Dear __________,

December, 1991

Merry Christmas; and here it is, family news time again.

A

n article I recently read on architecture compared the classic and modern idioms by observing that a good contemporary building is exciting when viewed from the middle distance, but from further away tends to appear as a geometric bloc, and from

close up is all panes, planes and girders. But a Gothic cathedral is a marvel at all distances: majesty from afar, grace from the middle distance, its sculptings giving joy close up. I thought when I read that, Why, that describes what retirement's turning out to be like. Corporation life was exciting, offering challenges, but there's little utility there to stand back and "philosophize" nor time to examine minutia. My, how the universe has now expanded!

W	e remain in Cincinnati, our ultimate goal of moving to the Berkshires with a pied-a-terre in Boston still somewhere over the horizon, Lois' mother being so well ensconced here. We have good friends around us however, and are content with the

arrangement, the more so as the balance of our values between excitement and comfort shifts toward the latter.

W	e're still valiantly trying to learn to play tennis, if for no other reason than to keep our circulatory systems from just giving up and gelling. We're batting away and enjoying it, the acquisition of crass competitive competence being consigned blithely
to irrelevancy.

T	he joys of genealogy have newly been revealed to me, and I've leapt into the pursuit of ancestors with both feet (if I don't unmix that metaphor I'll trip flat on my face). The detective work is good fun, offering the satisfactions of crossword-puzzling, and

history is brought to life. You can even persuade yourself that the information you're compiling constitutes wealth for your progeny. News flash (of seasonal relevance): I've discovered that a 3rd cousin 4 times removed was the author of the poem: "'Twas the Night before Christmas". Alas, further research indicates that he probably plagiarized it. Oh well.

Of greater potential benefit, I've just learned of the existence of a contemporary relative, a 1st 1/2 cousin once removed, who's the chief tennis pro at the Mariotte in Maui.

T

ravel still seems to offer the most reportable events of life: in early Spring a ski-week with Peter, in April a week with friends in the mountains of Tennessee, in May a much-anticipated visit to southern Europe, which began by recuperating from

jet-lag with a week on the Amalfi coast, then charging through several days of Florence to come to ground for a warm ten-day sojourn with friends in Grasse, finally winding up via Paris for a week in Brussels with Arthur (.....and it all felt as good as it ever did). Then in August we experienced for the first time the Pacific Northwest, crowning a tour of Victoria, Vancouver and Washington with a stay at the Benton's new high-desert home in Oregon. In September I got to be a spectator at the Ryder Cup in Kiawah. Then - we stayed home, and Lois raked leaves (pneumatically), while I mined ancestors.

A	ll four kids remain single, our repeated offers to baby-sit grandchildren for as much as three, maybe even four hours per year notwithstanding. Arthur's still with P&G in Brussels, whence he indulges his passion for diving wrecks now in the North, Red,

and Mediterranean, rather than Caribbean, Seas. Richard continues energetically to do the things one would expect of a young bachelor living in Cairo (beyond the selling of soap for P&G) becoming a windsurfing enthusiast and lately catching Arthur's bug for diving. He reports such land activities as spending starry and adventurous nights riding horses through the desert around pyramids. Needless to say Lois and I were relieved when the unpleasantness in Kuwait subsided. The recent scaling-back of the defense industry affected GE's Aircraft Engine Division, for which Sue was in charge of the college recruiting program. What with massive layoffs in the offing and the recruiting program halted, she saw handwriting on the wall and when a job was offered her with Citicorp in their (healthy) credit card division operation across the river in Kentucky, she took it. Peter is still doing esoteric things with main-frames at Carnegie Mellon University's Computer Center, no longer quite as poised as he once was to leap out of the security of academia into the corporate world, as IBM and DEC lay off thousands. And he loves his work.

They're all four home for the holidays again, bless 'em.

Merry Christmas, and may the New Year bring only blessings to you.

Most fondly,

Dick and Lois Neergaard