Christmas letter, 2021: First rough draft

Time to trot out the annual missive on family comings & goings. Bought 100 stamps today!

Our year would not be complete without a family Christmas tree expedition (above, left) and it seems like the last ten years also meant a high school or college graduation (above, right).

Getting the family together grows more difficult each year. Gaby finished her UCLA degree in June in Los Angeles and by August 1 she settled into her Chelsea apartment in New York. Jane left the familiar confines of Milwaukee after almost two years to take up an assignment with Discovery Southeast on Juneau, Alaska for the second half of the year.

Dena is approaching 22 months of work with Saleytics – keeping the consumer products supply chain flowing -- and has been working ‘remotely’ almost her entire tenure. Peter gave up his tenure for emeritus status two-and-a-half years ago and has spending a lot of time doing volunteer work with the local parish and their elementary school.

After a wonderful family weekend in January 2019 in Los Angeles with Gaby’s UCLA posse, we can still remember a night in mid-March 2019, when we were promised a two-week effort to ‘flatten the curve.’ As with the other 7.6 billion people of the world, life has been different these past 21 months, yet the Lorenzi and Qastin extended clans have fared quite well through the miasma. Gaby secured a great job in New York. Jane found a new life in Alaska to be followed next year by graduate school, perhaps in Spain or Scotland. Dena has played a critical role in keeping essentials delivered and stocked in supermarkets and pharmacies. Peter will have walked over 2,000 miles since the onset of the pandemic, and we all have enjoyed good health and negative test results.

We celebrated Thanksgiving with Abe and Jane Qastin and a new tradition, a Lorenzi-Qastin family football game in our Harrison yard. Then Jane and Dena struck an adventurous chord, flying to Lisbon just as Omicron came ashore in the United States. Most important, we are expecting to have the four of us together for a week over Christmas. Who could ask for more?