Having not sent out a holiday letter last year, one might be tempted to posit that there was not much going on in our lives worth sharing. To that I simply ask “When has that stopped us before?” So “Why was there no letter last year?” one might ask. As unaccustomed as we are to the notion of blame shifting, we will take full responsibility and state that the dog ate our electrons. That said, consider yourself blessed to receive this tightly edited delightful digest of diverting dramas of da Rosens.

Alena is now halfway through her sophomore year at the beautiful campus of Scripps College. She was able to make the transition from the peripatetic lifestyle of an Americorps volunteer to an academic lifestyle with relatively little tsuris. Prior to her arrival at Scripps for her freshman year, she vacationed with us in London and Paris before heading off to Italy spend a few weeks working on one of those ubiquitous Tuscan kosher vegetarian organic farms run by Canadians. She is currently leaning towards an American Studies major and a minor in Environmental Policy, and is serving as peer mentor for unsuspecting first year students.

Dan is still in New York City working at Sam Ash Music in Manhattan, where he is mostly a high-end guitar salesman. One of the advantages of this job is that he was able to give his dad a 60th Anniversary Fender Telecaster. This nicely fulfills Rosen’s Law of Purchases, which states “One must only own musical instruments of a quality far in excess of one’s musical ability.” In his off hours, Dan is either rehearsing or performing with his improve group or sketch comedy group. We know that we’re not exactly unbiased, but we sort of like the somewhat raw sketch that you can see on Youtube that was apparently inspired by an encounter with rather pretentious lover of scotch. He is living in Astoria (a neighborhood in Queens) with his girlfriend Kate, who seems to tolerate him pretty well. More importantly, we like her.

We have been exiled from Newton to some fairly interesting places in the past couple of years. During our trip to Europe with Alena we stayed in London with our long suffering cousins, the Eccleshares, who couldn’t have been more generous with their time and house. Highlights included visits with family and friends, and it was particularly fun to eat take-away curry while watching the World Cup final with people who actually know the sport. We took the chunnel to Paris, where we arrived having discovered that we had left the key to Dara and Todd’s (Anndy’s sister and brother-in-law) apartment on our coffee table at home. A couple of phone calls in panicky English and pidgin French eventually got us another set of keys.

This summer we did a 5-day bike tour of the Champlain and Mad River Valleys in Vermont. We traveled with David and Sue Dannenberg (Anndy’s brother and sister-in-law) and were impressed by the fact that Vermont is not flat and that David is an animal on a bicycle. We were less ambitious but somehow managed to travel 250 miles over the 5 days. The fact that there was no significant weight loss is testament to the excellent food at the various Inns in which we stayed.

Glenn’s work continues apace. Grants are up and down—he received a 5 year grant last year (that is an “up”) and another grant renewal has not been successful as yet (that would be a “down”). At the risk of sounding vaguely political, we’re certainly looking forward to a new administration that doesn’t hate science. On the positive side, he had the opportunity to travel to Campos do Jordao, Brazil for a conference this summer. Upon his return, he decided to update the lab’s web sites, and after an exhaustive nationwide search for the most qualified webpage coder, he hired Alena, who at the time knew that “html” was not a real word. You can see the products of her efforts at the Rosen Lab site and the Dyslexia Lab site.

Anndy entered her 7th year of teaching science Newton North with a renewed vigor and excitement because on top of her normal work load, she was fortunate enough to to receive a directive from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to enroll in a Masters program in, oddly enough, “Science Education.” We’re not quite sure what to make of the fact that her program is in Montana, but the commute by internet hasn’t been that bad. On the positive side, on-site summer courses include forays to Yellowstone National Park. She and her friend Matty traveled to Alaska for 10 days this summer, which has whetted her appetite for more frequent visits.

Just in case this letter does not fulfill your federally mandated minimum RDA (Rosen Demagogic Assaults), you can see pictures and other information at our new family web site (although you are already here so I don't know why I left that line in). We also occasionally post pictures on our Flickr site , and if you join our “friends” or “family” list, you see even more than is probably healthy!

From the home of the World Champion Boston Red Sox (see Glenn with the two beauties here), the undefeatedNew England Patriots, the east-leading Boston Celtics, and the top twenty Boston College Football team, we wish everyone a healthy and peaceful New Year.