Memories flooded me Monday as I arrived in Weimar, a city best described as our heart-home. No matter where I walk, my mind overflows with twenty-four years of memories. After the intensity of my early December Christmas-Market tour (Interlaken, then down the Rhine to Düsseldorf), I left the ship, took the train, and five hours later, stepped out onto the platform where so many memories had begun.

A dear friend hauled my super-heavy suitcase into a car, and ten minutes later I was in our little apartment, amazed that everything still stood beautifully in its place. Hank had been here several times in the interim, but for me, it had been four years.

Before me lay a day and a half of unscheduled time, which I intended fully to enjoy. And so, the next morning, I stalled making needed preparations for the arrival of my clan from the States and got on YouTube with the goal of learning something about 3-D printing. The subject comes up increasingly, with me having no idea what people are saying.

Not surprisingly, “YouTube University” provided limitless clips of information. Some of the clips were clear as a bell; others moved from a comprehensible opening sentence directly into strings of acronyms and broken mono-textured technological vocabulary. By the end of those explanations, I felt stupider, not smarter.

Still, overall, the videos did inform. Of course, 3D technology is fascinating and the potential advantages are staggering. Yet the information jarred me too, sitting here in solidly rooted, culture-rich Weimar, a quiet city ringed by the Thuringian Mountains where people are renown for traditional handicraft.

Then, the new knowledge threw me back into memories of my graduate schooling and the moment when my dissertation advisor—whom I like to call Saint Smither—agreed to take me on.

Dr. Howard E. Smither was in the final years of a long teaching career. A leading figure within a stellar musicology faculty at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, he was not obligated to adopt a greenie like me as advisee. I say “greenie” because, despite surviving the tough, often baffling courses required for the Ph.D. in musicology, I had not written a master’s thesis. I had not grappled with the ins and outs of an 80-to-120 page document ordinarily prerequisite to climbing the mountain of a dissertation. Instead, as a candidate for the Masters in Piano Performance, I had grappled with the ins and outs of Prokofiev’s Eighth Sonata, the tortuous transcription of Bach’s Chaconne in D minor as transcribed for piano by the virtuoso Ferruccio Busoni (whose top student had taught my own teacher, which meant I had Busoni’s actual fingerings at my disposal), and whatever else filled up my master’s recital.

So there I was, imploring this man to take me on, based on the singular experience of taking his seminar in the history of the oratorio. How does all this connect to computer technology? Smither had jumped onto the computer band wagon the moment Apple Desktops appeared. He was that kind of guy, always curious, always interested in the new and exciting. Back then, almost zero students in the humanities owned computers (we’re talking those bulky ones with not-so-floppy floppy disks capable of holding 264KB of data). Smither had bought the best model available—an Apple II as I recall—and he was convinced that word-processing would change the world of scholarship. In that he was 100 percent correct.

Smither’s strong suggestion (read “unstated requirement”) before taking me on was a serious one. He asked, “Would I consider investing in a desk-top computer and a printer?” The printer alone—dot matrix—cost about $2,000 dollars back when $2000 really was $2000 dollars! The computer probably would run around $1800. Together this amount easily could have paid for a car. But that was his deal or, rather, “strong suggestion.” And so, I took a bank loan, and bought the stuff.

In a field based in the fruitful work of medieval scribes, why should such technology matter? Aha, that’s the grand part. Smither foresaw that a student using a word-processor could revise, revise, and revise without physical labor or cost. That meant he could advise, advise, and advise and at this point in his life, that was the thing he enjoyed. Chapters could come to him repeatedly for editing without the writer having to retype them, or, as was often the case, pay a typist to retype them. Smither had done the math, and he knew the price of having someone type multiple drafts of a dissertation. Yes, one could do it oneself, but the requirements were so strict: perfect text, exact margins for all borders and footnotes, perfectly formatted bibliographies, precise appendices, you name it! In short, this new tool was the way to go.

Well, to cut to the chase, the experience of working with Howard Smither was colossal. I shake my head every time I think about it. Even today, I wonder over the drafts he edited so closely for me (yes, I’ve kept them all). With each page, each line, he pushed me farther, examining each sentence, correcting and questioning, all done in small, beautifully cast, penciled handwriting. This was a man who cared what his students were doing. He became my eternal model for an advisor.

But, oh that computer! Not to mention the printer. I’ll restrain myself from relating the tribulations of coming to terms with those two, other than to mention the time I learned one hot Chapel Hill summer that the Osborne would malfunction in extreme heat. This lesson I learned when staying one week in the unairconditioned attic bedroom of a friend.

And let us not even mention carting that thing across the ocean (I was living in Germany at the time). The computer resembled a sewing machine in a solid case. False were winsome television advertisements showing a lovely lady in heels stepping delicately across an airport, lightly carrying the monster as if it were a purse! Trust me, at 24.5 pounds, this thing was not a purse.

But I did it, multiple times, over a period of nearly three years before completing that dissertation. My good fortune at having Howard Smither guide this work cannot be measured or described. And little did I know that his own experiences with computers and printers were not dissimilar to mine: they simply had occurred a year earlier than my own struggles and he had more patience.

These were my thoughts as I carried my feather-weight MacBook from spot to spot, tidying up before the arrival of my family while listening to a lecture by Tracy Lee Simons on Marcus Aurelius. (Now there’s an example of the marvels of technology!) Information about 3-D printing faded from my mind. Filling the crockpot was relevant. And even more relevant was the glow from remembering Dr. Smither fostering my teeter-totter steps into the technology that now frames so much of our daily lives. Towards technology I remain ambivalent. But towards the gifts bestowed by Smither? There I can only place my hand over my heart.