Posted: 2 years ago

I was trading messages with our own Jack Selway earlier today, and in the process, sent him my annual letter. Sounds almost like an accident, doesn't it? Regardless, he either liked it or was way too polite to suggest he didn't.

It struck me that it might (always the operative word, "might") be interesting for us to have a place to share annual letters with each other. Of course, we already do - you know that from being in the forums and reading this now - but I thought a thread on annual letters might be entertaining. There's that important word again.

So, in the spirit of letting everyone know what 2009 was like for my family, I'll paste below this year's holiday letter. Enjoy, and feel free to share your own!

Rushton

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Holidays 2009

Dear Family and Friends,

Happy New Year to everyone! This go-round, Dad (Rushton) asked me, Chiquita, youngest of the three cats, to write the holiday letter. I pointed out that I'm not all that practiced at such things, and that this would take serious time away from napping and chasing those things that only we felines can see. He seemed to think my schedule could handle it, though.

My oldest cousin, Gordita of Great Girth, has had a solid year, as she always seems to have. I'm always impressed with just how often she lets Dad and Mama (Tabitha) know she needs food, and the unusual times of day she chooses to express her needs. Moments when Dad and Mama are sleeping soundly seem special favorites for her. Her younger sister, Flaka of the Bland but Expensive Food for Those with Allergies, has been quite sick this year, but has hung in there well. They even learned to give her fluids intravenously at one point, which she typically would follow by choosing an inappropriate place to urinate. A bit Philistine, that one, though I wouldn't want a needle in my back, either.

Dad's been away a lot, as he travels around the country speaking to groups of teachers about technology, multimedia, and making what they do more engaging for students. He and Mama used one of the trips to New York to take a couple of days to walk around Manhattan, though they didn't bring squat back to me. Ingrates. I still let them rub my belly, though, as I think they need it. He also took a big trip to England and Ireland in the summer - something about developing a relationship between our town of Santa Clara and the city of Limerick. After he got back he bored me with a bunch of pictures of new friends and where Harry Potter lives or something, but as I was worried he wouldn't feed me if I wandered off, I sat through it.

Mama still works long hours for the school district, with a title longer than the ingredient list for the food Flaka eats. She organized a team for Relay for Life in the spring, and spent a monster chunk of the fall working on a parcel tax campaign for the district. They're having real trouble buying scratching posts and mouse toys, it seems. By law, they needed a two-thirds vote for it to pass, and missed it by about 250 votes. All I know is it's over and she's home more, so I get to sit in the window and watch her do her gardening around the deck. Good lady, she is. In between during the summer, she and Dad did something they'd been talking about for years, which was to spend a week in Hawaii. He tells me that they have huge litter boxes along the ocean there, and that they, Jacob, Heidi, and Baby C had a great time walking where I would have pooped.

Also during the summer, a nice young lady named Kelly started showing up. Mama spent a lot of time with her in the first half of the year helping her apply to and prepare for Chico State, and she's there now getting good grades. She does visit on holidays, though, which means another pair of hands is available to pet Flaka, Gordita, and me.

Speaking of nice young ladies, Dad told me about his half-sister Laine getting married in October. He and Mama flew to Marathon, Texas, and spent several days with family there enjoying time with each other in seriously rural territory. That prompted another round of pictures, but it didn't look like a place with enough crunchies for me. It's all about the crunchies, after all.

For the coming year, I'm planning to spend plenty of time curled up near Dad while he sits at the computer working on his NextVista.org stuff. Still trying to save the world, apparently. Gordita hopes to spend most waking moments in Mama's lap getting brushed. Flaka will undoubtedly keep trying to get into the wrong food - I don't think she has clued in to what that stuff does to her bowels. Not the sharpest knife in the drawer, she is. That said, Dad and Mama love and clean up after her anyway.

Well, it's high time I climbed into a window to watch some birds. You are welcome to come pet me any time, though please let Dad and Mama know well in advance, if possible, as they continue to maintain pretty intense schedules.

May your 2010 be full of naps and free of furballs.

With love,
Chiquita

P.S. Here's the picture that went with the Walmart-produced card.

Posted: 2 years ago

I think that sharing Annual Holiday Letters is a great idea. Some have seen this first one before but the second is a newer one which was sent out very selectively. Happy Holidays!

Dear Friends:

It is that season again, a time to give (and if we give, we receive more than we give, I know). Today, two days before the official opening of Christmas (no matter what the stores say about Valentine's Day being the first day of the Christmas season), we will celebrate Anne’s birthday. She is officially 30 today (one day more than the last time that I sent out bumper stickers saying: "Anne Kagle is not 29", on her 49th birthday, years ago). No bumper stickers this birthday (just turning off the television news this morning, sitting on the bed, and singing her a ˜Happy Birthday" song). She has gotten, already this early in the day, four virtual birthday cards over the Internet and one delivered personally by our son, Christopher, plus balloons and flowers in a vase, personally delivered from a drive-up florist. She will get a cake and candles tomorrow (and little presents) when we journey to The Woodlands where our daughter lives.

