We usually sum up our year in our Christmas letter to our family and friends. Here is 2014:
First, we apologize for the lateness of this letter and cast the blame on Nina’s computer, which we were deprived of for most of December until yesterday. It went through so complete an overhaul in its visit to the cyberdoctor that everything on it that hadn’t married it at the factory underwent a forced divorce and was gone when we got it home, of which the software we reloaded to write this letter was but a minor part. And it is looking like the important part – the stayed-behind-in-the-shop part - is unlikely to come back, alas. So don’t trust inanimate objects like computers. They are clearly out to get humans. Think HAL.
Aside from computer struggles, we realized when we started to write this letter that we have become very dull people, because we couldn’t think of a relatable thing that happened to us in 2014 except for the naked computer and the fact that we developed a roof leak in Alaska. Those have ramifications, yes, but none that would interest anyone else.
Our friends are doing interesting things – opening an antique store, for instance, or mulling a run for governor, or going to Dubai for the weekend (no, she’s not rich, she’s just clever), or moving a huge sailboat to Florida – which by contrast render us even more staid.
We did have some Berea College students down here this fall to talk about the environment and Appalachia. During the evening session, we wandered into local ghost stories, including one that happened to Dean’s brother Lee, and one that happened to his Aunt Mary. In Lee’s case, he saw a headless man on the highway between here and Ulvah. Ulvah sits on one of the possible routes back to Berea from here.
The students were much more interested in the ghost stories than the serious stuff, and, as we said our goodbyes in the dark of the parking lot, demanded to be taken back via Ulvah in hopes of seeing Lee’s ghost. Their faculty driver nixed (don’t you love those old crime noir expressions?) that proposal, admonishing them, “How likely is that? Waiting to see a ghost is not like waiting to see a moose come by.”
We refrained from telling him that, even in Alaska, waiting to see a moose come by is not a high percentage gamble either, unless you’re standing at the moose exhibit at the zoo. We do see them quite a lot, but always by chance. Taking a stand in a particular place and expecting one to show is like expecting a live deer to appear inside Bergdorf-Goodmans in NYC. Not impossible, but definitely don’t hold your breath.
(We will give you Aunt Mary’s ghost story later sometime.)
We are all agog at the thought of having a friend as governor. We did brush elbows with some prominent people when we lived in DC, but none were personal friends whom we could ask, “What’s it like to be a governor, governor?”
We have been trying to expand a fifteen-minute video of a local stir-off (an event, for you A-List people, at which sorghum molasses are made) to a thirty-minute documentary and, let us tell you, it would be easier to take pieces of the moon and construct a planet the size of Jupiter. There just isn’t enough to work with.
So we have been trying to expand it by including what Dean calls “animal boring facts,” along the lines of “Did you know that, in parts of the Middle East, molasses are made from grapes?”
(That phrase “animal-boring facts” is borrowed, by the way. When we lived in DC, one of the radio stations featured a thoroughly entertaining drive-time duo. One of them loved odd bits of knowledge, as I do, but whenever he tried to share one, his partner would cut him off with “No animal-boring facts!” Dean shares his dislike of A-BFs, so you can imagine the angst when I try to insert them to fill in the holes in the video.)
We will no doubt post the video here on Cornett Media when it's finished in a few weeks, so check back if you'd like to learn about Sugar Cane, Sorghum, and Stir-offs.
This summer, on the Russian River in Alaska, we did not experience, but did miss, one of the video opportunities of a lifetime. We had been filming a sow bear and two cubs (Warning, A-BF coming: In the bear world females are called sows and males boars, but the young are not called piglets or shoats; they are cubs; don’t know why in either case) fishing along the other bank of the river.
Dean had just shut off the camera and we’d turned to leave when this big boar came roaring out of the riverside brush toward the sow and cubs. Sows with cubs keep away from boars with the same fervor doctors isolate ebola patients, and for the same survival purposes, since boars often kill and sometimes eat cubs. We can only speculate that the sow was upwind to have let a boar get so close without scenting it and reacting.
She reacted like lightning, though, once she saw it. She and the cubs flew out of the river at an angle away from the charge, leapt onto the bank, and were into the woods in a flash, the rear cub escaping the swipe of the boar’s paw by a hair. We didn’t have time to turn the camera on, much less point and shoot. One of those frustrations life is full of, alas.
Another frustration: We have been hoping to spot a black bear around our house in Kentucky, attracted by food in the woods. (Not that we would put food out to attract a bear; we would never do that. After all, it is illegal. And it didn’t work anyway.) So far, all we seem to attract is possums. Do we seem to be on a frustration roll here?
Have a wonderful, unfrustrating holiday season!
