In case you hadn’t heard, the Red Sox won the World Series. If you haven't seen it already, you may get a kick out of the following:

Be assured that we have not stricken you from our annual correspondence list. Following the example set by the leader of our country, we have ignored both the scientific evidence and conventional wisdom and have declared a “year” to be of twenty four months’ duration.

So this year in the Rosen household:

Somehow, Danny has reached legal drinking age just in time for his final semester atVassar. He’s been enjoying his coursework as a psychology major and is learning enormous amounts of incomprehensible (to me) material in his music composition minor. His thespian tendencies persist, and we have been able to see him recently as an irascible pseudo-cripple in The Man Who Came to Dinner, a love-starved lad in his third production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and most recently, as a somewhat officious “head player” in Tom Stoppard’sRosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. Based on our previous experiences with that particular play, Glenn and I had thought it was tedious and stupid. Surprisingly (but happily), we were in error, as we thoroughly enjoyed the students’ intelligent, witty, and well-timed production. We think our son is enormously talented (that’s our job, of course, but he really is!!) and performance is still the undertaking that makes him happiest.

Danny is also still playing oboe and is a member of four bands in which he plays electric bass. This summer he was asked to stand in for a professional gig performed by his high school mentor’s band Soulfège [sic]. He was thrilled to be asked, and is reported to have “not ruined the reputation of the band,” high praise indeed from one’s idol!

Alena weathered her junior year of high school with aplomb, and wrote her obligatory junior thesis on the Marshall Plan. Her feeling was that the thesis writing process was “a great learning experience,” and that she “never wants to go through that again!” On the other hand, because her history teachers have consistently been her best and favorite teachers in high school, she has become very interested in public policy. She spent a week with the Close Up program examining the federal government with several hundred other high school students from around the country and was heartened to learn that not all political conservatives are idiots.

Alena’s senior year began ominously when she injured her shoulder in a fall from her broomstick (don’t ask!) in the final days of her summer camp job. This was followed by a most unpleasant case of mononucleosis, which took her out of most of her swim season and a large number of days of school. She has almost completely recovered from both setbacks and is enjoying (if by “enjoying” one means “loathing every minute of”) the college application process. In spite of this being “the worst year” of Alena’s life, she continues to be the sweet, witty, perceptive, sensitive young woman whom everybody loves.

Glenn maintains that he is the most sought-after rodent neurosurgeon in the blue state region. He ran an extremely successful boondoggle (he called it a conference) on Lake Como in Italy in June of this year, and we’re all certain that the resultant book, Developing New Pathways in the Study of the Dyslexic Brain, will be a best seller among educators and the neuro-nerd set.

Ann(dy) is still casting her influence on high school science students and appreciating those two best things about teaching–July and August. She finally realized a life-long dream of following her father’s footsteps and climbed Mt. Katahdin in Maine in 2003. That trip demonstrated her camping compatibility with a couple of colleagues, so that in the summer of 2004 she was able to take a few other trips between professional development undertakings. One of the latter was a class with the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife about Wildlife Management. She had sort of hoped she’d learn how to control rowdy teenagers, but instead spent the week tracking moose and bear.

We wish you peace and love for the New Year. GO SOX.