A system of rewards

I should also note, before I forget, that historian Robert Remini in the session that the Doc and I attended had a thoughtful and very proper attitude towards self-reward. He was urging the audience of historians to become better writers, and said he realized early on that he was going to have to write nine pages a day, no matter how bad it might be. "If I wrote my nine pages," he said, "I got a martini. No nine pages, no martini. These days," he said, "I get my martini whether I've done the nine pages or not."

Historical prose could greatly improve if this simple advice were to be followed. We would be a merrier, happier band of compadres, and have loose elbows from all the shaking. And our image would be greatly improved. We no longer be seen as academic drudges, but as vigorous cosmopolitans of the word processor and the database (technological changes being what they are).