Weinland Holiday Letter
December, 2007
We bring warm holiday greetings from stormy New England. We write to share news of our family and to express our hopes for a peaceful and productive year ahead. We continue to be blessed with good health and have taken advantage of that blessing to travel extensively as well as continue some of our projects here in the “greater Storrs” area.
Travel has taken us to Seattle and Japan – about which we wrote a rather long letter in April, to St. Petersburg, Florida, and Aruba for weddings, then Italy in May-June, and finally Arizona in early October. The Italy trip justifies a more extensive comment. If you have never used this group, may we recommend Untours – available on the web as www.untours.com. As the rather clever name implies, this travel group serves as the organizer, and support program for your own travel – providing air flight, a car (or transport pass in a city), lodging and loads of advice and information for daily activities. With all that done, they leave you alone to arrange your own touring. And so we spent two weeks together with Storrs and British friends on a vineyard in South Tuscany – just down the mountain from Montalcino. We drove everywhere: to small mountain towns, to quiet abbeys, to Siena – a wonderful day trip. And when the distance and the formidable gas prices dictated, we took the train to a Florence over-run with tourists (we write that word with contempt while never bothering to look in the mirror!) Aside from the usual sites, the special attraction of Florence was the chance to visit with Mary’s school roommate Pat Fallani (nee Klee), living with her husband just outside of Florence, whom we had not seen in some forty years.
After two weeks, our friends returned home but we headed off to Rome for a one-week extension of our Untour. Here we found ourselves in an apartment on a quiet street, equipped with a travel pass good for any public transportation – and did we ever use it! We saw a lot – including a four-hour tour through the Vatican museum with a guide from Untours (free, and no waiting in the multi-hour-long lines). For Tim, who had never been there, the Sistine Chapel was breathtaking. When you teach this information for much of your career it is a special blessing to have the opportunity to see it. One impression was the overwhelming size of Michelangelo’s work. Untours was recommended to us by friends; indeed we stayed on the same vineyard where they had visited four years before. The price was right, the independence was wonderful and the personal support on location was both thorough and friendly. And we could go on about the local wines but….
Yes we do have a life in Storrs – not much different from what we have been describing to you over the last few years. Mary has major responsibilities with the Windham Area Interfaith Ministries, providing assistance for those in need. She is also active in several other groups including a reading initiative that brings third grade classes from suburban Storrs and urban Willimantic together to share experiences with books. Tim continues work with Human Rights curricula, editing the state social studies newsletter and helping with a federally funded grant for local American History teachers. We are plenty busy.
News from our sons and families: Rick is now in his second year as principal of the high school at the American School in Japan (ASIJ) located in the outskirts of Tokyo. Sandy is co-teaching in a kindergarten classroom at ASIJ and tries to use her limited free time to continue her progress in mastering Japanese. From all reports, their three children, Lucas (12), Mia (10) and Noah (7) are enjoying school and the independence that kid-friendly Japan offers. Jay and family maintain an impossibly busy schedule in Seattle, made somewhat lighter with the release of Halo 3 that has reduced Jay’s workday from 20 hours to a more humane pace. Heather’s acting career continues to thrive with positive reviews for her work. When not performing on stage she directs drama activities for several elementary schools. Duncan (9) and Tessa (6) have enjoyed school and both show some evidence of their mother’s acting talent. Jay and family are joining Rick in Tokyo for Christmas and the two families will be using their vacation time to tour Vietnam and Cambodia together. What a special opportunity for those children!
Closer to home, Chris and Jen are both free-lancing in their work. One of Chris’ frequent assignments has sent him on the road as the soundman for a news team to follow the presidential primary races. Needless-to-say, he has gained some impressions of most of the candidates – if you want a particularly amusing story ask him about his run-in with Fred Thompson in New Hampshire. Given that we are only three miles away, we have a special opportunity to watch Kenton (7) and Spencer (3) grow up. Kenton has become a baseball nut (we haven’t heard the word “truck” in over a year) but sadly, for Tim anyway, his baseball loyalties are directed toward the Red Sox and Cubs. And, following in the footsteps of his older cousins and brother, Spencer remains the poster child for charm (in our unbiased opinion, of course!). This summer we were fortunate to have all seven grandchildren with us at Mullett Lake, Michigan at the same time – and as you can see below we quite enjoyed being surrounded and engaged in their activities.
click on picture for full-size view
At the risk of dating ourselves – as if it is not self-evident – both Tim and Mary attended 50th reunions of high school classes this year. In Tim’s case, there were two reunions since the graduating class of ’57 at Horace Greeley High in Chappaqua asked class members who had attended private schools to join them (“It’s not about graduating together; it’s about growing up together”). Likewise, Mary’s school chums in Ashland, Ohio included her in their 50th reunion even though she too had attended a private high school. Particularly amazing were the distances that many traveled to attend. What a wonderful chance for us to reconnect with our past and reflect on the impact that our early friends and experiences have had on our lives. These memories have inspired Mary to travel to Florida each year to see a group of her school friends and led to Tim’s trip to western New York to visit a long-time friend unable to attend the Greeley reunion.
These reunions serve as a metaphor for the blessings we continue to enjoy. How privileged have we been to live and grow up with the advantages of freedom, supportive families, loving partners and good health. How privileged are we to be able to travel and follow our children’s travels in far-flung places on the globe. How amazing is it that our children and grandchildren are visiting Vietnam and Cambodia; could we have imagined this thirty years ago? Can we dream that some day in our children’s lifetimes they may have the opportunity to travel in Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan? We hope the spirit of this season will inspire each of us, those who lead or hope to lead and those who act upon a smaller stage, to demand the best of ourselves and each other– to think and speak plainly about the real problems of our time and work in common purpose to resolve them. And in that same spirit we hope that 2008 will be a safe, healthy, peaceful and productive year for you and those you love.
All our love, Tim and Mary Weinland
