Still Life with Desktop

Handmade clay pot, pewter bowl with keys, four mugs full of pens and pencils, wooden box of binder clips, headphones; wooden box with stones, birch bark, turtle shell; lamp, antique desktop with slots containing Chinese chop, Chinese balls, notecards, envelopes, address stickers, stamps, old address books, bank transaction registers, recent receipts, 2012 Day Runner planner; electric pencil sharpener, mug full of scissors, wire rack of bills, line gauges, iPod nano (unused), Trepanning cassette (unheard), Church of the Master illustrated pamphlet, oil can; stack of magazines, file folders of correspondence (unfiled), half-filled writing pads, class rosters; stack of books: Gaddy and Hart, Real Estate Fundamentals; Remnick, ed., The New Gilded Age; Rheingold, They Have a Word for It; Dennis and Pinkowish, Residential Mortgage Lending; Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow; Bloom, Bloom's Bouquet of Imaginary Words; Minardi, Short Bike Rides, Ohio; Rosenthal, The Surreal Calder; 2013 Staples planner, wicker basket with wallet, post-it notes.

Happy Holidays, Family & Friends

It's beginning to look a lot like Solstice – darker every day – as we approach the turn of the Mayan calendar and an unpredictable fiscal slope. We hope our annual bit of creative nonfiction finds you in good spirits and good health. We would love to hear your own Revised Standard Version of life in your part of the world.

The Year of the Dragon brought change, and we are all seeking balance. Jessi joined the hurricane recovery effort Respond and Rebuild, organized by his friend Gabriel. With tools donated by Occupy Sandy, crews of volunteers remove toxic debris from flooded houses in Rockaway, Queens. Jessi’s regular job is art handling – packing, moving, and hanging art for galleries and collectors. On a rainy week in May, he joined a posse of friends on a bike trip to Acadia National Park in Maine. He went to Guatemala in July, taking Spanish classes, trekking up volcanoes, and exploring Mayan ruins. 

Gven teaches 14 yoga classes a week and took up boxing at a gym in Westerville – peace, love, pugilism. She spends countless hours working with fabric in her little studio and took part in two workshops with the Art Quilt Network,  delving deeper into hand-dying and hand stitching. In August, Gven and Zelda joined Annette and Sharon and their families in Georgia to celebrate her mother’s 80th birthday.

Ignoring Thoreau’s advice to beware of all enterprises requiring new clothes, Sven started a new job as a policy editor in risk management at JPMorgan Chase. He works with a world-class team of writers, mortgage gurus, and IT wizards to make the world safe for borrowers (and bankers). In September, he and Gven joined Anna Banana, Jeanie Beanie, Jo Jo, and The Rock (and spouses) in Tennessee to celebrate his mother’s 91st birthday.  

Zelda started coursework toward her MLIS in January, balancing part-time classes with full-time work. After six years at Half Price Books, she decided to turn the page and focus on school. Zelda and her new housemate Alicia moved into a duplex in a nice old Columbus neighborhood. In July, she took a road trip to North Carolina to visit college friends and took her dad kayaking on Big Darby Creek for Father’s Day.

The garden had mixed reactions to a year of extreme weather. What we missed in strawberries we got back tenfold in peaches. Storms brought down some big trees, so we have firewood for winter, and we planted a bunch of seedlings to fill in. A black cat named Lamar joined the family right after New Year’s, and after some mild sparring with Ruby, he has made himself right at home. 

 

From our home to yours, have a happy holiday!

Peace on Earth,

Sven and Gven

Photos (top to bottom, left to right):

Natural forces at work, Pulhapanzak, Honduras; Jessi and friend with pyramid, Guatemala; Risk management, Lake Atitlan, Guatemala; Zelda in repose; Zelda, Viking librarian; Iris, salvia, more salvia; Peaches in Ohio!