The F**ket List: Things I Will NOT Be Doing Before I Die

So, what’s a “F**ket List”? Just about everyone these days seems to be preparing a “Bucket List,” i.e., a compilation of all the things that they want to do before they die. Since he was retiring, after a long career in higher education, David Stameshkin thought he should probably have a Bucket List, too. As he started working on one, he recalled that there were things he had wanted to do earlier in his life—particularly alternate career paths—that perhaps he could pursue now that he was retiring and might have the time and resources to do so. Indeed, while many people reluctantly give up some of their most cherished dreams early in their lives, as retirement approaches, they sometimes start to think about pursuing those old ambitions and/or “reinventing themselves.” But, as the author relates through the stories in this book, he began to realize that (judging from his occasionally outrageous, sometimes disastrous, but always humorous past experiences) pursuing some of those paths would never work. So, in addition to making a Bucket List, he started making a F**ket List, i.e., the things he was not going to do before he died—the things that might have been on his Bucket List, but about which he would now just say: “F**k it, given what I know about myself now, there’s no way I way would be successful in trying to do those things.” For years, Stameshkin’s students, colleagues, friends, and family have heard these stories and have urged him to publish them. Well, here they are! Enjoy!

David M. Stameshkin David M. Stameshkin was born, raised, and educated in the Midwest. He graduated from the University of Chicago, and earned a Master's Degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and his Ph.D. in history from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. After teaching history for several years at Middlebury College in Vermont, he and his wife, Colleen, a philosophy professor, settled in Lancaster, Pennsylvania in 1976 so that she could accept a tenure-track teaching position at Millersville University, where she retired in 2011 after completing 35 years of teaching. From 1978 until he retired in 2012, David was an administrator and instructor at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster. He has taught a wide variety of American history courses, including classes in African-American history, the history of race relations and the history of education. He has published several historical monographs and co-edited another. Stameshkin is also a frustrated comedian, musician, and entertainer. Since 1985, he has written, produced, directed, and/or starred in nearly thirty popular musical comedy spoofs, including the infamous Fum Follies at F&M and annual Purimshpiels at his synagogue. He plays clarinet in the Chopped Liver River Band, a klezmer group in Lancaster, and is a soloist in the choir, Chavrai Zamir. David and Colleen, who just celebrated their 45th anniversary, live in Lancaster and summer in a little cabin on Lake Dunmore in Vermont. They have two adult daughters, Anne, a writer and editor in New York City; and Elizabeth, an intellectual property attorney in San Francisco.