On August 3 Joan boarded Lufthansa 0401 for the first leg of this year's highlight event, her tour of Egypt with our good friend Tim Vernon. It needed to be a whirlwind tour, if only to create a breeze. At one point temperatures exceeded 130 degrees Farenheit. Starting with the Pyramids and Sphinx at Giza, Joan and Tim hit all the hot spots, including Cairo (Egyptian Antiquities Museum, the Citadel, the Khan el Khaleili bazaar), an overnight train to Aswan, Abu Simbel (this was HOT), a four night Cruise down the Nile (the Philae temple, the High Dam, Kom Ombo, the Edfu Temple, Luxor, the Valley of Kings, the Valley of Queens, Karnak, Luxor), Alexandria (and its incredible library), and Coptic Cairo. They would have done more if they could. A mixup between the hotel desk and a tour guide prevented a trip to St. Catherine's and the Sinai. Neither the heat, the heightened security, the hour and a half bus breakdown, nor the missed tour could spoil the trip. It was wonderful.
Egypt was the highlight of a wonderful year that featured over 120 days with scheduled events. As in the past, many of those events involved music. There were wonderful concerts at Lincoln Center. Highlights included a Los Angeles Philharmonic performance of a work by John Adams and the Chamber Music Society performances of a cycle of Shostakovich's chamber works (which we were able to see in rehearsal and in concert). We also enjoyed a number of concerts by good friends including Carl (playing piano with other Van Cliburn finalists at Rockefeller University), Lisa Daehlin (singing in her own concert), and others.
We continued to make music as well. Joan moved from renting a cello to acquiring her own and attempting to play a string quartet movement at the first week of Summertrios. She also accelerated her piano studies, picking up a second piano teacher and playing in several piano trios and quartets. Her quartet from Lucy Moses moved their rehearsals to her apartment and are now coached by her cello teacher. Davis continued his musical journey as well, singing Bach with the Choral Arts Society, Shostakovich with the Mannes Community Orchestra, and Ives and Copeland with the SUNY Oswego Orchestra.
Davis continued his ongoing series of temporary faculty assignments, this year teaching at Brooklyn College, Montclair State University (spring semester), and a return to full time teaching, SUNY Oswego. His research program in the structuration of media expanded with three competitively selected papers at national conventions and another three invited papers. While he continues to struggle to find a full time position that will afford more time for writing, he loves teaching and has received some outstanding evaluations from both colleages and students.
It was a great year for both of our families. Clare visited in February to enjoy Cristo's "The Gates" in Central Park. Whatever you may think of it as art, it was an amazing event, with large crowds in the park and an interesting highlighting of things one might not otherwise notice. Later in the year Clare did a tour of India, returning home with many wonderful pictures and observations. Ashley is doing well in college now. Sam is almost done at Penn State. His spring of student teaching promises to be an anticlimax to a fall that included a Jury Recital in September and a Senior Recital in October. Both were wonderful. Davis was on hand in November (in Boston for a convention) when his granddaughter Charlotte (Devin and Lisa's daughter) took her first steps. Rebecca made an unexpected career change when a women's help organization she was volunteering for offered her a full time job.
The year has also had its lows. We both did Jury Duty (grin). More seriously our friend Elaine moved to New Orleans just in time to experience the evacuation for Katrina and the after-effects of being displaced without access to possessions; she stayed with us for a while. As we write this letter, sadly, our friend Tim (the same Tim that Joan toured Egypt with) is fighting a horrible pneumonia. As we write this we simply don't know if he'll ever read these words. We hope so, not just because we love Tim, but because he touches so many lives in a good and powerful way. Its easy to see Tim's network right now. Hundreds of people hang on every word of daily emails about his condition. There are so many of us who care and want to help, and there is so little we can do but pray.
But the year has also had many highs, not the least of which was Tim's 60th birthday party, which brought his family from North Carolina together with friends from New York and around the world. Who would have expected, in a day filled with musical performances, some of them professional, that the North Carolinians would steal the show. Just one more wonderful day in a most often wonderful year. Our days are filled with knitting, reading, writing, creating, practicing, and rehearsing. We spend time with friends, including many of you, and make time for concerts, plays, movies, and other events. In the cycle of our new year, we will do many of these things again. We hope to see you somewhere in the midst of it.