Statue of Liberty quote. "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Times have changed since this poem was written about welcoming immigrants to the USA.
Immigration has been a big theme this year, with too much anti-immigrant thinking, and police brutality against people of color feeding into the New Jim Crow prison industrial complex came to a head with the police shooting to death of an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson and the strangling death of an unarmed black man in NYC whose last words were repeatedly "I can't breathe" to the 5 or 6 cops responsible for this outcome. "Hands up, Don't Shoot" became the slogan of many protests across the country to give voice to the weak for whom enough is enough. Both these ideas are collapsed into this year's theme, though a bit awkwardly perhaps.
I did not want to represent military weapon pointing law enforcement in this card that would have gone along with the Hands Up, Don't Shoot sketch because this is an emotionally charged issue and not one I wanted to push hard on a holiday card, so I just showed the back of a CBP Federal Agent with his hand gesturing "Halt". Unfortunately the lopsided power between police and civilians is mirrored by the exaggerated response to police deaths compared to civilian deaths, and no one seems to even question this in the main stream.
We missed the December 25 deadline again this year, mailing out everything December 27 (domestic: 353) and December 29 (foreign: 142).
Personal News:
In June-July we made it to Yerevan, Armenia for the first time and enjoyed one week with ICRANet friends at a scientific meeting there, with an afternoon of siteseeing in two tourist destinations outside the city, and an evening visit to the Armenian cognac company Ararat, whose 7 year aged product is called Ani.
My inspiration for the hands up Santa was my 1980 Christmas sketch, which I updated for the present application. The weird reindeer come from the usual suspects in many different years. A Google image search gave me the Statue of Liberty pose to bring into this work.
page 1:
a crop of the Yerevan night fountain shot on page 2:
page 2:
Mt Ararat in the background.
The meeting Banquet, outside and inside.
a small town in Abruzzo, thanks Fede and Mario! then October vacation in St Martin, best French meal ever in Grand Case.
Christmas 2014 in Philly.bonus photos:
Love sculptures in Philly, Yerevan.
bob with mom in brother don's 1970 GTO Judge muscle car.For photos of our summers 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 in Italy, check out our collection of Facebook uploaded photos. Lots of Italian food shots! Too many food shots.You should see bob's photo archive! Food, food, food and more food. Our talents in the kitchen at least keep us relatively happy together.
Bill Stoeger left us in March 2014. A good friend since 1980.
Tom Magliozzi from NPR Car Talk passed on, we did not know him personally but we enjoyed his many years of humor with his brother Ray.
Etc.:
the dr bob negative profit corporation lost:
stamps:
360x $0.46+130x$1.15+1.85 S&H = $327.75 (but we needed some more foreign stamps)
photocopy:
$117.93 for 500 Fed-Ex-Kinko colored paper BW copies with Z-fold (okay, we had twenty some left over),
thanks Lynne who has been working there 17 years and often does our order at the Villanova store.
envelopes:
$43.69 No 10 Left Window Quickstrip envelopes shipped from Staples.com
labels:
17 sheets Avery 8460 30: 1"x2 5/8" address labels ($5.10),
8 sheets Avery 8167 80: 1/2"x1 3/4" return address labels ($3.50)
Total: 497.97, so roughly 500 bucks.
sending smiles around the world is serious business..serving to maintain contact over so many years with so many people who have entered our lives along the way.
This is for later maybe...