Happy Holidays, Family & Friends

It seems that change is everywhere, rocking, if not raising, all boats in wave after wave of events local and global, economic and political, corporate and personal. Whether the tide is rising or falling, turbulent or calm, whether revolutions spiral upward or downward, we send our best wishes for a bright, buoyant holiday season.

This time last year, Gven and Sven went to New York with Jessi, missing a record-setting blizzard by a day. We roamed the Brooklyn Museum, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and some neat shops in Soho, then celebrated our thirty-second anniversary at the coolest little trattoria in the West Village.

In May, the Golly clan gathered in Milwaukee for the wedding of Sven’s nephew (Jeanie Beanie Golly-Gee’s son) Max. The ceremony in an old Presbyterian church included a ritual handfasting with the family tartan, and the reception on the lakefront was memorable.

In June, we all converged at a beautiful winery in Rochester, Michigan, to celebrate the marriage of another nephew (Anna Banana Golly-Gosh’s son) Todd following Todd and Liz’s wedding in Dubuque, Iowa. Gven and Sven then leapfrogged further north for a couple days of camping, horseback riding, and kayaking.

In July, Gven took her sister Annette Funicello Horton and their mother Layla Alexander, who called herself Lill but everyone knew her as Nancy, to the Quilt National exhibit at the Dairy Barn in Athens and the State Fair in Columbus. In August, we went with Nancy to her sixtieth high school reunion in Hillsville, Virginia, and the Alexander family reunion at an idyllic riverside spot outside Sylvatus, Virginia.

Sven’s parents overcame a couple of close calls and continue to amaze us with their hardiness and resilience. Mom didn’t let a little pneumonia and a fractured hip stop her from celebrating her ninetieth birthday in September, with Anna Banana, Jeanie Beanie, Jojo, Sven, Petro, and their spouses in attendance. She has been a real trouper in regaining her mobility by diligent physical therapy, strength of will, and Dad’s patient support. He has decided his driving days are over, but he and Mom are still very independent, maintaining their cozy house and wonderful garden on the scenic Cumberland Plateau.

Zelda decided that it’s time for more formal education, so in January she is starting the Master of Library and Information Science program at Kent State. She will keep her assistant manager’s job at Half Price Books and commute to classes at the State Library of Ohio near downtown Columbus. She and her friend David have a new apartment in North Campus/South Clintonville, strategically located between work and school. Zelda spent Halloween in Chicago exploring new and old haunts with her Kent roommate Megan.

Jessi has worked on art handling projects with a moving company that specializes in fine art, as well as renovating apartments in Brooklyn and Manhattan. His baseball team played a home-and-away series with a team from Pittsburgh, complete with live bands, cookout, and friendly competition. In August, he took a week-long bicycle trip along the Maine coast with three friends in the wake of Hurricane Irene. This fall, he shouldered added responsibility as head honcho of the screening shed during the cranberry harvest in Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts.

Sven’s Mom, Dad, and sister Jojo made the trek north to Central Swing State for our traditional Thanksgiving feast, featuring world-class pies by Gven and Zelda. Jessi and his friend Flora joined us straight from the cranberry farm.

Gven keeps finding creative ways to bring a serious, respectful, personal yoga practice to a broad demographic cross-section of Central Ohioans, with the Yoga Factory in Methodistville as her home base. As soon as our new furnace is installed in the nick of time just before Christmas, she will be back in her studio applying chaos theory to the construction of architecture-themed art quilts.

On weekends, Sven can usually be found in the garden outside Om Shanty, weeding, pruning, planting, watering, or splitting and stacking firewood, his favorite form of fiber art. So far, he has kept his day job at the Hill, the newly independent, downsized, digitized, not-your-grandfather’s-textbook company.

We lost a dear friend in October. Our brother-in-law Bart Badly – Jojo’s husband – died after a battle with cancer. We will miss his wit and passion for life.

Jessi and Zelda are home for the holidays; the tree is up; a fire is in the hearth; lutefisk, potatoes, and peas are on the table. I guess some things don’t change so much. Have an energetic, dynamic Year of the Dragon.