My 2024 Christmas Letter

Season's Greetings              Christmas  2024

        Well, the 2024 U.S. presidential campaign lived up to its billing, didn’t it? (And then some?) No matter how any person feels about President-elect Trump, good or bad, there is no denying that Donald J. Trump made, perhaps, the greatest political comeback in U.S. history with its genesis being from the ashes of the violent insurrection inside the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6, 2021. Trump 2.0 will be quite interesting, I’m sure.

         Johnathan has spent 2024 in near total isolation. He has been working on something, or rather someone, he's been meaning to get around to: himself. Pulling from his decades of self-study and life experiences, he has finally come to discover and truly know himself and who he is. Johnathan sends his love to all, far and wide. He cannot wait to complete his personal mission and see you all in the coming years ahead.  Carissa is holding down the fort at home. She continues to work as the lead sonographer for Swedish/Providence. This fall was the first season that she coached Hunter & Kennedy's volleyball team. Carissa was nominated by her coworkers for an honorary coach award and was presented with her very own Seattle Storm team jersey, front row tickets to their last home game and a meet and greet with one of their players. Hunter, Kennedy, two friends and Carissa's boss also attended the game. Hunter, 13, is in the 8th grade, and is getting prepared to apply for the STEM program for his freshman year of school. He enjoys playing video games, practicing volleyball, and spending time with his friends. Kennedy, 10, is in the 5th grade. She is active in safety patrol at her school and volleyball at the local boys and girls club. Kennedy enjoys hanging out with her friends, playing volleyball and cooking.

       Holly and her family have had a huge transitional year! Her mother started the year off with a six-organ surgery for her pancreatic cancer, which was a success! Holly has helped aid her mom, Mernell, while sharing another place with her husband, David, so she has been juggling and now calls herself a bag lady at this point (lol!).  Their daughter, Melanie, finished pre-K where Holly still teaches and has been enjoying the first half of her kindergarten year!  Melanie keeps her parents on their toes and in character most of the time. She’s obsessed with The Little Mermaid and she loves to name all three of them, including Mernell (her Meme) and me, Papa Greg, as characters in the show. Holly is known as the main lead Ariel, Dave, as Eric, Melanie, as Melody, their daughter, Mernell, as Ursula, and myself as King Triton, of course (hahaha).  Holly’s little family tries to keep it as light as possible with all things considered…. They hope all of you stay well and have a Happy Holiday and a Happy New Year!

       My mother, Roberta, has been doing more 'doctoring' for various reasons.  When I asked her to tell me what to include in my letter, she said, "At 92, the years are catching up with me, which has been slow to happen.  Alicia and Angela are giving good care with it all." I can only recall one special person who sadly passed away this past year, my cousin, Sheryl Magruder Enriquez, in October at age 80, though I will likely think of others later.

        In 2024, I witnessed two rare displays of the Northern Lights from Missouri, in May and in September. My smartphone captured nice images of Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) over many nights in October (though it certainly was no Comet Hale-Bopp of 1997). And I experienced an iota of local fame when Chief Meteorologist Rich Cain of KHQA-TV in Quincy, Illinois used my photo that I had posted on Facebook on May 23, 2024 of the Full Flower Moon to lead off his 10 p.m. weathercast and credited me for it. But “The Main Celestial Event” for me in 2024 began on April 6, 2024 when I drove down to my sister's, Angela's, home where I stayed overnight. I enjoyed seeing my cousin, Susan, and her husband, Dave, before driving on down to Doniphan, Missouri the next day (where I lived and worked for ten years between 1979 – 1989) to see the long-anticipated total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024. (My total cost for two nights in a rather plain motel room in this town of ~ 2,000 people was $571.79. (I'm satisfied that this motel could have charged more due to Doniphan's ideal location on the centerline of the path of totality, experiencing the maximum totality of 4 min., 12 secs.) I was able to experience this total solar eclipse in the yard of my very good friend and coworker, Terry Cooper, who turned age 88 this year. Staying with Terry during this time were his stepsons, Kenny and Roger. I had with me my 60-year-old, 2½ -inch refractor telescope equipped with an adapter that I had recently purchased to hold my smartphone camera up to the telescope's eyepiece to (hopefully) record images and video of this rare celestial event. I thought that I was all prepared, but when I turned my telescope upwards 70° (90° is vertical) when totality began, the lens of my phone lost its alignment with my telescope's eyepiece and I labored to get it realigned quickly (!!!) to record something from this eclipse. Getting my panic under control, with a little over a minute left of totality, I did obtain video of 1/3rd of the sun's limb where the Diamond Ring effect occurs. And those pesky lens flares caused by bright light sources turned out to be a good thing as they slowly formed an inverse arc of Baily's Beads to the side in my video. I did glance up once for a few seconds to see the eclipsed sun and the corona seemed brighter and larger than it did when I watched the total solar eclipse from Columbia, Missouri on August 21, 2017. The fact that I was using the same telescope that my parents gave me when I was age 10 in 1964, and recording the voices of Terry, Kenny, and Roger on my video as they were making observations of totality, such as spotting the planets Venus and Jupiter, made this a very special experience without my seeing all 4+ minutes of totality. I visited with Terry at his home the next day before I headed home and we hugged a few times, my telling Terry that he is one of the most important people in my life, which I could tell stunned Terry to hear and he told me that that really meant a lot to him. I have always admired Terry for helping many, many people in need throughout his life, including Mernell and me, and having the gift in making people laugh with his God-given sense of humor. Terry and I both know how special our little Doniphan watershed project office was to work in.

