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January
1, 2008
"Happy New Year" to Friends and Family
Everywhere,
Or,
stated in more acceptable modern terms:
Please
accept, with no obligation,
implied or implicit, our best wishes for an environmentally conscious
socially
responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral, celebration of
the
winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions
of the
religious persuasion or secular practices of your choice, with respect
for the
religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their
choice not
to practice religious or secular traditions at all....and a fiscally
successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated
recognition of
the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2008, but not without
due respect
for the calendars of choice of
other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America
great (not
to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country or
is the
only "America" in the western hemisphere), and
without
regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious
faith,
choice of computer platform or sexual preference of the wishee.
(By
accepting this greeting you
are accepting these terms. This
greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal.
It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original
greeting. It implies no promise by
the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for her/himself or
others,
is void where prohibited by law, and is revocable at the sole
discretion of the
wisher. This wish is warranted to
perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a
period
of one year or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting,
whichever
comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or
issuance of
a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher).
We recently read that the
traditional 4 stages of life
(childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and old age) have now become six,
with "odyssey" interspersed between adolescence and adulthood, and
"active
retirement" between adulthood and old age. As
you'll see, we think that the Harts are prime examples of
these two new stages!
It is hard to believe
that we have been retired for almost
three years. Although work is
becoming a distant memory for us, our schedules sometimes seem
work-like. As with many of our retired
friends, we
don't know how we ever had time to work!
We both spend several
half days a
month attending classes in our Learning-in-Retirement organization (http://Omnilore.org)
plus
additional time
doing the common reading and preparing our own required presentations. Hal
has continued in the Shakespeare group (one of his retirement goals
being to
read all of Shakespeare's plays) and between us we have also taken
classes this
year in Intelligence, Anti-Intellectualism
in the US,
the Federalist Papers, Feynman on Physical
Law (Ruth
actually heard the lectures
when originally delivered at Cornell in 1964 — not that she remembered
anything
about them, of course), Women Who Dared, and the Evolution
of Human Societies (they read Pulitzer-winning
Guns, Germs, & Steel by Jerod Diamond - not as
good as
his next book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, in Hal's opinion). Next
up are classes on Political Cartoonists and the Ten Great
Ideas of
Science. Ruth is now firmly entrenched on
Omnilore's board and curriculum committee and we also run the
scheduling
program.
One of the highlights of
Ruth's year was the 50th reunion of
her Hunter College Elementary School 6th grade graduating
class in
April. HCES is what we would now
call a magnet school and, although many of the girls continued in the
all-girls
high school, most of us hadn't seen each other in almost 50 years. We spent almost a year organizing the
reunion, tracking down classmates (Ruth spent a lot of time on the
Internet
finding people — we worked from class pictures and other memories),
picking a
date when most people could attend, etc. but it was all worthwhile. About 40 of us (the vast majority of
those we located) spent a fabulous 6 hours one Saturday night in April
at a
classmate's apartment in NYC getting reacquainted and sharing old
memories. We then continued the
next morning at a brunch to which spouses were invited. It was amazing
that the
bonds that we formed as children remained so strong in late-adulthood
and we
have continued to stay in touch.
Ruth also joined the League of Women Voters this year, becoming
involved
in their Immigration Study and Membership Building Initiative. She continues her yoga class and walks
4 miles 2-3 times a week, but, in general, her view of retirement is
that she
gets to do whatever she wants to do whenever she wants to do it. What could be better?
In 2007 Hal pushed most
activities
to the back burner as he was consumed by key organizing roles in two
events
that won't happen every year. For
his 40th Carleton Reunion in June, he was webmaster (publicity
vehicle), organized
a fixer-upper service project (reliving our spirit of the 1960's), and was the
volunteerism rep on a
panel on Life-After-60. All
the organizers'
efforts paid off as 101 of our 300-some classmates and 30-some family
members
made it to the reunion, and over a third signed up to arrive early for
the
successful service project. We
always love renewing old acquaintances and visiting places holding fond
memories from our youth!
Simultaneously, Hal was drafted to be safety chief (lotsa
OHSA
research & preps for safety inspections, training, etc.) for the annual Jimmy
Carter Work
Project which
our
LA affiliate hosted Oct. 29 - Nov. 2, and we had to pre-build the 30
houses far
enough to finish during blitz week.