Dean and Nina
First, we apologize for the lateness of this letter and cast the blame on Nina’s computer, which we were deprived of for most of December until yesterday. It went through so complete an overhaul in its visit to the cyberdoctor that everything on it that hadn’t married it at the factory underwent a forced divorce and was gone when we got it home, of which the software we reloaded to write this letter was but a minor part. And it is looking like the important part – the stayed-behind-in-the-shop part - is unlikely to come back, alas. So don’t trust inanimate objects like computers. They are clearly out to get humans. Think HAL.
Aside from computer struggles, we realized when we started to write this letter that we have become very dull people, because we couldn’t think of a relatable thing that happened to us in 2014 except for the naked computer and the fact that we developed a roof leak in Alaska. Those have ramifications, yes, but none that would interest anyone else.
Our friends are doing interesting things – opening an antique store, for instance, or mulling a run for governor, or going to Dubai for the weekend (no, she’s not rich, she’s just clever), or moving a huge sailboat to Florida – which by contrast render us even more staid.
We did have some Berea College students down here this fall to talk about the environment and Appalachia. During the evening session, we wandered into local ghost stories, including one that happened to Dean’s brother Lee, and one that happened to his Aunt Mary. In Lee’s case, he saw a headless man on the highway between here and Ulvah. Ulvah sits on one of the possible routes back to Berea from here.
The students were much more interested in the ghost stories than the serious stuff, and, as we said our goodbyes in the dark of the parking lot, demanded to be taken back via Ulvah in hopes of seeing Lee’s ghost. Their faculty driver nixed (don’t you love those old crime noir expressions?) that proposal, admonishing them, “How likely is that? Waiting to see a ghost is not like waiting to see a moose come by.”
We refrained from telling him that, even in Alaska, waiting to see a moose come by is not a high percentage gamble either, unless you’re standing at the moose exhibit at the zoo. We do see them quite a lot, but always by chance. Taking a stand in a particular place and expecting one to show is like expecting a live deer to appear inside Bergdorf-Goodmans in NYC. Not impossible, but definitely don’t hold your breath.
(We will give you Aunt Mary’s ghost story later sometime.)
We are all agog at the thought of having a friend as governor. We did brush elbows with some prominent people when we lived in DC, but none were personal friends whom we could ask, “What’s it like to be a governor, governor?”
We have been trying to expand a fifteen-minute video of a local stir-off (an event, for you A-List people, at which sorghum molasses are made) to a thirty-minute documentary and, let us tell you, it would be easier to take pieces of the moon and construct a planet the size of Jupiter. There just isn’t enough to work with.
So we have been trying to expand it by including what Dean calls “animal boring facts,” along the lines of “Did you know that, in parts of the Middle East, molasses are made from grapes?”
(That phrase “animal-boring facts” is borrowed, by the way. When we lived in DC, one of the radio stations featured a thoroughly entertaining drive-time duo. One of them loved odd bits of knowledge, as I do, but whenever he tried to share one, his partner would cut him off with “No animal-boring facts!” Dean shares his dislike of A-BFs, so you can imagine the angst when I try to insert them to fill in the holes in the video.)
We will no doubt post the video here on Cornett Media when it's finished in a few weeks, so check back if you'd like to learn about Sugar Cane, Sorghum, and Stir-offs.
This summer, on the Russian River in Alaska, we did not experience, but did miss, one of the video opportunities of a lifetime. We had been filming a sow bear and two cubs (Warning, A-BF coming: In the bear world females are called sows and males boars, but the young are not called piglets or shoats; they are cubs; don’t know why in either case) fishing along the other bank of the river.
Dean had just shut off the camera and we’d turned to leave when this big boar came roaring out of the riverside brush toward the sow and cubs. Sows with cubs keep away from boars with the same fervor doctors isolate ebola patients, and for the same survival purposes, since boars often kill and sometimes eat cubs. We can only speculate that the sow was upwind to have let a boar get so close without scenting it and reacting.
She reacted like lightning, though, once she saw it. She and the cubs flew out of the river at an angle away from the charge, leapt onto the bank, and were into the woods in a flash, the rear cub escaping the swipe of the boar’s paw by a hair. We didn’t have time to turn the camera on, much less point and shoot. One of those frustrations life is full of, alas.
Another frustration: We have been hoping to spot a black bear around our house in Kentucky, attracted by food in the woods. (Not that we would put food out to attract a bear; we would never do that. After all, it is illegal. And it didn’t work anyway.) So far, all we seem to attract is possums. Do we seem to be on a frustration roll here?
Have a wonderful, unfrustrating holiday season!
Dean and Nina
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