       2024 was a year when I did much improvement to the exterior of my home that I have been living in since 1991. It began when a very good and hard worker (I would learn), Shawn Dryden, came to my home in early February to remove persistent squirrels that gnawed their way through my home's fiberboard soffits to make a nice home for themselves. I then hired Shawn and his men (including a very fine man, Shannon) in April to remove my roof's 27-year-old shingles and put on new, better-quality shingles. (Shawn did this job after a local roofer, who I had hired in late 2021 after my roof had hail damage, refused to show up or even tell me that he was welching on his agreement to do this work. Prices for labor and materials had soared in the meantime.) After a very rainy spring, Shawn and his men put two new coats of a quality paint on my home's wood exterior in July, its first painting since just before I moved here in 1991. (Suffice it to say, it was time.) They also replaced a weak and rotting floor, in places, with a good sturdy floor on my small front porch, trimmed my three large bushes, trimmed tree limbs from my two maple trees that were hanging over the roof of my home, did some much-needed improvements to my back deck, and installed sturdy elbows to the two downspouts for my front and back roof rain gutters to outlet PVC pipes that I will no longer need to maintain with 2-inch wide Duck Tape annually.

         2024 saw a few very special family get-togethers.  On July 4th, many of my family gathered at Alicia’s and my recent 70th birthday was celebrated.   My sister, Diane, and her extended family joined us at Alicia’s home in September. (I must give my tech genius nephew, Shawn, a special mention for giving me an SC card that gave my smartphone MUCH more storage for photos and videos.) And in November, there was the roughly biennial event in which all six of us Jarboe siblings were at Alicia’s home for a very enjoyable get-together with our special mother. My special friend, Debbie, volunteered to make a chocolate cake with milk chocolate frosting for our family gathering that everyone in my family enjoyed so much that we sent a “Thank You” video recording to Debbie, which Debbie appreciated. 

         I went to Columbia in May to see my granddaughter, Melanie, 4, graduate from pre-school, complete with caps and gowns. In August, I went to Melanie’s 5th birthday party held at Shakespeare Pizza in Columbia.  In November, I met Holly, Carissa, Hunter, Kennedy, & Melanie at Golden Corral in Columbia for dinner. But I first set up my telescope in the parking lot and my three grandchildren got their first good look at a waxing gibbous moon through my childhood telescope, which seemed to impress all of them.

        I will conclude with my telling of Debbie, a Lady who has become increasingly special to me since she and I first met at her home two years ago on December 10, 2022.  The following is from Debbie in her own writing voice: “I'm ill and have been for over 6 months and counting. Greg was kind enough to stay at my home to help me out and give me someone to talk to at my lowest part of this dreadful journey. He could make me laugh when I was miserable and he cooked when I had a migraine. Greg is a very special friend.”

                                I plan to spend much of my time with Debbie in 2025.

 I hope that you and your family have a prosperous 2025!  

                                                                 Greg