A Spirit of Connectedness

This year, in our home, we are struck by how spontaneous acts of kindness in our daily lives stand in stark contrast to the cruel and senseless violence dominating the news.  As we write this letter, war continues to rage in Ukraine and in Gaza, and apparently in Venezuela now;  reports fill the airwaves of ordinary people living their lives being shackled and deported while attempting to trick-o-treat or fly home for Thanksgiving.  (For a good read on how to treat the ‘strangers’ living among us we recommend:  https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/  Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:3-12 and Luke 6:20-26) is inspirational!)

Meanwhile, back to the horrors of the day, all good citizens are sitting around waiting for the prices of groceries to drop, important given that the cost of eggs drove many to madness a year ago.  Even more are expecting a check from DOGE and the Department of External Revenue (tariffs) to help with rising prices because taxing policy is now created in response to a Minister in Canada having the audacity to put Ronald Reagan’s own voice and image on television.  The SCOTUS which seemingly believes in lawlessness as much as the Executive branch these days, seeks modern legal solutions in the writings of twelfth century mystics; and the abject failure of the Congress to do its job of checks and balances, leave us wondering if in fact we are the only pair of fools who have actually read the Constitution!  To that end, we invite you to give this copy of our Nation’s most sacred document a good read:  https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript .  You are likely to find things of interest in there, from the prohibition on Presidential emoluments in a time of constant grift; to the fact that the only agency mentioned explicitly is the USPS which is under attack for daring to deliver ballots through the mail; to the right of Congress to levy taxes, and not the President.  It is a marvelous little document, if we bother to adhere to it.  Any questions, shoot us an email.  Do not be surprised though if we send you a link to School House Rocks from the 1970s since so many may need a refresher course taken from our childhood Saturday Morning cartoons!  Let civic knowledge/understanding be our gift to you this holiday season!

Against the backdrop of constant racism, misogyny, homophobia, and worse, we were delighted on July 4th, to join a neighborhood barbecue at our friend Sarah’s house.  There, we met a graduate student who shared his remarkable story of fleeing Berlin at the onset of the COVID pandemic.  He had managed to secure a seat on the last plane bound for the United States.  Upon arriving in Wisconsin, he discovered that transportation systems were barely functioning.  His solution? Buy a cheap rust bucket.  “I could see the road while looking down through both the driver and passenger sides—the rust had eaten away sections of the car body,” he recalled.  Armed with tools from Harbor Freight and plenty of mechanical skill, he made the car operable.  Yet what struck him most was not the challenge of repairs, but the kindness of strangers.  “It was hard to fix it when it needed work, because car after car stopped on the roads’ edge to offer help.  I’ve never met more friendly people than here in Wisconsin.”

On a different afternoon, we received a simple note, left in our mailbox.  It read:  “Just wanted to say it was lovely meeting you two. I feel grateful to be in this wonderful neighborhood.  I just had two trips, one to London and then Rome.  I wanted to share a few treats with my new neighbors.”  The note was signed by Luke, a flight attendant for American Airlines, who also left two packages of cookies purchased on his overseas trips.  Gregory had earlier struck up a conversation with Luke, a new face in the neighborhood, while our raking leaves (to be relocated from the lawn to flower beds so that the bees could still use them this winter).  Wonderful fellow.  

That spirit of connectedness carried into the Labor Day weekend, when Spencer invited us to a Saturday morning coffee gathering of graduate students residing on our block.  About twenty students, each engaged in diverse fields of research at UW–Madison, came together over brunch and a specialty coffee drink crafted by our hosts.  The invitation itself carried a thread of continuity. The man who welcomed us is a close friend of the son of Gregory’s best friend of more than thirty years.  In the 1990s, Brad had rented a home directly across from the one where we now live.

In general, it was not an easy year.  Politics and outrage notwithstanding, James continued to suffer the aftereffects of Lyme disease, followed by more than six weeks of extreme pain and three small surgeries to fix a kidney stone situation, with a month or more of crippling migraine headaches to follow.  It is hard to feel productive in these situations.  On the plus side, James’ efforts to shed a few pounds through intermittent fasting and better portion control have left him at the end of the year weighing twenty pounds less than the blatant lie he had told the DMV when last he had renewed his driver’s license!  In other terms, he is down almost six pants’ sizes, hoping to see about another twenty pounds, or two more pants’ sizes, slip away.  All of this while Gregory continues to benefit from a high carb diet, recommended by his UW dietician.

