Christmas Letter 2007

Dear Family and Friends,

Time passes so quickly these days, our Christmas letters are starting to read like chapters in a serialized novel. By the time the last one has been mailed, it’s time to start thinking about the next. What to do for a cliffhanger though?

This year was a big one for us. We made up for all the travel and experiences we didn’t get to do last year while we were going through our home ownership transition. Much of that travel was the back-and-forth shuffle between our jobs at Aspen Valley Hospital and our home in Grand Junction. We shared a house down the road from Aspen in Basalt during the work week and drove home every weekend, partly to water the plants and check the mail, partly because it was home and it felt right to be there. But as of November 1st, when Nan ended her nineteen-year career at AVH, we are now full-time Grand Junctionites. Nan just started a new job here as Surgery Coordinator for Community Hospital, and I am telecommuting now to my job as the Database/Internet Administrator for AVH. It’s working out well so far, and our dog Charlie seems less confused.

The fun travel started last January. I was looking to expand my sailing horizons so I joined sailor/writer John Kretschmer and a group sailing John’s 47-foot cutter from Fort Lauderdale to the Bahamas and back. It was rough crossing the Gulf Stream overnight while beating into the wind, but we enjoyed the Settlement on Grand Bahama and the quick surf back. It was smooth enough on the return to practice using sextants to determine our latitude, confirming our position with the ship’s GPS.

To build her sailing confidence in anticipation of our upcoming May sailing trip to the British Virgin Islands, Nan took the American Sailing Association basic keelboat class in St. Petersburg, Florida in April. She surprised herself by passing both the written and practical exams. Our Christmas picture this year shows Nan happily putting her new knowledge to work at the helm of the boat we chartered in the BVI.

The May sailing trip was a dream, especially compared to our 2004 misadventure. Chartering a larger, safer boat and having Nan’s sister Monica and her friend Vicky along made all the difference. It was a first-time experience for both of them, but after they got over the feeling that the boat was going to tip over when it heeled, they pitched in on all the sailing duties. Good weather, smooth seas, excellent snorkeling and plenty of conch fritters kept everybody happy.

In August we visited family, Nan hers and me mine. Nan went home to Manitowoc to celebrate two milestone birthdays, sister Sue’s 60th and sister Amy’s 50th. Sister Sarah, the ninth and final Mullins daughter, and her husband Ian hosted the festivities at their home in Green Bay, complete with a This Is Your Life-style trivia contest.

I drove to Washington State with Charlie for a week-long Lichty family reunion celebration of Mom and Dad’s 50th wedding anniversary at sister Jane and her husband Josh’s homes on Whidbey Island and in Seattle. We toured the island, we hiked the beaches, and Charlie experienced sea water for the first time, prompting him to puke in the back of Jane’s van. Back in Seattle, we visited the art museum and aquarium, and celebrated Jane and Josh’s twins Max and Ben’s 10th birthdays.

In September we traveled to Italy for the first time. We wandered around Florence for a few days, reliving the Renaissance through the architecture of the Duomo and the artwork at the Ufizzi gallery, all the while partaking of the great food and wine. Then we took the train to the coast to meet up with The Wayfarers for a week-long package walking tour of the Cinque Terre and Italian Riviera with a terrific group of fellow Americans. The coastal views of the Mediterranean and the compact, pastel-colored towns were spectacular. At a walking pace, putting in about ten miles a day, we had plenty of time to appreciate them. If you’d like to see for yourself and you have a high-speed Internet connection, there are slideshows with captions on my blog at http://whisperingjesse.blogspot.com. After the hike ended, we stopped in Pisa to see the Leaning Tower on our way back to Florence, where we spent another day that included a visit to the Academia museum to see Michelangelo’s David.

October saw us witnessing Brett Favre’s bomb to Greg Jennings to beat the Denver Broncos in overtime. It does the heart good to see an athlete past his prime having probably his best season ever. Maybe Brett will have one more chance at a Super Bowl before he retires. Maybe he’ll play another season. Either way, go, Pack, go!

After that whirlwind of travel and the job and living adjustments, we’re happy now to be spending time settling into new routines and finally unpacking the last of the boxes from our move more than two years ago. There’s snow on the high desert, making for a rare white Christmas and good skiing at Powderhorn. We’ll be here enjoying both this holiday season. Here’s hoping for plenty of snow and the best this season has to offer for you and yours, now and in the New Year.

Love,

John and Nan and Charlie

Final Italy Photos

These are the final photos from our Italy trip, taken with a disposable instamatic camera that Nan carried. The photos needed to be scanned from the original prints, which slowed the process of getting them online and seems so outdated in this era of high-quality, low-cost digital photography. But here they are, only slightly retouched in Photoshop (click the thumbnails to see the full-sized versions):

Street scene in Campiglia on the first day of our Cinque Terre hike. The gentleman with the ladder is adding another coat of pastel-colored paint to the wall of a shop.









Our Wayfarers walking group having a big laugh at George's expense. He was late for our departure from Riomaggiore on the second day of our hike, so we ducked into a garage down the street from our hotel and surprised him as he hurried to catch up. Left to right are our guide Paolo, Pauline, Burton, Jean, Barbara, me, Virginia and Nan. While we waited for George, an old man carrying a little boy stopped and asked, "Is it raining?" That was an even bigger laugh.

Instead of hiking along the shore between Manorola and Corniglia, we went up and over the large hill that separates them, passing through Volastra where this gentleman was using long-handled shears to harvest grapes from the arbor outside his home.







Lunch under the palm trees in Corniglia, the middle one of the five Cinque Terre towns. This was day two of our hike, which took us from Riomaggiore through Manorola and Corniglia to Vernazza.




