Our Christmas Newsletter

2011

Hello. Here is our annual Christmas newsletter. We’ve been doing our newsletter on the web since 2002. Unfortunately, the 2002 web site is gone. But we still have Christmas Past going back to 2003, with links on the right side of the screen. (Links to 2002 and before are reconstructions.) So this edition is the 10th, a milestone.

We still live in a century-old house in uptown New Orleans on Magazine Street, a block and a half from Audubon Park. The house itself is solidly built and will likely last another 100 years. We could live here without our cars; everything we need is either within walking distance or a bus-ride away (the Magazine bus stops a half-block from our front door). We share the house with four cats: Rocky (in the photo above, our geriatric Persian), Jelly Roll (our tubby tabby), Wednesday (black and bad), and Petunia (f.k.a. Alexis, inherited from Ray’s mom in 2005).

We’re both active in Holy Name of Jesus parish. We’re members of the RCIA team, and we’re fixtures at the Sunday 6 PM mass. Both of us serve as lectors. Suzanne also serves as a eucharistic minister and a hospitality minister (what used to be called “ushering”). Ray is part of the 6 PM mass ensemble, attempting to provide guitar accompaniment to some excellent musicians.

Suzanne has been busy in retirement, building a yoga practice and competing in several half-marathons and other races. She teaches yoga classes at Life Yoga & Boutique, Touro Infirmary, West Jefferson Fitness Center, and Kona Fitness Center. She also finished several half-marathons as a race-walker, including the Rock ’n’ Roll in New Orleans, the Shamrock in Virginia Beach, VA (where she also did an 8-kilometer race the day before), the Jazz Half-Marathon, and the Stennis Half-Marathon at Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, where she was the second overall race-walker. She also did a series of Q50 races: 10 miles, half-marathon, and a 25-kilometer trail race. She has a blog about her race-walking exploits, which you can visit by clicking here.

Ray is stil practicing law at Adams and Reese LLP, focusing on appellate advocacy. He gave up one of his blogs (Minor Wisdom) but still keeps up his legal-writing blog, The (New) Legal Writer, which is popular among folks who like the topic. He’s still running a few times a week. He’s not much for racing anymore, but he did finish yet another Tchoupitoulas Barathon (6 miles, 6 bars, 6 beers—not for the faint of heart or weak of stomach). He takes guitar lessons from Vincent Marini (whose web page you much check out).

If we haven’t heard from you in a while, drop us a line. There’s an e-mail link on the right. Best wishes for a wonderful holiday season and a peaceful 2012.

P.S. Click here for our Christmas card.

2010

Greetings, and welcome to our on-line, multi-media Christmas newsletter. For those who know us well, this will be mostly old news. But for friends from long ago in distant places, this newsletter will catch you up on who and where we are what we’ve been doing.

This past July, we celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary. And this past Election Day was the 18th anniversary of our moving into this house. It’s uptown on Magazine Street, the most interesting street in the world’s most interesting city, New Orleans. The house dates back to around the 1890s to early 1900s. It has survived several hurricanes, including Katrina. As old as it is, it has its foibles and its charms. We share the home with our four cats: Rocky, Jelly Roll, Wednesday, and Petunia (f/k/a Alexis, inherited from Ray’s mom in 2005). Our across-the-street neighbors are the Poor Clare Nuns at St. Clare’s Monastery.

Ray, a 1990 graduate of Loyola Law School, is a lawyer with Adams and Reese LLP. He practices mostly appellate litigation—that means a lot of legal research and brief writing. In his spare time, he is attempting to learn how to play blues on the guitar—his teacher, Vincent Marini, needs much patience with that. Ray still maintains his two blogs, The (New) Legal Writer (devoted to legal writing), and Minor Wisdom (devoted to nothing in particular).

Suzanne retired this year from her career with the State Department of Social Services, where she worked in the area of Social Security Disability determination. She is now working on developing a yoga-teaching practice, conducting weekly classes at Touro Infirmary and the Holy Name of Jesus Parish Center.