James also wishes to thank all those who reached out to him at the time of his Aunt Erma’s passing in July, and even more so after his brother, Todd, died suddenly in mid-October, of an infection his medical team could not conquer.  He flew home to Maine for Todd’s funeral to be with his dad and sister in November and was grateful for his aunts and cousins who hosted a lovely post-ceremony luncheon at the local church for everyone attending.  A good meal in a time of grief, that is what love is.

Before closing this holiday letter, we mention one final sign of remarkable kindness offered to one who can never repay it. The raccoon at our home who comes for a meal each evening was severely injured due to the cruelty of someone implementing a trap, hidden somewhere in the neighborhood.  The mother, who we call Ricki-by-the-lake, was coming out in the day to secure food for her little ones and her maladies were noticeable.  With tenacious focus, the animal arrived every day on three paws, her injured front one extended.  That is when a women next door, Robyn, started to arrive every morning with fortified cat food and chopped apples smothered in agave in a special container.  Robyn would return each day for weeks with the container loaded up again.  A couple of months later, Ricki brought her three youngsters over to greet us on a warm summer night.  If they could talk, surely words of appreciation for caring about mom would be heard.  In the current MAGA world, be a Robyn, a Sarah, a Luke or a Spencer.  The world needs more deliberate acts of kindness these days.  Happy Holidays!

Immediate Need: Position: Big Brother

           

I have had time since October 13 when my older brother, Todd, 57, died rather unexpectedly after a brief period with an infection that his medical team wasn’t able to get under control with antibiotics.  It has been quite devastating losing him, and I can’t help but feel a sort of emptiness in my life, a hole in my heart that he used to occupy.  The loss and pain is different than when we lost Mom, or our Grandparents over time.  I was quite young when Grampy Sweet died, so had lost a pea-shelling, farming playmate then; Grampy Wilson died when I was in college and it seemed as though I had lost a true spirit guide.  Mom’s passing was truly distressing and I was a full year before I felt anything akin to ‘normal’ again.  Our grandmothers both passed away five years after that.  Grammy Sweet slipped away gently in Spring and Grammy Wilson in the Fall., her centenary soul dancing toward Paradise to the tune of “I’ll Fly Away.”   With Todd’s death, to make any kind of sense of it since I wasn’t able to say goodbye in any meaningful way, I’ve tried to put some of my thoughts down on paper, and it feels rather like I am writing a performance review.

Position:  Big Brother. 

Job Description:  Mentor and role model who provides guidance, support, and companionship.  This role involves spending quality time together, offering advice, and helping develop life skills by being a positive and consistent influence.

Qualifications and skills

• Commitment: A willingness to make a regular time commitment to the relationship.
• Communication: Good oral and written communication skills are important for expressing ideas and building rapport.  Those periodic phone calls and small gifts and gestures around birthdays and holidays are important.
• Passion: A genuine passion for positively impacting another’s life.  Being just and overall good guy.

Areas of Excellence

Todd’s true strength was especially evident in our early years, when we were growing up in the trailer with its commodious addition, then located behind the house that Dad would eventually build in 1984.  Todd always seemed to have good ideas for having fun.

We had swing sets, two of them, in the back yard near the garden, so that there would be three swings instead of just two.  A two-seater would have left one of the kids out of the fun.  (My sense is that Dad would have acquired the second set in order for peace to reign and for the bickering to stop.  This was likely the goal to all the times he would shout at us in the back seat of the truck, “Don’t make me stop this truck and separate you.  James you get in the middle, and don’t let those other two near each other!”  He applied a similar technique when purchasing Mom’s first dishwasher, I am convinced.  Our conflict-averse father clearly believes, “Happy family, happy life”.)  One swing set was blue and the other was red and tan, but the seats were all set to the same height; see above to explain that.

