Smale Christmas 2008
Trying something a bit different this year: we didn't send Christmas cards except to our electronically-phobic friends. So, instead of using paper and postage, we've decided to reproduce our usual holiday letter right here online. This lets us include lots more pictures, and real active links to other stuff! (Click on them - you'll see!) I hope you enjoy!
Concerts, career news and camels, oh my!
This has been quite an interesting year for travel. In February, Karen went on her first cruise (with the
Chromatics' Padi and Deb and "sound-babe" Jenna). The cruise visited Jamaica and Grand Cayman, but the highlight
was all the on-board live music from great bands like Barenaked Ladies, Great Big Sea, Carbon Leaf, and Gaelic
Storm. Karen enjoyed it so much that she's taking Alan along next year!
In June, we went to a joint meeting of the American Astronomical Society and the Astronomical Society of the
Pacific in St. Louis.
In addition to attending
panels on science education, we visited the Gateway Arch and took a half-day off to see the huge earthen mounds at
Cahokia, built by the Native Americans in the 13th Century. But the jewel in our travel crown this year was our
trip to Mongolia! (We always get one of two reactions when we tell people we went to Mongolia: "Wow -- cool!" or
"Um, whatever for?") Alan writes of the experience:
Mongolia is a beautiful country, from the stark wide-open desert spaces, big blue sky, rocky mountains, sand dunes and red-cliffed badlands of the Gobi through to the almost alpine scenery of the taiga forests and lakes in the north (much of Siberia is apparently like that too). I really like the steppe, though, that forms the middle part: rolling grasslands that go right over mountains and hills, on and on for miles. It's all so empty and undeveloped everywhere, though you'll quite often come across a solitary ger and/or a nomad and his flock of goats, yaks, cows or camels. By and large if you face in any direction at any time, you'll probably want to take a picture of it.
We did a huge amount: visited Buddhist temples and museums of history, natural history, and art; flew to tiny airstrips, took a boat trip on an ex-Soviet clunker on Lake Hovsgol, and also canoed on it, lurched and crunched over chronically bad roads, rode sulky camels and very spunky Mongolian horses, hiked, and slept in ger (yurt) camps. Visited with horse nomads, a camel-breeder and shaman's family, and other local people. Watched wrestling, horse-racing and archery in our own mini-Naadam (sports) festival, and enjoyed several traditional music concerts from nationally known musicians. The people were friendly. Even the food was good.
On our way to Mongolia, we spent one day in Beijing. This was a few weeks prior to the Olympics and the beautification projects were almost complete. The city and the people have changed in many ways since our first visit in 2001 -- the country is coming out of its shell in a big way. But the pollution is still as bad as it looked on TV.
Both sets of parents visited us this fall. Karen's stayed just a few days and visited her brother in Pennsylvania
on the same trip. Alan's parents stayed for a couple weeks and we took a trip to
Shenandoah National Park and also
spent a beautiful day in Baltimore seeing sites that they had somehow missed during previous visits. It was great
to see them all!
The Chromatics had a very good year, performing 22 times. Highlights were attending the Philadelphia Science Fiction Convention as the Music Guests of Honor, and performing at the East Coast A Cappella Summit where we did a showcase concert with some excellent groups from all over the world. We also recorded a new song (downloadable from our web sites) called "Shoulders of Giants", which was commissioned by the Johannes Kepler Project for the upcoming International Year of Astronomy. We hope to perform at as many astronomy-related events and venues as possible next year to help celebrate the 400th anniversary of Galileo looking through a telescope at the heavens for the first time.
Karen tried an experiment this year, working just 32 hours per
week and taking Tuesdays "off" at home to do chores, make appointments with contractors, run errands, etc. With
Chromatics performances on weekends, we often had difficulty finding time to mow the lawn or relax and read a
book. During Karen's Tuesdays at home she finished redecorating her office (framing pictures, sewing a duvet cover
for the daybed), did all the prep work for our new stone paver front walk and porch, planned a lot of Chromatics
logistics, and kept up with the usual chores so we had more time to enjoy the weekends. However, the Tuesdays off
have recently become a bit difficult because...
At work, Karen has taken on a new position as Editor-in-Chief of Goddard's Science Directorate web presence. This is a big change for her as she's moving in higher circles (meetings with lots of people at the Goddard senior management level) and doing more strategic work. She's currently trying to cover her new and old positions, but a replacement for her old Astrophysics Division web work has now been found (yay!) and by February Karen will only be working one job again. (This will make her Tuesdays off a bit easier to maintain, too!)
After five and a half years as a Program Executive at NASA HQ, Alan moved back to Goddard in August to take up the position of HEASARC Director. The HEASARC is the High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center; in addition to managing the data archive, Alan's office has overall responsibility for the Guest Observer Facilities and Science Support Centers for Goddard's various operating astrophysics missions. It's certainly different from HQ; he no longer has meetings at 8 a.m. and is definitely discouraged from wearing a tie. He enjoys sinking his teeth into some longer-term technical projects, but does miss the adrenaline rush and that intoxicating sense of drinking from a fire hose. In other news, Alan's long story "Fossil Fuels" will appear in the Feb'09 issue of "Realms of Fantasy" magazine, and he hopes to spend more time writing fiction again now he no longer has to spend so many hours a week commuting into DC.
This year we joined the millions of people on Facebook. We both update our statuses there daily. Karen has posted lots of pictures (from St. Louis, Beijing, Mongolia, Shenandoah, of the front walk, our back yard, and the night sky) and we've both made it past the 100-friends mark. Please join us there if you haven't already! We'd love to keep in touch with you and have found Facebook a wonderful way to find out what our far-flung friends are up to, and to let people know what we're doing!
And a Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night....
(Psst: check us out on the Web:
http://www.astrocappella.com/IYA/
http://www.pagecreations.com/images/2008/ - for more images of our year )