2022 Christmas Letter

 

    Season's Greetings                        Christmas 2022

 

        Until 2022, it was commonly seen that with the end of the Cold War in late 1991, gone were the days when a major nation invaded and took over a smaller nation. But February, 2022 witnessed the "special military operation" by Russia's military invasion into Ukraine, including unthinkable nuclear saber rattling by Russian President Putin. In April, I became Facebook friends with a Ukrainian woman, Larissa, who fled to Vienna, Austria with her son and she keeps me abreast of the depressing challenges that she and her son are experiencing. It is unknown how this tragic war will turn out.

         My son, Johnathan, Carissa, Hunter, 11, and Kennedy's, 8, year started off with a house fire in their laundry room. Johnathan managed to put the fire out with a fire extinguisher and called the fire department. They also had water damage in May due to a leaking refrigerator. With all that damage, they decided to do some remodeling and upgrading, so they'll have a brand-new home by Christmas. Plus, they all four got Covid-19 in May while staying in a hotel due to the renovations. Johnathan's family went to Missouri to see family and friends in April and they went to Las Vegas in June to watch the kids' cousin play in a national boys' volleyball tournament. Kennedy broke her wrist in August, right before the kids started their volleyball season. Both kids are doing well in school.

        My daughter, Holly, and Dave are having quite the transitional year. They have been living in the suburbs of New Jersey for the past 6 years and are ready for a change. With the pandemic, Dave changed jobs over the past couple of years and went into management for a NJ wines purveyor and eventually wants to get back into the chef world.  Holly has recently finished up her 12th year as an instructor for the Sukha Arts Dance studio, but she sees she’s needed in other ways, being back helping her mother, Mernell, and getting their daughter, Melanie, 3, settled into school life. Recently, Holly’s been back in MO just for those reasons and has started a new job in daycare education, which is beneficial that Melanie gets to be in a class right down the hall, allowing an easier transition or her.

        At the age of 90, my mother says that she has the back problems and other aches and pains “to prove it.” And my mother adds that she's in pretty good shape for the shape that she's in.   😉

        2022 was a very good year for us amateur astronomers and space exploration enthusiasts. (Yes, all 30 of us in the United States. 😉)  I was blessed with clear skies over Hannibal, Missouri to watch the entire duration of two total lunar eclipses on May 15^th & November 8th. I watched the May lunar eclipse from Lover's Leap and I was pleasantly surprised to see and spend time with a woman, Kristie, who I had met a year earlier with her boyfriend in Riverview Park. And the $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) was finally launched on Christmas Day, 2021 and placed in orbit about one million miles from the earth. And in its first few months, the photos and data sent back from the JWST just blew astronomers away and has already caused astronomers to need to go back to their drawing boards on how the early galaxies developed so quickly in the universe's first 300 million years. And America took a big step in sending human beings back to the moon after a 50-year hiatus with the launch of Artemis 1 sending an unmanned Orion spacecraft in orbit around the moon and putting it through its paces as I am now typing this on December 5, 2022. Splashdown is scheduled for December 11, 2022 in the Pacific Ocean.     

        ¶ My second SCS supervisor out of college, Ken Morgan, 93, passed away in June. Ken was a quiet-spoken, competent, and common-sense engineer who had a very strong, but quiet, Christian faith. He was very proud of his children and I messaged his daughter, Marilyn, of Ken always having a sparkle in his eyes when he talked of her, which Marilyn appreciated. When I asked her, “Marilyn, you have seen that sparkle yourself, often, haven't you?” Marilyn replied, “Greg, All my life.” ¶ Another SCS engineer, Neil Randall, 89, passed away in August. Neil was the superb and skilled Head of the Design Section in the State Office.  ¶Two other SCS-ers who passed away are Melvin Hamm, 87, of Benton and Keith Little, 83, of Cape Girardeau. ¶And my Hannibal friend, Sarah Sanders, 58, passed away. 

