Lewis graduated from the U of Michigan last spring and is now in a U-M graduate program called MAC (Masters and Certification). He is student teaching in History at Pioneer High and will have a teaching certificate and masters degree in June, 2009. His program is quite intense (and expensive!), so he is living at home this year.
Elaine graduated from Pioneer, capping off her high school career with another two seasons of rowing on the crew team, getting good grades, and being admitted to Kalamazoo College for 2009. In the meantime, she is living with a host family in Neily, Costa Rica, for five months, trying to become fluent in Spanish, volunteering as an environmental education teacher in a K-11 school, and having as many adventures as she can.
We usually begin the year camping up north, but this year we were in Florida, attending the Capital One Bowl game. It was Lewis’s last game as a member of the U-M Marching Band, so we thought ‘why not go?’ Having lost to Ohio State at home (a game Dan attended with Andy O., in horrendous weather), the Wolverines were a two-touchdown underdog to the U of Florida, but much to everyone’s surprise, a great football game broke out, and Michigan won!
We were so happy Lewis got to go out on a victory. We also had fun visiting Universal Studios theme park and two beautiful state parks, where we saw lots of birds and our first wild manatees. It felt weird to see in the new year at a ball in a fancy hotel instead of around the peaceful campfire with our buddies up north. I guess you have to try everything once. Lewis’s band experience has been very positive, for Lewis (and his proud dad). He is still very involved in intramural band sports and sits behind the band at every home football game. Since the trombones call themselves ‘bones’, Lewis is now a fossil, because he is an old bone. In the summer, Lewis got his motorcycle license and bought a sweet 150cc Schwinn bike.
Dan spent MLK weekend in Boston, where his dad had fallen, broken his hip, and had an emergency hip replacement. Mercifully, Rafe made a fairly quick recovery and was up and around in fairly short order. Rafe has since been both to Israel and Costa Rica, and has gotten a dog, so you can see he’s bounced back. Tragically, his sister Miriam had a similar fall and surgery shortly after Rafe did, but didn’t recover and died soon after. We also lost Bert, the husband of Dan’s dear Aunt Bernice, this year.
In February, Tina and Dan went skiing in Colorado. We had a great time, traversing a lot of the state, meeting up with Dan’s colleague Jackie at Copper Mountain, enduring a big bliizard in Leadville (including some double-black-diamond driving back to our motel at night while it was snowing sideways!) After the storm cleared, We drove to Durango, in beautiful blue weather with incredible snow-covered scenery, to visit our friend Barb Wynne, see the Knowledge Master people, and ski at Purgatory. As we crossed the state, we saw mountain sheep in several places, and we soaked in the open-air hot springs at Pagosa. Though we dropped in during the work week, Barb was a gracious hostess, and it was great to reconnect with her. In March, we got in one last ski, as Tina’s sister Sheila hosted us for a weekend at her condo up north.
The school year was a hard one for Dan, as he adjusted to having his planning time cut almost in half, as well as teaching two grades (6th and 8th, instead of just 6th, as he had taught for the last 15 years). As usual, he was also busy with coaching KMO, running the Silly Olympics, organizing the Science Fair, and many other special activities. In his spare time, he continued his Greenbelt Commission service, birded, and rode his bike.
Meanwhile, Tina spearheaded a series of environmental initiatives at Bach School that culminated with the school receiving a Green School certification from the state. Tina was interviewed on the Issues of the Environment show on WEMU, our local NPR station, about that. She also continued coaching KMO along with all her other teaching duties. Our jobs continue to be both challenging and a source of deep satisfaction to us.
In April, Dan chaperoned Elaine’s school band field trip to New York City. We had a great time being tourists during our five day visit, walking across the Brooklyn Bridge, attending Wicked, birding in Central Park (Dan only), visiting Ground Zero, Little Italy, Chinatown, Planet Hollywood, Planet Rock, and Greenwich Village. We also went to the top of Rockefeller Center (at night), went to a concert at Lincoln Center, watched another Pioneer High band perform at Carnegie Hall, and took a boat tour to Liberty Island and around Manhattan. Elaine’s band played a lunch concert at the atrium of one of the Trump Towers. Our hotel was close to Times Square, and a lot of our touristing was done on foot, which made us feel like real New Yorkers.
While Dan and Elaine were in the Big Apple, Lewis was graduating from U of M (along with his kindergarten buddy, Ashley. Hunter was graduating from MSU). Because Michigan Stadium was under renovation, the graduation ceremony was held on the Diag, the biggest crowd there since the antiwar protests of the 1960’s. It was a gorgeous, crisp spring day, the trees and flowers were in bloom. Thanks to cell phones, Tina and the Westons could see Lewis and Ashley, and it was more fun than our own graduations. It seems like Lewis, Hunter, and Ashley were in Mrs. Kluge’s kindergarten the day before yesterday, so this was definitely an occasion for both a smile and a tear.
In May, we had a big bash in our backyard to celebrate Elaine’s HS graduation. Grandpa Rafe Ezekiel and Grandma Tish Harmon were there, along with a lot of the crew team and Elaine’s other friends and relatives. It was another beautiful day, and the party continued (for the parent generation) with a bonfire far into the night. The graduation itself was held in Eastern Michigan U’s convocation center and was the usual kaleidoscope of pomp, circumstance, pride, laughter, and tedium that is found at such events. Afterwards, Tina and Dan dealt blackjack at the All Seniors All Night party at Pioneer, where Elaine said her class felt more unity than they ever had during their four years together at school (welcome to the world of instant nostalgia, Laney!)
