A grand day

Dear Family and Friends,

The highlight of the day was the trip to Kathryn's home on East 5th Street in Manhattan. Merwin had decided that I could not manage the train and subway and wanted to take me door to door, and indeed that's just what he did. We found a parking space exactly opposite Kathryn's front door. Once inside we greeted Antonio, visiting from Italy, Kathryn, of course, Jay and Barbara. Later Hedda and Meta arrived. Toby is in Hawaii, Joe had a family emergency, and Anna was busy with family in her new home. We ate and ate, drank and drank, and read our pieces to each other and enjoyed each other's company. Our group has been together for over 25 years.

My piece had two parts, and I'll share one with you. As Jay said, I took on Kathryn's sometimes acerbic voice, though I can hardly match her wit:

email etiquette

Having been the person who introduced the writing group to email several years ago, I think it is incumbent upon me to share with you my lecture on proper email etiquette to all and sundry on my list: please feel free to pass it on to those whose emails need some work:

1. When forwarding mail from others, for God's sake remove the trash, that is, the unnecessary routing information that accompanies the forwarded message. It's bad enough when the mail has been forwarded once, but often it is three or four times, with a mess of stuff to get through to find the message. Seldom does anyone need ALL the forwarding material—or any of it.

2. The subject line does serve a purpose: please use it. When I am searching for someone's message from the past, having a reference to the topic is a help. I don't know if others save email and find a need to go back to old messages, but this is a frequent need in my experience. Please change the subject line appropriately when you respond.

3. Please don't send me jokes, funny photos, or anything else what is cute, winsome, delightful! A subject line helps here, too: if it says “You'll love the humor!” or “This is so cute,” I understand right away that I can hit the delete key. I can tolerate the few that slip through my net, it's an open and shut case: open, see what it is, and discard. By the way, when you do send on these gems, pay attention to no. 1, above. What is more annoying than the cute pictures themselves is the trash one must get through (the multiple lists of recipients, in solid block paragraphs), revealing how often this particular collection has been forwarded, and forwarded, and forwarded.

4. Please do try to answer emails promptly when an answer is required. I know you are busy, but so often even one word is sufficient.

OK that's it, just 4 suggestions.

Since we went to NYC by car, we took the opportunity to bring a couple of large things to our NYC apartment, the framed "multiple me" photo that Dave made for his dad's birthday and one of the mirrors I have around the house, unused. Since legal parking was impossible at Bryant Park, Merwin parked illegally, dashed up with the 2 items while I stayed in the car, ready to be confronted by a policeman, but none ever came.

At home, we watched the News Hour, and I guess I could have remained supine for the rest of the evening, but instead I got up, found some good tasks to do for hamletworks.org and spent two fruitful hours. Had a nice chat with son Arthur, too, along the way. It's amazing to me how much my work energizes me.

A happy day: I hope you all have happy days in abundance in the New Year.

Love,
Bernice