Happy New Year!
We are settling into the lull just before starting a new year. We had a quiet Christmas at home after the traditional Hays Christmas Eve party down at the Aunts' house. Here's all the news I (Mary) can remember since last year.
Ellis is now a Sophomore at the University of Illinois. It's nice to have him close to home and on campus. He stops by my office occasionally, and usually says yes if I ask him to lunch or ice cream. He did very well his first year and was invited to be a James Scholar and a Chancellor's Scholar (but he said yes only to the James Scholar gig). He would like to study Computer Science. He likes to skateboard and ice skate.
Dylan works at The Betty, an upscale restaurant in Chicago. We've been there a few times and enjoyed the food and the atmosphere. We go up for a day trip there and have recently discovered the Chicago Botanic Garden. Michael and I got a little obsessed with it for a while in the fall, tossing our bikes on the rack and driving up to the Braeside Metra Train Station, and then biking about a mile to the gardens. The gardens are amazing and we walk and dream and plan about how to bring a little of it home. Sometimes we just drive up and meet Dylan and walk around the neighborhood. He knows all of the interesting places to eat, and wherever we go, they greet Dylan like family. It's quite a community up there.
Chandra is still in Seattle, and came to visit in May, bringing his lovely girlfriend, Lila. He has caught the genealogy bug recently and keeps texting me with questions about our family. I've promised to take him to the grave sites I know in Illinois, and I think I may be catching the bug too. He will visit in March, when it's easier to travel. The past few times he's tried to come for Christmas he's lost a day or more stranded with weather related plane delays.
Michael has been painting and writing. He goes up to Chicago occasionally for poetry readings. His private therapy practice in Watseka is flourishing.
I'm in school again, studying for my MFA in a low residency program at Murray State University in Kentucky. I go down for a ten day residency twice a year. I was very honored to be chosen as the 2015 Jesse Stuart Fellow. If all goes well, I'll defend my thesis in January of 2017 and graduate that May. Can I just say I love my program? I have already learned so much and feel so inspired to write. I've written more in the past six months than I have in the last decade. I've had a few publications this year. My short-short, "Horse Dreams" was published in Short Fiction Break, and just last week two stories (published as parts I and II of "Encounter") appeared in this winter's issue of Broad! Magazine. Both of these are part of my collection of short stories called Ruth Harris: Under the Prairie Moon. I keep saying that the collection is almost done...but I've been saying that for about a year, so I don't know. Last semester I had an internship with our Literary Magazine, New Madrid. My first book review will come out in this spring's issue.
At work I was humbled to be nominated by my students and chosen by my colleagues for a teaching award. I figured that improvement must have been one of the categories. I've been teaching for 16 years now and finally feel like I'm getting a few things right. I still want to chase down my students from my early years of teaching to apologize.
A new dog joined us this summer. Cullen is very sweet, but he's a ramblin' man. We have to keep a sharp eye or he'll chase a deer into the next county. He always comes home, though. Ursula is very glad to have a friend, and she sometimes accompanies him on his rambles. At the Humane Society they told us he was an Australian Shepherd mix, but someone sent me a picture of his dog, a Duck Tolling Retriever, who looks a lot like our Cullen.
We've done a little bit of travel. After my July residency I kept driving south to visit with my dear friends, Emily and Gardner, who live in Valdosta, Georgia. It was a wonderful trip, and Emily took me to Jekyll Island.
Michael and I got the chance to visit with another set of dear friends, the Magees, at their son, Cameron's wedding in Wisconsin. We all stayed together in little cabins on the river--another blast from the distant past.
We look forward to more travel and visiting and writing and reading in 2016 and wish you all the best for the new year.
Blessed Be!
