Hello and Happy Holidays from our family to yours! Where do the

years go? Alice has been with the faculty at Michigan Tech for

23 years now. Steve is a sophomore at Macalester. Ted has been

with Information Technology at Michigan Tech for 15 years.

As a family, we have been active in the theatre again this year.

Steve has been involved in seven performances at Macalester. He

got one of the leads in Return to Kanburi, the Mac drama

department’s Spring play. The play told the story of Eric Lomax,

an Englishman (Steve’s part) who was captured by the Japanese

during World War II, and spent much of the war as a POW working

on the Thailand-Burma Railway. Years after the war, Lomax

forgave his captors, and even traveled back to Burma to meet the

Japanese interpreter, Nagase Takashi, who was involved in the

torture that Lomax experienced during his captivity. Ted and

Alice were in the audience opening night. The real Mr. Nagase,

81 years old, traveled from Japan with a television crew that

taped the production for Japanese National TV. We met and talked

to him. Steve’s part was a challenging one, and it included a

surreal dance portraying Lomax’s ghost as a Spirit of Vengeance.

Spring Semester Steve took a beginning ceramics class, and he

certainly made the most of it. It was fortunate that at the end

of the semester he got a ride home in a pickup truck, otherwise

he might not have been able to transport all his loot. One of

the pieces he made is proudly displayed in Ted's office. Many

more of them are on the top shelf of the bookcase in the new room

of our house. Others are waiting for some space so they can be

displayed.

We told you in our previous Christmas letter about the tragic

death of our young friend and neighbor Oren Krumm in October,

1998. Oren was a dedicated Eagle Scout, and loved to hike. His

parents decided to use some of the money from the memorial fund

they set up to build a shelter on the North Country Trail, which

passes within about 15 miles of our house. Ray Krumm and Ted

worked during the winter, pre-cutting, labeling and bundling the

lumber. During the Spring, when most of Oren’s Scouting buddies

were between college and summer jobs, we all got together for a

weekend and put the shelter together. Ted was the lead carpenter

on the project, and was pretty busy from Friday afternoon until

Sunday morning when he and Alice limped out of there and home to

a hot bath. The shelter was already tight enough for some of the

Scouts to sleep in Saturday night. Over the next few weekends,

various volunteers put on the finishing touches, and now the

longest hiking trail in the US has one more shelter. Everyone

that worked on this project worked hard, and deserves to feel

proud of this legacy to Oren.

Steve worked at the Philmont Scout Ranch again this summer. His

job was at another lumberjack camp like Crater Lake, where he

worked last summer. This year’s camp was called Pueblano. He

taught spar-pole climbing again, and did a nightly campfire

performance. This makes the 5th summer in a row Steve has been

to Philmont, and his travel arrangements are already made for

next summer, when he hopes to work as a Ranger.

While at their camp this summer, the guys at Pueblano decided to

get a cat. Steve borrowed a car and drove to Raton, a town about

an hour from Philmont. A quick trip to the animal shelter there

netted him a spayed female cat who became known as Genovebe.

This is the Spanish equivalent of the name Genevieve, and is

pronounced, more or less, Hen-o-vey-va. As the summer came to a

close, someone had to take Henna home, and Steve volunteered.

Unfortunately, Amtrak, which was Steve’s ride home, refuses to

take any pets. After some quick checking, Steve found that a

couple of older Scouts who were leaving Philmont by car and

heading home to Duluth, so he packed Henna up and delivered her

to these fellows at Base Camp. The guys took the long way home,

and our plans to meet them in Duluth got delayed day after day.

Finally when we spoke to their dad, we learned they would be home

on Saturday, August 21, the day before we were to pick Steve up

in Milwaukee. So, we left early that morning to pick up the

newest addition to our household.

We arrived at the boys’ home in Duluth at noon, as we had

arranged, and their dad explained that the boys weren’t home yet.

They had changed plans at the last minute and stopped at their

aunt’s home in Brainerd, about 2 hours further west. We got

directions, and continued down the road. When we found the

place, the boys’ aunt took us to their car, and cowering in a

corner of the backseat was a scared, skinny, black and white cat.

Ted scooped her up and carried her toward the van, and every dog

in the neighborhood seemed to take an immediate interest. Henna

still had some spunk left, because she dug into Ted's skin hard

with her claws. We got home after midnight from that trip, and

left the next morning to pick up Steve at the train station in

Milwaukee. It was a relieved Steve that learned that his kitty

was safe and sound at home.

Since Steve landed one of the lead roles in the drama

department’s Fall Play, he had to arrive on campus 2 weeks before

regular classes began in order to start rehearsals. This meant

that we had to pick him up at the train station in Milwaukee as

he arrived from Philmont, and drive him directly to St. Paul.

