A compilation of my determined writerly efforts to bring comfort and joy during a mixed-bag of a season.

JA Holiday Letter 2020 – “Non Sequitar”

Did you know that a non sequitur is considered a “conversational literary device”? I just thought it more an interactive lifestyle choice for flair and that I was especially accomplished in this regard. Linear, on-point conversation or writing is all fine and well for getting some things accomplished in “efficient” and “coherent” ways, but: BOO-RING. Quotation marks, btw, are here to infer eye-rolling dismissiveness. Non sequitur can also mean invalid argument in which the conclusion is not supported by it’s premise. I AM EXCELLENT AT THAT, TOO!!!!

Listen YOU – I’m a pro-fessional writerly-writing writer and I eke out a living with sharp, tight, effective word arrangements to achieve specific goals. As such, my personal Holiday Goodwill pursuits can and will ramble along the many paths of my mind in this effort because: great affection for YOU!

Do we NEED to rehash this year? Best guess – we all have many shared experiences in our self-imposed house-arrest, fun-face-covering, way-too-online-everything lives. We all were equal parts anxiety-tripping and suck-it-upping. We all lost and found ways to cope and to help others cope. A whole lotta of coping going in. It’s possible that having major urban infrastructure failing, aforementioned being a 75-year-lifespan bridge that is falling apart at 36-years old, and effectively marooning almost 25% of the Seattle’s citizens, including me and some of mine, MIGHT qualify as “my deal is way crappier than your deal”, but you know, probably not. In this way – 2020 was a great equalizer – so much crapola to go around! This quadrant of Seattle may be in a world of disconnected hurt, but we’re not on freakin’ FIRE. I am always and reliably grateful when NO where is on fire. Nor did anyone get hit with detritus from asteroid and space-junk collisions (although, evidently, it was close). The threat of Murder Hornets was over-reported – which is cool. Also, I am of the opinion that the country might avert continued and ultimately failed-state level deterioration under the presumed (knocking on wood and holding breath) new leadership, so there’s that.

I have this incredibly fat squirrel that’s basically taken over my front garden area. I call him “Fat Squirrel” (my naming things prowess is legendary) and he’s a player in the known neighborhood drama wherein someone (we know not who) feeds the squirrels shelled peanuts and the squirrels in turn bury them in our yards, disrupting our purposeful yard and garden efforts and in general…it’s just annoying. Fat squirrel is THAT guy, the jerk that’s rearranging the tulip bulbs to bury his purloined peanuts. THAT dude almost stomped into my HOUSE the other day. Setting aside the boldness and the presumptuousness – here’s what I want to know: HOW does a squirrel get so fat? I mean, they are running, climbing, leaping, scampering and burying stuff All. Day. Every. Day. Long. (No, Fat Squirrel is not in fact Mother-to-be Squirrel. He’s been fat for too long now.) How is Fat Squirrel EVEN POSSIBLE?

I suppose that I am the only one that has come to embellish my confined circumstances with elaborated and imagination-enriched daily-life minutiae, but I doubt it. I’d be willing to bet I’m not the only one that has named the hummingbirds — “Messy”, “Pinky”, “Bully”, “Tiny”, “Frank” and “John” send their regards, btw.

Never have we been more acutely aware of the physical and metaphorical dimensions of our lives and every impact we may have on others. We get to be saintly and disciplined every time we stay put and non-contributing to the swirling miasma of airborne particulates. Which, c’mon now — is pretty easy, life-saving heroics wise. I know I’m right. I’m guessing we will never have such a low-grade path to the high road and more reasons to be proud of ourselves.

Over too many years to ponder, these holiday letters of mine have evolved from a deeply sarcastic rejoinder to the traditional-family-unit annual dispatches of “normality” into a heartfelt compunction to express my affection for our association, whatever those threads may be, as well as the determined effort to keep those threads viable and attached. You will not be surprised to be reminded that I would love to hear from you, now more than ever. Baked into whatever written ramble I’m on in these moments – the point is this: You are great, I care about your current state of affairs and I would like to hear about them. As much as I’ve come to appreciate Fat Squirrel’s presence in my days, I know in my heart that what’s going on with you and yours is more interesting. Ramble concluded.