Blessedly, the year finally wrapped up for everyone except Lewis, who had to start his Masters program immediately, and we went on our annual June camping trip, but not at Lake Michigan Rec Area, which had been left inaccessible by a freak 11-inch rainstorm with 80mph winds three nights before we were due to be there. We went to D.H. Day, another old haunt, instead. It was fun to go somewhere different for a change (and the amazing cherry pie of Cherry Republic was only a short bike ride away), but we missed the remote end-of-the-road feeling (and lack of cell-phone service) of LMRA; we hope to be back there next June, as usual. The weather was ridiculously cold for June; one night we heard coyotes howling close by.
Mike McGraw, Ron Weston and Dan went down to LMRA to check out the devastation. Though it wasn’t possible to drive to the campground yet, we did ride our bikes there. In several places, the roads or bridges were washed away, leaving huge gulches in the sand alongside the roads. A really awesome display of nature’s fury.
While we were camping, Ron and Dan realized that we both planned to re-roof our garages during the summer, and we decided to join forces. Lucky for Dan, since he had never roofed anything before, and Ron knew what he was doing! We worked our butts off for eight days or so, and got our roofs stripped and re-shingled, which was a great feeling of accomplishment and a good antidote for the frustrations of the school year.
Summer worked its usual magic, as we relaxed into the routine of gardening, bike rides, softball, and Top of the Park. The Nematodes got off to a 4-1 start, ended up 4-6, but the main thing is that we had fun, and after the first game, no one got seriously hurt. Pretty good for people in our late 30’s (Sandy), 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s (everyone else). A cool thing that happened this summer is that we started having hummingbirds come to our feeders for the first time. They are amazing and fun to watch. Tina exercised her ever-growing artistic prowess by hosting several fun craft days at our house.
In August, Dan, Tina, and Elaine flew to California to spend 8 days with Dan’s brother Josh and sister Margalete and their families. Uncle Don Rubinstein and his wife Jannis came up from LA to join us for part of the time. We had a sensational time in Salinas and Santa Cruz. Some highlights included a great enchilada meal at Josh and Myrna’s, going to the beach, wharf, and boardwalk at Santa Cruz, meeting Margalete’s friend Tom, and going bodysurfing with him (in wetsuits) at his favorite beach. Lewis couldn’t come, because he was finishing school, then being a counselor at Pioneer’s band camp.
Tina and Dan spent a few days in a cabin near Killarney, Ontario, a place we had always wanted to visit. We saw a couple of bears, including one Tina saw from her bike. We climbed to a beautiful place called The Crack at the top of some high limestone rocks, which afforded a beautiful view of the surrounding lake-strewn wilderness, with Georgian Bay in the distance.
Then it was back to Ann Arbor and the sad (for the parents) task of taking Laney to the airport to fly to Costa Rica. She is participating in an exchange program sponsored by AFS (American Field Service) in the small town of Neily, near the Panamanian border. She is living with a local family as their daughter, volunteering as an environmental educator at a school, learning Spanish and local culture, and generally having an international adventure during her gap year before college (she starts as a freshman at Kalamazoo in the fall of 2009).
Elaine has had many amazing experiences, including attending language school at an organic farm as well as helping hatchling turtles make it to the sea without being eaten by wild dogs or vultures. At this writing, she has just celebrated her 19th birthday and is about to meet up with Grandpa Rafe and Nona Kathy for some R & R at an eco lodge in the Monteverde cloud forest. But she can tell the story better than we can; read her wildly entertaining blog at
We miss her dearly, but we are not yet empty-nesters, as Lewis moved back home for this year of Masters study. We see him every now and then, as he flashes between student teaching, college seminars, and sports events. We get to assuage some of our Elaine jones when Lewis’s friend Mandee comes over to eat or study. We like her a lot.
Lewis adopted a one-eyed kitten named Callie, who is a charming addition to our home. She has a tortoiseshell pattern, and looks very much like our first cat, Angela. Our older gray cat, Nimbus, was not too thrilled to have Callie around at first, but they are becoming friends and playmates, which is fun to watch.
In the fall we mostly taught our brains out, as we say around here, but Dan went camping up north with the Quill Pigs one weekend this fall, and Tina went up north with her sisters and mom on another weekend, staying at Sheila’s condo.
Like many of you, we participated in the election campaign and were thrilled by the election of Barack Obama. It was Elaine’s first vote, and when she brought her absentee ballot to the post office in Neily, Costa Rica, and told the postal workers what it was and who she voted for, they cheered. That story made us realize even more the import of this election, not just for us, but for people around the world.
In Ann Arbor, on election night, there was an impromptu midnight parade, as thousands of joyous college students poured out into the street after the TV networks called the decision and the new president-elect gave his wonderful speech in Grant Park. Another outcome of the ’08 vote is that our friend Chris Harker was elected to the state legislature in Oregon!
In early December, Tina’s brother George married our new sister-in-law, Judith, in a beautiful ceremony in a magnificent cathedral in downtown Detroit. The occasion was especially memorable for two reasons: the atrocious icy weather we all had to drive through to reach the wedding, and the wonderful double surprise of seeing George’s son Conor and the mythical Guido, who as an exchange student lived in the Harmon home in Detroit lo these many years ago. Both Conor and Guido had come all the way from Chile to be at the wedding.
Amid all the grim economic news this fall, we feel a light of hope as we await the new administration. Along with all of you, no matter what your religion or political stripe, we pray for more prosperous, greener, more equitable, and more peaceful times in the year to come. May you have a healthy happy holiday season.
Love,
Dan, Tina, Lewis, and Elaine Ezekiel
