Category: Christmas

“Moderation in all things” is one of my favorite aphorisms. Especially when you add “. . . including moderation.” This past year seemed a mix of the routine and regular, spiced with new experiences and new acquaintances. That may be the best balance in life. (Note: Addy’s somewhat odd arms arrangement in the photo above is explained by the presence of a praying mantis in her hands. Why the praying mantis is there is beyond explanation.)

My activities early in the year started as they have for the last 12 years, volunteering at the Farmers Insurance Open PGA golf tournament at Torrey Pines. It was my fourth year as hole captain on hole #3 on the south course. Still a really nice place to spend a few days.

Soon after I moved to Fallbrook in 2012, I realized I lived in what could be called “horse country.” Heck, my neighbors had them and I often drove past nearby horse ranches. My own experience with horses had been limited to riding on a pony at the age of five, wearing my Hopalong Cassidy gear, and being led around a corral at a local park. Being here, I wanted to do something more with horses. But what?

Switching channels one morning in May, I caught the end of a program on a local channel. It was a live segment at a therapeutic horse-riding program. I caught the name and was startled to recognize that it was just down the street from me. I drove by it almost every day, but didn’t realize what it was. They mentioned they always welcomed volunteers. I went online, applied, and I now volunteer at REINS (Riding Emphasizing Individual Needs and Strengths).

I just go Tuesday mornings, but it is the most active morning of my week. In addition to raking straw, filling water barrels, and shoveling poop, I assist therapists who work with riders, children and adults, with special needs, mental and physical.

Most often, I’ve been a “side walker.” I walk alongside the horse on the side opposite from the therapist working directly with the rider. I’m there usually to provide some physical support to riders who may be unsteady in the saddle. Recently, I’ve begun to “lead” horses, directing them where the therapist wants and halting and getting them to move ahead. (See more)

I was fortunate again this year to travel to see family and friends. The annual trip “back East” centered around the BC football game at West Point in October. We stayed at the historic Thayer Hotel, located on the post, on the banks of the Hudson River.

The hotel was an “easy” uphill mile-long walk to the football stadium. In the rain.

Oh, did it rain. Each of us thought we had water-proof gear. Nope. All of us got soaked. It’s what hours of steady and sometimes heavy rain can do.
Most of us stayed only for the first half. We repaired to the hotel to watch the rest of the game on tv . . . and dry out. (See more)

Next phase of the trip was to the Cape and Boston. Picking up my Avis rental in Cambridge, I got a repeat of what happened last year. Only vehicles available were a minivan and what you see below. Again, ridin’ the pickup.

At BC, I visited our liaison in the Alumni office. While we met in the building’s atrium, person after person stopped by to say hello. Our liaison said next time I visit, she’s going to send out a blast email to the office to let people know I’ll be there.

Stopped in Michigan on the way home to see Julia, Sam, Dillon, and the Wolverines. I was able to get tickets to the Michigan-Indiana game from a friend, and Dillon and I got to go to the Big House. Where it rained.

Great scene. Huge band. Rabid fans. Once again, though, conditions forced us to head for home after the halftime show.

Just happy otherwise to settle in with Julia and Sam. (See more)

I start my final year as president of the Anza-Borrego Foundation in January. In recent years, ABF has grown in staff and resources, consequently expanding educational programs, purchasing land to convey to Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, and providing direct financial support to the Park. ABF’s growth has been due to good fortune, the generosity of donors, and a great staff.

We were able to return to ABF board meetings in person a few times this year. On one occasion, I stayed overnight in Borrego Springs and awoke to this desert sunrise.

The grandgirls are 11 and 8 years old, with Adeline turning 12 in January. She was born less than two weeks after I moved to Fallbrook. Middle school next year. !! For my birthday earlier this month, Alice wrote in a card, “I hope you find wonders in the age 77.” She’s one of them, as is Addy.

Meredith works in development at the Boys and Girls Club in town and Winter is at Charlie’s Foreign Auto in Encinitas. He recently joined the big 4-0 club.

Happy Hanukkah, merry Christmas, and happy New Year to you and your family. May 2024 bring all you hope for!

