My 2020 Christmas Letter
Season's Greetings Christmas 2020
Well, the 2020
U.S. presidential election and the Covid - 19 pandemic certainly dominated the
news this past year, didn't they? But one bright ray of hope that nearly all
Americans either missed or quickly glossed over was the announcement of the
Abraham Accords, leading to the normalization of relations between Israel and
three of her Arab neighbors: The United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Sudan, with
more Arab neighbors very likely to follow suit in the coming years. This will
certainly be a highlight of President Trump's legacy.
From my
son, Johnathan, 39: In
March, Johnathan, Carissa, Hunter and Kennedy went to Jupiter, FL to see the
St. Louis Cardinals play in spring training, but ended up missing the game by
one day due new COVID restrictions. So, they decided to make due by bumping up
their trip to Orlando and visiting Disney World on the very last day before
they closed. They had also booked flights
to London to watch the Cards v. Cubs exhibition games, which were also
cancelled. They're still holding onto
their plane tickets and plan to make a trip around western Europe out of those. Zoom meeting schooling for 9-year-old Hunter
and 6-year-old Kennedy has been challenging to say the least, but they're
getting by just fine. All family members
participated in Carissa's union's strike in January. Hunter and Kennedy enjoyed yelling slogans
into the bullhorn.
From my
daughter, Holly, 35: What an
interesting year this has turned out to be LOL! Dave for the first time working
for a liquor distributor, while it still is in the service industry, he during
this pandemic has supplemented work in a different way. With restaurants being
at 25% capacity or not at all, where they serve only take out. He’s had a positive outlook overall seeing
this as a way to try something different. Holly is still working at her local
New Jersey dance studio, even though it’s even more part time with the pandemic
and with being a full-time mom to Melanie (who is no longer a baby and now a
toddler 😔). To this very
day Melanie has traveled on an airplane eight different times in her life and
would’ve had two more added on if able to go home for Christmas.. She’s quite
the world traveler, domestically speaking LOL. She was able to see her uncles
Johnathan and Brett and aunts Carissa and Amanda and her cousins Hunter in
Kennedy during those travels which was really great! She had also gotten to see
Great-Grandmommy over the summer as well as her Meme (Mernell) and Grandpa Greg
and a few cousins! She also got to
experience the beach and sand for the first time up at Cape Cod, where Dave’s
dad and stepmom reside, which was so cool to witness! She’s a beach bum for sure (like her
parents)! She has now had her first Easter, her first birthday, her second
Halloween at a social distance and soon will celebrate the others the same.
Thank goodness she’s only one, honestly don’t think she minds or knows to mind
lol. We are truly sad that we are still in a state of quarantine and can’t be
with the family this coming holiday but we want you to know that we send our
love, stay safe and Happy HollyDayz!
Johnathan's
& Holly's half-brother, Brett, and his wife, Amanda, are excited to be
expecting their first baby this coming April, 2021.
My good
college friend, Kim, was kind enough to make me a St. Louis Cardinals--themed
face mask to wear to protect me from Covid, not just once, but twice (after I,
unfortunately, learned that one should not place the mask in a washer and dryer
cycle).
I want to thank
Carol Ann, a married woman from Ohio, for my sixth enjoyable year of being pen
friends with her. Also, thanks to Zofia in Germany and Phuong in Nevada for corresponding
with me in 2020. And a special thanks to Victoria in Canada for a very special
three months of corresponding with me. T'was truly remarkable.
My sister, Diane, and husband, Mark, are in the process of moving back to southern Missouri to enjoy their retirement. And my sister, Rochelle, and husband, Ed, have completed their move to Virginia to also enjoy their retirement. Speaking of retirement, I have completed 30 years of retirement as an engineer with the Soil Conservation Service due to disability, which served me extremely well at a very difficult time in my life. My mother is age 88 and is still living in her farm home for the past 70 years, but she is no longer able to “leap tall buildings in a single bound.” But her children, particularly Chris, Angela, & Alicia; and Mike & Lisa Houston and ‘adopted’ granddaughter, Emily, care for her needs. We are all very thankful that Mother is still enjoying life.
