Dear Friends,
I've been thinking about starting a new tradition for several years now, and maybe this is the year to do it. Instead of Christmas Cards, which we haven't sent out in many years, I thought, "Why not a New Year's Letter?" It seems more natural, and since the year is new until, oh, at least March, it feels like I have time to do justice to this new tradition. Together we shall see how successful I am.
We had an eventful 2014. Ellis graduated from High School! He spent his summer working hard at the Energy Farm (where they grow...Energy! Miscanthus, mostly, I think, and other biomass.) Come fall, he began his first semester at UIUC, in General Studies, but with high interest in Computer Science. He had a successful semester, and it was very nice to have him near enough that I could text him to go out to lunch. He would show up in my office with his longboard, and we'd go across the quad together. It was fun introducing him to our old haunts, like the Red Herring.
In June, Michael and I celebrated our *first Anniversary. It was a nice, low key, private celebration—not like our wedding the summer before, which was blessed with many good friends and family and music and food, and a thunderstorm that sent the party scurrying for the house, and finally, a double rainbow and dancing into the night!
Dylan is still up in Chicago, cooking at Celeste, a high-end restaurant in River North. My sister, Becky, and I went up once this summer and had a lovely dinner. It's a fun place to visit, and he's enjoying the work there. He actually helped open the restaurant almost a year ago, and they're doing pretty well with the food critics.
Chandra is enjoying Seattle and working for Bungie. He is pretty active with lots of hiking and camping and martial arts and yoga and boxing and sports and...it's actually pretty hard to keep up with all the stuff he does. Just yesterday he posted pictures about doing archery, which is a new one, I think.
Michael's private therapy practice in Watseka keeps him busy, but he has a lot of projects at home— optimizing our computers and keeping our cars running and working on the house. By next year we might actually have a second bathroom and a deck out front. He hasn't been painting much, but he writes poetry and short stories in the mornings. He reads occasionally in Chicago, and was the featured poet at an open mic in December. He has had good luck publishing his work this year.
My big news is that I'm going back to school. I started my low residency program for an MFA at Murray State University in early January. "Low residency" means I don't have to quit my job and move to Kentucky. I will go down twice a year during school breaks to a week-long seminar. The rest of the time I will work online with my mentor and take online classes. I'm excited and terrified. I stayed in a dorm for the first time EVER! It was awesome—like living in a monastery. I had no distractions, (the undergraduate students were not on campus yet) and did nothing but read, write, study, and go to parties. (These were, ahem, required parties. Receptions for the visiting writers.) My hope is that this program will help me finish a project. I already had to write a new story before the residency even started, and I'm working on a second. I'm not supposed to work on a novel until the second year, but I hope to finish one then.
Another highlight for me was winning a teaching award in my department. One of my students secretly nominated me, and then the awards committee asked me to prepare a teaching portfolio. It was a lot of work, but that action helped me look carefully at my teaching practices, and helped me consciously consider what I do and why I do it. Just the act of preparing the portfolio and declaring my teaching philosophy helped me improve. And... the committee must have liked it. I feel very grateful for the opportunity.
Be well in 2015. We wish you a happy and peaceful new year. My new year's resolution is to keep in better touch with friends, but if I don't succeed, please know that we're thinking of you.
Walk in Beauty; Work in Peace; Blessed Be.
Love, Mary and Michael
*For those who haven't heard from us in a while, Michael and I split up in 2008. We were separated for two years and even got divorced. 6 weeks later we started "talking" (as the kids say these days) and then reconciled. We were engaged for a year and remarried on June 1, 2013.
I've been thinking about starting a new tradition for several years now, and maybe this is the year to do it. Instead of Christmas Cards, which we haven't sent out in many years, I thought, "Why not a New Year's Letter?" It seems more natural, and since the year is new until, oh, at least March, it feels like I have time to do justice to this new tradition. Together we shall see how successful I am.
We had an eventful 2014. Ellis graduated from High School! He spent his summer working hard at the Energy Farm (where they grow...Energy! Miscanthus, mostly, I think, and other biomass.) Come fall, he began his first semester at UIUC, in General Studies, but with high interest in Computer Science. He had a successful semester, and it was very nice to have him near enough that I could text him to go out to lunch. He would show up in my office with his longboard, and we'd go across the quad together. It was fun introducing him to our old haunts, like the Red Herring.
In June, Michael and I celebrated our *first Anniversary. It was a nice, low key, private celebration—not like our wedding the summer before, which was blessed with many good friends and family and music and food, and a thunderstorm that sent the party scurrying for the house, and finally, a double rainbow and dancing into the night!
Dylan is still up in Chicago, cooking at Celeste, a high-end restaurant in River North. My sister, Becky, and I went up once this summer and had a lovely dinner. It's a fun place to visit, and he's enjoying the work there. He actually helped open the restaurant almost a year ago, and they're doing pretty well with the food critics.
Chandra is enjoying Seattle and working for Bungie. He is pretty active with lots of hiking and camping and martial arts and yoga and boxing and sports and...it's actually pretty hard to keep up with all the stuff he does. Just yesterday he posted pictures about doing archery, which is a new one, I think.
Michael's private therapy practice in Watseka keeps him busy, but he has a lot of projects at home— optimizing our computers and keeping our cars running and working on the house. By next year we might actually have a second bathroom and a deck out front. He hasn't been painting much, but he writes poetry and short stories in the mornings. He reads occasionally in Chicago, and was the featured poet at an open mic in December. He has had good luck publishing his work this year.
My big news is that I'm going back to school. I started my low residency program for an MFA at Murray State University in early January. "Low residency" means I don't have to quit my job and move to Kentucky. I will go down twice a year during school breaks to a week-long seminar. The rest of the time I will work online with my mentor and take online classes. I'm excited and terrified. I stayed in a dorm for the first time EVER! It was awesome—like living in a monastery. I had no distractions, (the undergraduate students were not on campus yet) and did nothing but read, write, study, and go to parties. (These were, ahem, required parties. Receptions for the visiting writers.) My hope is that this program will help me finish a project. I already had to write a new story before the residency even started, and I'm working on a second. I'm not supposed to work on a novel until the second year, but I hope to finish one then.
Another highlight for me was winning a teaching award in my department. One of my students secretly nominated me, and then the awards committee asked me to prepare a teaching portfolio. It was a lot of work, but that action helped me look carefully at my teaching practices, and helped me consciously consider what I do and why I do it. Just the act of preparing the portfolio and declaring my teaching philosophy helped me improve. And... the committee must have liked it. I feel very grateful for the opportunity.
Be well in 2015. We wish you a happy and peaceful new year. My new year's resolution is to keep in better touch with friends, but if I don't succeed, please know that we're thinking of you.
Walk in Beauty; Work in Peace; Blessed Be.
Love, Mary and Michael
*For those who haven't heard from us in a while, Michael and I split up in 2008. We were separated for two years and even got divorced. 6 weeks later we started "talking" (as the kids say these days) and then reconciled. We were engaged for a year and remarried on June 1, 2013.
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