We hope you all are well and thanks everyone who sent photos and Christmas letters.
It’s been another interesting year. Headlining our news: Larry’s chapbook Health Insurance and Other Matters of Death came out from Foothills Publishing in October. Book signings and readings keep him busy. Highlights include reading at the Riverside Art Museum in Southern California in July and as part of Montana Poet Laureate Sandra Alcosser’s poetry reading at the State Capitol rotunda on January 4. He continues his schedule of writing a poem a week and sometimes writes me love poems. (Swoon.) We went to his 20th high school reunion in Superior this summer.
Olivia picked up violin lessons and will play at a recital on January 21. We’re not sure violin holds her heart, but she enjoys the lessons. After the recital, we’ll see if her interest piques or flags. She takes dance lessons as well and performed in four shows this holiday season. Her reading is pretty good and her math skills are quite advanced for a kid her age. Our "little angel" shows great interest in and aptitude for the sciences.
Paul loves people, climbing and wrestling – not necessarily in that order – just like his dad. Being two-going-on-three, he will inflict injury one minute and then show real compassion for the injured the next. He enjoys anything having to do with locomotion, from his train set to riding his new trike. He speaks very well and has a great vocabulary. The picture is from the church Christmas pageant. (What is Paul? A shepherd. And yes, we darkened the doors of a religious institution. . . a good one.)
I graduated with an MFA from Vermont College this July. I’m so grateful for the experience, my instructors, the friends I made and everything I’ve learned. A very brief report on publications; I’ve had a story in edifice WRECKED and have another forthcoming in MO: Writings from the River. My novel Home Star is complete and looking for a home. I taught several writing classes again this year, wrote life story books for two wise and wonderful senior women, freelanced for the local paper, worked on a new novel Coyote Stories (an excerpt of which earned high praise from Wally Lamb at our one-on-one meeting at the VC Residency in July) and started a reading series to give local writers a welcoming audience for their work and strengthen our community.
Those are the highlights. The lowlights only serve as hooks for gratitude to grab onto the good. Thanks to everyone for all your love and support this year. We engage ourselves in the usual – pursuit of happiness, making enough to live on and be of service to others. There ain't no big deals going on and we like it that way.
Happy New Year
Olivia, Paul, Anne and Larry
