A Christmas Letter, 2017. December 21, 2017

Copyright © 2017                                                         John F. Oyler

December 21, 2017

A Christmas Letter, 2017

Last year I dedicated a column to a Christmas letter to our readers and enjoyed it so much that I have decided to repeat that process again this year. It has been my custom for a number of years to type out a general discussion of the activities of our extended family and to then customize it for the individual folks on my Christmas card list – this will serve as my column as well this year.

This term I am completing my twenty-fifth year teaching in the Civil Engineering Department at the University of Pittsburgh. It has been a rewarding experience for me. My colleagues and I are quite fortunate to have the opportunity to interface with a wonderful group of young people there. Currently I teach Materials of Construction to Sophomores and also coordinate the Senior Design Project program that all of our Seniors take in their final semester.

My daughter Elizabeth is also teaching at Pitt, in the East Asian Languages and Literature Department; lunch with her at the University Club is a highlight of each week. Her family has purchased a home in Olde Sewickley Highlands, just off Camp Meeting Road. Mike is on a sabbatical from his job at the University of Illinois and has been busy moving necessities here from Champaign.

Their thirteen year old daughter Rachael is an eighth grader at Quaker Valley Middle School and deeply involved with music. She is a fine violinist, a good pianist, and a beginner on the guitar. It was a special treat recently to see her perform at the Carnegie Music Hall with the Symphonette, a training string orchestra closely associated with the Pittsburgh Symphony. I have also enjoyed attending the Pittsburgh Symphony concerts with her and her family.

John’s family spent most of the year in Beijing. Four year old Lai An has started school there in a program that seems quite advanced for a child of that age. We are hoping to see them here in Pittsburgh for Christmas. John’s company, Beigene, appears to be prospering. They have expanded into manufacturing and marketing drugs, but their primary focus is still on continuing clinical trials prior to approval of drugs they have developed.

I went to Colorado in the summer to see fifteen year old Ian (Lazar Wolf) and ten year old Claire perform in “Fiddler on the Roof” and again in the Fall to see Ian (the Carpenter) in “Alice in Wonderland”. I also got to see twelve year old Nora play soccer and basketball on the Fall trip. My grandchildren are terrific; the plays and sporting events in which these children participate are impressive.

Their parents are busy supporting all their children’s activities, but still manage to find time to earn livings. Sara manages a state of the art conservation genetics lab for the Department of the Interior; Jim is a very versatile substitute teacher.

We had the family together in Champaign for Rachael’s Bat Mitzvah in May and then in Truckee, California, for a family vacation in mid-summer. For me the highlight of the vacation was an Amtrak train ride on the California Zephyr from Colfax through the Sierra Nevadas to Truckee.

I continue to enjoy frequent brunches with the Octogenarian Club, a group of my cronies from Bridgeville High School days. My other old fogeys group is our Book Club, which meets once a month, rotating between each other’s homes. For December we will go to the North Side to Max’s Allegheny Tavern, an annual treat. My favorite of the books we read recently is “Golden Hill” by Francis Spufford, an excellent combination of mystery and historical fiction.

Another enjoyable monthly activity is “Second Tuesday”, a workshop that I host for the Bridgeville Area Historical Society. This year we have concentrated on the history of Bridgeville High School, currently are up to 1942. I also gave a handful of historical talks to a variety of organizations, dealing with “The Mason Dixon Line”, “Higbee Glass”, and “The Flannery Brothers and Standard Chemical Company”, among others.

The opportunity to walk in our woods twice a day is a real blessing. It always includes a visit to the tulip tree we had planted in memory of my wife. It is doing okay now, although it was slightly damaged in the winter by a buck trying to rub the satin off his antlers. This necessitated my building a rugged fence around it.

I enjoy the change of the seasons and looking for Mayflowers and trillium in the Spring, “chicken of the woods” mushrooms in the Summer, and bittersweet in the Fall. I am known to the folks who inhabit the woods as the “dogless dog-walker”. I don’t think I could bear watching another old dog die.

A year-end column would not be complete without some comment on the state of affairs in our country and in the world. It doesn’t appear that we are making much progress. Somehow we need to find leadership that can reconcile the differences between the extreme factions that end up in power. We hope it doesn’t require a catastrophic crisis for that to happen.

These columns are a great source of pleasure for me. It is always a treat for me when a stranger comes up to me and reports that he or she knows me from reading my columns. I do wish a very Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year to all of our readers.