Christmas 2013:
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.

Dear Friends,

The 2013 edition of Messiah is safely part of the historical record — a full house at The Vets, with generous, unanticipated applause after each movement — and the prospect of a full week off the grid gets more inviting by the day. Our preparations are well beyond the part about “tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.” We’ve ripped out whole windows, storms, and sills and replaced them with new thermal pane versions. Sure, there are scars on the interior walls, but we are warm, dry, and ready for whatever snow might happen by.

We haven’t quite topped the one year in which we had kids on three different continents at the same time, but the flow of information this year has been exotic in its own right — e-mailed greetings from the Indian subcontinent, regular dispatches from Madrid, observations of nighttime sea turtle hatchings from a beach down south. Our own non-business travels didn’t take us much beyond Acadia National Park in Maine and a weekend in Vermont, but those were thoroughly enjoyable trips.

News from Madrid is upbeat and arrives here on the Lane via various channels — Skype, mostly, but sometimes from unexpected quarters. A “New places to go in Madrid” article in the Spanish edition of Vogue included comments from the American restaurateur Dan Crawley, who had just opened his second Tierra restaurant. We ran it through the translation app on our Macs and were pleased to note Dan’s new title: Dan Crawley, Earth Creator.*

In May, we were in Washington for Susan and George’s wedding. It was a wonderful, joyous outdoor affair. There were strong winds and steady rain all day and well into the evening — except for a two-hour window of blue sky and sunshine that began half an hour before the wedding and reception. Ushers toweled off the folding chairs, Nina the enterprising flower girl began handing out flowers, and away we went. By the time the weather window closed and the rains returned, everyone was under the tent for dinner. Susan and George have settled into their new apartment and their work: Susan as an art teacher and art-across-the-curriculum advocate in Washington public schools, and George in digital communications and journalism for a national youth services organization.

In October we got the wonderful news from Brooklyn that Anson and Reva are engaged. We couldn’t be more thrilled with the news. They are a happy blur of activity, with the end of current graduate studies in sight (Reva finishes this spring at NYU; Anson finishes the second of three years at the Pratt Institute). Their travel agenda is enviable: Oregon, India, Peru, Portsmouth, and points in between.

The Providence Singers is still front and center — and full-time for Alli. Our artistic directors keep getting hired out from under us to lead choral programs at distinguished universities. We take this as a compliment to our knack for identifying excellent artistic leadership, but frequent transitions can be difficult for the group and its executive director. We have landed right-side up once again with magnificent new artistic leadership and are well into our 42nd season, which includes the world premiere of a work commissioned by the Singers.

Mark continues at Brown University, where 2014 will bring a convergence of historical trends: The 250th anniversary (semiquincentenary) of Brown’s founding; Alli’s 40th reunion; Anson’s fifth reunion; the 50th anniversary of Brown women’s ice hockey; and probably a few other notable milestones still to be discovered.

The garden, yes. This year’s discovery was enormous sunflowers, giant 12-footers that touched the second floor of the house. We marked their progress at suppertime against rows of cedar shingles — three, now four, now five — and wondered what manner of monsters these things could be. They cleared the tops of the first-floor windows in August, then began bending back toward Earth, weighted by enormous seed heads. Those seeds, harvested and cleaned, now add a decorative touch to the kitchen – too handsome to salt, roast, and eat.

The atavistic, back-to-the-roots gardening also continued, with Mark turning a crop of cabbage into gallons of authentic sauerkraut made in an authentic stone crock according to his great-grandmother’s authentic recipe — all of it from a garden plot that includes a shovelful of authentic dirt taken from the original immigrant farm in Kendallville, Indiana. Yes, that’s a lot of authenticity. Making sauerkraut turns out to be a simple, almost fool-proof way to connect with the heritage, and the product is pure, probiotic, crunchy, cheap, and very tasty. Information — it’s not so much a recipe as a technique — is available on request.

This year we introduced LEDs to our outdoor holiday lighting. It was largely an ecological decision to stop throwing out strings of cheap dead lights every year. We started small with the driveway dogwoods – white mini-lights on the downhill side and larger bulbs uphill. The timer turned them on while we were out running errands, so the full effect was waiting for us on our return. It was harsh and blue, with all the charm of a Walmart parking lot.

Who knew that the whole package — childhood memories, notions of holiday spirit, a warm and welcoming home, enjoying friends, having cocoa with Stollen and Lebkuchen, even the sound of Christmas music — could have such a fundamental connection to incandescent lighting?

But time does march, and even holiday traditions need to incorporate strange new technologies. Our solution? We turned around and headed back to Home Depot. They make mini-LEDs in colors too, so we added several colorful strings and were surprised at the difference. We’re both Midwesterners at heart, so our memories of holidays in Chicago and St. Paul are heavily sprinkled with colored Christmas lights. We’re home again, more or less, with familiar colors, the prospect of holiday guests, and the time to enjoy it all. We’re hoping the trend lines are moving that way for you as well.

Love and best wishes for the New Year,

allison-mcmillan@cox.net
mark-nickel@cox.net

* Tierra being Spanish for Earth. Our translator app also said that Dan’s restaurant serves Young Donkeys. We assume that’s “burritos” ...