Suzanne has also gotten into prime racewalking shape. So far this year, she has finished several half-marathons (13.1 miles), including the Rock & Roll Mardi Gras Half Marathon, the Gulf Coast Half Marathon (on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain), and the Jazz Half Marathon (finish-line photo at left). Most recently, she finished the Mississippi Gulf Coast Half Marathon, winning third overall in the race-walking category with a personal best time of 2:47:28. She also competed in some shorter races over the summer, winning the masters category in the Southern Runner 2.1 Summer Race Series. (Update—Suzanne’s new PR for the half-marathon: 2:47:25 on Dec. 19, 2010 at the Ole Man River Half Marathon, good for 2nd overall female race-walker.)

Both of us are active at our parish church, Holy Name of Jesus. Ray plays guitar in the music group for the Sunday 6 p.m. mass, and occasionally serves as a lector. Suzanne is a lector, extraordinary minister of communion, and lead hospitality minister (what they used to call an usher) for the Sunday 6 p.m. mass. We are both team members for RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults), helping those preparing to enter the Catholic Church.

Well, we promised you a multi-media experience. So we leave you with a young Sungha Jung’s interpretation of Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring, and our wishes for a blessed holiday season.

2009

Click here for soundtrack

Hello, everyone. Welcome to Ray and Suzanne Ward’s on-line blog-style Christmas newsletter, our annual snapshot of who we are (or appear to be) and where we are at the moment. We’ve been doing this for a few years now; at right, under “Christmas Past,” you’ll find links to back issues (and yes, some old family photos too).

We’ve been married for 19 years, and for the last 17 of those years, we’ve lived in this 110-year-old house on Magazine Street in New Orleans (click on photo to enlarge). The location is fabulous — one and a half blocks from Audubon Park, and within easy walking distance of many stores and shops.

The city itself continues to recover from the disastrous levee failures that followed Hurricane Katrina. (And please, please understand: It was the levee failures, not the hurricane, that did New Orleans in.) We were fortunate to live in the “sliver by the river,” the relatively high ground near the Mississippi River that didn’t flood. In the other 80% of the city, the recovery continues at a slow but steady pace. The places that tourists usually go are in good shape. The major landmarks continue to re-open one by one. This year the Fairmont Hotel re-opened under its old name: the Roosevelt Hotel, where Huey Long stayed when in New Orleans. The Saenger Theater is undergoing repair and renovation and will re-open in 2011.

Ray continues to work as an appellate lawyer for Adams and Reese LLP in New Orleans, where he had a win-some-lose-some year. In his spare time he does a little blogging (see links at right under “My web sites”). Also this year, he took up guitar-playing again after a 20-year layoff. Back in the 1980s, he was just a strummer of chords, like Dr. Katz playing “She’ll Be Coming ’Round the Mountain” or Guitar George in the Dire Straits’ “Sultans of Swing.” This time, he’s trying to learn some more interesting blues techniques, along the lines of Junior Kimbrough: hypnotic bass line accompanying melody. In fact, if you clicked on the soundtrack above, you heard a taste of that: Ray’s homemade slide-guitar recording of “Silent Night.” At right is a group photo of Ray’s guitar collection.

Suzanne is in the final stretch of her tenure with the Louisiana Department of Social Services, where she has been working in the area of Social Security disability. Her last day at work will be later this year; she officially retires in March 2010 when she will use up her accumulated vacation time. She recently became certified as a yoga instructor, and plans to spend her newly available time developing that as a second career. This past year, she completed two half-marathons (that’s 13.1 miles each): the Mardi Gras Half-Marathon on February 1 and the Jazz Half Marathon on Halloween.

Both of us are active in Holy Name of Jesus Parish. Both of us are on the RCIA team (that stands for “Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults”), and both of us serve as lectors for the 6 p.m. mass. Suzanne doubles as a eucharistic minister and hospitality minister (translation: usher). Ray, meanwhile, has found a spot strumming guitar chords for the 6 p.m. mass’s music group. Several weeks ago, in a moment of poor judgment, the music director let him do a solo during the offertory: “Amazing Grace” a la Blind Boys of Alabama (that is, to the tune of “House of the Rising Sun”). If you’re masochistic enough to want to hear Ray’s version, you’ll find an MP3 recording here.

