Well, another pandemic year is almost to a close, and while it's consumed our lives for almost 2 years, the advent of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines has helped return life to some sense of normality; at least for now. While 2020 saw us locked down to some degree or another, 2021 allowed us more freedoms, the ability to travel, and to socialize. And being vaccinated, and wearing masks when appropriate, we've remained COVID free since the virus hit our shores in early 2020. Long may that continue. Anyway, before you sit
yourself down in a comfy chair, drink in hand to while away a few minutes
reading this letter, we hope that 2021 was good to you (and hopefully better than 2020), that you’re in good
health, and that you’re looking forward to the end of year festivities
Unlike previous Christmas letters, this one will begin with
a tale from the end of last year since it occurred after I’d written the 2020 news. As you may remember, last year’s card below had a
selfie of the family
Christmas 2020
While I was going to send it to Jacqui who was overwintering
in Washington State (more of that later), Trish decided it would be fun to play a little mind game with her. You know, one of the joys of being a parent! After designing it and ordering a few copies, one was popped in the mail to await
a reaction. Suffice to say that it had
its chosen effect as Jacqui was bewildered that her boyfriend Oscar had made it to the card, and which she thought had been sent to over 200 of our family and friends.
When questioned, Trish said that “Dad did the card” and that she hadn’t
paid much attention. Definitely plausible with her absent minded father and busy mother
Jacqui's 2020 card
The penny dropped on Christmas Day during a
family FaceTime call when, after I asked my brother if he’d received our card,
he held it up to the camera.
Jacqui, peering into her phone during a break from skiing, realized
it wasn’t the one she’d received, and that she’d been had. Trish 1 - Jacqui 0. As if that wasn’t enough, when we received a card from
Oscar’s family, a little photo editing by Cam and their dog looked vaguely familiar. Brilliant!
Fetch Jacqui!
Cam (now 24), started 2021 as a graduand of Hamilton College having finished his studies and
exams just prior to the 2020 Christmas holidays. While he wouldn't formally graduate until May, he nevertheless started his long search for a career job, and while doing so worked as a barista at a local coffee shop as well as a sous-chef and then waiter at The Cornerstop, a local restaurant. We ended up dining there quite a bit over the year, not only as we like the food and the atmosphere, but also as our waiter was super friendly and refused to take tips. So back to his career search, as someone who devours news and politics as if his life depends on it, he decided that he wanted to go into TV journalism. One problem, with a degree in Economics he had no experience. Not to be deterred, he “networked” like none before him and working
his connections started to make contacts in the TV world. Of course, still lacking experience he needed
to get something under his belt, so he volunteered to work for a local podcast
called “The Hingham Cast” run by a good friend of ours who used to be an
investigative reporter. With that, and his tenacity, he began to get
interviews, and after many months he landed an internship as a production assistant for the PBS news show “Firing Line with Margaret Hoover” (https://www.pbs.org/wnet/firing-line/). It’s a weekly 30 minute show where
she interviews politicians, actors, musicians etc, and where Cam worked with a team doing the research on her guests and coming up with the questions. While he learned a lot, unfortunately it didn't lead to a full time position so he's now following up on some leads at CNN. He's working on his James Earl Jones voice as we speak!
Random picture of Cam to break up the text
When not working, Cam spends time with his friends, many of whom he knows through college and who moved to Boston for jobs. He also got to travel on the weekends to see his lady friend on Nantucket Island (heaven forbid I use the term "girlfriend"), his friends in New York City, as well as getting together for 5 days of hiking in the Cascade Mountains of Washington State with his buddies from college. He's also taken up snorkeling in the not too warm waters of the Atlantic, where he and his friend Max go looking for lobsters and other sea life. He's even roped Graeme into going (see back of the card), but he has yet to get me to join him as the one time we went the sea was dangerously rough after a recent storm and we remained landlubbers. Something for 2022
Cam and Max with a nice lobster
And talking of sea life, Cam put together a TikTok this year that pretty much says it all (https://vm.tiktok.com/TTPdjm7hqp/). I signed up for TikTok to see the video, and while it's very funny, after posting a comment and then being connected with complete strangers I left the platform and deleted it from my phone. I knew there was a reason to stay clear of social media, but this proved the point. As an old fart, I'll just stick to LinkedIn and Christmas blogs
Jacqui (now 21) continued with her year off college at Baker Mountain ski resort in Washington State where she had gone for the winter. While her work started at 4:00 am, being that she was done by 8:00 am she had all day to ski until her late afternoon shift. And boy did she ski; according to her she hit the slopes 147 times. But after the season had ended in May, she had time to host Trish and Cam in Seattle. Trish flew out a few days earlier than Cam, and went kayaking with Jacqui and Jessie, a roommate of Oscar's, in Puget Sound, as well as going whale watching where they saw orcas hunt and kill a porpoise. Nature in the raw
Trish and Jacqui in Puget Sound with Seattle in the background
Orcas of Puget Sound
Cam then joined them and they travelled up the coast from Seattle to the San Juan Islands and stayed on Orcas Island. Fortunately, the weather was excellent and while it was sunny and warm the water was not, as Cam can attest to as he decided to go for a dip in the frigid waters sans wetsuit. Lots of shrinkage no doubt!
