xmascard 14: credits, comments, ani and bob news for
2014
- Notes:
Statue of Liberty quote. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Times have changed since this poem
was written about welcoming immigrants to the USA.
Immigration has been
a big theme this year, with too much anti-immigrant thinking, and police
brutality against people of color feeding into the New Jim Crow prison
industrial complex came to a head with the police shooting to death of an
unarmed black teenager in Ferguson and the strangling death of an unarmed
black man in NYC whose last words were repeatedly "I can't breathe" to the 5
or 6 cops responsible for this outcome. "Hands up, Don't Shoot" became the
slogan of many protests across the country to give voice to the weak for whom
enough is enough. Both these ideas are collapsed into this year's theme,
though a bit awkwardly perhaps.
I did not want to represent military
weapon pointing law enforcement in this card that would have gone along with
the Hands Up, Don't Shoot sketch because this is an emotionally charged issue
and not one I wanted to push hard on a holiday card, so I just showed the back
of a CBP Federal Agent with his hand gesturing "Halt". Unfortunately the
lopsided power between police and civilians is mirrored by the exaggerated
response to police deaths compared to civilian deaths, and no one seems to
even question this in the main stream.
We missed the December 25
deadline again this year, mailing out everything December 27 (domestic: 353)
and December 29 (foreign: 142).
Personal News:
In June-July we made it to Yerevan, Armenia for the first time and enjoyed one
week with ICRANet friends at a scientific meeting there, with an afternoon of
siteseeing in two tourist destinations outside the city, and an evening visit
to the Armenian cognac company Ararat, whose 7 year aged product is called
Ani.
- Sketches:
My inspiration for the hands up Santa was my 1980
Christmas sketch, which I updated for the present application. The weird
reindeer come from the usual suspects in many different years. A Google
image search gave me the Statue of Liberty pose to bring into this work.
- Photos:
page 1:
a crop of the Yerevan night fountain shot on page 2:

page 2:
Mt Ararat in the background.
The meeting Banquet, outside and inside.

a small town in Abruzzo, thanks Fede and Mario! then October vacation in St
Martin, best French meal ever in Grand Case.
Christmas 2014 in Philly.
bonus photos:
Love sculptures in Philly, Yerevan.
bob with mom in brother don's 1970 GTO Judge muscle car.
- More bonus photos:
For photos of our summers 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 in Italy, check out our
collection of
Facebook uploaded photos. Lots of Italian food shots! Too many food shots.You
should see bob's photo archive! Food, food, food and more food. Our talents
in the kitchen at least keep us relatively happy together.
- Remembrances:
Bill Stoeger left us in March 2014.
A good friend since 1980.
Tom Magliozzi from
NPR Car Talk passed on, we did not
know him personally but we enjoyed his many years of humor with his brother
Ray.
Etc.:
- The color of the paper this year was yellow. As usual Fed-Ex (Ex-Kinkos) did the work. This annual enterprise was sent out to about 480 recipients all over the world
again with nice
Sealed with Love
(forever) stamps to the domestic crowd (46 cents),
airmail
holiday wreath ($1.15 ouch!). We missed the Christmas day deadline again
this year.
the dr bob negative profit
corporation lost:
stamps:
360x $0.46+130x$1.15+1.85
S&H = $327.75 (but we needed some more foreign stamps)
photocopy:
$117.93 for 500 Fed-Ex-Kinko colored paper BW copies with Z-fold (okay, we had
twenty some left over),
thanks Lynne who has
been working there 17 years and often does our order at the Villanova store.
envelopes:
$43.69 No 10 Left Window
Quickstrip envelopes shipped from Staples.com
labels:
17 sheets
Avery 8460 30: 1"x2 5/8" address labels ($5.10),
8 sheets
Avery 8167 80: 1/2"x1 3/4" return address labels ($3.50)
Total:
497.97, so roughly 500 bucks.
sending smiles around the world is
serious business..serving to maintain contact over so many years with so
many people who have entered our lives along the way.
- Postscript:
This is for later maybe...