Top Ten

I haven't written a holiday letter for several years. Once I was solidly an adult and I didn't feel the need to explain my every move any more, I've gone quiet on the review part of the end of the year. But I've also gone quiet to myself, speaking instead through photos here and there and, since last summer, as photo books. To write captions or stories around the photos seems arcane, redundant, fake. So I've almost entirely only spoken through images and whatever I've written on here in those books. And if that's the case, then I need to write more on here as I go so I don't lose my words, my weeks, my years.

As I think back on 2014, I think Australia, June. Of course our trip of a lifetime was the highlight of my year, but it blurs the other months, the small joys, that I don't want to forget either.

I need a structure for it all, so I'm going with a list. The kind of list everyone makes at the end of a year: a top ten, in a sort of chronological order.  Just 10 experiences I don't want to forget.

A top ten of 2014, then:

1. Talk20 Hutch. My first summer in Hutchinson (2013) was spent on a journey of meeting, meeting people who valued ideas and had dreams for the community like me. One of those people was Patsy Terrell, and she immediately latched onto the idea of Talk20, inspired by my experience with Talk20 Spartanburg. We got a yes from the Hutchinson Public Library, got a front page article, and launched Talk20 Hutch on January 24, 2014 in the upstairs auditorium with seats for 60. But more than 150 showed up, lining the walls, sitting on the floor, listening in the hall. And when we did it again on July 18 we moved downstairs with seats for 200. But more than 200 showed up, standing in the dark stacks and pulling office chairs from distant desks. It's been so exciting to witness Hutch's hunger for something different, the exchange of ideas, the stories of their neighbors. Talk20 #3 is in just a few weeks, and I think we'll plan for 250.

2. Leadership Reno County. In mid-January, I showed up early to the Cosmosphere parking lot and was assigned three people to drive to an unknown location. We were given homework to learn about one another on the drive, and when we arrived in Hesston 45 minutes later we were immersed in two days of confusion, challenges, ahas, connections, inspiration, and new vocabulary. That was the start of Leadership Reno County, a three-month personal leadership journey that taught us about motivating others to do difficult work, about factions and the difference between adaptive and technical problems, about leadership principles that are practical and real and not from a lecture or textbook. Leadership is something you practice every day. And it has changed a lot for me this year, how I think about my job and how I think about myself in my community.

3. Food Sensitivity Diet. My digestive troubles led me to the chiropractor: acupuncture, adjustments, and a blood test to see what foods might be troubling me. Nothing came back extreme, but on a four-point scale they were within 1-2 points. Cottage cheese. Garlic. Crab. Gluten and all its friends. (And more.) For six weeks I was told to stay away from everything on that list, and for six weeks I had to get creative or desperate with my meals. I was mostly successful: I only had bread twice when it was part of a meal handed to me; I lost six pounds; I learned I could live without bread; I learned that I cry from hunger when I can't find anything I can eat; I learned garlic is in everything. I also learned that food probably wasn't the cause of my troubles because it didn't clear up. And because of all of that I quit the chiropractor.

4. Bicycle and Pedestrian Master Plan. The Foundation has a grant to support the development and implementation of a plan to guide future bike and pedestrian infrastructure (sidewalks, bike lanes, trails), and this summer our leadership team mobilized and educated and advocated to get it done and passed. It happened, on October 7, but not before controversy over a not-even-proposed roundabout and narrowing Main Street and making a weird intersection into a park. It happened, but it was a struggle to get people to connect vibrancy with people on the sidewalks, livability with walkability, economic development with quality of life. It happened, but now we have to mobilize and educate and advocate for the implementation of it, to actually get projects funded. And it's one of the best things I'm a part of.

5. The Cottage Renovation. I painted the living room, the dining room, the hallway. I stripped the floral wallpaper in the kitchen, ripped the laminate off of the wall, exposed holes down to the lath, patched holes down to the lath, attempted to strip the wallpaper from the ceiling, and painted the walls Marblehead Gold. I discovered there are walls in this house with at least four layers of wallpaper, including the living room ceiling (that I'm not touching). I discovered that I can't actually renovate our house but I can make it look and hold together as best I can. I discovered Phillip has absolutely no interest in any of it but that it's okay because I want to do it on my own anyway. Making a house has always been my thing, my dream.

