May 9, 2024: A Very Big Year

 

The lake at Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health
May 9, 2024

Our 37th year of marriage has been a momentous and eventful year, indeed! 

We began the year in Chicago (see our 2023 anniversary post), winding up some family time for James' birthday.

Our next adventure was to visit Maryland, where we spent Pam's birthday at a special exhibit of Jim Henson's work at the Maryland Cultural Museum in Baltimore. We then had dinner with family.

Friends from our Greater Boston PFLAG group were part of the GLBTQ flag raising in the nearby town of Mansfield, where James had been invited to be the keynote speaker. It was a great opportunity to let a broader community know about the support that PFLAG provides, and for us all to learn a bit more about the history of a group that has been very important to our family.

James spent much of July fulfilling a long-time desire to take an extended journey in the Amazon, sharing the adventure with Dr. Miguel Nenevé, the very first friend he had made in South America, back in 1996. This was the fifth visit to the Amazon for James and provided a great opportunity for learning and reflection. James drew heavily on this experience in a course about the region that he taught for BSU Senior College in the fall. As she often does, Pamela helped with the title: Forest and Fables.

After returning from Brazil, James went back to Chicago, this time to help Harvey move into our Fairhaven home. He spent the year figuring out his next chapter while spending a lot of time with Crumpet. Near the end of the year, he was accepted to library school at the University of Rhode Island. We are very proud, and now James has to be more careful with his use of the phrase "my favorite librarian" because he has two of them!

We have been supporters of the historic Zeiterion Theater in New Bedford for quite a few years. In August, we had the opportunity for a behind-the-scenes tour of the theater, which was also a preview of the very extensive remodeling that is still underway there. Even more exciting was our chance to see the last performance before the extended closer of the theater: a dazzling performance of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. We had heard of this play for years, but had no idea just how, well, amazing it would be!

Pam continued her work as a public scholar of information literacy by teaching a Senior College course on Banned Books, which was very well received. She was later part of an interdisciplinary panel on book banning at Bridgewater Public Library during Banned Books Week. Another notable achievement in this area was Pam's publication (paid!) on the blog of the Heterodox Academy.

A highlight of the autumn was a much-anticipated opportunity to hear Lech Walensa speak at our university. He was a hero in our young adult years, a labor leader who brought down the Soviet Union with non-violent protests and became the first elected president of Poland. Sadly, his speech fell a bit flat and included him excusing the pope for his role in the global scandal of sexual abuse by clergy. 

After years of not being directly involved in local environmental projects, James wore two hats this year -- one as a member of the Bridgewater Tree Committee and the other as part of a project to design and build a public trail on conservation land associated with the correctional facility in Bridgewater. 

For the second time, we traveled to Maryland on Veterans' Day weekend to complete the 10k walk across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, this time with both Bob and Teresa, whose home is conveniently located near the eastern end of the bridge. This was our second time completing this event (our first Bay Bridge walk having been before we were married, and closer to 5k). We were fortunate to have perfect weather as we completed the journey with 36,000 of our new closest friends.

For the first time in several years, we met our friend Tim Kelehan when he was in Boston for a conference. This is an occasional treat that we had not had since before the pandemic. Tim was one of Pam's closest friends in college but now lives on the opposite corner of the country, so this was delightful.

In December we created a special project for ourselves, we watched a different movie adaptation of A Christmas Carol every day as an advent countdown. Most of these were films (and of course we blogged about it), but we also attended a book discussion at the local Congregational church and the famous reading of the entire book sponsored by WBUR in Boston. We had heard about this event and although it is no longer held in the same hotel where Dickens first read it, the reading/performance was as marvelous as we had heard. 

We were fortunate to attend several other special performances during the winter. The whole family enjoyed John Waters Christmas special and we both went to Washington DC for a performance of Swept Away, a whaleship story that is, as we write this, going to Broadway. Both of these performances were genuine treats, and we very much enjoyed spending time on our own in DC. We finally made it to the Smithsonian Museum of African American History.

In January, James led his first travel course since the pandemic, Geography of Coffee in Cape Verde. Harvey eagerly joined the course, and learned enough Portuguese from Duolingo before we went that he actually was able to put it to use during the visit. Harvey earned his first graduate credits from his participation, which was characterized by very keen attention to questions of social justice. The entire family was exposed to COVID-19 just as the trip began, with Pam and Harvey both testing positive. This complicated things somewhat, but the trip was successful. During the trip, James decided to change the focus of his next (and final) sabbatical to further study of coffee in Cape Verde.

The entire family was able to continue the Cape Verde experience in the spring semester, when the Rector of the University of Cabo Verde visited our campus. We arranged for our family to join his entire delegation for lunch to talk about scholarship in general and librarianship in particular. It was wonderful to spend time with an academic leader who is an actual academic, something that has become rare in this country. These and other growing connections with the country will allow all of us to collaborate in various ways, especially as James' 2026. sabbatical approaches.

Soon after James and Harvey returned, the whole family experienced an extraordinary performance of Moby Dick with puppets. This globally traveling production would be difficult to describe and will not be forgotten!

Soon after that, we began a process that consumed much of our attention for the rest of our 37th year and that continues as we write this (belatedly) at the end of June. We began the process of Pam's retirement and our retrenchment to a single home. What began as a weekend getaway in Fairhaven will be our permanent home. The process began with finding a contractor/designer and wrangling the financing so that the equity in our Bridgewater house could be used to completely overhaul our Fairhaven house. At this point in mid-summer, the Fairhaven house is mostly an empty shell, with no walls, floors or ceilings in most of it. But the whole family worked with Quinlan Company to design something that will be our only home -- and a lovely one -- by the end of the calendar year.

Another entertainment highlight was the Boston production of the Cher Show. We have been mostly casual fans, although we were known as Hace Sol y Compartir (Sunny and Share) during our 1989 summer program in Mexico. This show was surprisingly emotional for us. James might have cried twice.

On April 8, we had a great family experience, though not exactly together. Almost a year ahead of time, we reserved a room in Lydon, New York for the total eclipse of the sun. Harvey opted not to join us, so he was to stay at home with Crumpet for a partial eclipse. Just a couple days out -- before dog care could be arranged -- he decided to go with his friend Kady to view the eclipse in northern Vermont. With the dog. This seemed a crazy plan but something we would have done at that age. In the end, a good time was had by all, though Harvey had to contend with considerably more traffic!

The last big event of our year was solo for James -- racing in the Wicked Whaleboat Challenge for the first time in a number of years. Usually James is busy serving coffee during the event. Last year participants got by on Dunkin' (the horror!) while we were in Chicago. This year, James brought decent coffee to the event and it was gratifying that so many racers from throughout New England had been anticipating the good coffee. The Shiverin' Timbers did very well in a race that we helped to design, placing 6th in a competitive field of 17 teams. 

As shown above, we celebrated our anniversary with a three-day stay at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health. Accommodations and meals were simple -- a dorm room and a healthy buffet. It was good for body and soul, as we attended a few yoga and divination classes and walked the grounds. We were quiet and offline most of the time. Scandal alert: we did sneak some Malbec in to toast the occasion. And we'll probably do all of this again before long!

To end: the view from our room. It really was this lovely.