Writing this in the midst of reports of a “tripledemic” of COVID, flu, and RSV, it feels as if we’re caught in some kind of warp — things are getting better, things are getting worse . . . . One columnist wrote it seems like Middle Ages redux. 

It’s the most wonderful time of the year, though. And there is still good reason to share good tidings and cheer. Also to share news of important loss.

The most significant event of 2022 for me and many others was the unexpected death in June of close friend Larry Kenah. I’d known Larry since early years at Boston College, nearly 60 years. In recent years, Larry sent me a note on St. Patrick’s Day, thanking me for hosting a party that holiday in our senior year at  our Brookline apartment. It was then and there he met Marcy McPhee, soon thereafter his bride and partner  over the next 50+ years. Marcy, Larry, and I were frequent golf and BC football game companions when I lived in Greater Boston and, since my relocation to North San Diego in 2012, their home was my home away from home on my annual visits East. Rest in peace, Larry.

Our “family photo” is even more discombobulated than usual this year. Recent illnesses in my household, COVID and otherwise, just made the process difficult. Photos of the Andersons, for example, are from New Hampshire, on their trip in the fall.

Julia and Sam, as well as Dillon, are enjoying their second winter in Ypsilanti, Mich. I visited them in late August, the first time I had been with Julia in three years. Dillon has his own apartment close by and is working at the National Center for Manufacturing Sciences in neighboring Ann Arbor.

In late November, I had what I believed to be a very small basal cell skin cancer removed from my forehead. It wasn’t small. The process left a rather  large wound, requiring a bandage taking up half of my forehead. Not photogenic, so my photo in the composite is from my time as a hole captain again at the Farmers Insurance Open in January. The marshal who took the photo called it “Billy and the  Blimp.”

The summer 2022 issue of Boston College Magazine contained a little feature about an old grad, the magazine’s founding editor . . . me. I didn’t know when the magazine was to be distributed. I got congratulation emails from East Coast friends three weeks before the magazine made its way West.

Normally, I join a group of classmates and spouses for a football game or similar event each year. This year, after so many activities curtailed, we sought a solid block of time together in a nice place. Of course, I kept suggesting San Diego. Not surprisingly, we ended up at the other side of the continent and it was grand. 

We rented what had been a B&B in Chatham, Mass., at the outside crook of the elbow on Cape Cod. Each couple  and single had separate bedrooms with bath and it was in a great  location for walking to the beach or downtown. In addition to just chillin’ together for several days, we visited the Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge just off the coast to see seals and birds. Some of us took a trip to Provincetown. Also was able to visit other friends who had joined the contingent of those who don’t just visit the Cape, they live on it. You can see much more here.

Returning to Boston, I caught up with several colleagues at BC, family, and friends. Because Avis wanted a certain  vehicle back at Logan Airport and that’s where I was returning my vehicle from a  suburban location, I was offered this at the same price as an economy model. Had not driven a vehicle that big. It was fun! Lent me a certain panache. Weird, but it had California plates. A gas  station attendant in Winchester, Mass., asked, “You didn’t drive that out here, didya?”

Obligatory pets pic, Cinderella and Baxter, with Addy.

Merry Christmas and Hanukkah to you and your family. May 2023 let us be free!

I expect nearly all of us wanted 2021 to be normal. I did some things this year I hadn’t done for more than a year and also hunkered down a bit. I hope you and your families were safe and healthy during this unforgettable (or forgettable?) year.

For me, the year started with a couple of unusual experiences. 

I’ve been a volunteer at the Farmers Insurance Open golf tournament in San Diego for almost 10 years. In January, the tournament took place, but without fans. (Then why have marshals?) I was assigned to a different hole than in the past, however — Torrey Pines’ #3 hole South Course, the most photographed hole on the course. It was a somewhat weird experience, but a relatively pleasant one.

You can see more from that tournament, featuring some awesome skyscapes and turbulent weather here. 

Early in the year, I was elected president of the Anza-Borrego Foundation (ABF), official nonprofit partner of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, the state’s largest at 640,000 acres. I am, of course, unworthy to hold this position, but very honored to do so. I have been a member of the board for several years and was vice president for five years.