Most of my crew had fun during blitz week converting from a
passive
safety-monitor role into Scaffolds-R-Us (fixing, erecting
&
re-securing scaffolding for reaching roofs & 2nd-floor
siding)
as all other safety risks were
managed by then. Success: zero
serious injuries! I
was impressed with Jimmy's craftsman
skills and his stamina, but of course he's been doing this much longer
than
I. (That's Hal kneeling, next
to Jimmy & Rosalynn.) I'll
sign up for the
reunion organizing again in 2012 (& 2017...), but Habitat won't
become a
sustained unpaid half-time job ever again. Oh
yes, my TRW softball team in its 31st year won
the "B" championship (I hit .563!), and I broke 40 for nine
holes of golf once (then shot 57 on
the back side).
We didn't let up on
travel this year. Our biggee was 17 days
in Greece (Delphi
at left, Apollo at right) — 12 on
the mainland and a 5-day cruise
to several of the Greek islands in the Aegean;
we'd reverse that next time. This
was our first time with a guided tour group,
and it worked very well in what
was a new country for us. We
also took a 10-day vacation around Phoenix & Sedona, Arizona (including
visiting grad school friends Dave &
Mary Browning), a two-week+ driving trip
to the
C
anadian
Rockies (Banff) and Montana (Glacier
Nat. Park + grad school friends Lee & Mary
Jane Tangedahl), an
8-day cruise
to the southern Mexican Riviera (ship at right), plus short trips to the
reunions,
2 family weddings, and Providence in May.
Whew! 2008's planned travel
so far includes a New York wedding in January, Costa Rica and Guatemala
for
much of March, the rest TBD.
Erika (age 29) and Alison
(age 26) are still both living in Providence,
Rhode Island, although that might not last much longer. Unfortunately,
Tazz
Networks, the software start-up where Erika has worked since graduating
from
college 6 years ago, was not bought as had been hoped, and announced
that they
were going out of business last August.
Fortunately, she's still being paid, as they kept a couple of
people on
to work on upgrading the software should anyone express interest in
buying the
product. However, after February,
she'll be on the job market, and will have to make some big decisions
about
whether to come back to California or stay on the East Coast. If anyone knows of a job for a talented
software engineer with 6+ years of good networking experience, let us
know! She
is fortunate to have bought her own home in 2002, where she lives with
her two
cats, Mouschke and Josh. Hal visited 4 times to help with house
fix-ups,
anticipating a possible sale if her next job forces a move.
Alison is still working
on completing her Masters degree in
Public Policy at Brown. She
has developed an interest in urban policy and is interning at the Urban
League,
where she will be monitoring the Rhode Island Legislature.
She'll be hitting the job market
as well later this year; a change in Administration in Washington will
hopefully
provide lots of opportunities. Her
two cats, S'More and Drew, both Tuxedos, keep her company, along with
new
boyfriend Jay.
Both our mothers
hung in
there this year. Helen (Ruth's
mother) had a mini stroke in September. Fortunately it impacted only
one leg,
and she's pretty much back to normal, that is to say in the upper 1% of
the
universe of 87 year olds. She and
her 94-year-old husband Dave are still living independently in the
apartment
Ruth grew up in! Vivian (Hal's
mother) is a real trooper at 91, and enjoys going out to dinner with
her three
kids, all of whom live about an hour away. Our
own health is good and our weight down; you don't see us
in those NutriSystem ads, but you could.
Although we like to think we're holding back the aging process,
we still
accept Hal's new Social Security checks.
No change in our feline
children: 3 residents (Bullwinkle,
Boris, & Baby)
and 2 neighboring interlopers (Rambo & Shadow) — all but orange
Bullwinkle being
some variant of a Siamese breed (3 long-hairs, all maybe Ragdolls).
Saturday, February
16, 2008, is St.
Harts Day XL.
Everyone's invited! We
still draw close to 100 friends and neighbors for this, our one social
hosting
of the year. Your St. Hart's Day invitation is, as always, linked
from http://hart-site.net, our family website. And please send us your email
addresses and/or url's
for any of you with your own websites — by email, of course.
And remember our new
motto: retired doesn't mean old.
Hal, Ruth, Erika, & Alison
Hart
Alison's email:
Alison_Hart@Brown.edu
Erika's email:
Erika@Alumni.Brown.edu
Ruth's email: Ruth.Hart@Cornell.edu
Hal's email: Hal.Hart@Alumni.Carleton.edu
Ruth & Hal at the Temple of Poseidon near
Athens, in
September
Webpage created 2 January 2008
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