December 2019 – M and D blog

Look at that, it’s time for another end-of-year blog post! This one will be followed in early January 2020 by a little postscript, as we will have returned by then from an exciting trip to see the Northern Lights (we’re hoping the weather will allow it) and we know you’ll not want to wait until December 2020 to read about that.

January started with a short trip to Mohonk Mountain House for our anniversary. We attended a wine class given by Kevin Zraly and took a guided walk up the mountain to the tower.

Work-wise, there were not big surprises in the Spring semester. The new item was that the course on economic inequality that D experimentally first offered in 2017 (see that year’s review on the blog) was now offered for the first time as an officially approved elective with writing credit.

Near the end of January we had a party at Estia restaurant to celebrate D’s 60th birthday. It was lovely to see so many friends and family come to break bread together and raise a toast to celebrate D’s newly round age.

In March, D’s brother Kostas and nephew Yannis, Kostas’s son, visited us for a week. Kostas came to participate in a workshop on Machine Learning at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, so we could visit with him on the two weekends that book-ended their visit, but Yannis stayed with us and we had several outings with him.

Kostas, Dimitrios, Marianne, Yannis in front of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton

In March we also took a short trip to Frederick, Maryland, as guests of our good friends Ellen and Jim. Frederick is a historic town, with many buildings that are a century or two old, good eateries, and a nice river park.

In April, D continued his streak of singing in the Meet Me @ The Music event organized by Honors music students at Temple University. This time, he performed the Song of Drunken People by Khrenikov, with a student accompanying him on the piano. For a top-notch performance (not by D!), and to get an idea of how fun this song is for a bass to sing, check out this YouTube clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zX4Jqabh1UI

M had a good Spring semester too, with the best, i.e., most hard-working and spirited, senior class ever. They made a deal with her that if they all got in their thesis papers she would go with them to the build-a-bear workshop at the local mall. Needless to say, the sight of twelve young people parading around with their newly made stuffed animals, a game of hangman, including a caricature of “Dr. Miz”, and pizza for all, made for a memorable celebration of the semester.

In late April, our good friend and D’s department chair (at the time) Mike Leeds surprised D with the Outstanding Service Award during the 2019 Economics department Award Luncheon.

In May we made a day trip to Paxson Farms, which proved as photogenic as promised online, and a two-night trip with an AirBnB in Kennett Square as our base, to visit the Nemours Estate, Winterthur, the Hagley Museum, and Longwood Gardens (all properties of various DuPonts in the past) without much back-and-forth driving from home. It proved to be a very nice, relaxing trip.

In June we visited Ocean City, NJ, for a few days, and were joined by Charlie and Nicki, which gave M the chance to go sailing with Charlie in the bay.

In July we drove to Ithaca, NY, and Aurora, NY, for a nostalgic visit to Cornell University, where M studied for her PhD, and to the Inns of Aurora, where we had a lovely visit in 2018. Check out M standing at the entrance of Uris Hall at Cornell, where her office was when she was a graduate student, and then a lucky capture of two bees in Cornell Plantations.

In August we visited with our friends Troy, J, and C, the Goschenhoppen festival, a recreation of life in Pennsylvania a couple of centuries back. Lots of photo opportunities there, from which we selected this reenactment of building a house to show you here.

Cutting a log into planks for house construction in Goschenhoppen festival

In August we spent a few days in California, visiting our good friends Jill and Rick and their youngest son, Owen, in Morro Bay at the beach house and in Pasadena at their house, as well as spending a few days in Santa Barbara. The trip was so photogenic it was a big task to narrow down the photo selection for this post.

September brought us great sadness at the loss of our wonderful friend Phil Jones, who died a month or so after he turned 74 years old. Phil was a friend we met in Mendelssohn Club when we were singing in that group in the 1990s. He helped us to get together romantically with a well-timed email, he sang and did a reading at our wedding, and was generally always around when we needed help. We are just two of many, many people for whom Phil was a wonderfully positive presence. Phil and his wife Ann had been at the 60th birthday party at Estia, where our friend Suzanne snapped this lovely photo of them.

Phil and Ann Jones on January 27 at Estia Restaurant in Philadelphia

Program for Phil Jones’s celebration of life in Chestnut Hill Meetinghouse, September 28.

A much happier event in September was the completion of the big job of putting new siding on our house. The old siding was made of cedar tiles. It was put up when the house was built in 1928 (our contractor found pages from newspapers dated June 1928 under the siding, evidently put there as insulation) and over the many decades it became weather-worn and full of holes (certain woodpeckers also had a hand, er, beak in this, too). Here are before and after photos.

The Fall semester was good for both M and D. We’ll finish this post with some photos from our visits to the Morris Arboretum and Longwood Gardens to see holiday light displays, as well as some photos from a fun excursion in South Philly with M’s brother Anthony and his wife Barbara and daughter April on Christmas Eve — but remember to stay tuned for another post in January for, we hope, great photos of the natural light display called the Northern Lights, which we hope to catch during our upcoming trip to Sweden.