In November, I joined other trustees in the desert for a board meeting, the first time we had held a meeting in person in nearly two years. I had the pleasure later of joining colleagues on an excursion into a remote area and welcomed the desert experience again.

My grandgirls started the year schooling remotely and returned to school in person in August. Adeline is in 4th grade and Alice in 1st. Meredith continues to work at the local Boys & Girls Club and Winter at Charlie’s Foreign Auto in Encinitas.

Dillon, who had lived nearby for several years, moved to Michigan in early December to join sister Julia and brother-in-law Sam in Ypsilanti. That’s why he’s in the picture with them. Julia and Sam bought a house there in November.

Bodacious “Boo,” the cat Julia and I rescued in 2005, showed major signs of  distress in June and he was euthanized. Boo was not an “easy” cat, but he was also unforgettable and he has been very much missed by me. That said, within a few days of his death, Julia sent me a picture  of a rescue cat in San Diego and I secured her. When she hid in the fireplace soon after arrival, she got the name Cinderella.

Also, in June, another distinctive experience for me. I served as a volunteer at the US Open Golf Championship, played at Torrey Pines. I was Hole Captain at #11, a par 3 that had the highest scoring average relative to par on the course. I supervised 28 marshals who worked am or pm shifts over a few days. The hole captain had the sole privilege of working every shift over seven days. On the second day of the  tournament, I was caught in perhaps my favorite screen shot from my golf experiences. Much more about the US Open here.

We celebrated Alice’s 6th birthday in July on the beach with guests, as we had in 2019. That was when a lot of people thought we had overcome the virus. Then Delta dawned.

The BC San Diego alumni chapter renewed football game watches this fall, choosing a location that offered open doors for air circulation. It was fun. Some new folks joined us. Just wish the Eagles had done better.

My BC buds and I decided in the spring to reinstate our annual football game gathering. We gathered for the BC-NC State game Oct. 16. Over 8 days, I also visited family and friends, spending a couple of days on Cape Cod. As always, Marcy and Larry Kenah were gracious and generous hosts.

On Halloween, Meredith, Dillon, and I attended the Patriots-Chargers NFL game  in SoFi Stadium, LA. We literally had seats in the last row of a 70,000-seat stadium that is an engineering marvel. Protocol was that everyone was to wear a face mask, but it was honored more in the breach. I am not a fan of the modern sports experience. The atmosphere is too loud, people are too drunk, the focus is on constant “entertainment,” not the sport. Get off my lawn! As usual, there were more fans of the opponent than of the  Chargers. Pats won, 27-24, allowing a late TD to make it close. More about that experience here.

Baxter has noted he’s the only living creature among us not included in this letter. ‘Nuff said.

 

 

 

Merry Christmas to you and your family. I hope we will gather again safely and happily. May 2022 allow us to renew!

 

This annus horribilis started off pretty nice, actually. In late January, I was a hole captain once again at the Farmers Insurance Open. Oversaw 15-25 marshals on the 9th hole, South Course, 615 yards. Except for my sightseeing days in Berlin in 2019, my personal records for steps had always been set on 9S. You can see more at the full post.

After the tournament, I settled back into my then relatively new routine at home. Drive Alice to pre-school midday, hold her hand as we walk in from the parking lot. Back at home, waited for my next task — walk the few hundred yards to the school bus stop, with Baxter my companion, to meet Adeline coming home. On Fridays, when Alice had no preschool, she accompanied me on our regular shopping stops — first to Costco (she loved the samples) and then the Commissary on Camp Pendleton. 

In late February, a really fun event. Long-time dear friends Marcy and Larry Kenah took advantage of a family wedding in Oregon to stay on the West Coast a little longer and visit us in Fallbrook. With my guest quarters sharply reduced, they stayed in an Airbnb unit just up the hill from our house. 

