We started writing a Christmas Letter in 1977, following our move to California. We continued the tradition every year since. We found that getting the letter out before Christmas was simply too hard, so we changed it to an Annual Report, issued each January, several years ago. We have
many examples of these letters, but to answer the inevitable question, no, we don't have a complete collection. Several people have told us that they kept all the old copies, but we have never seen a complete collection.
We are trying to recover some older copies. We will be adding them to the list as we find them.
- Annual Report for 2015:If you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere.
- Annual Report for 2014:We're lost, but we're making good time.
- Annual Report for 2013:Our 36th Year
"Nature has been for me, for as long as I remember, a source of solace, inspiration, adventure, and delight; a home, a teacher, a companion."
— Lorraine Anderson
- Annual Report for 2012:Exploring the World
Biophelia:
To experience biophilia is to love a diversity that,
as limitless as it is fragile,
both haunts us and fills us with hope.
—Leith Gollner
The Fruit Hunters: A Story of Nature, Adventure, Commerce, and Obsession
- Annual Report for 2011: Heading West
Ah Love! could thou and I with Fate conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,
Would not we shatter it to bits-and then
Re-mould it nearer to the Heart's Desire!
—The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam,
No. 73, trans. Edward FitzGerald
See Note at the bottom of Jim and Linda's 2012 report.
- Annual Report for 2010: Exploring the World
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding
(No. 4 of 'Four Quartets')
- Annual Report for 2009: Are We There Yet?
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
—W.B. Yeats The Second Coming
- Annual Report for 2008: About the light at the end of the tunnel…
At some time in the life cycle of virtually every organization, its ability to succeed in spite of itself runs out.
— Richard Brien
- Annual Report for 2007: Seeing Light at the End of the Tunnel
Ah Love! could thou and I with Fate conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,
Would not we shatter it to bits-and then
Re-mould it nearer to the Heart's Desire!
—The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam,
No. 73, trans. Edward FitzGerald
- Annual Report for 2006: There may be a future after all
- Annual Report for 2005
Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage, blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks!
[William Shakespeare (1564–1616), in King Lear, act 3, sc. 2, l. 1-3]
- Annual Report for 2004:
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last
Slouches off to Bethlehem to be born? [W.B. Yeats, The Second Coming.]
- Annual Report for 2003, the Best of Times, the Worst of Times.
- Annual Report for 2002, Our 25th Year!
- Annual Report for 2001, the year of Before and After
- Annual Report for 2000, another final year of the 20th century.
- Annual Report for 1999, the last year of the 20th century .
- Annual Report for 1998.
- Annual Report for 1997.
- Annual Report for 1996.
- Annual Report for 1995.
- Annual Report for 1994.
- Annual Report for 1993.
- Annual Report for 1992. (Recently rediscovered on the disk in the wrong directory.)
- Annual Report for 1991.
- Annual Report for 1990.
- Annual Report for 1989 (Transcribed from a dead tree version. This is the one with Don't Stop! by Fleetwood Mac.)
- Annual Report for 1988.
- Annual Report for 1987. This claims to be the tenth year for the reports.
And a couple of real oldies, just to show how far we've come. These have been tidied up a bit. Apparently, spelling checkers weren't standard equipment back then, and everything came out looking like a typewriter.