HAHAHHAA – No it’s not. If my good intentions stand the double-threat tests of time management and the US Postal Service – this assembly of words will be in your hands by the Winter Solstice – Monday, Dec. 21 to be exact. While I know I struggle to do or be “Holiday” at the tail end of an exhausting and tumultuous year – we are in the darkest time of year in one of the darkest years in history. Getting the lights up on the house is hardly a battle of wills betwixt myself and my co-habituating ladder-ninja that I enjoy, but when the sun is down at 4:00 – you fight the good fight about getting the lighted icicles and sparkly snowflakes the F*CK UP THERE, please. It’s a matter of my mental health at this point. I’ve long thought lights on houses have far more value as a hedge against the winter darkness that it is about a somehow historically significant but relatively frequent reproductive-biology event with some interesting details mixed in. (That’s just me – anyone who’s totally psyched about lady in a stable having a baby, knock yourself out, I’m cool with it. The dude in the red suit with the sleigh is confounding, but I freakin’ love reindeer.) Personally, and especially in 2020, it’s the Solstice that I’m jazzed about – the marker in our time cycles where the days are the darkest and will start to get longer. The worst of the darkness will recede – the light will expand our days. My fervent hope is that this is indeed the symbolism that resonates with you and yours. We faced hard stuff this year, we are getting through it and there’s some relief in sight.

BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE:

Jupiter and Saturn will form rare “Christmas Star” on winter solstice – a show for sky-gazers that hasn’t been seen in roughly 800 years. Astronomers are calling it the Great Conjunction of 2020. On December 21 — coincidentally the winter solstice — the two largest planets in our solar system will appear to almost merge in Earth’s night sky. They will appear closer than they have since 1226 A.D. There it is — there’s the “sign” that we’re headed towards events that are not necessarily fraught with peril. An indicator that while weird stuff might happen, those happenings might not be the undoing of everything we hold dear.

Find your lights, follow your north stars, wrap yourselves in your silver linings. Even if your silver lining is just that your bathroom has never been cleaner – take the win. For every catastrophic loss, on every level, there is a grain-of-sand’s worth of victory. My carefully calculated wish is for a counter-tilt towards balance in 2021. Cheers to the appearance of equilibrium and the hopes for way better days.

Here’s a bunch of Latin translations for impressing people with your holiday gravitas!

Pacem et concordiam (Peace and Goodwill) — Gravidae solatium et gaudium (Comfort and Joy) —Utique in mane (Stay the course) — Ante lucem tenebris (Darkest before the dawn) —

Fiat Lux (Let there be light) — Oritur spes aeternae (Hope springs eternal) — Optime valete, Julianne (Best Regards, Julianne)

