December Greetings 2014
Read MoreTending the affairs of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: Attitudes and Social Cognition is pretty much a daily commitment. Here Eliot, 'on vacation' in Leiden, is working away on the journal. As a result of snarky comments about a picture from an earlier year, we have partially hidden the wine bottle and prominently placed a water bottle.
Pamela's second knee replacement surgery was on December 19, 2013, just about a year ago, so 2014 has been a year of recovery and rehabilitation. Pain was a demanding companion for a number of years and she is mighty happy to see it go, but she is still finding her way out of long-term disability. The second half of 2014, she's been reconstructing the personal infrastructure needed to lead an interesting, creatively productive life.
An utterly gorgeous May morning in Groningen, a smallish city and former Hanseatic port in the northeast Netherlands. The Rijksuniversiteit Groningen had Eliot come over for a couple of weeks to offer two short courses, and Pamela came too. They have invited him to do this for several years, and we have treasured getting to know the place and the people.
"Het bijna 400 jaar oude monumentale Goudkantoor is een café restaurant die u de hele dag wat te bieden heeft." The nearly 400-year-old historic Gold Office (where gold bars could be stamped with a hallmark proving they were real) is now a bar-restaurant where all day you can get what you want. Pamela is trying to invent a new craft to respond to the embroidered beauty of this building - nothing she knows how to do seems sufficiently over-the-top.
Thomas at his new job - he's part of an IT team redesigning the information architecture of the national genetics database, working on-site at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda. We think he might be the first man in our family in four generations to hold a job where he's expected to wear a necktie.
What can we tell you about our son-in-law? Stay-at-home dad, tech geek, permaculture geek, musician, urban homesteader, community organizer, working as local as it gets for justice and reconciliation - and also, it turns out, The Flamingo Ninja. Who knew? And where did he get this inner drive to make the world a more whole place for human flourishing? We don't know. Maybe that's the way he was raised?