We share our house with four cats — we didn’t plan it that way; that’s just the way it turned out. There’s Rocky (in group photo above), our geriatric Persian who has more prescriptions than any human I’ve known. One of his meds is Buprenex, a synthetic opiate, for arthritis-pain management. So yes, we are supporting Rocky’s opium habit. There’s Jelly Roll, our tubby tabby. There’s Wednesday, our black cat, who’s on Prozac for her anxieties. And there’s Alexis, now known as Petunia, my inheritance from my mom, who died in February 2005.

As Porky Pig used to say, “That’s all, folks!” Thanks for stopping by. If you have a minute, send us an e-mail and tell us what you’ve been up to. Just click on the e-mail link in the right sidebar. Please have a joyous holiday season and a wonder-filled 2010.

2008: Another snapshot

In the 1995 movie Smoke, Harvey Keitel’s character, Auggie Wren, takes a photograph of the same street corner at the same time every day for 18 years. A Christmas newsletter is like one of Auggie Wren’s photographs—people’s periodic attempt to take a snapshot of their lives at a fixed point in time. One snapshot in isolation is unremarkable. But the parade of snapshots shows the incremental changes that, over the years, add up to dramatic changes. It also shows the constancy of some things—and in an ever-changing world, constancy can be a blessing. With that intro, here is a snapshot of Ray & Suzanne Ward’s world, taken in December 2008.

Ray is a lawyer at Adams and Reese LLP in New Orleans, where he has practiced since June 2002. He concentrates on appellate practice, representing clients on appeals before state and federal appellate courts. In his spare time, he has written a few articles for publication by DRI (Defense Research Institute) and has taught three continuing-legal-education classes on appellate practice. For fun, he maintains two blogs: The (New) Legal Writer, devoted to legal writing; and Minor Wisdom, where the motto is Yogi Berra’s famous quotation, “You can observe a lot just by watching.”

Suzanne works as a manager for the State of Louisiana, Department of Social Services, Office of Disability Determinations. In February, she competed in the the New Orleans Mardi Gras Half Marathon (13.1 miles). In her spare time, she pursues certification as a yoga instructor. She teaches a yoga class at Touro Infirmary, and hopes to do more of the same when she retires from civil service in the next year or so.

We live in an old Victorian camelback house on Magazine Street in New Orleans. We don’t know exactly how old it is, but the earliest real-estate transaction we know of involving our lot occurred on October 20, 1900. So we’re pretty sure that the house is at least 100 years old. We’ve lived here since Election Day 1992. Like any old house, it always has something in need of fixing (at the moment, the kitchen floor and the lock on the front door). We love it. It’s a block and a half from Audubon Park and within easy walking distance of a great grocery store, dozens of shops and restaurants, a neighborhood bar (a bit pricey, but just 1½ blocks from the front door), and perhaps the last neighborhood theater in Louisiana. And it’s situated right between both our workplaces. Commuting time for both of us is about 20 minutes each way.

Both of us remain active in Holy Name of Jesus Parish. Suzanne is a eucharistic minister, and both of us serve as lectors and as members of the RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults) team. This year, Suzanne became a member of the parish council. On May 4, we were awarded the Order of St. Louis Medallion for service to our church.

We still have the same four cats we started the year with. In order of seniority, they are:

Rocky, our Persian. Rocky is now officially a geriatric. He has arthritis in his hips, causing him to walk funny and requiring expensive medication that he doesn’t like. But the medicine does seem to help, and he manages to get where he wants to go.

Jelly Roll, our spotted tubby tabby. She does not come when you call, but she never fails to show up when she smells something cooking in the kitchen.

Wednesday, our black cat, whom we got as a tiny street kitten years ago, and who since has grown into our biggest. She’s 17 pounds, due mainly to her habit of stealing Alexis’s food—her prerogative as top cat. Which brings us to ...

Alexis, a.k.a. Petunia, whom we inherited from Ray’s mom when she died in 2005. Until recently, we had to isolate Alexis in her own room because the other cats didn’t like her and (as mentioned above) kept stealing her food. But the last few months, we’ve started leaving her gate open, and have found that, most of the time, she co-exists peacefully with the others.

Some notable events this past year include the following:

• Suzanne was supposed to get a new car for Christmas 2007. We’ve been an all-Saturn family since 1994, and she wanted a small car. But there were no IONs to be had, because Saturn discontinued them right about the time we started shopping. So we decided to wait for Saturn’s new small car, the Astra, which is actually an Opel in disguise. It took longer than expected for the Astras to arrive in New Orleans, so she didn’t get her Christmas present until February. But we did end up being the first kids on our block (or for that matter, in the whole city) to drive one of these puppies.