Cam and Jacqui on Orcas Island
Between hosting Cam and Trish out West and starting her summer job as a counselor at a mountain biking camp for kids just outside Seattle, Jacqui came back to Hingham for a few weeks. It had been 9 months since Graeme and I had seen her after she drove across country with Oscar the previous August. It was lovely having her home for a few weeks. While she was home, Trish borrowed a friend's Mini to give her a few lessons on how to drive a stick shift since she'd arranged to buy a stick shift Ford F150 pick up truck (aka a tank) from a friend in Seattle to commute to/from camp each day
F150 training
While a few lessons in a Mini helped, the F150 lacked a working hand brake so doing hill starts was a steep learning curve. Suffice to say that there were many tales of stalling and blocking traffic, and trying to get round small rotaries (roundabouts) where the truck was too long to go around in one go and she had to back in and out to make it work. Our Jacqui behind the wheel of an F150, who would have thought?
After her pandemic year off, at the end of the Summer Jacqui returned to St. Lawrence University to resume her studies as a junior i.e. 2 more years to go before she graduates. Having been out of class for 12 months, it took a little while getting used to being on campus, but she got back into the swing of things and has now finished her Fall term. Settling in wasn't helped by the University's decision to test everyone for SARS-CoV-2 upon return to campus, but then letting them free for a few days while the test results came back rather than having them quarantine in their rooms. Suffice to say, there were a couple of infected students who unknowingly spread the virus during that short period, and within a few weeks there were over 200 cases. Why they didn't quarantine the students until the test results were available is anyone's guess since if they had they could have identified the infected students and isolated them to prevent spread. Fortunately, even though Jacqui's roommate was infected and had to leave campus to isolate at home, she didn't get infected so could stay at St. Lawrence. We would have dealt with it if she had, but as she's 385 miles away it would have been a 4-day affair going to get her and bringing her back. Fortunately, she recently bought herself a car so we're no longer on the hook for such, and with her own wheels she has more freedom
Picture of Jacqui and Cam to break up the text
Graeme is now 13, almost 5' 8" tall (i.e. taller than Trish or Jacqui), and had a very busy year. He's enjoyed being back in the classroom after the remote learning of last year and is doing well. He has a nice group of friends that he gets together with, either in person or via their mutual love of X-Box gaming. Lovely to hear peels of laughter coming from the basement. Throughout the year he did various activities including scouts, competitive mountain bike racing, soccer, theater, and playing the piano
For scouts, he and I attend the once weekly meetings of Troop 4 Hingham, as well as going on the camping trips (I got roped into helping out). In the summer he went away for a week to Camp Yawgoo in Rhode Island where he spent his days doing various activities to earn merit badges and obtain the requirements to move to the next rank. I attended for half the week as they needed adult supervisors to watch over the troop when they were not in class. Of course, you can't watch them all of the time, and when the older boys came peeling into camp having knocked a wasps nest from a tree with a football we had to have a chat about making wise choices. However, it was quite a fun experience (camp food notwithstanding which was awful), the weather was great, sleeping under canvas was pleasant, and we got to go fishing at the lake when the boys were in class. The highlight of the week was the Olympic themed dinner when the boys dressed in toga's. Interestingly, none of the other troops seemed to have got the memo, so Troop 4 Hingham was the only group in costume. They certainly didn't feel like the odd man out and got a lot of credit for going the whole hog
Troop 4 Hingham in costume (Graeme 2nd from the right)
