2008

                                                                       December 14, 2008

Dear Family & Friends

The Year in Review

The Way We Were

Last week on a flight from Honolulu to our home in Lihue, we were seated behind a mother with her infant son. He began the flight by crying miserably, stopping only for a few moments in mid-flight while he spit-up on his mother. During the landing he screamed as though she were poking him with a sharp object. (I could have told her that never works.) I had been missing our kids, whom we had left back on the mainland and that short flight brought back fond memories:

• My first solo plane ride with Stephen when he was six months old. He had an ear-infection and screamed for the longest ten minutes of my life as the pilot insisted that the runway be clear before he would land the plane.


• The excitement of flying out of Jackson Hole with Christie, in a miniature plane made of balsa wood and tissue paper. Christie had cleverly consumed an entire Big Gulp of Mountain Dew just before we took off. I’ve never liked Mountain Dew.


• Nicole’s unalloyed fury every time we told her she had to go to Sunday school. Actually, any time we told Nicole she had to do anything.


On The Beach

Okay we didn’t actually move to Lihue on a full-time basis. We bought a beachfront condo from our good friends the Marriotts, and they let us stay in it one week every two years. Some know-it-alls told me it wasn’t a good investment, but it’s done a whole lot better than those investments I made in GE, Google and Goldman Sachs.

I cleverly waited until the last possible moment to book our week in Hawaii, which is why we ended up taking the week right after Thanksgiving. Maybe the weather isn’t as good at that time of the year, but there’s plenty of room on the beach.


The Sun Also Rises

I watched over five hundred hours of Cubs baseball this year, which at my billing rate comes to an investment of almost a thousand dollars. When the Cubs won their division, I decided to splurge and buy tickets so that Nicole and I could watch their triumphant return to playoff glory, live and up-close.

Through some special connections that I have with STUBHUB, I was able to snag these great seats for only two hundred dollars a piece. And trust me, the way the Cubs played, we were too close to the action.


For Whom the Bell Tolls

All the family members are actively pursuing their careers.

Stephen lives in Chicago and works as a contract lab tech and as an instructor for the Princeton Review. He is in the process of applying to graduate school for an advanced degree in Chemistry.


Nicole is in her third year at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago in their fashion department. Last spring we got to attend a Fashion show where all of the students’ designs were on display. Nicole’s was the best.

Christie is in her first year at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, also studying fashion. In my efforts to teach Christie to drive, we never got beyond making a right turn. That’s probably okay because Brooklyn seems to have banned left turns and no one else who lives there knows how to drive either.

Suzanne continues to work long hours for BP (our combined average work week is about fifty hours) on secret projects that I am not allowed to write about, at locations far from our home in Evanston.

Released from my primary occupation as Christie’s chauffeur, I have had a lot more time to devote to my writing career. I attended two writer’s workshops this year. One in Iowa, which was flooded out by the Iowa River, and one in Squaw Valley, California where I had a chapter from my novel critiqued. These workshops can be strenuous, especially for some of the older guys who aren’t use to the student lifestyle.

My novel is now 99% complete, but that last one percent is the toughest. I am hopeful that it will be showing up in bookstores before the end of the next decade. I’ll be sure to let everyone know.


Ken Joy (1917 – 2008)

My Dad died in early October. This picture was taken in late August when my three sisters and I returned to Skaneateles to help him celebrate his ninety-first birthday with Mom, who is still going strong at nine-two.

My Dad was many things: father, husband, World War II pilot, businessman, golfer. Not a bad storyteller, either. He was generous with his time and his possessions. He was a good man and he had a long, long season of living and a very short season of dying. And that is gift from God, which we can all only hope for.

We hope you all have a great Holiday Season.

Len & Suzanne

Stephen, Nicole & Christie

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