Dear Family and Friends,

Carl and I spent most of our free time in the winter and spring getting to and from readings on my New England book tour. I took one foray into Salt Lake City, unescorted. Otherwise, Carl was with me every step of the way, setting up our cappuccino machine to scent the bookstore with the ambience of Italy and warm up the crowd for an hour-long reading from Artful Italy, with many side notes, which Carl heard again and again and again. We were amazed at what we saw of the bookstore landscape. The smallest bookstores in the most rural towns always packed in a crowd while the metropolitan conglomerates. . .I stopped agreeing to read and would only sign after the first one. The Barnes and Nobles and Borders cannot attract a community like Cover to Cover in Randolph, the Norwich (Vt.) Bookstore, and the Gulf of (Brunswick) Maine Bookstore, among many others. So support your independent bookseller, please!

At Ralph & Grace Wim-bash's wedding

Also along the way we conducted research for a book I'll be writing this spring (so this will be the last you hear from me for a while). Invisible Cities Press has asked me to write a second book for them, this time on New England food. It will come out in September as Which Exit, if the Fates are kind. So we trolled up and down the highways and byways of Massachusetts, Maine, R.I., and the rest, Carl navigating like the homing pigeon he is, and my discovering that art is easier to write about than restaurants. People don't like being judged, even when I'm obviously in ecstacy about their food. I can't really be anonymous since I need to ask for a copy of their menu and how long they've been open. The Italian art on the other hand could care less what I think of it. Hundreds of years after the last worm has sharpened its teeth on my marrow the fresco will still be fresh, the tapestry still vibrant for some other so-called critic to "discover." Restaurant owners are not so arrogant.

Star & Fricka at home.

Cool Mr. Star

In March we went to San Francisco for a conference. Carl traveled on to visit his old student, Tyler Drake, at Caltech, and have him give the campus tour, including of the room lionized by the magician of 20th century physicists, Richard Feynman. Carl shows his students a film of Feynman lecturing, so Tyler had enjoyed a moment of recognition when he arrived there. I had my own moment on that trip when I visited the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco and found my book in their shop. It is now my favorite museum, as the Chicago Tribune is my favorite newspaper (they reviewed me), and Seattle home of my favorite library (they bought five copies).

We were desperate to get on a boat and sail away by the end of March–the winter was brutal, being mostly sheets of ice and unskiable, unwalkable, uninhabitable. Salt on the wound came as late spring snow–still not that skiable--which didn't end until May 20. We chose Antigua this year overSt. Martin, or rather chose Boat A over Boat B, and may never go back. As much as we love the French food on St. Martin, the Antiguans are as friendly as Italians, and where we stayed, there was plenty of Italian food, too. In fact, we made friends with a man from Genoa, Bruno Bettelli, who opened a gelato shop that produces back-home flavors. He gave us a pantry tour of his imported ingredients and machinery, which he uses in combination with the island's fresh mangos and bananas to make a cup of heaven that was worth a twice-daily trip. And when we could tear ourselves away, the sailing was fabulous!

In the summer we committed ourselves heart and soul to Opera North. I sang in the chorus of Eugene Onegin while Carl videotaped both that and the Così fan tutte, as well as a few shows of the Young Artists' performance, The Coronation of Poppea. Singing the Russian was for me like memorizing chemical formulas for oral exams to be conducted in Chinese (since I had to sing and not just speak them.) Our dear friend Allison Voth came and stayed with us and played the continuo for Poppea on harpsichord. She practiced on our piano for hours each morning and we all, the two dogs included, went into mourning when she left us to silence.

The spring brought two deaths of very dear friends–Ralph Lewis and Lew Crain. Ralph was Carl's weekly companion at the Dartmouth Physics symposiums as well as our annual Christmas Eve guest, with his wife, Renate, skiing buddy, film critic, and general rock on which we depended. Lew we didn't see as much, but when we did we got a king-sized hug and laugh. A happier, more loving, more joyous man I've never met. I learned at his funeral that as he lay dying at the local hospital, he kept the nurses amused by, on being asked to sign organ donor cards, screeching in his best Monty Python accent: "But I'm not dead!"

We also celebrated the life of two friends Frank Duffy and Marcus Coxon this fall when their wives threw surprise birthday parties for them. Lots of their family drove long distances to be there, many of whom we've either known for years or now feel as if we have. The best part of both parties was really surprising the birthday boys. We will always remember the pleased look on both men's faces when they realized we're all there to celebrate nothing less than another great year together.

Carl later took Marcus' octogenarian father out for a glider flight. The last time Mr. Coxon had flown in a glider, for the Brits, he'd been shot down over Holland by the Luftwaffe, so he found this experience much more relaxing. Later, Carl and I broke my personal record by wave soaring up to 13,900 ft., which proved to be as natural a high–Look Ma! No motor!--as life offers off terra firma.

Speaking of great parties, my old friend from Rome days, Ralph Wimbish, married the terrific Grace Rena who held a blow-out dance-a-thon and eat-a-thon at their wedding. I also rendezvoused there with some of my other Rome friends. Miraculously we all look exactly the same as we did twenty years ago, except one guy has grown a discreet beard. We all remembered when Italy beat Brazil in 1982 and went on to win the World Cup but how that was the greatest game ever. Carl and I also watched the World Cup this year and the Brazilians are still chimeras with Patton-like brains and eagle hearts and gazelle legs.

Carl suffered a crushing defeat as Justice of the Peace this November, first time he hasn't been elected in twenty years. Never one to lie down for long, he applied on-line to be a reverend for the Universal Life Church. He can still marry people, his favorite part of being a JP, and even better, can now do so out of state. It was so fun and short (five minutes) that he also applied for a Doctor of Metaphysics. The Universal Lifers decided he's serious and so threw in a Doctor of Divinity and an extra certificate naming him "Saint." You can now address letters to him as Saint Reverend Professor Dr. Dr. Dr. Carl Stuart Brandon, which I believe is an anagram for St. Bernard.

I read a book this year by a friend of ours, George Vaillant, titled Aging Well and based on several longitudinal studies. One of the secrets to an excellent old age, he found, is to make new friends. We cannot replace Ralph–no one was more brilliant either in conversation or when playing squash with the grace of a cat. We'll always miss Lew–no one will be happier, especially in the face of years of illness. But we can find joy in the new. And we find them a lot at Opera North. So we host dinners and take the singers flying and make cookies and create CDs and DVDs of their performances–actually, Carl does all that while I wring my hands and say, "Honey, I'm going to be late for rehearsal"–and ingratiate ourselves with these young people whom we talk about all year long. They are beautiful and either sing or play with exquisite musicality and still manage to exhibit 19th-century manners. By the end of each summer, Carl and I want to fold up our tent and follow them from concert to concert. And we do sometimes see them outside of the Lebanon Opera House, like the great recital we caught in NYC by Audrey Babcock with a repertory that ranged from the ethereal to the political. But for the most part we spend the year waiting for the singing swallows to return to our Northern Capistrano and stay during our exceedingly short summer. In the meantime, we bundle up with our local and visiting friends and eat and talk and be merry.

We thank you all, old friends and new, for letting us live well.

Carl & Ann

Carl & Ann Brandon, 3071 South Randolph Road, Randolph Center, VT 05061-9734 Tel: 802-728-9947 e-mail: carl.brandon@vtc.edu Ann's e-mail: ann@onyons.com Web page: www.brunnhilde.com/~cbrandon Please send us your e-mail address.