• Not many people know that we have a mixed marriage. Ray is a Jazz Fest person; Suzanne isn’t. For the second year in a row, Ray got himself a WWOZ Brass Pass, allowing daily entry. Much of the time, it rained. And when the rain stopped, the Fair Grounds were a muddy mess. Ray had a ball. He filed daily reports on Minor Wisdom, to the delight of a dozen or so readers. In case you’re interested, here they are: Apr. 25; Apr. 26; Apr. 27; May 1; May 2; May 3.

• As some people know but fewer and fewer remember, Ray used to be a pretty good distance runner. But that was 20+ years and 35 lbs. ago. Nevertheless, there is one race every year that Ray still shows up for: the Tchoupitoulas Barathon. Participants must run from bar to bar, drinking a beer at each bar. Six bars, six beers, six miles (more or less, depending on shortcuts). Ray participated in the first Barathon in 1983 and has only missed one since (1990, which conflicted with his law-school baccalaureate mass). Photos from this year’s event are here.

• One advantage (?) of living on the gulf coast is that you can count on the occasional hurricane to break up the day-to-day tedium. New Orleans did not take a direct hit this year, but Gustav passed close enough to trigger a city-wide evacuation. We stayed put. We followed the storm closely on the National Hurricane Center’s web site; we also followed all the computer models. We just didn’t see anything to justify Mayor Nagin’s hysteria. We figured we would be better off here than on the road—especially with four cats. As it turned out, the storm did exactly what it was predicted to do, passing close enough to cause Category-1 winds in New Orleans. We felt very safe throughout, as the neighborhood was crawling with National Guard and NOPD. We did lose electricity for most of that week, but as luck would have it, the power outage coincided exactly with the Republican National Convention, so we missed all of the TV coverage. Though we had no air conditioning, this old house was designed for those conditions, ventilating itself naturally by convection.

• Like most people, we lost some loved ones this past year. Two deserve special mention. One is Patricia diGeorge, Suzanne’s stepmother, who died after living a long and full life. The other is Ashley Morris, a famous and fiery New Orleans blogger and a dear friend of hundreds, including us. To learn a little bit about him, read Ray Shea’s eulogy.

Best wishes to everyone for a happy holiday season and a wonderful 2009.

Ray & Suzanne Ward
6227 Magazine Street
New Orleans, LA  70118-5849
raymond.ward@gmail.com

2007: A few more steps toward normalcy

As 2007 comes to and end, we reflect on how far we’ve come since the year’s beginning.

The big news this year is completion of our post-Katrina repairs. We are fortunate to live in the 20% of New Orleans that didn’t flood: the relatively high ground along the Mississippi, known as the “Sliver by the River” or, because of the apparent normalcy of the neighborhood, the “Isle of Denial.” Still, Katrina’s wind blew off a chunk of our roof and some attic weatherboards, letting in rain, which caved in our bedroom ceiling, leaked through the bedroom floor, and stained the kitchen ceiling below. With a blue tarp outside and some plastic sheeting and cleanup inside, we resumed living in our house in November 2005. By the end of 2005, we had a new roof, and by the middle of 2006, we completed the other exterior repairs. But finding someone to do the interior repairs proved difficult; apparently the job was too small and not lucrative enough to interest anyone. Then someone at Ray’s law firm recommended David Courtiade, who does business as Renaissance Remodeling. David was a blessing: he consistently showed up exactly when he said he would, began the job exactly when he said he would begin, completed the job exactly when he said it would be completed, and charged exactly what he said it would cost.

The work was finished by the first weekend of Jazz Fest, which is the last weekend in April. So with relatively minor storm damage and no shortage of money to throw at the problem, it took us one year and eight months to complete repairs. Many of our neighbors in harder-hit areas are still wrestling with insurance and Road Home red tape.

Citywide, progress continues slowly. This graphic by the Times-Picayune shows the pace of repopulation. If their numbers are accurate, the city’s population is 63% of pre-Katrina. As the graphic shows, the area along the river has recovered more quickly than the rest of the city. The T-P also has a nice collection of videos showing the progress of various neighborhoods. Others who answer the question how we’re doing: the Center for American Progress, the Kaiser Family Foundation, and Time magazine.

