Jesus leads us in the circle A to Z,
From Alpha and Omega, beginning and end.
Look behind, Jesus was. Look around, Jesus is.
Look ahead to the one who was and is and is to come.
Another year has gone, at least in the Church's liturgical calendar, and we start
another with the season of Advent. The words at the top of this page are from a new
children's song that I wrote at the beginning of Advent to teach about the church year.
This is the first real song I have written in 10 years. I feel so
blest and energized by the gift of a new song. (I'd be happy to send any of you a copy of
the song and music if you'd like it.)
This past year has been quite eventful for our family. In the late winter,
just before Lent, my students at St. Luke
School performed the musical, Annie. They did a fantastic job and we
raised quite a bit of money for the music department and were able to contribute to a
curtain for the stage.
But, I was sick with bronchitis and no voice for most of the winter and
spring. I couldn't sing. I went to many doctors to find out what was wrong and
try to get it fixed. I was on drugs for asthma, and medication for my poor arthritic
knees. Frankly, I was beginning to feel like I didn't have much of a life.
After discussion with my primary care doctor, I made an appointment with a
doctor who specializes in bariatric surgery. The procedure that I was researching is
called a roux-en-y
gastric by-pass. I was approved for surgery in June and had the surgery on June 22.
I've made a wonderful recovery. Since June I have lost about 80
pounds. I no longer take any asthma drugs, and the pain in my knees is so much
better. I am able to walk in a way I haven't been able to for several years.
I still experience vocal difficulty, but am hoping to find a teacher to work with who may
be able to help. I'm having so much fun giving away my old clothes and buying new
ones, although gets a bit hard on the budget!
Another exciting thing that has happened in our family is that just a week after
my surgery Meagan married Edvin Jeronimo (see wedding photos).
Their timing was a surprise to us, but we have delighted in getting to know Edvin as a new
member of our family. He and Colin get along just famously, and Colin moved into the same apartment complex as Meagan
and Edvin in August. They all go out together and Edvin, who works as a chef, cooks
for Colin now and then. Colin is developing a career in management of movie theater
multiplexes , having worked his way up through the ranks as both worker and supervisor.
Meagan is going into her final year at University
as a Sociology major, plus working
part-time as a database analyst for InteliTarget.
At Thanksgiving, Edvin and Bob played a great game of chess although it had been
awhile for both of them and Edvin won. Lots of laughter around our house that
day! I cooked a huge meal and sent most of the leftovers home with the
kids. On the Friday after Thanksgiving, Bob and I drove up to Washington, PA
to see my parents at my mother's sister's home. It was great seeing them and seeing
Uncle Carl and Aunt Martha in their lovely new home. We spent a great afternoon
together and then drove back to DC.
In October, we were very happy to have Wiley Beveridge, David and Sandy Stayner
and son Matthew stay over with us after they lead a retreat in the area. We all
spent a great afternoon together at Martha and Conway Barkers, where to my delight I found
Mark Prebble, who was visiting from New Zealand. What a great reunion!
Wiley has spent several weekends with us in the past few months as he and I lead
the worship at Grace Church in Georgetown one Sunday
and he has come back this weekend to help with the Advent Lesson and Carols at
our church and also with to help with my school's Advent Lessons and Carols on Tuesday
night. My choristers, chime choir and two 8th grade flute players came to
our tiny church on Sunday with their parents and we shared our music with the church
choirs music. We had lots of fun and the church was packed. I have fifteen 6th
through 8th graders in my chime choir and twenty-one 4th – 7th
grade students in Choristers. I've worked for five years to get this many students in
choristers. We are singing in two and three parts with relative ease. Last year I
had just seven girls in Choristers and eight 8th grade boys and girls in
hand-chimes. The children are really committed to bells and to Choristers - I love
it.
I have so much to be thankful for and I truly am thankful to the Author
of all things.