Graeme also got into competitive mountain bike racing this year with the Wompy Warriors, a bike club that rides in Wompatuck State Park in Hingham. The park is a haven for mountain bikers, kids and adults alike, and there are endless trails, jumps, and berms that biking enthusiasts have built. While the midweek rides are casual affairs, the weekend races which occur all over New England are a different kettle of fish. Racers choose the number of laps according to their age and experience, and once the starting gun goes off they're pedaling like mad to make the front of the pack. He had a slow start to the season this being his first, but he got better with practice and ended up coming in 3rd in the last race of the year. Considering he has a regular mountain bike and not one of the high-end bikes that many of the other riders have, he did pretty well all told
Graeme and a teammate getting ready to race
Unlike last year, when Graeme's favorite pastime of performing on stage was put on hold due to the pandemic, with easing of restrictions he was once again behind the footlights. He auditioned for a role in Disney's "The Aristocats" and played Edgar, the butler who's allergic to cats and wants rid of them. I must say that I hadn't seen him in action since he had a supporting role a few years ago in the stage version of Mulan, so I was gob-smacked when he was front and center commanding the audience with his oration, humor, and singing. Who the hell was that kid? But shock aside, it was great to see him so confident in himself and enjoying something he really loves
Graeme and fellow thespians
Trish is still working at Norwell Veterinary Hospital 3 days a week and continues to enjoy her chosen career. When not working, she spends time with her many friends in town, going for walks with their respective dogs, playing pickleball (the new craze for middle-aged women as Cam refers to it), and playing a little golf this summer after many years off the links.
The most adventurous thing she did this year was to get dive certified. After completing the on-line course, she then proceeded to the diving itself. While she's dived as part of resort courses in the Bahamas, Grand Cayman, Turks and Caicos, and Colombia over the years, where the sea is warm, the water crystal clear, and the under sea life amazing, she was not as fortunate this time and had to do her training in nearby ponds where if you kicked up the silt you'd see nothing, and even if you did it was an ugly largemouth bass or an old golf ball rather than some beautiful Angel Fish. Nevertheless, she got her certification and it was definitely worth it when we vacationed in Eleuthera in the Bahamas in the Summer (more of that later). However, later in the year when she was visiting Jacqui, they went diving in the St. Lawrence River that separates the US and Canada (see back of the card), so a return to cold, murky waters. But you've got to love her spirit
Trish and her instructor after completing her open water dive
(dressed for the Paris cat walks)
For me, 2021 was the second year working from home and seeing my friends and colleagues via Zoom. In fact, I hired 2 new members of staff this year and haven't met either of them in person. I went into the office recently after a 21 month absence, and it was odd meeting people you've only met on Zoom and to realize they're either much shorter or much taller than you imagined. Work has been very busy, and I've spent most of the year building teams of scientific/medical writers, biostatisticians, and operations specialists in Hyderabad, India. I'm typically on calls from 7:00 am onwards since they're 9.5-10.5 hours ahead of me. At some point in the future, I'll need to travel there to meet them, and which I'm very much looking forward to having never been to India, but while COVID's still raging that's unlikely to be any day soon
When not working, I keep busy with my fruit and vegetable garden, coaching soccer, helping out with scouts, making wine and kombucha and, my favorite of course, fishing. With my continuing goal of catching 300 species of fish in my lifetime, I went to Sarasota, Florida in April for a week of pure self indulgence (post vaccination of course since Florida was a hot bed of COVID at the time). I chartered the same boat for the week with a request to the captain to help me catch as many species as possible. He rose to the challenge, and with 12 of the 22 species I caught being new, my total rose to 253. And with another new species caught in Eleuthera in August, I have 46 to go. Apart from species hunting, I also got out on our boat a few times this year although with calls to India it's killed my midweek early morning trips. However, working from home does have some benefits as it enables me to pop down to Hingham Harbor for an hour with my fly rod and fish from the shore for striped bass. It's been quite productive (the last time I went I caught 6 in 22 minutes) and is very good for the soul. There's only so much screen time a man can take!