JA’s 2020 Silver Linings — Year-in-Rapid Review Holiday Letter Addendum

While I lost my high-falutin’ job this spring – I landed on my feet with a variety of new, more, smaller jobs and a renewed facility for freelancing • I lost easy access and consistent connection to my charming Vashon farmhouse – but it’s still there and holding it’s own • My busy-busy mother has been in self-quarantine all year since the risks of Covid19 outweigh the risks of stir-crazy – but my sister and I are managing to support her in this with heretofore unparalleled tag-team consistency and effectiveness • My long-term house-mate and I are still oddly copacetic • While my cooking/baking skills are still rudimentary – they’re considerably better • While turkey/quinoa meatloaf sounds terrible – it’s not • While efforts to vegetable gardening largely failed – I know what needs to be done for next time and the roses had an incredible year • While I failed to single handedly unseat Lindsey Graham – I did strong work mail-campaigning in South Carolina and addressed some minor young-life trauma in the process • While I actually did not clear my house out of all the excess stuff – I have a far better idea of what needs to go and where • I lost a great character from some of the more exciting of my rocker years and although there is no silver lining here, nor was it a Covid19 related thing – it reinforced the danger in the far-reaching implications of isolation and lack of access to resources and while hardly consolations – awareness is always a good thing • I lost one of my very best friends suddenly and without warning and while again there is no silver lining nor was it Covid19 – I had talked to her at length the day prior to her untimely and unforeseen demise and while not a consolation AT ALL that does serve to reinforce the value of maintaining connectivity • The struggle with diminished financial resources is very real – but I am managing so far and absolutely have learned what we can do without • Live music, my former lot in life, is in great peril but the community has never been more united and some of the greatest minds I know are on it • While Old Man Joe doesn’t spark any great hope for true progress in virtually any of the challenges we face as humans – he’s not a tantrum-terror and we seem to have at least staunched the hemorrhaging • Kamala Harris = silver lining  • While my dogs are old and have old dog problems – in many cases LESS activity is the solution. Trust me – this is a big deal since I’m not getting any younger either • While books cost money and run afoul of efforts to declutter – TV on the whole has devolved into valuelessness and reading on paper seems to be going a long way to offset age and computer eye deterioration • While the pandemic procedures protocols of the King County library system are crazy and terrible – I appreciate they’re trying and I routinely manage to navigate them • I made over 100 cloth face-covering mostly with stuff that’s been languishing on shelves for decades • While I know this is hard on so many and while in no way would I purposefully deploy a pandemic to get the affection demonstrators to knock it off  – Big win for NO HUGGING! • There is absolutely no silver lining in the West Seattle bridge failure • NOT ON FIRE!

JA Holiday Letter 2019 – “Finished-ish”

Happy Holidays-ish!

Season’s greetings from one of your favorite (presumptuous, I know) spinsters! As is my time-honored tradition, I’ve decided to share a quick and amusing recap of the year in the spirit of catching up and sharing accumulated wisdom from the last 340-ish days.

One of my 2019 joys is the ever-increasing use, and acceptance of, “ish” as a thing we can all use to add a disclaimer-y, non-finite flair to all the things we say or do. Ish really makes it’s mark around here, for sure. If you’re not already doing it, seriously, it’s great-ish. [See – by using “ish” here, I’m indicating that it’s great, sure, but also imperfect in some vague way, including but not limited to rampant grammatical incorrectness.]

Recap-ish wise, let’s see….

My 3-year long boondoggle “Black Sheep Farm Vashon (Aka BSF-V)” house rescue (aka restoration) project is finished-ish. The farmhouse and center of my often overwhelming effort is past habitable and well into charming and lovely. The “ish” in this story tells you there’s still things to be done, for instance, the utility/laundry/half bath isn’t “done”, nor is one of the loft spaces, but I’ll get there eventually. It’s SO habitable that someone actually inhabits it now! For real. Old friend of mine lives and works and chops firewood on the regular out there now. Whoa! Right?

Anyhoo – getting to this BSF-V “Finished-ish” milestone took an enormous amount of effort, resources, and well…all year. Really. For all intents and purposes, this is what I did all year. I came dangerously close to total physical and emotional collapse in September during the intense drainage cellar project, but I made it through (OBV). Now all the mind-boggling amount of time, money and tenacity that equals the cute, restored 1912 farmhouse is sitting safely above a very hard-won and sophisticated ground water abatement system. Which is but one of the huge rebuild, repair, reshape and reclaim projects that make up the whole of this story’s happy-ish, ending-ish.

