All
best wishes for a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
This was a year of change and of
unexpected happenings. Early in the year Bruce’s Dad Jim (Milf to
the family) died at age 92. While his health had been slowly
failing for quite some time, he was still very alert and “with it”
right up to the last week or so. We buried his ashes next to
those of Bruce’s mother on a sunny day in May with most of the current
generations of the family there with us. This was especially
poignant to all of us, as he was the last of the large set of aunts and
uncles that Bruce and his many McClung clan cousins grew up with.
The occasion brought forth a number of reminiscences of the extended
family’s Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve gatherings of our
youth.
We were in New Hampshire in March
for that quintessential New England happening, Town Meeting. The
townsfolk gathered in the school gym after an optional potluck dinner
and debated the town budget, including whether to buy a new camera for
the police department and what steps should be taken to fight the
mosquito-borne virus that is starting to appear in the eastern part of
the state. The police got their camera, and the voters were quite
generous in their resolve to keep the nasty little biters out of town.
The unexpected happening of this
trip was a letter advising Bruce that he had been selected for jury
duty and was already late in filling out the required
questionnaire. Thirty-five years had passed in Maryland with no
such summons, and here it arrives just a year into our residence in New
Hampshire. So the next unexpected happening was that Bruce spent
pretty much all of April commuting to the 150 year old courthouse in
Concord, serving on the jury for three trials. It was quite a
profound experience, but there were really other things that he had in
mind to accomplish in the month of April.
And what did Sue Anne do while
Bruce was so engaged? Well, the next somewhat unexpected
happening is the rowhouse that we bought for ourselves in
Baltimore. We had considered the idea in principle when Bruce’s
Dad was still alive, as we figured that there could be reason for us to
have to come back to Maryland for extended periods of time. The
idea developed momentum, and we decided to keep going with it.
Karin’s husband Dan, who among his other callings is a real estate
agent, located the perfect place for us, just on the other side of a
lovely park from their own house. (Which incidentally was featured in a
recent HGTV show. Though the video was shot well over a year ago
as we mentioned in last year’s letter, it took a while before this
episode finally hit the air. We hope that some of you got to see
it.) Anyway, at the end of March we became the owners of a 1920s
rowhouse in the Highlandtown neighborhood of Baltimore.
(Baltimore has over 300 distinct and recognized neighborhoods!)
The lot is just 13 feet wide, nicely located on a corner so there’s
plenty of light coming in. The first floor and the finished
basement are occupied by a longtime and very contented tenant, a well
known chef in town who is the proud owner of a small bulldog rescued
from Hurricane Katrina. The second floor comprises our three-room
city pad. There’s a small walled garden out back.
So Sue Anne’s artistic pursuits in
April took place on a three-dimensional canvas that measured 13 feet
wide by 87 feet long! Murals on the garden wall, murals in the
kitchen, bright new paintwork and carpeting everywhere. On his
return from New Hampshire Bruce joined in with upgrades to the
electrical system. We had a great view of the Fourth of July
fireworks from the roof!
We’re not yet sure how the
Baltimore house will fit into our lifestyle once things settle down,
because things haven’t yet settled down. The job of getting our
Columbia house on the market has taken much longer than we had hoped,
but the end of that project appears to be getting ever closer.
The attendants at the county dump know us well.
Sue Anne was also engaged in
unexpected family activities, as she and her brother and sister devoted
a good bit of the fall to helping their mother move from her house in
Gardner, Mass. to a retirement community in nearby Leominster.
We’re happy to hear that she is finding it a comfortable place to live
and is still close to many of her friends.
Another activity that engaged us
during the year, this one not unexpected, was visiting Sarah and her
family in Edmonton. Often. We just can’t get enough of
Noelle (3½) and Roxy (1½). We miss an entire growth
phase if we’re apart for more than 3 months or so.
But Sarah and Dan did present us
with the extremely unexpected opportunity to accompany them on a
two-week trip to China in October! Dan and a number of his
academic colleagues participated in a conference and visited a couple
of Chinese universities, and Sarah, Sue Anne, and Bruce tagged along as
tourists. It was an adventure! There’s not enough room on
this page to describe what we did there, so we refer you to the blog
that we wrote most every night and published on the Web for all back
home to read. You can reach it through our family Web site, www.bottomleyweb.us.
It’s been quite a year! Once
again, we promise you that we’ll be fully settled in our New Hampshire
house by this time next year. Our address is PO Box 66, Elkins,
NH 03233, phone 603 526-2496, and our e-mail address remains bbb@acm.org. Have a wonderful
holiday!