MERRY CHRISTMAS 2008

Gretchen and Dana Smith

If anyone has ever wished for a white Christmas, they should come to Flagstaff. We're on the tail end of a massive snow storm, lasting four days, dumping more than three feet of snow on our back deck. Schools have been closed for three days. The ponderosa pines behind and beyond our deck don't need to be flocked, heavily laden, as they are, with snow. The beauty of our landscape is picture postcard.

We're content and happy, probably the most content and happiest in our lives, at least for two opinionated people. We're in good health and doing exactly what we want to do. Gretchen has become an artist, creating and fashioning jewelry, especially necklaces, from her raku fired beads and other stones and metal beads. People admire and buy her work. She's been in several juried shows.

Dana works in the garden and writes a column on gardening for the local newspaper, the Arizona Daily Sun, along with editing other contributors to the Master Gardener Column and firing off letters to the editor. Roxie, on a stringent diet to loose 30 of her 90 pounds, causes Gretchen and Dana much angst as she plaintively begs for more food.


Also, we have many very nice neighbors, especially at snow removal time, plowing us out with their snow blowers. One of the many advantages of age is that people do things for one.

We had a delightful Thanksgiving visiting family in California where Elizabeth cooked up a splendid meal. Dana Marie is in law school, second year, and doing well. Michael, Elizabeth's husband, oversees a successful world-wide business. Tim is getting ready to retire from the LA County Fire Department, purchasing property in Thailand, and Paul cruising along making a name for himself on eBay.

We're grateful that our national nightmare is over with the election of Barack Obama. As Mrs. Obama said, "We can be proud to be Americans again."

We hope to see our government and leaders invest in human beings once again rather than inhuman right-wing Fundamentalist self-serving ideologies. God invested in human beings by taking our flesh in the Christ Child. In addition to making us in his image, he also took our flesh and marked us with his blood. So let's a Merry Christmas, recalling the significance of the season for human dignity.

Gretchen and Dana