a lot more books and stories. Joe and Gay. Oh, my God. Best is to friends, greatest of allies, and peerless of colleagues. It's not the same around here without you guys. You guys clasped up the joint. And really, we don't get as much sun without the two of you here. We miss you so much. We miss you so much. And I just can't thank you enough for your friendship and your kindness. And I miss seeing your faces. I miss you guys very much, and I just send you all my love. Yeah, and after all, I ain't nobody around here writing lines like, he didn't tell me he was from another world, and I didn't tell him I was from the future. Thank you so much, you guys. Bye.