Christmas Letters

5000 Beverly Hills Dr.,
AUSTIN, TX 78731, USA

December, 2008


Dear Friends,

We are writing this letter a week after the US Presidential Elections, which we all hope mark the dawn of a new day in which America regains the trust and confidence of the rest of the world, returns to the rule of law, and begins to deal with the major issues that face us all, such as climatic change and increasing energy costs. But the ship of state here has, by design, huge momentum, and is thus very slow to change course: so those of you abroad please have patience.

Ingrid and I have had a good year: Ingrid retired in August and now intends to devote herself solely to research. In practice that has meant so far that she is sorting through the giant pile of impedimenta (mostly books and papers) that came home from her office.
She spent the month of September in Europe, and actually was able to fulfill a long-held dream by visiting Malta in connection with a conference. While she was in Sweden she walked the marathon at the European Masters' games, held in Malmö, and won her age group. She got a nice little medal for this! She also had an opportunity to visit with friends and family in Sweden, and long-time friends in Italy on a whirlwind trip to Murlo, Castiglion Fiorentino, and Rome.

Both of us have run or walked several races during the year: the Austin Marathon, Capitol 10K, Texas Round-Up, Keep Austin Weird 10K, the Fila Relays (Ingrid's team won their division), the IBM UpTown Classic, and the Run for the Water 10-miler (English miles, NOT Swedish ones!!). This latter follows a very pretty course through the Tarrytown neighborhood of Austin and then along the cliffed banks of Lake Austin. It is organized by Gilbert Tuhabonye, a Burundian champion runner who was slashed and burned and left for dead in the genocide there, but who survived and has settled in Austin where we runs a training program. Money raised in the race goes to drill wells in Burundi. Our performances are improving as we age, rather like red wine or blue cheese!

At this time of the year we swim 3 to 4 times a week in Deep Eddy Pool, which is a weird swimming pool, as befits Austin (One of Austin's slogans is "Keep Austin Weird"). It is down by the lake and is spring fed, and is therefore not chlorinated. It is not 25 yards or 25 m long, but 100 feet. It consists of two pools separated by a wall: when they empty the shallower of the two during the winter artesian water can be seen fountaining from every defect in the concrete base. It is not named after a philosopher or idiot savant who hung about the area in the early days of Austin and committed suicide there by diving off the 15m board into an empty pool, so that his ghost may be heard in the rustling of the cottonwoods, even though that is a romantic conceit. It is named after a deep pool in the bed of the Colorado River, which was generally nearly dry in summer time before the chain of dams were built in the 1930s to 1950s. The Swedish settler who owned the land turned the natural pool into a swimming pool. He was bought out by a German named Eilers, who turned the area into a tropical resort complete with a funfare, water slides and a zoo – I believe a swimming elephant was a feature of the latter. In 1898 the city bought the facility from Eilers, and within a couple of months the whole thing was destroyed in a massive flood. This led to a mindset of total opposition to any kind of Government getting involved in any kind of business deal, because government always loses the taxpayers' shirts. This opposition lasted until three months before the end of the conservative G.W.Bush administration, which decided to take over the banking industry and lost the taxpayers' shirts.

John was ready to swim the Capitol of Texas 2K in Town Lake in April when he was found to have an irregular heart beat and was catheterized. Nothing bad was found, so John carried out his plan to tour Alaska by bicycle and then ride back to Austin. He had a wonderful time, in spite of some frost damage to his hands, and was able to spend some time with brother Ted in Bethel and with old college friend Milton Wiltse in Fairbanks. He rode the Inland Waterway ferries from Seattle to Skagway, and the narrow-gauge White Pass and Yukon train from Skagway to the Canadian border. Then he rode to Fairbanks, flew to Prudhoe Bay and Barrow, and took the Alaska Railroad train to Anchorage, from where he flew to Bethel to visit Ted. He then rode to Homer and briefly visited Kodiak Island. After taking a bus and ferry to Valdez he rode home via Chicken, AK, Dawson City and Whitehorse, YT, and Dawson Creek, Edmonton, Saskatoon, Winnipeg and Lincoln, NE. Total distance cycled 5,018 miles, averaging 74 miles per day. You can reach John's blog through www.johnlberry.com/blog/blog.html.

Dana has been out on the West Coast, but has recently moved back to Baytown, near Houston in Texas. She continues to work in sales and seems to be doing well. Robert has left home and is sharing a house with a friend. He is going to Austin Community College and still working in construction, which is slow but not stopped in Austin. He still owns his 1970 Chevy Nova, which has done more harm to his wallet than has Wall Street's infatuation with pooled mortgages to the US Treasury. Barkley, our squatty black mutt, is now gray, blind, diabetic and has a heart murmur, but that doesn't stop him walking a mile a day or so and occasionally trying to steal food from the kitchen counter. He's the only dog I know who will crash into a parked car at full tilt!

With our very best wishes for a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, God Jul och Gott Nytt År, and Happy Holidays!

From John and Ingrid