{"id":55,"date":"2006-01-05T09:35:54","date_gmt":"2006-01-05T13:35:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.silkentent.com\/History\/2005\/01\/05\/the-holiday-letter\/"},"modified":"2009-12-19T23:53:34","modified_gmt":"2009-12-20T03:53:34","slug":"the-holiday-letter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.silkentent.com\/History\/?p=55","title":{"rendered":"The Holiday Letter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" align=\"left\" src=\"http:\/\/www.silkentent.com\/Images\/Holi05.gif\" alt=\"Holidailies 2005\" title=\"Holidailies 2005\" \/>January 5, 2006<br \/>\nThursday<\/p>\n<p>Tomorrow is the last day of Holidailies. I missed six dates and won&#8217;t be able to post material to each date in time for the final official tally. Once again, I enjoyed the whole enterprise. I started writing again, I got interested in some new journals, and I even once again saw a piece recognized as a &#8220;Best of&#8221; entry. Once again, thanks to Jette and to the panel of readers. If you&#8217;re reading this because you&#8217;re a regular, thanks for sticking with me. If you&#8217;re reading this only because you read at Holidailies time, thank you as well, and see you next year.<\/p>\n<p>I finally wrote my holiday letter today. I&#8217;ve always made mine an end-of-year thing, usually dating it on the Feast of Stephen (December 26, my father&#8217;s birthday) and getting it out before year&#8217;s end with the thank-yous to those who brought gifts to the party hand-written in the margin. This year I just couldn&#8217;t get to it before today. One thing that held me back was knowing that when I printed the address labels I would have to cut five records from my database because the people died since last year. Only one record was that of an elderly couple, friends of my parents. Three were high school classmates. One person was younger than I am.<\/p>\n<p>I have always posted the contents of my letter online. It repeats some material given over my Holidailies series. To those of you already on my postal mailing list, or those of you who hate the genre, click away now. And thanks for reading!<\/p>\n<blockquote dir=\"ltr\"><p><em>There is less sunlight than<br \/>\nshade today; . . .<br \/>\n. . . the light<br \/>\nshining at the edges of the clouds<\/em><br \/>\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Prentiss Moore, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153November 7\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Dear Friends,<\/p>\n<p>Usually I date my \u00e2\u20ac\u0153end-of-year\u00e2\u20ac\u009d letter on December 26, the Feast of Stephen. On that day I did look out to see that not snow but fog lay round about, deep and even, if not crisp. The air wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t cold enough for that. The fog has returned intermittently since then, giving central Pennsylvania more the look and feel of November than of January, so I thought that the lines from Prentiss Moore seemed suitable.<\/p>\n<p>It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s taken me ten days beyond my usual letter-writing day to begin this. The \u00e2\u20ac\u0153holiday letter\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is a genre I particularly enjoy. Indeed, if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve known me very long, this might be the tenth or eleventh one you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve received. I think I was a bit reluctant to begin because it seems this season I heard more negative chat about such letters from more people than usual, some of them people who actually receive mine! \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I never read them, I just throw them away\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said one person. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Those things are just bragging,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said another. I think I bragged only once, when I reported that, when asked why she chose Millersville University, Lynn answered, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153My mother went there, and if it was good enough for the best mother in the whole world, then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s good enough for me.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Oh my, I did it again!<\/p>\n<p>So, for those of you with impatience toward this genre (who haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t actually thrown this in the fire yet), I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll give the PowerPoint version:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>All of us are well.<\/li>\n<li>Lynn&#8217;s still in school and doing well.<\/li>\n<li>Ron still enoys model airplanes and computer train simulations and (brag alert) his new flat screen HDTV.<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;m still writing.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The lowlight was the death of Ron\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mother, Eva DeAngelis, in August. She turned 90 in April, and had been experiencing a slow buy steady decline for several years. She never complained, through all the losses she suffered of friends, of loved ones, of the familiar things and activities she had always taken joy in.\u00c2\u00a0 In the weeks before she died she would say to visitors, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m glad you came by. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m going home soon.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d We took that as a sign of an increasing loss of orientation in time and space. On Thursday, August 18, she said to one of her dearest friends, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m glad you came by. You know, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m going home tomorrow.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d And on Friday, August 19, she did. You can read the words I said for her (and see her engagement picture) at \u00e2\u20ac\u0153A Woman of Courage, A Woman of Peace.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d We miss her every single day. The highlight, at least for me, was my trip to Wyoming. Yes, I went alone. Ron dislikes (not a strong enough word) travel, and would not be interested in visiting Wyoming even if it were at the west end of the Wade Bridge. (Well, maybe if it were at the west end of the bridge and Lynn were playing hockey there . . . )Why did I go? Because it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s there. Because ever since I read My Friend Flicka when I was ten I wanted to visit that land where everyone owns a horse, you ride him to school and hitch him up outside the classroom, and at the end of the day take him into the hills in search of adventure. And because planning and executing a solo trip to a faraway place (albeit not an exotic one \u00e2\u20ac\u201c after all, I speak the language and I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t need a passport) roused me out of the funk I fell into in February. I spent two weeks touring the Wind River Range in western Wyoming, after an initial stop in Buford (in eastern Wyoming near Cheyenne) to stand on the land where Mary O\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Hara lived when she wrote the Flicka books. You can read my travelogue by going to <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.silkentent.com\/History\" title=\"The Silken Tent \u00e2\u20ac\u201c 1999-2005\">The Silken Tent 1999\u00e2\u20ac\u201c2005<\/a> and clicking on the link for pieces\u00c2\u00a0in the category\u00c2\u00a0&#8220;Wyoming.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>So, have I mentioned all the news? We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re healthy, we miss Ron\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mother, Lynn is in her second year as a biology student at Millersville (well, as I write she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in Utah, visiting McKenna, still her best friend though wheat fields and clothes lines and highways come between them), I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m still writing (visit my sites!!). And I think of you, reading this, whoever you are and however you got onto this list. May 2006 be a year of joy for you.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin: 2px;\" title=\"Holidailies 2005\" src=\"http:\/\/www.silkentent.com\/Images\/Holi05.gif\" alt=\"Holidailies 2005\" align=\"left\" \/>January 5, 2006<br \/>\nThursday<!-- Start of StatCounter Code --><br \/>\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\"><!--\nvar sc_project=3916081;\nvar sc_invisible=1;\nvar sc_partition=47;\nvar sc_click_stat=1;\nvar sc_security=\"41f88bb5\";\n\/\/ --><\/script><br \/>\n<script src=\"http:\/\/www.statcounter.com\/counter\/counter.js\" type=\"text\/javascript\"><\/script><noscript><\/noscript><\/p>\n<p><!-- End of StatCounter Code --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>January 5, 2006 Thursday Tomorrow is the last day of Holidailies. I missed six dates and won&#8217;t be able to post material to each date in time for the final official tally. Once again, I enjoyed the whole enterprise. I started writing again, I got interested in some new journals, and I even once again <a href=\"http:\/\/www.silkentent.com\/History\/?p=55\">Continue reading &#8594;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-holidailies-2005","category-suburban-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.silkentent.com\/History\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.silkentent.com\/History\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.silkentent.com\/History\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.silkentent.com\/History\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.silkentent.com\/History\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.silkentent.com\/History\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":221,"href":"http:\/\/www.silkentent.com\/History\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55\/revisions\/221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.silkentent.com\/History\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.silkentent.com\/History\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.silkentent.com\/History\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}