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Steve and Mimi's 2011 Christmas Letter

Date post: 21-Sep-2014
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Family and friends, We send you warm holiday greetings as we reflect on an exciting and eventful year for both of us and for our immediate and extended family. Our year’s news breaks into several themes: younger generations, a new job (yeah, again), travel, writing, teaching, Duffy, welding, nieces and nephews. Younger generations Even though our granddaughter, Julia, lives in Edina, Minn., we managed to see a lot of her: We visited for her first birthday in March and will be there again for Christmas. She visited (bringing along parents Mike and Susie) in June when Susie returned for the 8 th -grade graduation of her former students and again at Thanksgiving. We also saw her at the wedding of our niece, Kelly Head (more on that in the niece section). That isn’t enough of Julia for us, though, so Susie sends daily photos by MMS and we frequently Skype with the family. On an August Skype call, Mimi quickly noticed that Julia’s shirt said “big sister.” Susie is pregnant with our second granddaughter, expected to arrive in early February. The grandparents from Virginia are scheduled to visit in mid- February. Even a Minnesota winter won’t keep us from visiting our granddaughters. Mike’s job brings him frequently to Washington, so we saw him a couple more times without the family. Joe and Kim
Transcript
Page 1: Steve and Mimi's 2011 Christmas Letter

Family and friends,

We send you warm holiday greetings as we reflect on an exciting and eventful year for both of us and for our immediate and extended family.

Our year’s news breaks into several themes: younger generations, a new job (yeah, again), travel, writing, teaching, Duffy, welding, nieces and nephews.

Younger generations

Even though our granddaughter, Julia, lives in Edina, Minn., we managed to see a lot of her: We visited for her first birthday in March and will be there again for Christmas. She visited (bringing along parents Mike and Susie) in June when Susie returned for the 8th-grade graduation of her former students and again at Thanksgiving. We also saw her at the wedding of our niece, Kelly Head (more on

that in the niece section). That isn’t enough of Julia for us, though, so Susie sends daily photos by MMS and we frequently Skype with the family. On an August Skype call, Mimi quickly noticed that Julia’s shirt said “big sister.” Susie is pregnant with our second granddaughter, expected to arrive in early February. The grandparents from Virginia are scheduled to visit in mid-February. Even a Minnesota winter won’t keep us from visiting our granddaughters.

Mike’s job brings him frequently to Washington, so we saw him a couple more times without the family. Joe and Kim continue to work at Mandalay Bay and City Center in Las Vegas, but are also operating a side business, providing lighting for weddings and other events. Tom’s work with Sen. Tom Harkin included two trips to Africa – Algeria with a group of congressional aides and to Ghana with Harkin. The Algeria trip included a Sahara sandstorm.

New job – Again

TBD was fun while it lasted. We were off to a terrific start, generating strong traffic and great breaking news coverage and community engagement. But the bosses at Allbritton Communications started changing directions even before we launched. By February, they changed the whole approach and slashed the staff. Fortunately, my community engagement colleagues found good new jobs, as did most of the TBD

Page 2: Steve and Mimi's 2011 Christmas Letter

staff. Only a few remain at a much-diminished site. I have no regrets about joining TBD. My colleagues were amazing and we created something special, even if the shortsighted people running the company decided to quit before we had a chance to succeed (the original plan called for us to be profitable in 3-5 years). I miss my TBD colleagues, but it was time to move on.

I moved on to the Journal Register Co. I was just a few months into that job when it grew. JRC created a subsidiary, Digital First Media, which now runs both JRC and MediaNews Group (a blogger called the deal a “merger-without-merging”). Jim Brady, my old TBD boss, is editor-in-chief of Digital First and I’m leading the charge on community engagement and social media. We are among the biggest news companies in terms of newspaper circulation and web audience. And, I believe, first in optimism.

Mimi and I remain at our condo in Virginia (12941 Centre Park Cir #224, Herndon, VA 20171). When I’m not visiting newsrooms, we work together from home.

Travel

My new gig was responsible for much of our travel. I visited all 18 JRC newsrooms, meaning trips to Connecticut (three times to the New Haven Register, including two weeklong visits), New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan. In the fall, I started visiting MediaNews newsrooms in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Colorado, the San Francisco Bay area and the Los Angeles area. Many more MediaNews visits are coming in 2012, as well as some JRC return visits.

Mimi took an epic journey without me, helping her sister Carol drive from Jacksonville, Fla., to Scottsdale, Ariz., where Carol and her husband, Mike, were going to be spending a few months. Mimi and Carol wanted to make it a road trip with all the sisters, so Flat Donna and Flat Mary came along, causing many photo ops with police in a memorable, and incredibly long, drive.

In another trip with Mimi’s family and Tom, we went whitewater rafting on the New River in West Virginia. Mimi and I got launched out of our raft in a swirling Class IV rapids. We were quickly retrieved and enjoyed the day’s rafting. But the incident caused a frozen shoulder for Mimi and she is still receiving treatment and hoping to regain full range of motion.

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Page 3: Steve and Mimi's 2011 Christmas Letter

I continued to squeeze workshops for other journalism clients into my schedule, and we continued piggybacking personal travel where we could. For a workshop at the University of North Carolina, we took a side trip to the Outer Banks. We followed a

conference in Salt Lake City with visits to Arches, Canyonlands (above) and Goblin Valley parks in southern Utah. A September workshop in Albuquerque led to a side trip to Santa Fe and Taos. Gigs for CBC.ca in Toronto and Vancouver included sightseeing in both cities for Mimi and a weekend together in Tofino, our favorite place (sunset at left).