Marcy was especially interested in visiting Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, which Larry had seen on his trip here in 2013. (They were both to come then, to attend the BC-USC game, but Marcy chose to help out with the family’s new grandchild in Georgia.) We rendezvoused with Betty and Wayne White, long-time friends of the Kenahs who live in San Juan Capistrano. Spent most of the day seeing the sights in the desert. Then we traveled to Julian for its eponymous apple pie and on to Stone Brewery in Escondido, traditional end point of my county tours.

Next day started with really good corned-beef hash at Beach Break Cafe in Oceanside. After a stroll along the Oceanside Pier, I took them on a brief tour of Camp Pendleton and we closed out their visit with lunch in “downtown” Fallbrook. They traveled north to stay with the Whites for the remainder of their SoCal visit. Little did we know, of course, that the coronavirus was already around. More at full post.

March 11 was the last time Field Medical Training Battalion-West held a public graduation of classes that produce Navy personnel qualified to be Fleet Marine Force Hospital Corpsmen. For several years, I’ve represented the Navy League in recognizing the honor graduate of each class. Alice joined me in attending that March graduation and my first/last presentation of the year. 

For a few weeks after that initial lockdown, there was a lot of uncertainty. Schools closed. When would they re-open? Would Meredith and Winter continue to work? My “income” is quite modest, but it is secure. Winter’s work in auto repair has been considered essential from the beginning. Meredith’s work at the local Boys & Girls Club, which continues to provide lots of services to local school children, is mostly from home. Economically, at least, our situation has been pretty much unaffected. 

Mid-summer, I noted in my blog about serving in the Navy 50 years ago that I left USS Biddle (DLG-34) and reported as ordered to Naval Special Warfare Group, Pacific, on Naval Amphibious Base, Coronado, Calif. My first time in San Diego. I was able to get in touch with two officers of similar rank who served there with me — Fred Palmore in Midlothian, Va., and Randy Middleton, Normal, Ill. They’ve helped me add to recollections of the year we served together.

By fall, the girls were “going to school” online. Alice in kindergarten, Addy in a combo 3rd/4th grade. They still also attend ballet lessons, with students and instructors distanced and wearing masks.

Except for a single trip to get products curbside at the IKEA in San Diego (roundtrip 100.6 miles, single time in triple digits), my only “excursions” have been Sundays to the Post Office to get mail, followed by a 20-minute+ drive around the area to charge my car’s battery.

There have been no BC football game watches with San Diego Eagles. I have not been out to the desert since the Kenah visit. I fulfill my duties as Vice President of the Anza-Borrego Foundation through email, phone, and Zoom.

I have not had a haircut since February. At least not one by a trained barber. I looked a little like I did in the ’70s, hair-wise . . . except for the color and the amount on top. I finally just took scissors and hacked away at the back and used a hair clipper to work on the sides. Shorter, but quite uneven.

We’ve seen Dillon a few times, e.g., Alice’s birthday, his birthday, Thanksgiving. Distanced and masked. He’s working from home through 2021. I haven’t seen Julia in person since the end of our trip to Europe in June 2019 and Sam for a couple of years. I am thankful I am not alone at home (though I sometimes really miss silence).

We’ve become pretty adept at curbside pickup and delivery. While our house is relatively distant from others, we live in easy range of at least two Costcos, a couple of Walmarts and Targets, and maybe 50 miles from a large Amazon distribution center. In a few instances, I’ve ordered something on Amazon in late afternoon and it is sitting on our doorstep when I take the dog out the next morning. Can’t imagine how we’d do if we didn’t have those options.

In last year’s Christmas letter, I referred to 2020 as “hindsight.” You know, “Hindsight is 20/20.” I am so glad 2020 will soon and forever be in hindsight. 

Merry Christmas to you and may 2021 be filled with fun . . . and be no re-run!

First Christmas in Fallbrook for the Andersons and thus a very different Christmas for me, too.

I had never attended the annual Fallbrook Christmas Parade until this year. Below is video (5:12) from the December 7 parade. It’s held in the evening, which accounts for the rather dim video. Evening is more convenient for folks, I guess, and closing Main Street on the weekend would be problematic, but evening is also good for showing off the Christmas lighting.