Todd, five years older, was bigger so he could really give a good push on the swings.  That was important.  We could practically get the four legs of the blue swing set to lift off the ground the higher we would climb.  Missy used to laugh raucously when that happened.  Mom was a bit more concerned, but not so much as to get out of the garden where she weeded the veggies we’d harvest in fall and hold the set in place.  Of course, she let us drink from the hose and ride in the back of the truck without seatbelts too.  It was the 1970s; it is a wonder any of us made it out of that period alive.

Dad also brought home once a set of large wooden spools from some job he had been working on.  They had been used for large wire rolls, but when empty were like building pallets, and just needed to be repurposed or gotten rid of somehow.  These three spools of differing sizes made their way to our back yard.  With a bit of imagination, Todd helped us kids and we were able to do all sorts of things with them.  They became forts in fierce land battles reenacting the Revolution (the Bicentennial happening only a few years earlier; my bed spread at the time still reflected the patriotic fervor.)  They became steps in a mountain climb, and precipices from which to scale and jump.  We could even turn them on their sides walk on them like hamsters on a wheel.   If you placed them just right, Todd said, you could race down the hill in the field, attempting to walk/run on them, and only falling off a few dozen times.  The big one, well that one did hurt a little if you found yourself rolling under one side of its wheel.

To be honest, Todd also found neat ways to make large cardboard appliance boxes a ton of fun as well, if not a bit terrifying as well.  Get trapped in one of those, and have your big brother rock, shake, and tip it over, and see if you aren’t just a bit scared.  Haunted house at Halloween, not necessary.

In winter, Todd was a big help with snow fort making on those days off from school when Ruth Wright, our friend and bus driver, would call and say that the bus wouldn’t be coming for us that day.  The snow was so often quite wet in Maine, so we could make gigantic snow balls, using up most of the available snow in the yard, and stack them together.  Todd was stronger so he could help lift his to put on the top of the ones Missy and I made so that it made it “two-storied”.  We could then carve out the undercroft with tunnels and ‘rooms’.  We’d come in to the trailer to dry off only after the sun started to set and the sweat-drenched snow suits got seriously chilly.

We would sometimes go out on the old cross-country skis and Todd on the snow shoes that Aunt Madeline had had.  We invited Sandra (Waters) Cookson to join us one afternoon when Todd wasn’t ‘too cool’ to be hanging out with us.  We went on the trails through the woods that Todd knew from his hunting, leading us from the yard at home to Grammy’s place where Sherwood greeted us all out by the end of the garage.  Grammy might have made some peanut butter cookies for us all to ‘reinforce with’ before getting us back on our skis and sending the lot of us home.  Once, I recall, Grammy had us all come in and make popcorn balls.  A sticky mess those were, but so good!

Todd and I were two VERY different people and always were.  I have always been quite comfortable as an academic; I read voraciously, and all the time.  Todd was not as academically inclined, though he did graduate toward the top of his class in school, a turnaround in attitude having taken place once he got in to the vocational classes.  His history teacher, Mrs. Smith, was years in figuring out, though, just who wrote his term papers his sophomore year when his homework was of a lesser quality.  (I made good money on those papers, footnotes included.)  Todd, though, was good in athletics in high school, earning his nickname of ‘Tank’ in soccer with his side tackles on the field.  He played basketball and baseball as well.  He had been on the little league team which used to play on the diamond out at the end of the Marsh Road, near the Hill’s farm.  I used to walk through the fields behind the house to go and watch him play, book in hand, which did nothing to help with the ridicule I got from the older kids then.  Did I want to join the team?  I hardly think so!  I had less than zero prowess for any of those things; best I stick with my books.

More impressively, Todd was a gifted carpenter—I like to tell people that I have, when it comes to construction, lots of the theory (it would have been hard to grow up in our house without getting some skills), but not a lot of the practice.  Todd used to tease me, especially after I moved into my current home, that had I paid attention rather than keeping my nose in those books, I likely would have saved quite a lot of time.  I thanked him always for the passive aggression interpretation of our childhood.

