The older we get, the less likely our lives are to include events not related to health problems or the deaths of family members and friends. Fortunately, our lives have included a number of events and preoccupations this year that encourage us in the confidence that our lives have not yet become superfluous:

• I flew to Virginia to spend my 67th birthday with Signe and Paul. Su-Kyeong (my student) flew down from NYC for the occasion, and another student, Kei, who is in medical school at Georgetown, also joined us. I really enjoy spending time with my students and hearing about their lives, struggles, and accomplishments. Thanks to Mel's brother, Jim, Kei had recently returned from a practicum in South Africa that gave him hands-on experience with and insight into the struggle against AIDS in Southern Africa. He wrote a very interesting memoir of the trip, which I have his permission to share with anyone interested. My best birthday party since my sixteenth!
• In March, I was elected to the Warwick Selectboard (Town Council or Board of Aldermen, for those of you who don't live in New England) - by a landslide, one of my predecessors keeps saying. At our first meeting, I was elected Chair. This has given me a way of exercising the skills and interests my parents and grandparents developed and encouraged in me from an early age and has kept me busy ever since. It took only half a century to get there!
• In April, I was an invited speaker at the grand opening of the Carrie Dickerson Collection in the Edmon Low Library at Oklahoma State University (Mother and Daddy's alma mater).
• In May, Signe and I flew out to Washington State to celebrate Aunt Clara's 90th birthday. We enjoyed spending the day with a number of Perry cousins we had never previously met - and whose existence, in some cases, we had not previously known about. The opportunity to spend time with Cousin Carrie Mae and husband Walt, their dear daughter Gigi, son-in-law Rob, and grandchildren Casey and Emma Carrie, as well as Todd and Alicia - and to meet Scott's delightful bride, Erin, was wonderful, too. While I was gone, Eddie supervised replacement of our decking, which had warped badly.
• In July, the Selectboard accepted Eddie's offer to set up an official web site for the Town. His efforts have received nearly universal applause and gratitude from townspeople. You can see it, yourself, here.
• In August, Eddie's cousin, Brian Brodie (a podiatrist born in London, England, but recently practicing in Saskatchewan and now semi-retired), spent a week with us. Alas, his dear mother Lillian, Eddie's father's youngest sister, died last month at 92.
• We're grateful to have had several visits from Signe and Paul and Ted and Andrea, this year.
• I spent Thanksgiving in Oklahoma, where I was encouraged to see how well my sister Florence seems to be doing and enjoyed time with my Cahalen cousins and Forrest Hanes (to whom I have transferred custody of Grandma Delilah's portrait and dining table). I also became involved in a couple of Carrie Dickerson Foundation events/publicity initiatives. One of the joys of that visit was Cousin Cherie's being informed that NEOSU has agreed to assemble the many course credits she has earned over the years to give her a diploma (B.S or B.A.) in May. Florence's grandson Wesley will be graduating from high school a few days later.
• During the horrendous Oklahoma ice storm this week, our (Mother's) house was the only one in several sections with electricity and heat, so it became the survival center for the neighborhood.
• My students are getting married. The latest was Kevin.
• Our nieces are having babies. Corrie's Amelia Grace Luongo was born in April and is a real cutie. Christina (Dina)'s Afrobaby (working nickname because she and Dan (the father) expect him to have curly red hair) will be making his debut in April.
• In late January, I will be returning briefly to Oklahoma for the grand opening of the Cherokee Nation's Three Rivers Clinic in Muskogee. I was invited because I lobbied successfully with my Massachusetts Congressman, John Olver (whose wife, Rose, is a long-time friend) to fund staffing for the facility the CN built the with Cherokee Nation Enterprises profits.

Health:

• I had surgery on the four small toes affected by my stroke, because they were making it increasingly painful to walk. My surgeon beams and congratulates herself (justly) on her skill every time she sees me post-op. I spent three weeks in a nursing home, because I was forbidden to walk until the pins were removed. The day after I got out, I tripped and wrenched my back, which is just now returning to relative comfort.
• During one of his walks, Eddie tripped and fell flat on his face (see his blog for details). His doctor was concerned enough about his dizzy spells and chest pains to send him for a radioisotope stress test, which showed nothing alarming.
• Mel's hip is increasingly painful, so she's considering replacement surgery in the coming year.

Please let us know how everything is with you and yours.

Love and best wishes for the coming year from,