Christmas 2006:
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.

Christmas Eve Day

Dear Friends,

It’s not quite Christmas, but our garden is already serving up the first harvest of spring. The sorrel patch, confused by this wet, almost tropical December, is sending up fresh shoots, which we have harvested and turned into soup. Parts of the oregano patch that had been protected by the dried asparagus are still fresh and useful. It’s wonderful to have all this; we’re happy to feel some global warmth, although Alli is impatient for snow.

Christmas will be a bit different this year here on the Lane. With Dan in Madrid for a year, we’re down to four of us at the homestead. Dan and another Middlebury College graduate student have installed themselves in a sixth-floor apartment on the Paseo, just across the street from the Prado. It sounds like a perfectly grand setup — convenient to everywhere, within walking distance of almost everything, and well plugged-in to the punta-com universe (including international telephone service through Skype). We hope to see for ourselves, although we will have to hurry. Dan will finish his master’s degree in Madrid in May.

Anson is due to make that trip a few days into the new year. He and a couple friends from Brown will fly to Spain, spend a couple days with Dan getting their bearings and exploring Madrid, and then take off to experience Barcelona, Seville and other points on the Iberian Peninsula. Anson is halfway through his sophomore year at Brown and very much loving it. Economics and public policy have caught his attention, but so have a number of other areas. He doesn’t have to declare a major until the end of his sophomore year. He’s continuing with WBRU — the Rock of Southern New England — including some on-air deejay time. New deejay hopefuls get the third shift; his parents caught the last hour of his show over breakfast.

Susan is back in Boston and has finished her first semester of graduate study in interior design at Suffolk University. This has distinct advantages — like new color schemes for our front hall, stairway and upstairs hall, hardwood floors in a couple areas upstairs, and a few other improvements. The painters, electricians and floor guys here in Portsmouth now know to deal directly with her. Better yet, Susan works part-time at the Starbucks in Waban, where Red Sox players occasionally stroll in. She is entitled to a free pound of coffee a week and very generously keeps the parents in Verona, expresso, French roast and other varieties.

This was a significant year in Alli’s work with the Providence Singers. It would be hard to understate the transformation of the group. The usual metrics — size of audience, staff and budget — are pointing upward, and steeply. But it’s the musical quality of our performances that is most noticeable and most satisfying. In March, the Singers will host a regional choral festival with two major concerts, three world premières, and several other events — all part of the National Endowment for the Arts “American Masterpieces” program. Check it out at www.providencesingers.org.

Mark passed a 25-year milestone as a Brown employee this year, which has brought him a handsome wooden armchair with brass nameplate and a one-time addition of 10 vacations days. The latter has us thinking of faraway places and new experiences. Our trip to Alaska in July — imagine eleven adult humpback whales rocketing straight up out of the water in perfect unison and you on a small boat a few hundred yards away — juiced up our Wanderlust. Exactly where that will take us isn’t clear yet, but we are resolved to begin work on a plan real soon now.

Meantime, we hope to spend at least one day away from the insistent e-media sludge that passes itself off as so essential. We'll leave the computers unbooted, power down the cell phones, unplug the fax, unhook the cable, set aside the earbuds and iPods and probably leave the house for long walks along Second Beach, an hour’s hike on Sachuest Point, or maybe the whole Cliff Walk down in Newport, now newly restored. Some reading, some pen-and-paper writing. We hope you’ll be able to spend some time off the grid as well, doing the things that make you happy, undertaking activities that relax and restore you, and paying full attention to what really matters.

With love,

Mark and Alli