Todd was different than the other kids in his class too, though he tended to conform a bit better than I did.  When most of the kids in his vocational classes in high school were designing and building a simple wooden box for their semester project, Todd designed an old fashioned, solid oak teachers’ desk with a large top and six drawers.  He and Dad had milled the wood on our own property the year previous.  The desk, stained in a lovely deep walnut color, weighed a ton, and was in the end simply gorgeous.  Because he ‘finished his project early,” he added a lovely glass-front locked gun storage cabinet to his task.  If you are going to go for some unnecessary extra credit, why not turn a pine tree into art?  The other kids’ boxes were quite successful and I am sure that some still grace a shelf in their homes today; Todd’s furniture though was amazing.  He had even convinced the school maintenance department, for which he worked at the time after school to earn some spending cash, to allow him to use some of the heavy-duty varnish that they use on the basketball courts for the top surface of the desk.  The surface would have been virtually indestructible.

            Todd would later earn a degree from the Washington County Vocational Technical Institute for construction.  Todd would then start his own company, Moosehead Builders.  He was active in Maine and Colorado for a time.  When he retired from construction, he went back to school with Grammy and Sherwood’s help, to learn to drive a big rig.  In his time driving truck, delivering goods across the country, he logged more than one million miles on the road.  He had an encyclopedic memory of the gazetteer, it seemed, or was it GPS which led him across the nation’s highways and byways?  He could tell you about most of the Eisenhower interstate system from firsthand experience on it.

When his health was complicated during the pandemic, he completely remodeled his TN home.  It is lovely, and much more energy efficient than the average abode there.  The whole-house attic fan, the insulation in the walls, the milled wood work—it may have been a small place, but it has class!

Areas in Need of Improvement.

            Todd was a kind soul.  He once got in to trouble in school for giving a good thumping to a kid who was picking on his disabled friend Bobby; the principal didn’t know if she should praise or punish him for that.  Another time, he had bought a chocolate molded candy bar in the shape of a woman’s breasts, a purchase which enraged the principal.  Mrs. Snyder had called Mom to come and “deal with her child,” but found little satisfaction.  Mom grabbed the offending pop and said, “Oh great!  I have been wanting one of these!”  She completely let the air out of Mrs. Snyder’s penchant for punishment.  At home, I am certain, though, that Todd found a very different reaction to his acting out.  He used to split a lot of wood for the fireplace in those days, from what I recall.

Mom also used to ‘send us to our rooms’ quite a lot when she had had just about enough of us.  Todd’s room was at the end of the trailer addition’s hallway, behind a blue door.  He would spend quite a lot of time listening to his radio—for Doctor Demento and programming from ‘The Moose’ up near Greenville when he had been banished from Mom’s sight for the hour.  He was always much more current with music trends and such than I could manage.  When we had our rooms in the house, later on, he had all sorts of projects he would work on from model cars with horrifyingly stinky glue, or just sputtering obscenities while lying on the bed.  He had a rich lexicon of swear words, which only infuriated Mom all the more.

Before Grampy Sweet passed away, Grampy had given us the Ski Doo, a yellow snowmobile that Wendy was no longer using.  Dad was forever braising (a type of welding) the muffler back together on that machine, so it was sometimes more work for him than it was fun for us.  We had blue plastic sleds or even the red metal flying saucer that we had gotten for Christmas one year which when attached to the back, gave a hell of a ride.  Todd would drive the snowmobile quite fast around corners, and the blue sled Missy and I would ride on the back would whip around as if almost untethered.  Things were fine usually, and it was quite exhilarating—well, until the day that rose bush jumped right out in front of Missy and her blue sled.  She was none too pleased about that!  She long suggested he learn to drive before she would get back on that sled.

Todd also got us into some hot water one winter when the snows were particularly deep in Corinth.  From the top of the barn, you could get some good speed on those blue sleds, provided you didn’t mind the few feet of a drop between the eave of the barn and the top of the snow pile.  Dad was livid, “Get off of that roof!” he shouted, “You’re going to take all the rocks off my shingles!”  Mom, over hearing the situation responded, “Seriously, the shingles, that’s what you’re worried about?”  She wasn’t any more pleased that year Todd had me convinced that a jump from the roof, with my blue speckled umbrella, just like Mary Poppins had, was a good idea.