       Because I am a late-night person, I need to recognize my Facebook friend, Debora, who has been  very good about keeping me company in the early morning hours, through messaging, on many nights and mornings.  In September, 2022, I was blind-sided by a longtime pen pal of mine when she casually wrote to me that she had thrown away all 7 ½ years of the 180 letters that I written to her. That led me to having a traumatizing heartbreak that required some time for me to recover from. (C. A. McC.)

        In Fall, 2021, a squirrel gnawed its way through the fiberboard ceiling over my small front porch and made a home up there for a full year. I had my handyman, Jerry, tear out and replace that ceiling and we found four very young squirrels nesting there and destined to be raised by a wildlife rescue group.  2022 would have been the year for my Madison C - 3 high school class of 18 students to have its 50th class reunion, though I did not hear one peep about having one.  Which was okay with my classmate, Billy Brewer, and myself when we discussed it over Facebook, both of us agreeing that our 20th reunion in 1992 went really well, so let's quit while we're ahead. Because this new “5G thing” would no longer support my old flip-up phone, I bought one of the simpler smartphones (which I have long been resisting to own one), and after Johnathan and Carissa helped in getting it set up for me, I rather like it, after all.

        Our St. Louis Cardinals had a great 2022 baseball season with future Hall of Famer, Albert Pujols, coming back home (and being rejuvenated) with the Cardinals and reunited with his close friend and another future Hall of Famer, one of the greatest catchers of all time, Yadier Molina, to finish their storied careers together. Pujols hit 24 homers to finish with 703, becoming only the 4^th all-time to be in the "700 Home Run Club." Molina and Cardinals pitching ace, Adam Wainwright, set the all-time MLB record for starts as battery mates with 328, breaking the old record of 324. Johnathan’s family gave me the special Christmas gift of attending the Cardinals’ Home Opener with them in April, with all of the pregame pageantry, and we cheered them on to a 9 – 0 victory over the Pirates. Unfortunately, after winning their division, the Cardinals quickly lost two games in the postseason, sending them home.

        My mother's sister, my Aunt Ferne, passed away on June 12, 2022, just two weeks shy of her 96th birthday. In early August, 2022, my mother and many members of the Four Woods Sisters’ families, plus a few special friends of the family, met at their childhood home which is located "A Mile South of Maud" (the title of Aunt Jane’s book) to remember the lives of Ferne and of my Aunt Jane, who passed away last year, and my Aunt Bea, who passed away in 2011. There was much laughter and, of course, there were many tears shed.  The new owner of their childhood home, Tom Bowden, was a gracious host to allow us to meet here to have this remembrance, and we all celebrated my mother’s 90^th birthday a bit early. As it was with my Aunts Bea and Jane, I fret about doing justice when writing about their passings in my Christmas Letter. When I visited with Ferne about 10 years ago, I told her that I thought that she possessed an aristocratic elegance and grace, but she also had the unique Woods Sisters' sharp wit. But my brother, Chris, "saved the day" for me when he sent out in an e-mail, to my four other siblings and myself, the letter that he wrote to Ferne on her 90^th birthday in 2016, the last part of this letter from Chris to Ferne that I am ending this Christmas Letter with, below:

You make it look easy, especially when it isn’t. You know about sacrifice and suffering, but I have no memories of you complaining. I remember your positive disposition with a special way of looking on the “sunny side.”  You are the very best of us, Ferne. On this occasion of your 90th birthday, I want you to know that I believe this: your graciousness, optimism, sense of awareness, work ethic, kindness, tactfulness, diplomacy, calmness, strength, courage, sense of proportion, sense of humor, and loving manner makes you our family’s best role model. How many of us would be better off if we would ask ourselves in tough situations, “How would Ferne handle this?”  You are an important part of my life, Ferne. You will always be.  I love you and Happy Birthday!   ~  Chris

I hope that you and your family have a prosperous 2023!                                                                            Greg