Grand Case, St. Martin, April 2003

Our biggest news in 2003 was Couple Survives Head-on Moose Crash with Just a Few Scratches Thanks to Their Saab. In one form or another that headline played in every Vermont newspaper, several times on their front pages, and in a few regional papers, like in Florida, made the national Associated Press wire, and even ran on CNN news. Vermont Life has asked me to write an essay about it for their summer 2004 issue. Altogether, it’s earned us our fifteen minutes of fame.
For those of you who weren’t paying attention during those fifteen minutes at the end of July, Carl was driving us home from an Opera North party and had turned slightly towards me to chat. Our Saab is designed to light up the side of the road to show wildlife, so he should have seen the moose before it appeared like a mirage in front of us, mythologically antediluvian, perfectly camouflaged in its matt grey-black hair. A nanosecond later we hit it.
Since this is a Christmas letter I’ll leave to your imagination the results of having a thousand-pound moose come through your windshield at a fast interstate speed. It taught us the futility of wearing clean underwear in case of an accident. The primary miracle was our walking out of the car, me in high heels, with just some scrapes and minor cuts. But the first miracle to happen was, after the car stopped on a steep embankment on the other side of the highway at about a 30-degree angle with a quarter of its roof torn off, we opened and shut both front doors. That’s Saab engineering.
Our personal headline was that Fricka delivered ten live English Shepherd puppies in February, which we mostly sold to friends. The excess of cuteness first in our bedroom and then in the mudroom helped us pass the tough Vermont April, as did my trip to see Rachie Farrow in Florida. Star our Border Collie was not the biological father, as we used a real gentle giant of an English Shepherd named Toasty, but he couldn’t have been more paternal and even maternal. He’d edge himself into the big birthing tub to lie down with the newborns while Fricka growled and snapped at him. We don’t think he slept for the first three weeks, as he kept his eyes and nose constantly trained on the puppies.
Just after Fricka got pregnant we went to Rome for New Year’s Eve through their Twelfth Night celebration, when the witch Befana flies around putting candy in the good Italian children’s stockings. She must have also put in some fancy coats and shoes. The Romans display their kids at Piazza Navona during the twelve nights, and the clothes are what you’d expect to see in a line to Santa if Tiffany’s invited him exclusively for their elite customers. New Year’s Eve we celebrated at a Sardinian restaurant where I had to burst into tears and Carl had to start yelling to make them honor the reservation I’d made over the phone weeks before. They’d over booked and so we were packed in there like, well, sardines, which I consider a classic Roman way to eat. Once seated–at 8:15, about an hour earlier than anyone else–we wasted a lot of time choosing which of the fifteen items on the menu we wanted. They served all of them, from baby octopus and steak tartar as appetizers to trout and lamb as main dishes. Carl was appalled at the end when they served lentils, but that’s the traditional Italian magnet for attracting wealth in the new year.
When the puppies were almost two months old, we boarded them at our kennel. It’s a small horse farm, with occasional turkeys and chickens, and lots of dogs. We wanted the puppies completely socialized with all the animals they might encounter. As a result of this visit and others we arranged with children and adults, we ended up with very calm and happy puppies.
We returned to our honeymoon spot on St. Martin to celebrate thirteen years of marriage–we were married on the 13th of October, so it seemed appropriate. Another matrimonial scenario we repeated occurred when we flew to the Airplane Owners’ and Pilots’ Assoc. meeting in Philadelphia this fall. Doylestown, where we planned to land, was even more fogged in than it had been thirteen years before, when Carl flew through The Groom Intersection to try to get to our rehearsal dinner. He made it then, after what was his flying career’s first missed approach, which is when the pilot tries to land and can’t, so either circles the airport to try again or flies to another airport. Maybe flying with me made him less foolish, as this time he made his career’s third missed approach and gave up on Doyelstown, instead landing us in North Philadelphia. His career’s second missed approach was this summer when he and our friend Marcus Coxon returned from a week touring the 12,000 airplanes at The Experimental Aircraft Association meeting in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. They were supposed to leave Marcus off in Biddeford, Maine, to go camping with his family. But the famous Maine fog rolled in and so they landed instead in Portland, and drove the twenty miles to the campgrounds.
Opera occupied our entire summer. I had a operatic lead for the first time, singing The Third Lady in The Magic Flute for Echo Valley Community Arts at the glittering Barre Opera House. It was the first time I’d sung alone over an orchestra. With the role’s very low notes, which usually one cannot hear past the first three rows, projecting my voice was a real challenge. My father came for the performance, which, given his extensive knowledge of what real singers sound like, was even more nerve-wracking, though he was infinitely kind. Nonetheless, I found practicing and rehearsing put me in a constant state of ecstacy, which is truly the Mozart effect.
Afterwards, we spent ten days in Bar Harbor, the first time we gave it more than a long weekend. We needed every minute. Immediately on returning, we went full force into Opera North’s production of La traviata, with me in the chorus, and The Marriage of Figaro, both of which Carl videotaped and photographed. Obviously I attended all the Traviata rehearsals and performances, but I also bought tickets to every night of Figaro, which had a fantastic cast of last year’s Young Artists who returned as principals. Since they had also sung Mozart in 2002, they had a running start for 2003's challenges. Their knowledge of and love for each other shone through the stage lights, as it did also for the two glorious lead voices in Traviata, who had previously preformed the roles together. When my friend Katherine Mack and her mother and young daughter came to visit, I made the two women attend not only Traviata, but also the Young Artists’ performance of Figaro and its regular performance the next night. Like me, they didn’t mind at all.
Opera North made Carl president-elect this year because, as the Executive Director said, “He deserves it for all he does.” Not only is he their volunteer videographer and photographer, but he designs and updates their website, decorates the lobby during performances with huge enlargements of each opera’s leads, and is the company’s Main Evangelist, as most of you know. Next year you can address your fan mail to El Presidente, and come see Gounod’s Romeo and Juliet and Britten’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. Expect to hear Wagnerian trombones in the orchestra during Carl’s administration.
I’ve started a new e-commerce business, from designing websites to writing articles to figuring out email campaigns–but no spam, I promise! Carl is negotiating for the Vermont State College teachers union as well as starting a Rocket Science program for Vermont Technical College, for which he seduced a company out of $2.37 million worth of satellite mission design software. Meanwhile, I taught my first college course this fall at Carl’s school. It was beginning Italian with a section on Dante’s Inferno, both of which proved to be more fun than I’d imagined. I’m teaching again this spring at the Community College of Vermont, Music Appreciation and Business Communication, but not in the same course. We both look forward to a year of “making big brains out of little brains,” as Carl says, and maybe even more puppies.

Love and good life and luck and health to you all,

Carl & Ann

E-mail: carl.brandon@vtc.edu

ann@onyons.com