Personally, 2009 has mostly been a great year. It started out sadly with my mother’s death on January 4th. She had been declining for months but the loss still hit me hard. We had a Memorial Service at Shepherd of the Hills Presbyterian Church in late January. My sister, Leslie, from Seattle and our two foster children, Rosalind Smucker and Stanley (Bubba) Holder, our daughter, Claire, and son, Charles were among those from out of town attending the service.
I worked 2 days/week for several months; then dropped back to one day/week doing house calls for elderly, chronically ill patients; and will no longer working at all for Adult Care of Austin after 12/16/09. Jim is a little sorry to be losing his one day a week “off” from my helpful suggestions and requests for computer assistance as I retire completely!
I’m leaving the office after 15 years, with mixed feelings. I will miss my coworkers and my patients. The Internal Medicine practice has been a good place to work and has afforded me lots of flexibility in setting my schedule and hours. I’ve also had many opportunities for collaboration with the three fine doctors, another nurse practitioner and a physician’s assistant, and have continued to be challenged by complex medical problems and new options for treatment.
Somehow my extra time this year has been filled with activity and travel and getting a start on organizing some of the extra “stuff” which has accumulated during my 65 years! (A start, only.) Jim is a little sorry to be losing his one day “off” from my helpful suggestions and requests for computer assistance as I eliminate
Travels:
In early February, my sister, Leslie, and I flew to North Carolina for a 90th Birthday Celebration for my Uncle Henry, my father’s only remaining sibling. Our charming hosts were Allan and Trish Moorman and we had a good chance to catch up with some rarely seen Moorman relatives. My cousin, Leslie Fuller, and I took a few extra days to drive to and explore North Carolina’s coast which was fun.
Back in Austin, on the Spring Equinos, Jim and I traveled down the road with friends to Wimberly, Texas, for the joyous wedding of our good friends’ daughter, Sarah Arnett, to her sweetheart, Adrian.
We had an enjoyable trip to El Cerrito, California, for our granddaughter, Kiera’s first birthday, March 27. She, of course, is perfect and one of her favorite activities is to be read to. Unfortunately she had a cold and fever, a recurring problem which has improved since she had tubes put in her ears. Her brother, Kai is always fun to be around, also. We read The City Mouse and the Country Mouse over and over, always looking for the tiny, hidden peas in each picture. Visits to San Francisco for a dim sum brunch and a visit to the Golden Gate Observatory for a model train exhibit were highlights. Kai’s infatuation with trains has since switched to Bob the Builder. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
We had a fine weekend birding in April on the Texas Coast near Aransas and Rockport with our good friends and great birders, Lorna and Dodge Englemann. We got some good, close up pictures at the Aransas Birding Center (AKA sewage treatment facility!)
In May, we cancelled our planned trip to Western Mexico, which was to start in Mexico City, due to the Swine Flu epidemic which had just erupted, and which caused the U.S. State Department to warn against any non-emergency travel to Mexico at that time. Instead, Jim and I took a long distance road trip back to California for Kai’s third birthday. We birded in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California both going and coming, of course, and learned that road trips can actually be fun. Listening to audio books helped.
Then back to California at the end of June to watch the 2 grandkids while Charles and Amy celebrated Charles’ 40th Birthday with a scuba diving trip to Belize. Amy’s mom, Marilyn, (my comadre) was a great help and the kids adapted well to us and to the absence of their devoted parents. A trip to the newly opened California Science Academy and El Cerrito’s 4th of July celebration were some of the highlights. We also spent time at the Asian Art Museum, one of our all time favorite museums and a highly recommended site to see in San Francisco. We were delighted to meet Vivien Ricci, the mother of Claire’s beau, Ron Ricci, who was visiting from Philadelphia.
In May we went to Williamsburg, Virginia for the annual Baker College (Rice U.) Reunion where most of our friends golfed while Jim and I toured the restored town, did a little birding, and then ate dinner with cousins Billy and Jill Sholl in Virginia Beach on our way back home.
In July Jim and I had a dream trip to Uganda, a poor but beautiful country. We were very lucky to have Livingston as our guide; he knew every bird by call and sight, as well as all the other animals and most of the plants. Seeing gorillas in the wild from 10 feet away was fabulous, but perhaps the most beautiful mammal was a full grown leopard!
