In any event, as best I can now remember it, 2008 was the year that Susan and I reached the milestone of 25 years of wedded bliss. [Mouse-over each image to get its caption!] In celebration of our propitious meeting at the 1981 Telluride Film Festival, we brought Eric and our virtual daughter-in-law, Lipica, to join us for a few days of camping and concentrated film viewing at the 2008 Telluride Film Festival. We took the opportunity to show Lipica some of our favorite spots in Mesa Verde, and good sport that she always is, she gamely joined us in climbing among ruins and hiking down spectacular canyons and up alpine trails. At the festival itself we rode the gondola to late-night shows in a theater high in the ski village, ate heartily at brew pubs, and slept beneath dazzlingly clear mountain skies. A slideshow of our Colorado adventure is here.

Two thousand eight represented a milestone for Eric as well. In my last family letter, I predicted that one day he would look back on each of his numerous jobs in Raleigh as a separate factor in his decision to return to school. This day came sooner than I anticipated; by last summer he was so desperate for intellectual stimulation and for a career that didn't involve asking anyone “Do you want fries with that?” that he moved back to New York and signed up for fall classes. This volte-face was swiftly followed by what can only be described as a near-graduation experience. A semester away from what he suddenly realized was an unmarketable degree (music technology) in a dying industry (music production) he had an epiphany that his true calling was actually economics. No sooner had he changed majors than he was interviewed by the press about being part of a trend (or fad) of students abandoning liberal arts for the no-longer dismal science.



In my imagination, his near-graduation experience involved a vision of a dark tunnel leading to unhappily employed figures beckoning glumly from dingy cubicles on the other side. Naturally, one couldn't go back to one's old life after such an experience! Eric now lives as an economics major (graduation deferred until Spring 2011) with Lipica (who herself walked through the tunnel to graduation and is now in the early stages of an exciting career in acting) in a 6th floor walk-up on the Upper East Side.

 

Susan is still happily employed by the Marine Technology Society. Members of her society include the engineers who discovered and salvaged the H.M.S. Victory, the S.S. Central America, and other historic and gold-filled wrecks. In what I can only explain as a symptom of a critical deficiency of testosterone, y-chromosomes, or both, Susan recently turned down an opportunity to take a journalistic ride 4,000' deep in the Alvin submersible. I tried to convince her that no amount of danger or discomfort could possibly outweigh the excitement of going where few humans ever have, or ever will, go, but she was impervious to my arguments. She said something about the reasons that women live longer than men, but I couldn't quite grasp her point. Susan had knee surgery for a torn meniscus in December and unfortunately wasn't sufficiently recovered to join Eric and myself in a yurt camping trip (via snowshoes) in Idaho with my nephew, Paul.

 

This year I was a bit more musically active than usual. I wrote a setting for a capella choir of an A.E. Housman poem, From far, from eve and morning, March 8, 2009, performance by the UUCC Chalice Choir here ; a piece for choir and piano based on a poem by Arthur Hugh Clough (synthesized version here) that will be performed in the fall; a song for two voices, violin, and cello entitled “No room for hate” for a Unitarian peace service (poem here, rehearsal pictures here, and a synthesized version of the performance here); and Eric, Lipica, and I performed a little song about differences in expectations between adult children and the parents that they visit. I also presented a lay sermon at the Columbia Unitarian Church on evolution and morality, the sequel to a lay sermon from the previous summer on religion and skepticism.

On a more somber note, after a long illness, my step-mother, Linda, died late in the year, plunging my father into deep grief. I urged him to move to Maryland to be near me, but instead he has moved in which an old friend in Parker, where he lived with Linda for many years and where he has connections to the local Unitarian Church. His staying in Colorado will give me a pretext to visit the Rockies regularly.

I hope that your 2009 is creative, productive, and filled with love. We look forward to hearing your stories and adventures!

With Love,

Karl and Susan