            Todd worked hard on a tree house for us kids.  Dad allowed him to use the scrap wood from a pile behind the garage, and nails that he had in big boxes under the bench.  Todd set to constructing in a tree near the garage a structure that had two stories.  The main level, and up a little ladder he had built, to a smaller ‘lookout’.  He would sometimes let me help out, if that is what you could call my efforts.  In that ‘area of needs improvement’ for this performance review, I was willing to be helpful to his training.

            Todd, at times, was slow to pick up on signs.  He picked on me relentlessly for not knowing some of the things I likely should have, but simply didn’t care about enough.  When it came to the tree house, one day was particularly bad.  The teasing just did not let up, and so I warned him several times that he would regret being so mean.  No change in attitude or behavior.  I warned him again.  Still no change.  At some point, I had a six or eight foot length of two-by-four in my hand and I clocked him a good one up side the head.  It had to have hurt.  There was a lump there that needed an ice pack.  He clutched his hand to his head and walked back to the house, as if stunned.  “He hit me,” he told Mom.  “I can’t believe that he hit me.”  Mom asked what had happened, and he was honest in telling her that he might have gotten a bit carried away, and admitted that I had indeed warned him.  He just repeated, “He hit me.  I can’t believe that he hit me.”  He did, however, heed warnings and respect personal boundaries quite a bit better after that.

Overall Performance Assessment:  Very good.

As adults, we spoke often on the phone, when being in the same spot at the same time was so rare.  I traveled, when home on vacations from school, to visit with him and Tena when they lived in Surry.  There, we worked in the kitchen to learn to make a number of sea food dishes that I had seen in France.  He really liked the stew I sometimes make of tuna, tomatoes and white beans.  I went to see them for a number of days when they were in Kissimmee, Florida also.  We toured Disney and at home smoked meats in his cooker, a process I didn’t have at home.  We made a full Thanksgiving dinner and I reminded him how to cook a number of the dishes that filled our family table in the years when Grammy and Grampy Sweet hosted the entire family every Sunday for dinner.  We made the onion dressing for coleslaw, the baby pearl onions in cream, pies galore, and more—Todd wrote down the instructions for things that he had forgotten or didn’t know how to make, and kept asking, “How do you remember all of this?”  For years, he has called me to recite recipes over the phone, even though I am sure he had them written down in the end; it was nice to connect in that way.

What was fun with talking with Todd was that he had all those memories of people we had loved and cared for that I didn’t have because I was that much younger than he.  He had vivid recollections of Uncle Everett, Aunt Olive’s ex husband, who continued to be a part of the family long after Olive had remarried and moved to Zephyrhills, Florida.  He and Everett were fishing buddies.  Todd could tell me how upset I used to get about the ‘good cows and bad cows’ in Grampy’s barn before Gene retired.  It seems I was upset that the cows would come in for dinner in the barn in two rows, the good ones up front and the bad ones in back.  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Todd would laugh, “They all looked the same—the filled in the barn in the order they came out of the field!”

Todd remembered what it was like to visit at Grammy Rowe’s big old farm house—Grammy Rowe was Grammy Sweet’s mother who lived at the top of the hill from us.  He recalled getting water from the old well pump, the cistern underground near the barn, and making soap in a big kettle out by the old maple tree behind the kitchen.  Todd could remember the weekend game nights with Mom’s cousins, and how Grammy Rowe would get upset if someone was ‘caught hanging out of her refrigerator’ even though it was no longer an actual ice box, but electric.

He remembered better Aunt Madeline from before her stroke, and Uncle Arnold, who used to play his violin, even at the nursing home.  He had fond memories of Grammy Rowe’s sister, Irene, who lived in Arizona, but who visited every summer.  He recollected the parties my parents threw in the basement of our new house when it was new.  He just had so many great stories to tell, now silent.

I will miss his Downeast Maine accent, which he managed to keep even while living in the South, and which I had lost years ago, and his calls which always began, “What’s up, Cap’n?”  I will miss our discussions of politics, even when I had to remind him that in his impoverished state, the tax cuts being proposed in Washington wouldn’t actually help him like he had heard on his right-wing talk radio that he listened to with fervor in his truck.  I will miss his take on the goings on at home and with Melissa and Dad.