Charles, Amy, Kai and Kiera came to Austin in August so Charles could attend an archivist convention. Despite the brutally hot, dry weather, we had a good time, catching turtles, hanging out in swimming pools, watching the bats come out at dusk from under the Congress Ave Bridge, and just generally delighting in watching our beautiful grandchildren explore their environment. Kai came to know cicadas well, for instance.
Speaking of bats, Jim and I were part of a Travis Audubon/ Bat Conservation International tour of Bracken Cave, between Austin and San Antonio in August. The cave is home to the largest concentration of mammals on the planet! It contains millions of bats who emerge at sunset and sometimes fly hundreds of miles to gobble up all sorts of pesky insects. They had to fly farther than usual this summer since we had an exceptional drought.
In late August we journeyed to Minneapolis to scatter my mother’s ashes in Lake Nokomis, as she requested, and to see some old friends and relatives. My sisters, Leslie and Mary, and nephew Noah, drove from Seattle. My cousin, Leslie Fuller drove from Massachusetts. Charles and Claire flew from California, and Mila Liden, cousin John’s wife, flew all the way from St. Thomas, Virgin Islands. Muriel Opsahl, Mama’s sister in law, her husband, Bob, and son, Craig, came from Florida and California also. We hadn’t seen them in years and were so glad they came. We had good visits with cousins Nancy, Richard, and Paul Wennerstrom. (Paul hosted a small Memorial gathering at his house.) The weather and city were beautiful; a green and cool respite from Austin’s heat. A day at the Minnesota State Fair was great fun. Jim and I were delighted to see two wild minks in Minnehaha Creek, about a block from where Mama grew up and where Linda lived the first 6 years of her life!
We have had several trips to Houston to visit family, always staying with Jim’s mom, Marion. We attended spectacular Houston Ballet performances. We were pleased to meet “Z”, Elisabeth Nesbitt, a brilliant student at Rice, (she designed her own Global Health major) who we sponsored on a trip to Malawi this summer. She provided a Lab in a backpack (which is being developed in the Rice Design Kitchen, Z is part of the Beyond Traditional Borders program at Rice U. We really support Rice’s expansion of interest in the whole world! We also saw the Solar Capteur which uses sunlight to cook food, and which will be installed in Haiti, where cooking with firewood is harder and harder to do, given the deforestation which is occurring. Rice is hoping to design technology which is sustainable and ultimately able to be manufactured in the country where it is used.
The Texas Book Festival, my favorite large annual, public event in Austin was held the weekend of Halloween and was super, as usual. Our good friends, Terry and Jenny Cloudman visited from Colorado and we watched taped interviews of Gail Collins and Madelaine Albright. We had a fun dinner with friends after a full day of book discussions at the State Capitol.
Claire, newly engaged!!, and her fiancé, Ron Ricci, plus Charles, Amy, Kai and Kiera all came back to Austin to celebrate Jim’s 65th birthday and Thanksgiving (crab cakes were served in deference to the piscaterians in the family.) Fortunately for us, but unfortunately for Kai’s turtle catching ambitions, we have finally had rain and Barton Creek is lovely again, but the water was too high to allow us to net the little critters. We have had a more colorful Fall than usual and continue to revel in the beautiful setting in which our house is located.
Ron and Claire traveled down to Houston, where Marion, Jim’s mom, hosted a very nice dinner so they could see all the Houston family at once and share the news of their upcoming marriage. Then Marion was driven by her friend, Dr. Arlys Bing, to Austin to share Thanksgiving dinner with us and to see Charles and his family. The weather was lovely and we had a great visit.
Now our sights are set on the Mad Island and Austin Christmas Bird Counts before flying to California for a jam packed week of Christmas activities. We will celebrate New Year’s Eve cooking, sharing pictures, and trying to stay awake until midnight, with our good friends, Sharon and Brian Moore.
Compared to our good fortune, we despair over some of the issues facing the nation. We are fiercely opposed to our involvement in the continuing quagmire in Iraq and Afghanistan; we are not surprised but are appalled that the banks are prospering while foreclosures and unemployment remain huge problems. We are so sorry that a single payer health insurance plan such as Medicare for All appears to be doomed while the U.S. remains the only first world country to not provide health care coverage to all its citizens. Apparently the big insurance companies and Big Pharma have bought enough members of Congress to prevent meaningful reform of a seriously expensive, unfair, nonsystem of health care insurance which leaves 47 million Americans uninsured.
We value your friendship and hope that 2010 will be a good year for you. You can email us using this form?
Sincerely, Linda Hargrove