Diane Andrew
In the spirit of smaller is better, while Diane's approach to healthier
life includes successful loss of weight, this year Bob's has involved simplifying
responsibilities. The year 2000 started out with additional responsibilities in
being elected as Vestry
person at Grace Episcopal church, advising my mother
on how to put her SimpliReading program
onto the internet, and my third (and final) year as the President of Foxhall Community Citizens Association (FCCA).
This year is ending up with me making a career progression, from three years at DynCorp as a Solutions Architect specializing in systems
integration, to ICF Consulting as a Principal
responsible for their Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
practice and a technology mentor across all of their consulting business which specializes
in energy, environment, housing, transportation and emergency response: closer to the work
that I did for so many years at Mobil in Princeton and Virginia, Synfuel in New Zealand
and Petromas in Houston.
At Grace Church, we are engaged in a once per decade Re-Visioning using a
process called "Appreciative Inquiry". While we have yet to analyze the
responses from over 30 of our parish families who took part in these workshops, it is
likely that we'll target growing from about 100-125 members to closer to 200, a more
sustainable number if we wish to offer more than one form of worship service. Like
many aging-in-place main-line denominations, we have not yet succeeded in reaching out to
Generation X. One advantage we have in the heart of Georgetown is a huge draw of the restaurants
and clubs to young people. They're not here on a Sunday morning: maybe we need to
also gather late Sunday afternoon for Christians to just get together before they go out
for dinner and entertainment. For the community who work in and near to Georgetown,
we held a successful year-long "Thank
God Its Friday" weekly lunch-time series on ethics and spirituality.
FCCA as an association has now matured from just reacting to individual
community issues to having a sustaining relationship with city agencies and surrounding
academic institutions. I put significant effort this year into getting the message
out about things that are important to our small jewel of a residential neighborhood ,
surrounded by universities and
private schools, which is traversed by
hordes of commuters going between downtown DC and the Virginia / Maryland suburbs.
In addition to FCCA monthly newsletter
and website, I wrote a weekly column for the "Georgetown Current"
newspaper, which is the one thing I will continue as others take over "Foxhall News" editing, layout,
production and distribution! Because of my engineering background, I'm also
overseeing a new traffic study
to synchronize traffic lights and to selectively remove some parking spots that obstruct view
and turning at hospital entrances on one of our major cross roads.
At DynCorp, I have been privileged to be the technical lead on a vital project
for the U.S. Department of Justice in the Civil Rights Division. This
involves upgrading the hardware, systems, software and data used in support of the Voting Rights Act. As a sign
of confidence in holistic approaches we take with our work, DOJ approached us to take over
this work from another contractor, integrating standard office systems for word processing
and e-mail with specialized GIS (Geographic
Information Systems) and imaging systems, all accessible from one PC in an attorney's
office, rather than still requiring separate specialized work stations for GIS and
imaging. These GIS tools enable complex analysis of multi-ethnicity Census 2000 block data, with the
purpose of ensuring that voting district boundaries are fairly drawn within State and
Local elections.
Another interesting and challenging project for me this year was for the U.S. State Department, who asked us to set up a "Financial
Management & Oversight System" for two International Science Centers, one in
Moscow and the other in Kiev.
The centers (with board of directors from U.S.A., Europe, Canada & Japan) fund work of
over 30,000 former weapons scientists in new areas to improve e.g. metallurgy and health.
It was my first time in either Russia or Ukraine, in some ways much changed from their
Soviet past, in others unchanged.
The Voting Rights project provided exposure to the leading edge of GIS software
development, and in many ways it also provided me visibility for this opportunity to join
ICF Consulting. ICF were my very first choice when leaving behind the international
travel demands at Mobil three years ago, but they did
not have the right position back for me then. I hope in this new role at ICF to
strengthen our strategic business partnerships with e.g. ESRI,
IBM/Lotus, to mentor staff in new skills, and
continue to contribute via our GIS solutions demo lab and in national and regional
seminars to the state of the art in technology-based analysis and collaboration.
Bob Andrew
For those interested in exploring more about any items that we covered above,
see web-links and e-mail addresses:
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