Another bit of normalcy that returned to our neighborhood this year was the Thoth parade, the Sunday before Mardi Gras. Although Thoth paraded last year, it was forced from its traditional route to conserve police resources. This year, it returned to its traditional route, which takes it past Children’s Hospital, several nursing homes, and the corner at the end of our block. We caught it at Ernie Svenson’s house, around the corner from ours. Between the beers and the bloody Marys and the beads, Ray managed to snap a few photos.

In May Ray ran the silver-anniversary Barathon. For those unacquainted with this event, it’s six miles, six bars, six beers. You don’t know grueling until you’ve tried running with six beers in your belly. It began 25 years ago as an invitational event for the Tchoupitoulas Social Aid & Athletic Club, a running club whose heyday was in the 1980s. Since then, the race has survived Tchoupitoulas and Katrina. This year Ray somehow won the award for first ex-Tchoupitoulan. He just turned 50, which makes the Barathon half as old as he is. This is the only race that Ray still runs.

Many other things in New Orleans are getting back to normal. The places usually visited by tourists — the French Quarter, the Garden District, Magazine Street — show few if any traces of the storm. With a few exceptions, the famous restaurants are all back in business. The Sugar Bowl, Mardi Gras, and the Jazz Fest were big successes. The Hornets returned to town, while the Saints returned to their maddening inconsistency. (Comparing the Saints’ 2007 season to 2006, Ray can’t help but recall what his high-school Latin and Spanish teacher, Fr. Gregor, used to say when a student gave a wrong answer immediately after a correct one: “Can’t stand prosperity.”)

Because continued employment is itself a blessing (one we often take for granted), we’re happy to report that our jobs are the same as they have been for the last several years. Suzanne works as a manager for the State of Louisiana, Department of Social Services, Office of Disability Determinations. In her spare time, she pursues certification as a yoga instructor — something she hopes to do when she retires from civil service in the next year or so. She has actually begun offering regular yoga classes for free at Touro Infirmary; with any luck she’ll soon start getting paid to do the same thing.

Ray is an appellate lawyer with a big regional law firm. His spare-time hobby consists of his two blogs, The (New) Legal Writer and Minor Wisdom, both of which continue to draw respectable traffic for one-man just-for-fun blogs. As mentioned above, he turned 50 this year (350 dog years), making him eligible for AARP. On the outside he looks relatively youthful, but on the inside he feels about 62. He has discovered that the older you get, the less you care what other people think. Let’s hope this discovery doesn’t affect his hygiene.

At home, we live with the same four cats we’ve had since 2005: Rocky (in the picture above), Jelly Roll (a.k.a. the tubby tabby), Wednesday, and Alexis (a.k.a. Petunia). We remain active in Holy Name of Jesus parish. Besides occasional lectoring and ushering, this year we became involved with the RCIA program (Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults). The program’s purpose is to teach those who wish to join the Catholic church about the Catholic faith and to prepare them for acceptance into the church.

That’s it. Thanks for stopping by. Best wishes for a merry Christmas, a happy Hanukkah, an inspiring Kwanzaa, a holy Eid al-Ahda, and a happy New Year (Gregorian, Chinese, or Vietnamese).

2006: An uneventful year (thank God!)

2006 was a relatively uneventful year — a welcome relief from 2005.

The recovery from Katrina has gone slowly, both for us and for New Orleans as a whole. We are lucky to live in the small portion of the city that didn't flood — the area closest to the Mississippi River, where centuries of alluvium put us on relatively high ground, a few feet above sea level. The area is sometimes referred to as "the sliver by the river" or "the isle of denial." The difference between this area and most of the rest of the city is stark. Here, things look relatively normal. Many other places remain desolate. In between, many people live in FEMA-supplied camping trailers parked in their front yards, while they work on making their houses livable.

Our house has been livable since a year ago October, when the roof was covered with a blue tarp and we got the inside mess cleaned up. We've been living here full time since a year ago November. Late last year, we had a new roof installed. This year, we managed to complete our exterior repairs — no more blue tarp! We also had the exterior of our house repainted, changing the color from margarita green  to what Sherwin Williams calls "youthful coral,"a shade of pink not too far from strawberry ice cream. So from the outside, the house looks great.

