Christmas 1999:
The annual report from Gideon Lawton Lane

Annual Christmas letters get a mixed reception: tossed unread, browsed lightly, responded to. In the aggregate, though, they have some historical value, some bits of information about who’s doing what. So here’s the archive.

December 1999

Greetings from our household to yours in this festive Time of the Naked Lemons.*

The holidays find us — Dan and Alli, particularly — with Fascinating New Ventures lined up for the New Year. In Dan's case, the FNV will involve a college or university to be named later and the prospect of heading out on his own. We’re finding the process of college hunting full of excitement (mostly parents) and angst (mostly Dan). The traveling has been the best part.

In Alli’s case, the FNV will come in the form of a fellowship from the Rhode Island Foundation. The Foundation offers a new fellowship program to enhance the effectiveness of nonprofit organizations by investing in their leaders. As president of the Providence Singers, Alli will get to spend a year learning how other fine community choruses have made the financial and organizational leap from amateur to something approaching the professional level — a leap the Singers are almost ready to make. She’ll visit lots of successful choruses and interview their leadership. The Foundation politely suggested that she add some European cities to her original list, so she will be heading for Canterbury and Salzburg among others. (Alli also completed a four-year course in financial planning this fall; this could lead to a new career in the management of nonprofit arts organizations.)

Look out world: Susan is learning to drive. She is halfway through a five-session high-intensity course with guest lecturers from the Providence Police Department. They are a crusty old bunch, Susan reports, who are determined to instill some street smarts (that's pronounced “smots” around here). The law has changed since Dan got his license, so Susan and her classmates will start with a variety of limitations and work their way stepwise toward full licensure. Susan dreams of a new VW beetle but is enough of a realist to know that the best she can expect is to inherit the ancient Camry when Dan goes off to college. Next year Susan gets to experience the excitement and angst of her own post-secondary choice.

Anson is in seventh grade, filling his life with hockey and tennis and all sorts of new academic and social possibilities. His Pennfield class is into AOL Instant Messaging and the requisite online argot (“sup?”). Whole clumps of them get together online ... for homework collaboration, of course. They are all enrolled in the Providence Journal’s stock market simulation game. How nice that AOL IM has a stock ticker scrolling across the screen.

Mark continues at the endlessly interesting Brown University News Service. When the weather warms, he'll be outside turning over the endlessly expanding garden (from which we are still harvesting excellent carrots). He learned last summer that there are limits to how much ground one person can have under cultivation (eight wheelbarrows of weeds!), but the operation continues to grow. Power equipment — at least a rototiller — seems to be the only option.

The millennial New Year’s Eve will find us at First Night in downtown Providence, although Mark will be packing the News Service cell phone in case Y2K really does cause some problems and reporters must be spoken with. ("From the smoldering ruins of Brown University, this is Mark Nickel for CNN Headline News.") Hope your new year is filled with good health, great fortune and endless fascination.

Mark and Alli

* That, for the uninitiated, is a reference to Stollen, our family’s favorite Christmas bread. Each loaf requires one whole lemon — peel only. We’re on our seventh loaf, so the naked lemons are piling up in the fridge.