Actual Christmas was also different. For only the second time (the first time being when Julia was living here), we had a tree. For the first time, I wore an attractive(?) Christmas sweater. And instead of the usual Dillon-and-me brunch, with chorizo and nopales (cactus) scrambled eggs, it was opening of gifts and Christmas dinner, featuring ham sent by Annie and Gordon.

Here’s video (2:58).

 

There have been years, as I have gotten older, when the levels of excitement and change were relatively low. This year was not one of those.

Foremost on the home front was the arrival in April of the Andersons. Meredith, Winter, and progeny had visited each year from New Hampshire in February. Duh. This time, they drove. And they stayed.

I had urged them each year to consider moving here, and to live in my house. Now they’re here. Adeline (8 in January) is in the second grade at La Paloma Elementary School in Fallbrook and Alice (4, with tongue out) attends pre-school at the Early Childhood Center.

Winter is working at Charlie’s Foreign Car in tony Encinitas, mostly on Porsches, Beemers, etc. Meredith recently started a part-time job at the local Boys and Girls Club, as a social media maven.

The grandgirls attended the Fallbrook Harvest Faire in October and each won her age group in the costume contest. The presenters in the photo are “Fallbrook Princesses.”

Julia and I took our trip to Berlin and Lithuania in June. It was a wonderful experience and I am so happy I was able to share it with Julia.

On June 12, we flew on Aer Lingus to Dublin and then Berlin. We were met at the airport by Isabel Traenckner-Probst and her daughter. Isabel was our principal contact among the family of Wilhelm Canaris. Our trip was founded on the return of materials that had belonged to Admiral Canaris and had been taken after WWII by my parents, who had been billeted in the Canaris house in Berlin in 1945/46. (You can see much more about the trip, etc., with photos and several brief videos, at socalbillmcdonald.com.  Part I: Getting there You’ll be able to access the posts in order.)

On our first night, we attended a gathering of the extended Canaris family and spent the next several days with many wonderful new friends. Julia and I, and the Canaris family, visited the family home (photo below), and later Julia and I attended Mass at the church in which my parents were married. Perhaps too much information :), but the Canaris house is where I was conceived. My mother returned to the States in July 1946, followed soon after by my father.

Julia and I touristed a lot. Berlin—both old and new—is more than I had expected. Set a personal record for “steps” on one day and blew it away the next. We stayed in an especially interesting hotel for part of our stay. Its idiosyncrasy is reflected well in its name—Hotel Pension Funk.

We few to Vilnius, Lithuania, on June 19, and stayed in its Old Town, a UNESCO World Heritage site and one of the largest medieval old towns in Northern Europe.

We also visited the Curonian Spit, a 60-mile-long dune peninsula that separates the Curonian Lagoon from the Baltic Sea, and is also a World Heritage site.

On our return to Vilnius, we stopped in Kernave, an ancient capital, to join thousands of people celebrating midsummer, longest day of the year.

We also found the graves of an earlier generation, the location of which had been unknown to us. I had had no idea where in Lithuania my grandparents had lived before emigrating, but we found out, amazingly, through a Facebook page on Lithuanian genealogy. We learned that my grandmother’s parents were buried in Zervynos, an ethnographic village being preserved in a Lithuanian national park not far from Vilnius. We drove there on June 24 and found the graves of our ancestors (photo). Zervynos was very likely where my grandmother had been born and grew up. It was especially profound, to me, to have my daughter, another generation, with me.

Back to Berlin, we celebrated Julia’s 30th birthday with friends at, of course, a biergarten.

Returning to Boston on June 28, we then took separate flights home. Wonderful people, sights, and lifelong memories.

An unusual, if not particularly significant, highlight took place in the spring. I was waiting to meet Adeline’s school bus, when I saw a car with “Google” on the side and what I guess was a camera on top. Yup, I was captured on Google Streetview.

 Dillon is now actively engaged in “uncle-ness.” Julia and Sam are living in Beavercreek, Ohio, she still working with DFAS and he at defense contractor Leidos.