That was a long day for us. It is about 6 hours from our home to

Milwaukee, and another 6 or 7 from Milwaukee to St. Paul. As a

result, it was about 2:00 in the morning when we finally got to

our hotel. The next day, we helped Steve get somewhat settled in

his dorm room at Macalester, said goodbye, and headed back to

Elo.

This play was called The Sisterhood, and is an adaptation of Les

Femmes Savantes by the French playwright Molière (the French

title translates directly into English as The Learned Ladies).

Ted and Alice were in the audience opening night, and had a great

time again. Are you surprised? The 17th century French costumes

for this play were amazing, right down to the high heels on the

men’s shoes and the period-accurate wigs loaded with ringlets.

Alice and Ted had both read a different translation of the play

ahead of time, but the adaptation modernized it significantly—

especially the humor was much more up to date. Steve played the

part of a mild, heavyset, congenial father. His costume included

an undergarment that we called his ‘fat suit.’ This added about

ten inches to his waistline, and he had to learn to walk and move

accordingly.

Back on the home front, the Calumet Players decided to do Fiddler

on the Roof for their Fall play. Ted was asked to run the fly

loft, and was happy to say yes. Good friend Dulnath Wijayaratne,

who has helped out in the loft before, was able to lend a hand

again this year. Fiddler has always been one of Ted's favorites,

and actually being involved in the production was very

satisfying. Alice worked as an usher for every performance, and

was house manager a couple of nights. Ted also worked backstage

for the Michigan Tech Fine Arts department production of Don

Quixote last Spring. He ran a winch that raised and lowered a

huge staircase onto the stage.

Speaking of theatres, the Rozsa Performing Arts building, which

includes a state of the art, 1200 seat theatre is well under way

on the Michigan Tech campus. They hope to have the theatre ready

for their Fall 2000 production. The current rumor is that they

want to perform Les Miserables. Ted recently got a tour of the

facility, and the space they are creating is absolutely amazing.

Fall Quarter started off with a bang. Tech is converting from

quarters to semesters, and we’re right in the middle of preparing

for the change. Fall 2000 will mark the official beginning of

the semester system. This Fall, 1999, the goal was to meet with

all students and either set their schedules so they would finish

their degree under quarters, if they were close to graduation, or

develop a combined quarter-semester plan, if they were more than

a year from finishing. It took about 30 to 60 minutes per

student. All student schedules are due to be finished by shortly

after the first of the year. A lot of the faculty and staff felt

(and acted) like they were being hurled into ‘hyperspace’. Next

year’s collective goal is to teach all the new courses that have

been proposed. It’s generally a challenge to teach even one new

course while keeping up with other already established courses,

advising, administrative tasks, etc. We’re wondering how campus

morale will deal with teaching ‘all’ new courses for an entire

academic year. Alice has 8 new courses to teach. Much of the

course content will be similar to previous courses, but its

organization, depth, emphasis, and prerequisites will be

different. As a result, almost every lecture will have to be

rewritten or revised.

In addition to the Molière play, Steve performed in a children’s

play called The Ugly Duckling. We didn’t see this one, but

apparently it wasn’t the version with which most of us are

familiar. The Mac Players’ were originally going to do this at

elementary schools in the Chicago area during the Fall Break, but

funding fell through, so they wound up doing their performances

on the campus, and inviting local children to attend.

Another recent Mac production called Into the Woods needed

backstage crew members, so Steve worked the fly system as part of

the requirement for his Technical Theatre class. He had worked

flies for other plays at the Calumet Theatre, but the equipment

he used at Macalester was much more modern. On one of his weekly

calls home, he talked about the tech rehearsal, and all the

things that went wrong. Steve told the story to Ted, who

happened to be lying on the couch at the time, and made his dad

laugh until he was doubled up! By the time the performance came

around, Steve and his partner had things pretty well figured out,

and the performances came off without a major hitch.

All three of us worked at the Tapiola Senior Citizen’s Center

this Thanksgiving, putting on a dinner for our local elderly

friends that have no where else to go for the holiday. This year

we prepared food for about 60 people. Steve (home for

Thanksgiving break) and Ted worked in the kitchen, while Alice

worked the dining room. We started counting the years, and this

was the 17th year in a row that we have celebrated Thanksgiving

this way.

A few weeks ago, Steve was in a play called Equus, by Peter

Shaffer. He played Nugget the Horse. Once again, Alice and I

got a copy of the script and have both read it. We were there

for the December 11th performance, starting our holiday

celebrations a bit early by sneaking in an extra weekend with our

son. What a powerful play!

The most recent Soldan show was an evening of student-written

short plays that were performed last week as the final project

for Steve’s Playwrighting class. Steve wrote one and acted in

two.

Best wishes for a great holiday season and a joyous turn of the

century. Ted, Alice, and Steve

Family picture taken May, 1999