Year-end Report - 2004

Casa Otra Banda

El Rancho, New Mexico

December 2004

Dear Friend,

Where to begin? Well, if you can ignore the corny border (which perhaps you cannot), this was a year with several major events. Two outstanding ones were that, 1) at least on paper, I retired from full-time employment at the end of June, and 2) immediately after that, David and I went to my daughter’s magnificent wedding ceremony, a three-day blast of an experience – fun, spiritual, and filled with human warmth – in which she joined her fate with her partner, Miryam Kabakov. If you have not gotten a copy of my “Reflections on a Wedding” and would like to share my experience of being a participant, let me know and I will be glad to e-mail you a copy.

As to retirement, that is something of a mixed bag. I say that mainly because after a short period of being outside the regular workforce, I went back to Los Alamos National Laboratory as a consultant-contractor, working part-time in the area that I had developed some expertise in, security issues relating to classified computer media.

In one sense, my timing in retiring was impeccable. Ten days after leaving, a security situation came to light that completely shut down the Laboratory. It was an emotionally devastating experience for most of the employees who had to go through a forced self-examination a la Chinese Communist “re-education” campaigns of the 1950’s. Many felt they were being blamed for the mistakes of a few, so that the upheavals led to a great deal of stress and demoralization. I missed all that, and I have to say, I was very glad I did.

On the other hand, it led to my reincarnation as a working stiff. I was asked if I would help in getting this troubled part of the security program back on track, help the Lab restore its damaged reputation, etc., etc. Since my goal, in retiring, was not to go from 100% work to 0% from one day to the next, this seemed like an inviting way to transition gradually out of the workforce. Besides, it paid pretty well, which did not hurt during this initial period when uncertainties about whether I could really live on my pension income was a real, if perhaps unmerited concern.

For about six weeks, I had a little taste of what it would be like to not work. First, David and I went to Mara’s wedding, literally the day after I walked out the door at work. The wedding took place in the northwest corner of Connecticut, the first part of a planned a two-week sojourn in western New England and central New York State. Historical ramblings, art galleries and museums, summer music and drama festivals (Glimmerglass, Saratoga, Tanglewood, Berkshire Repertory), were all part of the plan. We were fortunate to be in New England during the two weeks when the summer weather was close to perfect – sunny, dry, and relatively cool. Right after we returned home, things apparently turned cloudy, chilly and wet.

Upon our return to New Mexico I got into an initial pattern of working on day-to-day issues – the inevitable phone calls that are part of dealing with the health care system, membership in the local gym with David and me going together and trying to get ourselves in decent condition through aerobic workouts. We found that we actually enjoyed being home together, and worked out agreed-upon arrangements to give each other some space, but also to enjoy each other’s company.

By the second week of August, I was back at work a fair amount of time, and the brief idyll was over. But I have little doubt that this “outside work” will not go on for more than 18 months at a maximum. And when we feel like traveling a bit, we feel unconstrained to do so, which gives me a nice sense of freedom.

Meanwhile, my latest project at work is exactly what I wanted to work on – to develop an institutional database application in the security arena I am working in. I believe I am good at this, have a track record, and can find this a real challenge. Plus it badly needs doing, and doing right. So I am somewhat excited by being made the Project Leader.

The post-retirement era was not all peaches and cream. Right around the time I went back to the Lab, we realized we had a major plumbing problem with the house. We’d had premonitions for some months, but being a bit paranoid about the house anyway, and not being exactly sure what might actually be wrong, we waited until the signs became unmistakable.

This was probably the most costly, inconvenient, and basically miserable house mess of our lives. Admittedly, it was nothing like having a hurricane, tornado, or earthquake decimate your home, but it was not fun either. We eventually got through it, but it was a long slog (and we are still ironing out some issues with the contractor and our insurance company!).