Also, as indicated in last year’s note, I’m publishing a blog about my active duty years in the Navy. Fifty years ago, I was on the USS Biddle (DLG-34), which deployed to the Western Pacific May-December 1969. That blog is BlueandGold1968-71.org. I found on Facebook a page dedicated to USS Biddle. I have since connected through that page with several shipmates. Even newer Biddlemen have found some of the posts interesting.

Wishing you a very merry Christmas and happy hindsight!

It was a year without the “excitement” of evacuation due to wildfire :), but a year not without moment. Perhaps most noteworthy was the 50th anniversary of our graduation from Boston College. I’m a Golden Eagle!

While our class reunion was at the beginning of June, I had spent the previous 10 months or so working on a blog about our years in college and those tumultuous days. In doing ProudRefrain.org, I renewed friendships with some classmates and made new ones. I had a great time at the reunion and enjoyed so many wonderful moments with friends, old and new.

It was also the occasion for another personal appearance on Twitter (my first is shown a little later in the post). BC used me and my BC bowtie in a tweet about reunion.

As part of our Golden Eagle year, I made three trips to campus during the year, instead of the usual single annual sojourn. First was a “Winter Weekend,” when I joined the Sutherland Road gang (close classmates) for four BC men’s and women’s basketball and hockey games, all on the same weekend.

During that weekend, we squeezed in a brief meeting with new BC athletic director Martin Jarmond, who liked my retro Eagles jacket and tweeted a photo of us and it.

After the June reunion, the Andersons (Meredith, Winter, Adeline, and Alice) picked me up and we journeyed down to Martha’s Vineyard to visit sister/aunty Ann and Gordon. After too brief a visit, the Andersons brought me to West Yarmouth on the Cape, where I joined the gang of classmates for several days in a wonderful seaside “cottage.”

My final “East Coast” fling was in October, to watch the Eagles beat Miami and visit friends and family, including Julia and Sam in their new home.

Because of the truncated note last year, I wasn’t able to give the attention I would have liked to the December 1, 2017, marriage of Julia and Sam and their honeymoon later that month in Paris and Berlin. This summer, they moved from Athens, Ohio, to Columbus, where Julia works at Defense Finance and Accounting Services, the people who send me my Navy retirement check!

Meredith and Winter and the grandgirls came out at the end of February for a week or so. Did Disneyland/California Adventure again. Adeline turns 7 in January and is in first grade. Alice is 3 1/2. This is a very recent pic.

Dillon also changed jobs, moving from event coordinator for Deepak Chopra to grants administrator at Scripps Research Institute. He works right across the street from Torrey Pines Golf Course, where I marshal at the Farmers Insurance Open. At the 2018 tournament, I was captain at a new hole — the 9th on the South Course. 601 yards. I definitely pile up the steps over those five days. I’ll be there again in January.

This year was also special for a very unusual reason. My parents married in Berlin in November 1945 and were billeted in the former home of Wilhelm Canaris, Navy admiral and head of the Abwehr, the German military intelligence operation. They came home with personal photo albums of Canaris and other personal items. After my mother died in 2001 and I came into possession of these materials, I tried to find out how they might be returned to where and whom they belonged. I kept hitting dead ends. Then Julia, who had been sleuthing online, recently sent me an item about a German woman seeking information about her great-great-uncle, Wilhelm Canaris.

Long story short, I was able to contact Isabel Traenckner-Probst. She has been working with a German professor who is preparing a book and documentary about Canaris, particularly his efforts opposing Hitler. The photo below shows me holding one of the albums, with Patricia Highfill, another great-great-niece of Canaris, who lives in Palm Desert, Calif. (Convenient!) Patricia will convey the materials to Isabel early next year. And Julia and I will be traveling to Berlin next June to participate in ceremonies tied to the historical projects and celebrating the return of these materials. We also plan a side-trip to our ancestral land (in addition to Ireland) — Lithuania.

Finally, I’m doing another blog. (But of course!) BlueandGold1968-71.org is about my 1,035 days on active duty in the Navy 50 years ago. I’ve reached out to fellow members of my platoon at Naval Officer Candidate School and we have found and contacted more than half of them so far. Next year, the blog will focus on the ship on which I served, USS Biddle (DLG-34), and our deployment to the Western Pacific, i.e., the Gulf of Tonkin.