The inside of our house still needs some work. There's a big hole in the bedroom ceiling, which collapsed sometime after Katrina blew off a chunk of the roof, letting the rain in. Plastic sheeting separates the bedroom from the attic. We have a few other areas here and there with cosmetic water damage. Getting everything fixed is going to take a long time, because all the good contractors are booked solid for what seems like forever. The good news is that all that damage is cosmetic. The house itself is solid and comfortable.

Otherwise, our lives have gone normally this year. Ray still practices law with Adams and Reese LLP, where he is a member of the firm's appellate team. In his spare time, he maintains two blogs: The (New) Legal Writer and Minor Wisdom, both of which attract lots of visitors.

Suzanne continues to work for the Louisiana Department of Social Services as an assistant supervisor in Social Security Disability determination — and continues to count the days, hours, minutes, and seconds until retirement. At work, she taught a weekly yoga class for office personnel, until the unenlightened building management called a halt. ("No insurance," they said.) Nevertheless, she still takes classes at Wild Lotus Yoga and practices yoga at home.

The household feline population remains at four: Rocky (in photo above), Jelly Roll, Wednesday, and Alexis (nicknamed Petunia). Alexis/Petunia, whom we inherited from Ray's mom in 2005, still hasn't assimilated into the herd, so she lives in her own gated community in the back room, where she has her own separate bathroom and her own window ledge. Meanwhile, one of our other cats, Wednesday, officially became another post-Katrina mental-health casualty: in October, the veterinarian put her on Elavil, a tricyclic antidepressant.

Both of us continue to be actively involved with our parish church, Holy Name of Jesus. Suzanne, who was already an extraordinary eucharistic minister, added lectoring and sacristan duties to her agenda. Ray is an every-Sunday one-man choir for the 6 p.m. mass, with occasional lectoring added. In April, we attended all three Easter Triduum services at Holy Name, the first time either of us has done that in decades.

Best wishes for a happy Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, Las Posadas, New Year (Japanese or western), Eid al-Ahda, Al Hijra, and Tet Nguyen Dan. (I think that covers everyone.)

_________

p.s. Tip of the Santa Claus cap to Lynn at Business Writing, for tips on how to write a holiday newsletter and for the multi-cultural litany of holidays.

2005: What a year!

Greetings, and welcome to our on-line Christmas newsletter.

Last Christmas, the world was saddened by the tsunami that struck southern Asia. This Christmas, New Orleans, southeast Louisiana, and the Mississippi gulf coast find themselves recovering from their own tsunami, Hurricane Katrina. Events like these remind us that everything on this planet is temporary, and much of it (including ourselves) exists precariously. And they remind us to appreciate what really matters.

We are fortunate to have come through Katrina in fairly good shape. Though we were displaced from our home for more than two months, we are among the lucky few Orleanians who are now living in their own houses. We resumed living here on November 5, with a big blue tarp covering our damaged roof and an ice chest in the kitchen substituting for our ruined refrigerator. Today the house still needs some work, but it now has a brand new roof, and the kitchen now has a brand new refrigerator. One step at a time, we're getting back to normal.

Many Orleanians lost their jobs because of Katrina. We're among the lucky ones who still have ours. Ray practices law at Adams and Reese LLP, where he concentrates on appellate advocacy. Suzanne works for the State of Louisiana, Department of Social Services, Office of Disability Determinations, where she evaluates claims for Social Security Disability benefits.

2005 got off to a difficult start, with both Ray's mom and Suzanne's dad becoming seriously ill. Molly died on February 3, and Ignatius died on April 24. But not everything was a trial. Below are some of the notable things that happened to us in 2005:

• In January, Ray was called for jury duty at Criminal District Court. Unfortunately he didn't get to sit on a jury. Nonetheless, the experience was an education. You can read about his experience by clicking here and here.

• Near the end of February, Molly's cat, Alexis, started living with us. This raised the feline population at 6227 Magazine Street to four. The others are Rocky (pictured above), Jelly Roll, and Wednesday.

• Shortly after Molly died, we found her genealogy, which included a reference to an ancestor who was the brother of Hans Landis, beheaded in 1614. The family had no idea who Hans Landis was or what he did to get beheaded. A few months later, Ray stumbled on the answer. It seems that Hans is a famous Anabaptist martyr. You can read about him by clicking here.