My dogs and I are more….present (for lack of a better word) in our West Seattle headquarters, and we’re all fine. Ish. Fine-ish. We’re older, we’ve got older-related issues, they still tend to break out into rather unpleasant conflicts (which has never been great) and makes us all a little more crazy. We’re managing and readjusting to a less ping-pong-y, ferry-dependent, more exurb-centric life. I’m still doing the words-for-money transactional thing, which is also fine-ish and keeps me off the streets. I’m taking another run at breaking my bad sugar habit, if anyone wishes to join some sort of support group.

Goes without saying, but I’d love to see and hear from you and yours more often. We’ve all struggled with the increasing awareness of the perils of social media, the upshot of which seems to be a kind-of “No Free Lunch” + “Too Much of a Good Thing = A Bad Thing” hybrid life-lesson. I’m good with the phone (even still), or the email, or heck – mail mail. My perpetual wish is to spend more time with the fun and fantastic folks that have shaped and defined all my days. Ish.

As always – Tidings of comfort and joy! X/O Julianne

JA Holiday Letter 2018 – “Whoops”

Well Hello! How the heck is it the holidays already?

An acquaintance of mine once said that the older one gets — the faster time goes. This was many years ago, there was a great deal of hilarious follow-up banter but even then – I understood what she meant. It’s perpetual, too. Time just accelerates steadily and constantly. Come to find out, science decided to weigh in on this phenomenon. To paraphrase Scientific American (always a good idea), it seems that we judge how time is passing based on how many new experiences we are having and new memories we are building. The more routine and predictable your life is – the faster time will seem to pass.

WHOOPS.

Here we are in the depth of winter 2018, holidays rapidly approaching, the year coming to an end, and I’m just sitting here wondering “Where did the time go?” It went to chores, evidently. It went to working many hours, tippity-tap-typing, care and feeding of pets, keeping one house in shape while restoring another one and many, many other tedious and non-newsworthy everyday events. I did not travel, I did not win any awards, I did not write the book. I did not finish my Vashon restoration dream-project (that one stings). I did spend time with some nice, fun people. I did laugh a lot. I did give up cable and as a direct result – read many more books. I did get my bike out and start riding it again. But – “New” experiences? Not so much. It appears that looking to achieve stability, calm, contentment is NOT the way to go if time is going too fast for you. It appears that it’s not having too many things going on that can be at issue – it’s having too many of the SAME things going on. I repeat:

WHOOPS.

It appears if I need time to slow down, I’m going to need to take up juggling or treasure hunting or ziplining, which honestly – I’m not looking forward to. I don’t want to do any of those things. I want to finish the farmhouse restoration and maybe think about getting another cat. I guess I could do without vacuuming in the name of the greater good. But something is going to have to be done because I sure don’t like the realization that 2018 just slid right by me and I probably didn’t get to spend as much time with you and yours as I would’ve liked. Whoops. Happy Holidays – I miss you, I think of you often and fondly, and I’m genuinely sorry I didn’t take up hang-gliding or fire-breathing and by extension, wrangle the passing of time back into a better pace.

Bet you’re all wondering what 2019’s going to look like now, huh?

JA Holiday Letter 2016 – “Hero”

And, what to your wondering eyes has appeared? Julianne’s Holiday Letter! It’s Boring! Read it anyway!

Tidings of great joy! Points of light! Mirth and Merriment! ALL HERE – ALL RIGHT HERE for your tiny amusement and with any luck –the warm-fuzzies courtesy of the effort that got THIS pretty piece of paper from my house to your house in the spirit of being in touch and reaffirming our mutual admiration. I love you and yours – You love me and mine. We did some cool stuff together recently or at least we talked about doing that or at least we thought about doing that and it was awesome. THANKS – can’t wait to do it again. Boom! Holiday Letter Accomplished!