Wishing you a very merry Christmas and that your twenty-nineteen is pristine.

 

It was somewhat of a “routine” year at Casa del Aguila. But even routine can be eclectic and hectic, e.g., a visit from a neighbor’s rogue goat.

Major event of the year was the visit in February of the Andersons — Meredith, Winter, and Adeline. Good time to visit. Throughout their time here, as we would be at the beach or just sitting in the sun, I would comment, “It’s February.” No pressure, just friendly reminders. 🙂

Disneyland was on the itinerary, of course. Adeline is big on Mickey Mouse, though I did like her somewhat skeptical look at the ersatz rodent.

We also visited San Diego Zoo and Balboa Park, Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, San Luis Rey Mission, San Onofre and Trestles (iconic locations in surfing), Coronado, La Jolla, the beach towns.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We didn’t get a photo with all of the family this year. When we had the chance in February, we didn’t take it, figuring other opportunities would likely come. But we’ve become geographically challenged. Dillon is still in the area, living and working in Carlsbad, but Julia succumbed to the attractions of southeast Ohio (i.e., Sam) and ran off in late July. The Andersons are in Rye, New Hampshire.

This photo was taken in October on the front porch of sister Ann’s new cottage built close by her and Gordon’s home in Edgartown, Martha’s Vineyard. I went to New England to attend the reunion of my high school class, “celebrating” our graduation 50 years earlier, and to visit family and friends. The reunion was a blast. It was great to see and catch up with so many classmates, and sad to realize how many had died. It was also a bummer to see what had happened to much of the old hometown of Springfield, Mass. It’s in tough straits with what seems extensive urban decay.

I put just under 600 miles on the rental car in 12 days, traipsing east-west, north-south to visit. Thanks to friends and family for putting up, and putting up with, this vagabond. Joined college classmates for the BC-Clemson football game. More exciting than anticipated and therefore more frustrating as a close loss.

This is a picture of “the rest of the family” — a Dillon “selfie” taken on a trip in July to Kings Canyon and Sequoia national parks, a day’s drive north.

The writer Wallace Stegner said California is just like the rest of the United States . . . only more so. We do seem to contain some extremes and these parks, adjacent to each other, are good examples. The giant Sequoia are the world’s largest trees. Not the tallest, which is another variation of the sequoia, the coast redwood, but of the greatest volume. Julia is standing in front of the biggest of the bunch — the General Sherman tree, 275 feet tall and 2,300-2,700 years old.

Another example of California “more so” came in May when high temperatures and strong, dry winds created conditions for nine fires hitting San Diego county at the same time. Two of the larger fires were on Camp Pendleton and the Naval Weapons Station, both adjacent to me.

Hundreds of thousands of acres, mostly scrub, were charred. The scene above is looking northwest from my house and shows an early stage of the NWS fire. While that was contained after a couple of days, it reignited and forced evacuation of neighbors across the valley from me. I started packing, but the fire was put down the same day.

I was a marshal again at the PGA and LPGA tournaments that happen here early in the year. You may have seen this view of Tiger and me on the Golf Channel. BC home base has given our local alumni chapter a real boost in support. In addition to rooting on the Eagles in football and hockey by watching the games on TV and quaffing local craft beers, we’ve also had several service activities and twice got out as a group to the horse races at Del Mar.

Not to exclude the others who live in my home, here are Boo (cat) and Baxter caught in synchronous repose.

 

And at left is Baxter anticipating something from Dillon’s patriotic-color dessert on Independence Day.

Adeline turns three next month. She is growing up too fast, though seeing her grow physically and mentally, having the chance to talk with her, is such a pleasure. Here’s hoping the Andersons come back soon!

I continue to have some of the same plans for the coming year — golf, horses, sailing.  At what point do plans not implemented become wishful thoughts? And I continue to plan . . . and wish . . . to see or host you!

Wishing you a very merry Christmas and that twenty-fifteen is just really good.