Meanwhile, David was trying to concentrate on finishing the text for the book he has put three years of his life into – the book on American classic popular song in the second half of the twentieth century. The plumbing mess, with workmen traipsing through the place for over a week, did not foster the peace of mind he needed to work on completing the book. Since then, some complicated copyright and permission issues have emerged and created real concerns about meeting deadlines, or even possibly getting the book published at all. Needless to say, this has made it a bit rough going for David.

Although going back to work, even part-time, has suspended my taking on the kind of major projects that one thinks about as part of retirement – like taking courses, doing significant volunteer work, learning a new language, and that kind of thing. But I did begin to address some issues in my life that I’d put off for some time. None of it sounds terribly exciting or is worth going into, but it needed doing. I proved to myself that I could get in the habit of working out and sticking to an exercise program, however modest. I caught up on a million little chores around the house I’d been putting off forever and a day.

What I have not taken on yet, and wish I could, is to do a significant amount of cooking, trying out new recipes. I also have wanted to read any number of books that have always been on my list, but that will have to wait a little longer.

One undertaking I did try was that I signed up for two Sierra Club service (work) trips over the course of the summer. These are outdoors trips where instead of just having the standard kind of fun, you essentially volunteer yourself to be part of a work crew doing needed projects – in one case it was trail maintenance in the high Rockies. In the other, it was removing a terribly invasive “exotic” tree, tamarisk, from the stream banks of the Green River in Dinosaur National Monument. Both turned out to be very rewarding, even though they represented some of the hardest labor I’ve subjected myself to in a long, long time. I met wonderful people, and I learned a lot of the problems, and how what we were doing was contributing to alleviating those problems. Plus, we had some free days and we were, in both cases, in beautiful outdoor settings. Both trips were very rewarding experiences. (One ignores the fact of paying to volunteer time and effort, of course.)

I guess like so many others shortly after they retire – if they don’t wait too long – I really don’t feel old. I whisper my age to myself, and it doesn’t seem to fit me. I feel so much younger and I know that how you think of yourself, rather than chronological age is what has a lot to do with how one conducts oneself. I keep my fingers crossed that both David and I will stay in good health.

We have serious plans to sell the house and move into Santa Fe, with a projected date of summer 2006. Of course, it all depends – primarily on selling our present house. While we think the house itself is very saleable, there are some local issues – water, Indian ownership of the land around us – that could complicate things. I find it hard to imagine leaving where we are. The outdoors parts of the property are finally looking the way I want, and the place has the kind of natural, health look I’ve strived for. The setting is magnificent, and I am spoiled by the sense of freedom that being out of a city can give one. On the other hand, we are getting older, and before the house becomes too much, we would like to move into Santa Fe – in a lifetime care community – while we are still young and energetic enough to thoroughly enjoy Santa Fe. Our projected date means that some time in 2005 we really need to begin seriously working on downsizing our possessions, since any move we make is going to be into a considerably smaller living set-up. As demanding as that will be in terms of time invested, far more demanding will be the emotional impact of accepting that some precious things must be given up. We will be thinking about a good home for some, and become savvy as to how to use eBay for others.

Now that we are both retired, we do think about travel and the greater ease, in principle, to do it. Over the years, my ideas about travel have been evolving, and I now have a clearer idea what is satisfying to me. For one thing, I really like where I live – it is spectacularly beautiful and brings daily rewards. That being the case, I often think that the urge to travel is not as great, because I have already arrived where I want to be and it is very, very pleasing. I enjoy getting to know it better in all its many aspects and subtleties. But when I do travel, the idea of planting myself in one of the world’s great cities – New York, Paris, Rome – and exploring it exclusively, seems appealing. So many of the hip travel destinations I find disappointing in the end. Everyone thinks they are gong to a special, undiscovered place, and in all of them going to it, not only have they “discovered” it but changed it from what made it special. A big city is big enough to absorb all its visitors and maintain whatever local character it has. If there is no such thing anymore as an undiscovered place, then the only thing left is a big city where you can lose yourself and the city does not pander to you.