Todd was an optimist and disagreed with the old Maine dictum “You can’t get theah from heah”.  He drove enough on the road to know that there is always a route to get you from one dream to the next.  I admired him and will miss him very much.  I am most sad that he has left his position of Big Brother; I hate that I am forced to forever leave that position unfilled now.  It seems so dreadfully unfair.

Thank you, Todd, for the wonderful childhood memories, and the friendship over the years.

Love,

Your little brother

2024 Holiday Greetings!

“We added years to life, now it’s time to add life to those years”

–John F. Kennedy

“If you ever need anything, ask the two old men on the corner, they are very kind and will help you out.”

Our new friend, a UW-Madison grad student, originally from India and freshly returned from four weeks at ‘home’, was talking to his new roommate as they walked along in front of our home.  They clearly had seen neither James nor Gregory sitting in Adirondack chairs on the lawn.  With the monarda in full bloom and the canna lilies having a banner year, we were at times hidden in plain view.  As the young men passed and entered the intersection, Gregory turned to James saying, “They think we are kind!”

“That’s what you got from that conversation?!”

“Well, as old men, we can have selective hearing!”

Our corner lot on the Madison Isthmus (it takes sixty-seven of Gregory’s footsteps in a direct path from our lawn chairs to Lake Monona) has long been a perfect place to meet neighborhood friends and strike up new friendships.  In the first spring at our home in 2008, we started reimagining the area, landscaping it akin to a room, an extension of our home.  In the warm months, we are as likely to be found there as inside our home.  Stop by if you are in the area and say hello, understanding of course that we aren’t morning people.  Come before lunch and you’ll be entertaining yourself!  We’d love to chat and hear about your comings and goings, even if, like for our Indian friend, that might include a worrisome tale of how to navigate the tricky situation of kindly postponing the arranged marriage plans those back home have been conspiring to set up in your name!

One Saturday morning in early spring, a man was walking a gorgeous large white dog.  Gregory commented on the loveliness of the animal as he rounded the corner.  The man mentioned that he was the dad of one of the new owners of the brick house on the corner.  “Oh, you are the grandad!”.  With a smile, he wondered how Gregory knew that.  “Everyone has been talking about their July 17th arrival.  It’s nice to have kids in the neighborhood”.  The man spoke of working in the postal system in the Fox Valley and more about his son and daughter-in-law who moved here from San Francisco.  They are both engineers working for different companies, but now would be able to work from home in a less stressful city.  (Soon thereafter electricians spent the better part of a day updating their power sources.)  Gregory joked that come winter and the harsh winds that come off Lake Monona, which was so different from the bay they had lived near, they could walk during an ice storm and at the same time exfoliate their faces.  He mentioned before walking on that everyone he had met during his outing was so friendly.  “Oh, that is because in winter everyone hunkers down in their homes but come this time of year, we are ready to talk and talk!  Our friend, Henry, who had lived here before us, often spoke about not seeing neighbors from early November until the Spring thaw.  We did not think that could be true; yet, it is the case every year, if you do not count the shared snow shoveling experiences.

This summer, James came out to the lawn with two plates, carrying his freshly made tomato tart.  He did not realize that we had guests—a little girl, Nellie, and her mom who live on the next block.  Three-year-old Nellie was seated alongside Gregory, a place she often occupied when her mom and new-newborn sister pass our way as they head to the beach.  (Her mom, now working for the WI Innocence Project, was a prosecutor who worked in New York City and had insight into the ‘lay of the land’ of the building during the Trump trial this year.  She had handled many cases in the same courtroom.)

“What’s that?” Nellie asked as she looked down at the plate that now rested on the arms of the chairs as they sat close together.  Without waiting for a response she asked, “Can I have a bite?”

“Sure”, Gregory said and handed her the fork James had brought with the plate.  “No”, she said, “I want my own fork”.  No problem, and a dessert fork was fetched, and best of all, one that was more suited for a small mouth.  As we all talked (it was obvious Gregory was smiling and laughing inside)  Nellie took a bite, another bite, another, and soon Gregory was holding an empty plate.  Her mom was embarrassed, and we said kids should be kids and it is good to see them enjoy veggies.  Her mom said they should be heading home to make dinner and with perfect timing Nellie said, “That’s ok, we can stay, I am not hungry”.  That evening the family brought homemade cookies as a reward for our understanding way with kids.  Pro-tip:  the three-year-old makes excellent chocolate cookies if you are feeling in need of just a little nosh.