For the two of us, we splurged together, again already, in getting new laminate flooring for two/thirds of the house and new carpet in all the bedrooms (that large present to ourselves counts for this birthday, Christmas, New Years and our January 53rd Wedding Anniversary). It is the first major home improvement since we moved in five years ago, painting the whole house, putting up spotlights to show off my paintings, placing a new shower with a saved and carved piece of tile from the Northwest and new tile floors in both bathrooms, building a storage shed which takes about 1/3 of my art work (the studio and a rented storage area takes the rest, with the college getting paintings for two buildings on their walls). Some days it just does not seem like Christmas (except in the faces of the grandchildren, Erin and Matt, but we have not gone through the yearly ritual of opening presents and hearts on Christmas morning. That will cement Christmas in our spirits!). Oh, I did get some presents: news that a blood test came back ˜normal" and acceptance in several exhibitions (one of which is an International Online Juried Exhibition which gets 800,000 visitors each month). The news of the exhibit was great but it is interesting that sometimes a present is when nothing happens. (Plus, one other in 2009: the Published Writing Award for the Lone Star College System- six colleges).

Where something continues to happen is our love gets stronger and deeper (you know, we can still get a little upset with each other because we are who we are but now it is built on cooperation, not confrontation). It is interesting that we still look forward to the joy of what we build, not where we have built yesterday (although the past is the foundation for any lasting structure in our lives, because we know now that 'there are more yesterdays than tomorrows'- that is called "reality"). Therefore, we wish you all the best in this coming year, a happy holiday happening now and in the future, and much love because without love the giving is a gesture, not a life changing event. The receiving of love is a gift for any season, any moment of any day! So, again 'already', love....

Anne and Joe

Nestled in Texas but living around the globe!

MY RECENT CHRISTMAS PRESENT

My recent Christmas present started as many of my most cherished gifts happen: as a surprise. I was goofing around, as is my nature when I am trying subconsciously to change the milieu of an event. Humor is a powerful change agent. And Christmas is the emotional time that precedes our annual analytical side: New Year's Eve.

It was Christmas morning and all the family was circled around the brightly-decorated, gift-magnet, artificial Christmas tree (that came in three sections, already adorned with lights, waiting for more lights, different colored balls, and stuff that drips of nostalgia (memory-filled with the past: pictures, created ornaments, special pull-string toys, angels, funny creatures, candy canes, and, of course, multiple images of Santa, reindeers, snow flakes and stars). We were all opening presents (one at a time) except for the children where the rules do not apply. As the ritual continued, I noticed one elegantly-wrapped present to my daughter from her husband, covered in shiny red paper, circled with a special green bow seeming to hold a treasure in its bosom.

Instinctively, I took the discarded green bow and place it around my head, like an American Indian of the past, celebrating some victory. As each present was opened with a bow on the box, I took them and stuck them on my chest: becoming a wrapped present to myself.

It was only a few days later that I realized that I had given ˜my self to myself," a Christmas present. This is not the first time that this has happened in my life. I have, it seems, to have always believed that one cannot give of themselves, service above self, without first giving ˜your self to yourself". You have to have something intrinsically as ˜your own" to give if the giving is to have any meaning.

In a time when the ˜times are bad," it is interesting to find that the greatest gift that we give to others is an essence that we call 'my self'. That gift, with the green bow draped around my 'silly-bone' head, is filled with ideas, hopes, accomplishments, talents, dreams and knowledge (like knowing that the greatest gift is not the 'dreamer' but the 'dream' that outlives the messenger). There is a song sung (can't remember who sang it first) that has the line about leaving your children only that which stays in their heads.

This is the realization that I had, again, this Christmas/New Year: you can give the gift of 'self' if you first give that gift to 'your self' (expanding that self into something worth passing on to others). There are so many examples of this (citing a few gets across the point): Moses, Kennedy, Lincoln, Gandhi, Rembrandt, Martha Graham, Joan of Arc, Robert Frost, Kazantzakis, Paul Harris, Ravel (some of my giants of dreaming)...and on and on. We join hands with this company with our gift. These giants put a green ribbon on their heads at some point in time, initially giving their special self to themselves. It is a universal ritual of passage.

It can be done in a silly fashion, a head fake where people around think that it is only done for a laugh or it can be done in a serious fashion (like writing journals of what makes a 'self' to pass on). How it is done is not as important as doing it. Each of us must remind 'our self' that we are doing this and the education of the self is never ending (as long as one lives). Others may only see what is done when the individual 'self' is given selflessly to the world. Others need not know that this first gift is a part of the ritual where you find out that if you know yourself you can give it to the world. And if you are fortunate, the message of the Christmas/New Year present of 'self to self' is carried on by others. Is it the truth? Who knows? But it is a realization that: the dream of what is worthwhile about 'self' (all selves) outlives the dreamer when it is shared.