|
Dear Friends and Family:
This year held new beginnings for both of us. Some have
been positive, such as our new Church, and Diane’s CD
Listen with
friend-since-childhood Wiley. Others, like the fallout from Sept 11, 2001 terrorism, have impacted Bob’s ability to do federal consulting work,
because he is not (yet) a U.S. citizen, now needed to work onsite at most
government agencies.
Early this year, Diane and Bob heard Rev. Joy Carroll
Wallis preach as the reliever at
Grace Episcopal Church, and in the coffee hour afterward we caught
up with Joy and her husband Jim Wallis. Jim, as a founder of
Sojourners community, has connections with
Community of Celebration going back over a quarter century, and has
used much of our music. When we learned that Joy, now that her son Luke was
3 years old, was ready to set up a new congregation here in D.C. we did not
hesitate to become part of “Church
of the Sojourners”. (Note that Joy is who the BBC’s “The
Vicar of Dibley” is based upon)
Although we’re still small in numbers, the commitment to
social justice in a liturgical and ecumenical committed group attracts us
still. We want to be part of the
Episcopal Diocese, but for now they just seem not to know how to
handle new congregations without angst about parish turf boundaries and
who’s responsible for money. However, the new Bishop John Chane supports
change, so it should ultimately happen.
The CD “Listen
. . Open to The Call” arose out of requests from workshops Diane and
Wiley were leading. People kept asking if we had the songs on a CD. So . . .
This CD features new songs by Diane & Wiley, plus poems and songs by other
modern Christian writers. To hear samples from it, just go onto
www.SweetSong.org – if you like what you hear, order it on-line! We had
a great weekend with Celebration sharing in their Partners in Ministry
initiative. Diane wrote a wonderful new hymn for that weekend. “Faith
Begins By Letting Go.” It was wonderful to hear it sung in the rich four
parts. We’re scheduled to lead a week long August workshop in
Aliquippa.
Diane also started a new music teaching job, at two
Arlington County schools, Carlin Springs and Campbell Elementary
after a year at a Middle School. Having two schools keeps you hopping, but
younger kids are so sweet to work with.
Getting back to effects of September 11, Bob’s Department
of Energy client decided to stop putting up maps on the internet, even the
former DOE sites now in post-cleanup stage needing
long-term stewardship, vital to help ensure we do not get any repeat of Love Canal
(where local government later developed homes on top of contaminated land, perhaps
unknowingly, through failure to retain and maintain records of what was
buried where). |
In response to contract losses, Bob’s
employer cut him back
(plus staff that he had hired) to part-time in late February, then
remaining full-time ICF staffers compounded injury with insult by taking
away two other tasks that Bob had just won: a system for USDA to manage
the containment of Longhorn Asian Beetle, and a Southern Los Angeles pilot
to use GIS to do smart assessments of where to build new work-force and
childcare centers, using cleaned-up former brownfield sites that are also
transit-accessible. Bob was invited to go back to
DynCorp (where ICF hired him from) but on
March 4, 2002 the
Attorney General ruled non-citizens can no longer work on DOJ’s systems.
Ten months later, Bob’s citizenship application is stuck, like thousands
more people, in INS bureaucracy.
Bob continued to do some work part-time at
ICF Consulting about
methane emissions reduction from Oil & Gas facilities, while over the
summer he managed logistics & security for the
Casey Tree Endowment Fund’s “DC Tree
Inventory”. This project employed 35 college interns, 21 High School
students and hundreds of citizen foresters to record 20 attributes on over
100,000 DC street trees – one every four minutes, six days per week! This
work is now being used by the city Urban
Forestry Admin to manage the removal of dead and dying dangerous
trees, and plan best species to plant in their place.
Bob was appointed a “Researcher-in-Residence” at
American U, an honorary appointment advising on graduate
curriculum that might lead to teaching paid special seminars in future.
He’s also active in a monthly
workshop held at NSF focusing on new advances on Information
Technology that can benefit citizen access with low-cost (or no-cost) open
standards IT tools. Through this, Bob made new professional colleagues, in
particular Larry Koskinen. Bob was invited to
review Larry’s draft on
Digital Dividends for the
federal
CIO Council, and the relationship blossomed from doing critique to
collaboration. We’ve both since identified opportunities to provide the
U.S. Peace Corps with smarter tools to ensure volunteer safety. In the
meantime, thanks to Larry, Bob has now taken over a part-time role for the
St. Alban’s “School
of Public Service”. This summer program gives high school seniors
opportunity to do Kennedy School of Government
case studies on public policy while living in dorms on Washington
Cathedral’s Close.
Our daughter Meagan has finished her undergrad degree at
UDC while now happily working at
Kellogg Huber as a legal secretary. Her husband Edvin and she are
saving up to buy a home by mid-year 2003, before our first grandchild(!)
is born. Our son Colin has been attending the
University of Maryland Eastern Shore this last semester, is now
home for Christmas working as a waiter on a dinner cruise boat, plus he’s
painting the inside of our house to earn more money to pay off his car. |