Gregory always has a fun story to share about neighborhood kids.  Take Eva, for example, who arrived back on the Isthmus with her parents after spending several years in Montana.  Her mom had taken a job as a pharmacist on a Reservation as her dad, who had previously taught in a local school here, concentrated on honing his ‘stay-at-home’ dad skills.  The family had rented their home on the Isthmus while out West and were glad to be back in town.  Eva’s parents had not seen the the top two floors of our home, the additional space we bought and refurbished in 2019 just before the pandemic struck.  So, we went room to room through the house and Eva said there were loads of places to play hide and seek as she tried to wedge herself under a bed.  The next day, Eva bounded onto the lawn and said we should go inside the house again.  “But why, you saw everything yesterday?”  She did not need to think about a response.  “Today we can make cookies!”  We asked which of our two kitchens should be used, and since Eva had clearly thought about baking, she replied matter of factly that the table upstairs was too high for her, and she would need to stand on a chair.  “Daddy says I am messy so the lower table would be easier for me.”  Gregory, the big softie in the neighborhood, chose the route of less mess and brought out store bought cookies instead.

We met McKinley and his mom as she helped her grad student son settle into his upstairs apartment just a few doors from where we live.  Like all moms she wanted to know if the area was safe from crime.  We told her that he could walk all the way to the Yahara River and then off to the lake and back home and if he needed help of any kind all he needed to do was head to a lighted house.  She taught social studies to middle school students in Buffalo, New York for over two decades.  Middle School, insane, right?!  After assuring her of having earned her place in heaven, we asked what she noticed as the biggest problem in the classroom over the recent years.  We thought cell phones would be the thorn in the classroom, but she said since 2017 it was the boys who thought they could act in any way or talk in any way they desired.  Children may not sit down and watch the news, but they absorb so much from the daily conversations.  Teaching values in the classroom, she said, is futile when proven lies land daily and even serial adultery is applauded.  Hard to get kids to respect girls in the classroom when our leaders certainly don’t respect women in the public square either!

As autumn approached, we were invited to a spot which for years many people raved about for their Sunday Brunch fare.  It is rather close to where we live, but we had not been there except for an occasional dinner.  As the election approached a friend from Nashville invited us during a weekend he was in town.  It turned out the conversations were the best part of the experience.  The food was not terrible, but we had thought it would be exceptional considering the years of hype we had encountered.  James likened the atmosphere and noise level to a Grange Hall back in Maine when a ‘town meetin’’ was being held.  If you were to ask James, our in-house restaurant critic, “we’ve already suffered one upsetting let down with the way the country foolishly voted for hypothetical lower egg prices rather than casting a ballot for a black woman; we need not feel obligated to pay for disappointment at local eateries too!”

The following Sunday, though, we had a completely different experience. We had tickets for the American Players’ Theater in Spring Green.  Over the years we would park just about showtime.  Walking the winding and treelined path to the outdoor theater, we passed many picnic tables where people were finishing up their meals.  Often, we commented that is what we should do before a show.  So, on a somewhat chilly but sunny late afternoon we took a prepared picnic, found the perfect place under trees and sat for a simple meal of sandwiches and chips and chocolate.  The folks next to us were playing Scrabble and queried us about a word.  “As long it is not the deciding word that decides the winner of the game”, we joked.  James confirmed, in the absence of the Scrabble dictionary, that the word they were debating was genuine, and of French origin.  What a lovely way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

We hope that your coming year is filled with the simple joys and smiles that life holds.  As a nation, we need to stay united to principles and grounded in our national values and ideals—even if those appear to be harder to define these days than we had previously imagined.  Past generations fought so hard in multiple ways to help secure Democracy.  We must now be as committed to keeping it.

We send our best wishes whichever holiday you are celebrating this season from our home to yours.

James and Gregory