I just signed off at the end of our Boettiger family's biweekly Zoom call.
We are a hardy and diverse band, and it is a pleasure to see and share news from my immediate and extended family - my children, their children, and always a dear cousin or more of my own or my children's generation from hither or yon.
We all missed my daughter Sara, who is head of public affairs, science and sustainability for the Crop Science Division of Bayer. She has been on the road; maybe still is, but she well deserves a rest. My sons Adam (and his companion Lisa Plunkett), Paul and Joshua (and Joshua's daughter, my granddaughter Paloma, going into the 4th grade) were aboard, as was my dear cousin Nina Gibson, who lives in a currently verdant desert outside Tucson, AZ. Not a plea to which I am accustomed, but it's heartfelt: Send us some rain, Nina!
Joshua and his family, and my youngest son Paul, have recently moved east, to our old home ground of New England, living within a very few blocks of each other in Catskill, New York, on the Hudson River.
Adam and Lisa are pursuing their life and work outside of Portland, Oregon, and fortunately, despite the heat, outside the realm of fires to the south. Paul and Joshua are settling into their new digs, Paul as an artist and designer of remarkable furniture, and Joshua, after a career as a congregational rabbi in Ashland, Oregon, has become a faculty member of Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, from which he graduated years ago. Joshua's work at Bard — teaching history, Judaism and poetry and advising Jewish students — is only 20 minutes away. I'm sorry to lose them both in closer proximity to my home in Mill Valley, California, but happy they're returning to familiar ground. In addition to our biweekly family calls, we'll visit across country when that becomes more practicable.