Merry Christmas from Snowy Petersburg, Alaska

What follows is our annual Christmas letter (sort of) to family and friends which we're posting here for anyone curious how we spent this past pandemic year. So, here goes:

We’re not sending Christmas greetings this year.  You probably say we haven’t sent them in years, that they only came from an itinerant squirrel.  However, said rodent has been deported south to a lovely spruce/hemlock forest where she can observe swans but not us.  Her sin…making an unauthorized border crossing… to move into our abode.  She wanted to spy on us as she gnawed on the wood frame that keeps our cabin standing erect.

After unsuccessfully erecting a US Customs and Border Protection certified barrier (a stick stuck in a hole) and using a subsonic, undetectable-to-the human-ear noise-making machine, which only caused the pretty lady to ask “what’s that sound?”, we surrendered.  The impetus came in the form of the grouch presenting amaurosis fugax (look it up) which necessitated his being temporarily exported to Seattle for investigation.

Thus, we deported our Christmas letter scribe on the day of the grouch’s departure.  We feared she would solidify her reign on our log cabin home and bar us from reentry to the pile of sawdust that remained of the abode.

Not only did said rodent betray our loyalty, but even the grouch’s favorite tree, a cottonwood he conceived by sticking a branch in the ground in the 1980s, betrayed us.  After our basement toilet erupted in a volcanic explosion rivaling Mt. St Helens, a camera forced through the sewer line revealed said cottonwood tree’s roots hanging like stalactites throughout the pipe preventing the movement of movements.  Beautiful, but…  We replaced the sewer line.  The tree?  It remains unscathed except it’s “toenails” have been “trimmed.” 

Barely relaxing after back to back traumatic events, we received a phone call.  A house painter would arrive the next day.  This necessitated the panicked removal of every ornamental and not-so-ornamental object reclining against the house and car port — enough to furnish three condos.  Once begun, the paint job resulted in covering our windows with opaque plastic during this past summer’s only decent spell of sunny weather.  It gave us the unparalleled nightly opportunity to marvel at the beauty of an illuminated sheet of plastic as the sun retreated behind Petersburg Mountain.

Without the invasions of a rodent, a tree and a painter, life seemed boring so we took an autumn road trip to Wisconsin and Iowa.  A couple of days prior to our Alaska ferry departure, a friend of daughter Amanda offered a suggestion.  Since Mandy was taking a well-earned break between nursing jobs and her parents, at least the grouch, is getting decrepit, why shouldn’t she be their chauffeur?  Thus, the pretty lady rode shotgun while the grouch sat in the back seat for much of the trip as the two ladies up front still fulfilled their duties as back-seat drivers to the grouch.  

After a family rendezvous on the sun-drenched shores of Lake Michigan in Wisconsin and in Iowa, the three Corns aimed for Seattle via road and/or air.  In transit the grouch and Mandy toured Colorado Springs guided by son/brother David a deliverer of people for Uber and Lyft and stuff for Amazon.

While traveling, Mandy demonstrated the modern day convenience of locating coffee/pastry shops and reviewing restaurant menus on her cell phone.  The pastry part awed the grouch but he found comparing restaurant menus exceeded his level of desire to find basic grub.  As a bonus Mandy (a barista in a past era) taught the fair lady in seven simple hand-written steps the fine art of ordering a latte that wouldn’t drive a barista nuts.

Regarding cell phones, a significant part of family time involved convincing the grouch that he and the pretty lady needed to be brought from the 18th century into the 21st.  The clincher!  So he could track her via “find my” as she wanders with her camera through territory inhabited by significantly sized black and brown furry creatures.  The hardest part, more difficult than purchasing an AK-47 with 1000 rounds of ammo — signing up for cell phone service.  We couldn’t convince any cell phone service provider who was skeptical we live in a post office box that 1002 Wrangell Avenue exists.

Can’t forget, just because we banished last year’s scribe doesn’t mean the pretty lady has ceased communing with non-humanoids.  Beyond our windows seven days per week you’ll spy large pleading brown eyes and hear clucking sounds.  The pretty lady’s personal deer herd and neighbor’s chickens all consider her to be their guardian angel as she hands out organic apples, carrots, cantaloupe rinds and halves of pomegranates minus their seeds… even popcorn she pops just for them and not the grouch.

 

Incidentally, now that the pretty lady has a cell phone, the grouch knows she’s at the dentist’s office as he writes.  Alas that’s because he didn’t get a call from the dentist saying the didn’t show up.  The $1,200 cell phone?  It sits atop a dresser where it might as well be glued because she doesn’t want to damage it.  She just needs to dust it from time to time. 

And so, with this level of activity and, let’s face it, because the grouch gave up coffee which he blames for his laziness, we will not have a Christmas letter.  

However our prayer for each and everyone of you is simply this:

Rejoice that you are alive! Many of us struggle with aging knees and arthritic hands, but be thankful it means you have both knees and hands.

Rejoice that you have family and loved ones and friends that love you for who you are.  Friends who want the best for you are irreplaceable treasures.

So many in our world struggle with bodies no longer whole and able; they struggle with broken relationships and shattered dreams; and they struggle with prejudice because of their nationality or color of their skin or with themselves because they are not receiving encouragement for the gifts they do have.

We are thankful for all of you who have been so much a part of our lives.  

We are thankful for knowing where to take our gratitude, realizing that the kind of joy and peace that surpasses all understanding is found in that stable where a very little baby lay so very long ago.

Blessings and Joy to all of you, and, despite the notice at the start of this message, Merry Christmas.

Don and Karen