Ohhhh – maybe some updates? Let’s see – for the last year, I’ve continued my plodding march towards world-wide acclaim as the “Most boring person alive”. A lofty goal, to be sure. It hasn’t been hard, I moved to the outer-city limits in late 2015 and I’ve kind-of adjusted – that’s pretty boring stuff if I say so myself. I’ve had the same job for years. My pets are older and somewhat less newsworthy but equally high-maintenance/spoiled rotten. I bought a reliable car. I’m certainly too old for hijinks, so the purest elements of genuine boring-ness have fallen into place. There was some high drama deciding on new paint colors for the house – but you know, that was a brief affair and turned out to be anti-climactic. We painted it mid-grey – arguably the most boring color ever. Seriously, I was totally winning “Boring”.

I might have blown it, boring-wise, vis-à-vis the whirlwind acquisition of a dilapidated and sorely neglected farm-ish property on Vashon Island and immediately naming it “Black Sheep Farm”. This endeavor is about my long-term goals, building a place to enjoy “retirement”, investing in a second community I like and some other stuff but is NOT about moving any time soon – I’m staying put in West Seattle’s hinterlands in my totally solid rambler. Black Sheep Farm is a freakin’ fascinating and multi-faceted story and will be an on-going project of HUGE scope. It comes with a blog (www.smartfunnyjulianne.com/black-sheep-farm) and some actively-involved super-interesting other hero-type people (the cast of characters is great!) and if you’re a fan of house (And barn! And greenhouse!) restoration and/or “ugly duckling” stories you’ll probably enjoy watching the developments. Also fun – wondering often if I can really pull it off considering my lack of infinite resources. You’ll enjoy the validation that comes with knowing you’d NEVER be insane enough to take on something this ridiculous.  So, anyway – Black Sheep Farm as an ideal and as a metaphor AND as a severely neglected 1912 farmhouse – not totally boring. In fact, it’s a little exciting sometimes! In a huge, crushing kind of way.

Here’s my wish for you and yours – Health and Happiness, Calm and Contentment, Peace and Prosperity. And though it’s been said many times, many ways – Let’s be sure to get together soon! Best Winter Solstice Wishes EVER! X/O Julianne

Postscript in my most dramatic speech-writerly prose available:

The nation and by extension the world took a non-boring turn in early November. You may have noticed. You may be having a difficult time processing the implications of a redefined world. You may wonder what we’re facing and what we can do about it and how we came to this…You may be overwhelmed. The things you hold dear – nature, science, justice, tolerance, stability, integrity, peace, the list goes on and ON – are all potentially matters of great concern. Although “Boring” might not be the greatest thing ever (Contrary to my stirring endorsement thereof), “Fearful” is worse. I am frankly, terrified. I suspect that I am not alone. 2016 featured way too many bruising losses in art and music and hope. As happy as I am to put a difficult year behind me, I’m thinking it’ll be wise to be wary and prepared for 2017 and beyond.

Do I have solutions? Nope. Do I have ideas? Yep. Is there a damage-control strategy? There sure needs to be. Let’s come together, outside of the social networks and our respective micro-worlds and let’s talk about that. Am I possibly overly apprehensive? Please do call or write and tell me so – I’ll take any well-reasoned reassurances available.

Above all else – I believe we all need to be prepared for the potential of extreme unpleasantness. It is worth considering that keeping to ourselves and insulating against the things we do not understand or respect – that is what, in fact, put us all here. I will be actively, but quietly, thinking and dreaming of ways to build new barricades against hostility and harm and seeking sustainable in-roads back to the concepts of graciousness and diplomacy and fairness and relative safety in an ever more dangerous climate. I hope to have these conversations with you and with our communities – large and small, very soon. I believe we can all be heroes. We may need heroes, and we may need to become heroes. I genuinely hope I’m wrong. But, just in case – here are wiser words than mine should you need them:

The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing – Albert Einstein

Fear is a reaction. Courage is a decision. – Sir Winston Churchill

A hero is an ordinary individual who find the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles. – Christopher Reeve

It is surmounting difficulties that makes heroes – Louis Pasteur

A hero is no braver than an ordinary person, but is braver 5 minutes longer – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Hero is not a noun, it’s a verb. – Robert Downey, Jr.