Interestingly enough, I am finding, increasingly, that traveling within the U.S. holds the best odds of finding unspoiled places. We’ve had any number of trips to places that are not considered travel destinations, and yet have had real character, history, local flavor – all the things we seek when traveling. There is the far southwestern corner of Louisiana, the last of the true old West in the northwest corner of Nebraska, any number of historic Mississippi River towns in Missouri, Illinois, and Iowa. Right – these are not on everyone’ travel list, but they are rewarding destinations for us.

One foreign country that I continue to find satisfying is Mexico. Almost all the regions of Mexico we have visited over the years have preserved their character and not been overwhelmed by tourists. (The one place popular with foreigners that really disappointed us was San Miguel de Allende – everyone looks at us cross-eyed when we say that it just was not for us!) Because Mexico is so close, in tends to be devalued, and yet for all the things we enjoy about foreign travel, Mexico comes up high on the list.

Overall, this was a fairly “slow” year travel-wise. David and I visited my father in Florida over Christmas break, 2003, and included our own little side trip to the southwest coast of Florida (Ft. Myers, Naples, Sanibel Island). And I made several additional trips to south Florida in the course of the year to see my Dad. There were a couple of long weekends to Los Angeles (to hear a concert in the new Disney Hall and hike in the Santa Monica hills) and Dallas-Ft. Worth (to see the new Nasher Sculpture Museum in Dallas and our favorite small museum anywhere, the Kimbel in Ft. Worth). Then New England in June-July, and finally Bali in October, which included a few days each in Los Angeles and Hong Kong. We do have some plans for 2005, but that is jumping ahead.

Gardening per se was not a major part of my life this past year. For reasons I am not entirely clear about, the vegetable garden has performed more and more poorly in the past few years. This spring I sent out soil samples for analysis, and based on the results – which were not a “slamdunk” as some say – took a stab at improving the soil. I got a late start this year, and the results were very mixed. As I become increasingly “retired” and as we focus on our transition into Santa Fe, there really won’t be much time to attend to a vegetable garden.

However, gardening, in the broadest sense, has been quite satisfying, as I approach the entire property holistically. I am developing a very good sense of what perennials, shrubs, and trees, are right for what area, and my success rate has improved dramatically. I am also doing more with less – learning how to divide and propagate plants and use them in places where I need them. We are seeing a significant drop in annual expenditures on the garden, and I attribute that at least in part to my increasing ability to do things for myself.

This year, while still in what appears to be a many-year drought cycle, historically speaking, our rainfall did improve over the last few years, and that is always to be welcome. The property now looks good, in all seasons, and I am very pleased with it. I like being outdoors and I am finding more time to actually enjoy the place without always having to put in so much work (although believe me, I still spend a lot of time at it.)

While Santa Fe continues to grow and in the expansion zones, starts looking more and more like Anywhere U.S.A., there is still a tremendous amount about the city and environs we continue to enjoy. Along with the growth has been a considerable expansion in the cultural wealth of the city – more galleries, more performing artists coming to town, a commensurate growth in culturally, socially, and politically aware people that makes Santa Fe one of those wonderful “islands” that go against the increasingly depressing American grain of the early 21^st century. While you are here you can fool yourself into thinking that the whole country thinks the way we think in Santa Fe – it is a comforting, if ultimately counterfeit experience, but it does add to the overall stimulation and enjoyment of living here.

Except indirectly in the previous paragraph, I have tried to keep away from anything that could be construed as “political.” Since I wrote up, separately, my thoughts post-election, alluding there as well to my overall sense of what kind of country we seem to be becoming (at least in the decades ahead), it has allowed me to not go to that depressing topic in this letter.

While we still live out in the Pojoaque Valley, we invite you to come visit and stay with us. Time is running out, so if you have been thinking about it, do it soon! Once we are in El Castillo, our lifetime care place in downtown Santa Fe, the visiting arrangements may be a bit trickier.

I hope this finds you well and with a bit of optimism about the year ahead. (In fact, if you find yourself with a surplus of optimism, please make a donation to me.) Wishing you a happy and healthy New Year,

Love,