The beach and harbor in Vernazza, our favorite Cinque Terre town and the place where our second day of hiking ended. From there we took a train to Sestri Levante to begin the Italian Riviera portion of our hike.








Approaching San Fruttuoso by ferry from Punta Chiappa. The church dates from about the fourth century and is the final resting place of many members of the Andrea Doria family.





Ferryman at the San Fruttuoso dock. It was chilly and sprinkling rain, but he seemed comfortable in his sweater, Madras shorts and bare feet.









Lunch on the balcony outside the main restaurant at San Fruttuoso. There was a canopy to protect us from the rain as we enjoyed the food and the view.






Moreno, waiter extraordinaire, at La Bussola in Florence (www.labussolafirenze.it) on our final night in Italy. The restaurant was recommended to us by the concierge at our hotel because it was just around the corner, but we ate dinner there three times during our trip because of the great food and service.






Moreno hams it up for the camera as he pours Nan a glass of vino bianco. Salute!

Reflections on Michelangelo's David

On our final day in Florence, Nan and I visited the Galleria dell'Accademia, home to the original statue of David by Michelangelo. The photo to the left is of the copy in front of the Palazzo Vecchio, which we passed several times while wandering around Florence. This did little, however, to prepare us for seeing the original in its permanent location.

I experienced the same rush of emotion when I first spotted David at the end of the hall devoted to Michelangelo's sculptures as I did when I saw Van Gogh's Starry Night in the Museum of Modern Art in New York and Da Vinci's Mona Lisa at the Louvre in Paris. There is something about being in the physical presence of artworks that one has known about their entire life but only previously seen in photographs that is incredibly life-affirming. Yes, it really does exist, and yes, it really is as beautiful as you imagined.

Every photo I had ever seen of David had been taken from the front, and I could never figure out why his hands were positioned as they were. Was his final scrap of clothing flung casually over his shoulder? Did he have an itch he was scratching with that over-sized right hand? As with most displays of sculpture, it was possible to walk completely around David, taking him in from every angle, and that solved the mystery for me. David's sling is slung across his back, the handle end in his right hand and the pouch with the stone in it in his left.

All the descriptions I had ever read, including the one on the plaque in front of the statue, said that David's facial expression was one of confidence in victory, similar to the expression on Donatello's earlier David, who while also naked is wearing a war helmet, holding a sword and standing with one foot on the severed head of Goliath.

When I saw the sling, I suddenly realized that this was completely wrong. David was not contemplating his victory, he was at the moment of attack. His weight was on his right foot, his concentration was focused to his left, and his sling was at the ready. It was easy to imagine him stepping quickly and confidently to his left, at the same time releasing the pouch in his left hand, swinging the sling powerfully around his head and letting fly the fatal stone. The expression on his face is not victorious at all but rather the grim determination of one about to commit a necessary murder.

As I stood there restructuring my thinking, the genius of Michelangelo was apparent. In one statue he had managed to capture the beauty of the human form and the menace of its physicality, the peace of a body at rest and its anticipated motion to violence.

Pisa and Florence, Part 2

On our return to Florence by train, Nan and I shared the first leg to Pisa with Burton and Virginia from our Wayfarers hike. They were scheduled to fly out of Pisa the next day, Sunday, while we were set to fly out of Florence on Monday. So we spent the afternoon together wandering around Pisa until Nan and I boarded another train for the final leg to Florence.

Our time in Florence and the Italian Riviera had definitely spoiled us. Except for the area immediately around the famous Leaning Tower, Pisa was sorely lacking in charm. It is a modern, mid-sized port on the Mediterranean, and this function clearly dictates its form, which was evident from our taxi rides to and from the train station--factories, warehouses, wide busy streets, numerous traffic lights, and block after block of post-War two- and three-story brick buildings with shops on the ground floors.

One of the reasons we got off the train in Pisa was that I had convinced Nan we needed to see the Leaning Tower of Pisa as an homage to Galileo and his famous gravity experiment. Galileo is supposed to have climbed to the top of the Tower and dropped two different-sized cannon balls simultaneously. The reasoning of his time was that the larger, heavier ball would fall faster. In fact, they hit the ground at the same time, proving that gravity acts equally upon all objects regardless of mass.

Enough with the science lesson. As with the two previous posts, this one also contains a slideshow. Just click on the Leaning Tower photo if you already have Adobe Flash Player installed. And click here if you don't. The first ten pictures and captions are of the Leaning Tower and the area around it. The remaining ones are from our last full day in Florence. I had just finished reading Ross King's Brunelleschi's Dome, so these final pictures favor Brunelleschi and his work. Salve!

Florence, Part 1

Nan and I recently returned from our first trip to Italy. We flew into Florence on Thursday, September 20 and wandered the streets for a few days before taking the train on Sunday to the Cinque Terre area. There we met up with a great group of fellow Americans for a six-night, five-day Wayfarers hike (thewayfarers.com). On Saturday, we returned to Florence for a couple of more days before flying home.

We knew this would be the trip of a lifetime for us, so we took plenty of photographs, like this one of the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence's 700-year-old town hall.

With the help of modern technology, I have started putting the images together with captions into Flash-based slideshows. They will display in a standard browser window provided you have the Adobe Flash Player installed. If you need it, click here. If you already have it, click the photo of the Palazzo to go to the first slideshow, "Florence, Part 1". There are three different ways to view the show, so be sure to experiment with the different buttons you'll find.

Separate slideshows of our Wayfarers hike and our second weekend in Florence will follow as they are completed. Enjoy!