• Besides lawyering, Ray serves as publications chair of the Defense Research Institute's Appellate Advocacy Committee. That job includes editing the committee's newsletter, Certworthy, which Ray modestly describes as "the best damned appellate newsletter on the planet." To read about the Summer 2005 issue, click here; to download it click here. To read about the Winter 2005 issue, click here; to download it, click here.

• Ray also wrote a short piece for the January 2005 issue of the DRI magazine, For the Defense. The article, titled Good Writing, Good Reading: Advice on Typography, contains advice for using principles of typography in legal writing. To read the article, click here. (The December 2005 issue will carry another article written by Ray.)

• In March, Suzanne was featured in the Times-Picayune, in a regular column titled The Best Revenge. To read the story, click here.

• In August, Suzanne became certified as a Level 1 practitioner of Reiki. (To find out what Reiki is all about, click here.)

• In September, Ray was honored by his alma mater, the Franciscan University of Steubenville, with the President's Award, for outstanding achievement in the field of law or government by a member of the Class of 1980.

• Ray continues writing on his own web log, Minor Wisdom. And would you believe that people actually read it? No kidding—over the last six months, Minor Wisdom has averaged 154 visitors per day. And probably dozens more people read it by RSS feed.

Meanwhile, there was Katrina

All these things are interesting footnotes in a year dominated by Katrina. For those who haven't heard our Katrina story, here it is:

When we woke up on Sunday, August 28, we thought we would ride out the storm here. That changed when we learned that the mayor had ordered a mandatory evacuation of the entire city—something that had never happened before. So we packed enough clothes for a three- or four-day road trip, corralled the cats, loaded up the car, and headed for Jackson, Mississippi. There, we were welcomed into the home of Holmes and Gayle Adams. (Holmes is a partner of Adams and Reese.) We spent a week at the Adams' house, then another week in Jackson at the home of Jerry and Susan Sheldon. (Jerry is another Adams and Reese partner.)

When we arrived in Jackson, we thought we'd be there for just a few days. We were discouraged to learn that our sojourn would be much longer. On the other hand, our hosts in Jackson were most gracious. In fact, we liked the hospitality in Jackson so much that we thought about staying there until New Orleans re-opened. But Adams and Reese had a better idea: the firm opened a temporary "New Orleans West" office in Baton Rouge and encouraged its New Orleans personnel to report there for work, which Ray did. Moving our base from Jackson to Baton Rouge was a chore, but a worthwhile one, as it brought us closer to home and re-united Ray with his colleagues.

Finding housing in Baton Rouge proved difficult; we ended up renting a couple of rooms in a house north of St. Francisville, an hour north of Baton Rouge. Meanwhile, the cats were boarding in Jackson. Eventually, we leased a condo in Baton Rouge near LSU, only 15 minutes' drive from "New Orleans West." Even better, the condo owner let us have our cats—all four of them! So on September 30 or thereabouts, the family was reunited under one roof.

Our zip code in New Orleans re-opened on October 7, and on October 8, we visited our house for the first time since Katrina. The good news: The flood didn't reach our house. The bad news: The wind took off a chunk of our roof, and the rains from Katrina or Rita or both caved in the bedroom ceiling. (To see pictures of how things looked then, click here.)

We spent the next few weekends cleaning things up and making the house liveable. Sometime between October 9 and October 16, a contractor put a blue tarp on the roof; and on October 16, some FEMA folks made some improvements to the tarp covering. Meanwhile, Adams and Reese was working toward re-opening its New Orleans office. That happened on November 7. We moved back in the weekend of November 5 and 6. For the following two weeks, Suzanne continued to spend Monday through Friday in Baton Rouge, using the condo there and spending weekends in New Orleans. Finally, just before Thanksgiving, Suzanne's office announced that it was returning to Metairie, just outside New Orleans. So on Thanksgiving, Suzanne came home for good.

There's still much Katrina stuff to deal with: insurance adjusters, contractors, estimates, repair work. But as we deal with those things, we will be together, under one roof—our roof. That's something to be grateful for.

Best wishes to you and yours for a Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, and a happy and healthy New Year.