Though Patricia
Falco Beccalli accepted my Facebook friend request back in October, 2009 (when
she was an anchor for CNBC Europe as Patricia Szarvas, before she later
married), Mrs. Falco Beccalli and I exchanged our first brief messages with
each other in 2020 and, to make a very long story short, I messaged to Mrs.
Falco Beccalli that my hearing directly from her was a thrill for me.
Sadly, my cousin on my father's side,
Jeffry Jarboe, passed away in August at the age of 60. My father's first
cousin, Paul Wood, passed away at age 95 in May, whose wife, Mary, passed away
in 2019. As I wrote to Paul's daughter, Kathy, we didn't know the strong
individuals that our parents and other adults in our communities were when we
were growing up until we later ventured out into the world. My first work
supervisor after my college graduation, Jerry McElhiney, passed away in
November at the age of 90. Jerry was recognized within the Soil Conservation
Service (in the USDA) as one of the best to train new engineers and I was one
of the many "rookie" engineers who was fortunate enough to train
under Jerry at Warrensburg, Missouri in 1976 - 1977. During my first (of seven)
psychiatric hospitalizations in January, 1989, I received a letter from Jerry
that expressed Jerry's soothing and reassuring "writing voice" in
which he wrote to me, midway through this letter, "You are one of the best
Engineers I know Greg,......" Coming from Jerry, that made me feel very
good while I was in the hospital. And this letter is still invaluable to me today.
Two legends in St. Louis Baseball Cardinals history (and who were great stars
when my brother, Chris, and I fell in love with Cardinals baseball in the
Summer of 1966, listening to every game that we possibly could on the radio),
Bob Gibson and Lou Brock, passed away in 2020 less than a month apart from each
other. A major era in St. Louis Cardinals baseball coming to an end.
On the astronomy and space exploration front, American astronauts were once again launched on American rockets from American soil for the first time in nine years, thanks to the private company, SpaceX, with two manned launches in 2020. (Thank you to the nation of Russia for providing the only access to the International Space Station for all human beings since 2011.) The star in the right shoulder of the Orion constellation, Betelgeuse, mysteriously dimmed in late 2019 and early 2020, leading to (wild) speculations by some of Betelgeuse going supernova in our lifetimes, but it then regained its former brightness. Studies suggested that occluding large-grain circumstellar dust may be the most likely explanation for the dimming of the star. I observed and I obtained a few photos of Comet NEOWISE, but it was a quite a flop compared to Comet Hale-Bopp in 1997. And we are now approaching the Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn on December 21, 2020, which only occurs once every 20 years. To see this, pray for a clear sky, find a completely unobstructed southwestern horizon about 45 – 60 minutes after sunset and just above the southwestern horizon, the two giant planets of our solar system will almost merge into one "star" on Dec. 21st , quite a sight to see through a small telescope: Saturn with its glorious rings and Jupiter with its four large moons. Enjoy watching their close approach to each other in the coming days.
My pen friend, Carol Ann, correctly noted to
me that my life wouldn't change much with Covid when she wrote to me in March,
2020, "Since you don’t go out very much, life may feel a lot the same to
you even though we have the virus. Other than the news and a shopping trip here
and there, you can pretty much ignore it.” I replied back to Carol Ann of this recent
exchange between my friend since childhood, Billy, and myself, Billy becoming
disabled from his railroad job around the same time that I was disabled from my
engineering job in the year 1990. (Billy grew up on a farm only one mile from
the farm that I grew up on, our Moms long being the best of friends, and Billy
and I were two of the 18 students in our graduating High School Class of 1972
at Madison, Missouri):
Greg Jarboe: I don't know about
you, Billy, but nearly all of America is changing closer to my lifestyle for
the next few weeks or months. 😏
Billy: Greg, well, we're
both qualified and skilled in the art of being hermits. Maybe we should stand 6
feet apart and make and sell a video on lifestyle changes?? Think??? 😷😷😷😁
Greg Jarboe: Billy, sounds like a
plan!
Comments
Post a Comment