Christmas Letter

I am fascinated by Christmas letters – in the same manner that a snake fascinates a hare. I love to read them and at the same time I am a little repulsed by them. Too often they are brag letters or organ recitals. I want to know that people are healthy or ill, but I don’t want to hear about every incision or stitch, every frozen slide made from shaved tissue. I don’t want to know about all the relatives and friends I never heard of.

But I have no qualms about putting any of these topics in my own Christmas letter. I often wrote one in the past and included it in the myriad Christmas cards we’re still writing. This year, I included cards with this weblog address. Here goes:

January: We escaped the cold of Chicago and went to London for a week. There it was early spring, with daffodils blooming and cyclamen and geraniums blooming in window boxes. We were able to visit with our friend Tim, and we visited Ann’s distant cousin Jean in Nottingham, who became in the wink of an eye Ann’s English Mum. On the morning it snowed, the headlines read: London Paralyzed by Inch of Snow. Ha!

February and March: At the end of February we joined our travel buddies Ted and Carol in Buenos Aires for a couple of days before we got on a cruise ship for a trip around the horn and up the coast to Valparaiso, Chile. The highlight of Buenos Aires, in addition to Evita’s tomb, was a Tango Diner at the Taconeando, a local joint where we were the only English speakers. Way double plus cool.

We visited the Falkland Islands, Las Malvinas to Argentines, saw a penguin rookery – in a desert not an ice floe – went to the southernmost city in the southern hemisphere, visited a Bavarian expatriate community in Chile, and had a great time with Ted and Carol.

April: I had minor surgery and everything is fine.

May. Grandson David graduated from high school. Son Derek graduated from Veterinary College at the University of Illinois and moved to an internship in Denver.

June: Ann went on a skipper (a type of butterfly) and butterfly census sponsored by the University of Illinois, in western Illinois with friend Julie for a few days. When she came back, I went to Vermont to the Clockhouse Writers’ Conference at Goddard College and came back refreshed, reinvigorated, and ready to write.

July: I went to Port Townsend, Washington, to a writers’ conference, made new friends, and fell in love with the Northwest, and came back refreshed, reinvigorated and ready to write.

August: We went to Oregon to visit travel buddies Ted and Carol. We have made five major overseas trips together but had never visited each other’s houses. We had a great time.

September: David started college in Wisconsin and Jonathan became a sophomore at the local high school, where he produces his own radio show on the school’s FM station. The geriatric symphony season also started. We are some of the youngest people at the Friday afternoon concerts, and some of the few who don’t take very expensive naps. The opera season also started and we met for dinner with the people who sit behind me. (Ann doesn’t like the spectacle of opera, just the music, so she saves about a thousand bucks and stays home.)

October: A couple more operas, a symphony and Halloween. We stayed home and painted the guest room. Bill worked on a newsletter for his cousin Rochelle who owns a local restaurant, Flavor.

November: Ted and Carol returned our visit and came for ten days with a jaunt to Michigan to see their daughter, a professor in Ann Arbor. We had another great time and did all the tourist things we should have done in the last forty years but haven’t gotten around to.

December: Insurance finally paid the outpatiend surgery bill (not to be bitter, but for this we pay almost $15k per year?). Bill started a new blog based on the Episcopal Lectionary. It's at Bill's new blog.

Merry Christmas to all!

Our best wishes for a happy, healthy, and prosperous New Year for all of our friends, and those who wander through cyberspace and read this blog. May the next year bring peace in the world, a viable presidential candidate who is more interested in our nation than in lining his own pockets or consolidating his own power, and harmony within your family and yourself.

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