Blacknose shark from Sarasota Bay
King mackerel from the Gulf of Mexico
Trish and Graeme joined me in Sarasota half way through the week, and while I fished they visited the local aquarium, went swimming, parasailing, and relaxed. In the evenings we went out to dinner and enjoyed some lovely al fresco dining. On our last full day, I had the captain take us on a tour of Sarasota Bay to see the sights and the wildlife. Even though I'd been on the water all week, we saw some amazing birdlife, a dolphin, and a mother manatee with her calf that came to the surface only a few yards from the boat. I even saw my first armadillo while there, snuffling through the wet grass as I drove to my first morning of fishing. Even at 56, I still get a kick out of seeing animals I've never seen before
Manatee and her calf
And while we're on cool sightings, Trish and I came across this Ocean Sunfish just off Boston Light in the Summer when we were out on our boat. While it was a relatively small one, likely 200-300 lbs, these gentle, jellyfish-eating giants are known to be quite curious and this one was clearly checking us out. As you can see from the video, it had come into contact with a boat's propeller, a consequence of spending a lot of their time basking near the surface. However, it seemed to be OK and was swimming strongly (at least for a sunfish that is)
Ocean Sunfish (Mola mola)
For our Summer vacation we went to Eleuthera in the Bahamas for 2 weeks. While Trish and I had been there 5 times before, including our honeymoon in 1994, and Cam, Jacqui, and Graeme had been once, as we wanted to go somewhere where there weren't many people, where we could stay in one place and not travel, and hence reduce our chances of getting infected with SARS-CoV-2, we unanimously decided that was the place to go. Not only do we love it there and we're very familiar with what to do (i.e. nothing but snorkeling, diving, and fishing ... bliss), it was for us the obvious refuge from pandemic life. That's not to say that the pandemic didn't affect our travel plans since the paperwork to get into the country was itself a lot of work, but that all melted away once we were there and it turned out to be one of the best vacations we've had as a family
We snorkeled every day, exploring reefs we'd visited before but also using Google Earth to check out areas that might hold some unexplored ones. This was Cam's idea and boy did it pay off. We saw 100 species of fish (yes, I keep a list); from schools of silversides no more than an inch long to rainbow parrotfish the size of cars doors, we saw it all. One reef in particular (the location of which remains a closely held secret) was the most amazing we've ever seen. Fish of every size, color, and shape, forests of fan corals swaying in the current, and enormous hard coral formations the size of Christmas trees towered from the sea floor. It's a world unlike any other and with so many reefs dying at an unfathomable rate it was wonderful to see this one thriving. In addition to snorkeling, Trish and Jacqui, who are both dive certified, went diving from a boat. For their first day they dove down to 100 feet, through caves to the edge of the drop off, but on day 2, with a bait box in the water, they went shark diving and spent an amazing time getting up close and personal with these magnificent animals
Trish and Jacqui's shark dive
When we were there, the spiny lobster season had just opened, so having bought a Hawaiian sling (a spear propelled by rubber bands) we bagged a few for dinner as well as a nice yellow jack that swam too close to me and ended up on the grill. Curiosity got the better of it as it swam passed me, then turned around to make another pass. Big mistake. Graeme, our seemingly gentle child, became a man possessed and really wanted to spear his own lobster. The Gods blessed him at the end of our vacation with a beauty that, as with the fish, ended up as dinner. Unfortunately, Cam was not quite as good a shot, and the tales of his inaccuracy and general incompetence became legend. I swear I saw a school of little fish swim up to him and laugh
Graeme with his first spiny lobster
While 2021 was a very good year for us overall, in the summer we had a thunderstorm roll through in the middle of the night and the back door, which wasn't shut tight, blew open. Kenai, our beloved orange cat, escaped, but unlike last year when he got out but came back 5 days later, this time he didn't come back and his body was found at a nearby golf course. RIP dear Kenai. While our other cat Ed still had Colby for company, about a month ago Trish managed to get a rescue cat who we named Fiona. It's the first female cat we've owned and it seems as if she thinks she owns the place, running around like there's no tomorrow and bossing Ed around. But she's sweet, and with time we hope she'll settle down
Colby and Ed
Graeme and Fiona
Brian, my desktop companion
Uh oh!
Anyway, that's about it for this year, we did a lot, especially in and on the water, and it was certainly better than last year. I'll leave you with this picture of our house after the first snow of the season recently fell. From our home to yours, we hope you have a lovely holiday season and that the New Year brings you health, happiness, and continued immunity to SARS-CoV-2 and all of its variants. Let's hope it's all over before we get to the end of the Greek alphabet!
With lots of love from Darren, Trish, Cam, Jacqui, Graeme, Darcy, Ed, Fiona, and Brian
Darren: darrenpbaker@msn.com; Trish: trishanddarren@msn.com; Cam: cambaker81@gmail.com
Jacqui: jacquibaker77@gmail.com; Graeme: gbaker2710@icloud.com
Darcy: woof, woof, woof; Ed and Fiona, meow, meow, meow; Brian: who the hell knows?
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