I also was able to visit Mom three times in Lee’s Summit, Mo. Mom moved this summer into a memory care unit. She needs a fairly high level of care now and has significant memory loss, but she enjoys visits from family and still plays a good game of Scrabble.

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Page 4: Steve and Mimi's 2011 Christmas Letter

Writing

We told you last year about Mimi’s contract to write a non-fiction book about great-niece Maya’s rescue from Haiti after the 2010 earthquake and her family’s inspiring commitment to adoption. That book didn’t work out because of a situation in Haiti beyond the control of anyone here. So Mimi shifted back to writing fiction. She finished rewriting and updating a novel she had written earlier. We are quite sure that novel, Gathering String, will be published in 2012, perhaps after we learn about self-publishing. (We’ll be sure to alert you when it’s available for sale.)

I had another busy year on The Buttry Diary, four times surpassing my 2009 record for monthly traffic on the blog. My most popular posts were about Twitter tips, new revenue sources, branding and accuracy. A post that was one of my favorites, but didn’t get as much traffic, was about how the crowd can save your career.

Teaching

I continued teaching in Georgetown’s Master of Professional Studies in Journalism program, team-teaching with my ex-TBD colleague Mandy Jenkins on a summer course, Social Media and Reporting. I led two one-day workshops for Georgetown, on job-hunting and accuracy. I also taught Disruption and Opportunity in Journalism, a course in American University’s Interactive Journalism master’s program.

Duffy

Our ornery schnauzer celebrated his first birthday in August and his first anniversary of joining us in October. He came along for most of the JRC World Tour and proved to be a surprisingly good traveler. I continue to tolerate and Mimi continues to enjoy Duffy, who has mastered the use of cuteness as a survival skill.

Welding

Mimi and some of her family made a side trip to southwest Iowa after Kelly’s wedding. Mimi made a nostalgic visit to her father’s old welding shop in Shenandoah. On one of our trips to New Haven, she made a day trip to Mystic, dropping in on the shipsmith’s shop at Mystic Seaport, watching a while and discussing welding with him.

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Page 5: Steve and Mimi's 2011 Christmas Letter

Nieces and nephews

Most of our niece/nephew news this year involved love or hospitals. The big love news was the wedding in Ames, Iowa (same day as the Iowa Straw Poll just a few blocks away) of our niece Kelly Head. We had all of our sons, daughters-in-law and Julia together for the wedding. That was a real treat and a highlight of the year. As a bonus on that trip, I had lunches with old friends from the Des Moines Register and Omaha World-Herald. We’re expecting more weddings in the coming year, as nieces Meg Head and Liz McNamara and nephew Jon Buttry all announced engagements this year.

The year started grimly for our niece Kathryn Devlin. Kat’s brother, Patrick, died of leukemia in 2009, so it was stunning and emotional for the family to learn last Christmas season that Kat had myelodysplasia, a pre-leukemia blood disorder. Given Patrick’s history, she needed to have chemotherapy and a stem-cell transplant this early. We visited her in January at Children’s Hospital in Boston, the same place Patrick had a bone-marrow transplant two years earlier. She was weak and sleepy and it was painful to see the family going through the transplant ordeal again. Kat had a long haul, spending three months in the hospital. But she’s a resilient girl, and returned to school earlier than expected, starting high school on schedule in September. We visited the Devlins in Vermont in October and were delighted to see a happy teen-ager with a full head of hair and a bright outlook.

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Page 6: Steve and Mimi's 2011 Christmas Letter

Our nephew Austin Buttry also had a severe health issue, when detached retinas due to a birth defect caused sudden blindness. Surgery in Iowa City restored vision in one eye, but the other may not recover its sight. Our great-nephew Shay Poulter also had hip surgery for Perthes Disease and has to spend months in a chest-high cast. Thanks to all for your prayers and support during the year as we have shared the news about these young people on social media and my blog. I know they and their families appreciate your continued prayers.

We also had nice visits with several other nieces and nephews this year (Boston, Minnesota, Iowa, Michigan and West Virginia, that I recall). It’s been great to stay in touch with the next generation on both sides of our extended family. We’ve also been pleased with how many friends we’ve visited with in Washington and on the road, both old friends and virtual friends we’ve finally met in person.

Odd stuff

You know how kids sometimes need tubes in their ears to clear up ear infections? They do that to old men, too. I needed a tube in my left ear this year (it worked, thankfully). Even odder was our drive home on Jan. 26. Mimi drove into DC to the George Washington University Hospital emergency room to help Tom, who was there with a bout of mono. She called me to help her drive home, because it was starting to snow pretty heavily (I was in Arlington at the time). Though she’s an Iowa farm girl who’s experienced driving in the snow, I know the Washington roads better than she does and she thought I might be better at picking the best route home. She thought wrong. I took the Metro to meet her and Tom near his home. Well, Washington doesn’t handle snow well. The George Washington Parkway, our primary route home, was blocked by a bus crash, and other routes weren’t much better. Our drive home took nine hours, most of it on the parkway. At one point, I timed that it took us an hour to travel one-tenth of a mile.

But we made it home safely and had a great story to tell. I hope you and we make it safely through the coming year, with a few more great stories.

We wish you all a Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and joyous holidays, whatever you celebrate.

Hoping our paths cross in 2012,Steve and Mimi

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