6. Adventures with Jack. We try to get him away from the tv whenever we can, whenever we have the willpower. We had briefly joyous but eventually disastrous visits to the Rolling Hills Zoo and Kansas State Fair. We had simple, largely drama-free jaunts at parks. But our biggest adventure of the year was camping at Kanapolis Lake in August. Silly me, I thought maybe it would be his first time camping and among his first times at a lake, but it turns out he's been camping more than I have and he's so comfortable in bodies of water that he'll climb on rocks and jump with barely a thought. We splashed a while, cooked hot dogs and s'mores. And as night fell it became increasingly clear we were in the path of a severe storm. Near midnight we put the rain guard on the tent just in time and then spent the next few hours getting whipped by wind and rain. Three times Jack woke in the night crying, and he wet himself--and the blanket Phillip was lying on--also at least three times. By 6am it was beginning to be light and the rain had stopped. Though I'd planned on a hike, instead we started packing the car. We had barely slept, and not at all well. And when Jack woke and came to the opening of the tent to step out, we stopped him to put on his shoes first. His fear or frustration or exhaustion led him to let out a yell, a tension-filled cry, and grip the collar of Phillip's shirt so that his hands were red from the pressure. We drove home with Jack asking to see rawrs, but I told him that thunder in the night was the rawrs charging, that they were asleep now, that the rawrs, like us, wanted to get dry and rest without the threat of lightning.

7. Early Childhood Block Grant. The result was satisfying, but the process was hell. We had six weeks to write a grant that would serve at-risk children birth to 5 in Reno County. I met with programs. I took notes. I told people I was figuring it out. I panicked. I was not figuring it out. I asked people to send me their proposals. I took those proposals and constructed a whole. I wrote a 90 some page grant in two weeks. I was relieved it was over and didn't have much hope we would get it. We got it. $566,000 for 6 programs. I had to change pieces of it. I had to mold it to the evaluator's requirements. I had to construct MOUs and finalize numbers and try to wrap my mind around a 38 page grant agreement. I'm still doing it.

8. This Is Where Our Heart Is. It was an epic year at the Foundation celebrating our 25th anniversary. It began in January with our anniversary event at the Ramada, a high production with three video screens, live music, a dozen speakers, several dozen kids, 400 t-shirts, and the launch of our This is Where Our Heart Is theme. We began asking people to tell us where their heart is in Reno County, what their vision is for our community. Then we raised more than $200,000 for Reno County nonprofit endowments on Match Day in May. We asked nonprofits to question ingrained assumptions and take risks for impact at our August nonprofit workshop, What's Next for Reno County Philanthropy. We had more than 600 people come to revisit the past and imagine the future at Envision Hutch in September at the Fox, where we got an oral and pictorial history of Hutchinson from Nation Meyer and launched an idea exchange in the lobby that would then move online to ihearthutch.org, asking people to share their ideas to make Hutchinson and Reno County even better. And, finally, in November we gave away more than $200,000 through the Fund for Hutchinson, more than in any year to date. It wasn't a typical year, that's for sure, so I'm looking forward to 2015 and only doing one event out of the usual--the Envision Hutch Unconference in March. Because I'm lucky that they keep saying yes to my ideas. Yes to more community, yes to #ihearthutch.

9. Jury duty. The first time I appeared for jury duty I was selected as a juror. It was a stalking case in December, a soap opera worthy story with an immigrant, quick marriage, quick divorce, and dualing stories. I had so many questions neither attorney was asking, but tried not to show it on my face as I studied their tactics. The defense attorney was a mess who asked questions that weren't questions or were questions hidden somewhere in strange syntax. The prosecutor was someone I know, and two other jurors knew my father-in-law. The bailiff said we were the happiest jury he'd seen, and we laughed because what else are you going to do with all of that waiting? The verdict was guilty, two counts, and in the end it was easy--despite all of the confusion--because the defendant and the defense attorney actually did their own convicting by creating a lie that, although rationally lesser than the accusation, was nevertheless still a violation of a stalking order. And all of those other details that I wanted to know about these people were mute because the facts on the one day at the one time at the Hutchinson Mall of all places were all that mattered to the decision.

10. One year anniversary. How do you measure a year? Australia, of course, which was so much the highlight of the year that I'm not going to go into it again. The measure of our first married year was date nights, I'd say (which we had many of in Australia), and we did it right on our anniversary at Jillian's for dinner and wine and at Stage 9 for live music and more wine. Our best times are those spent in conversation--deep and philosophical or humorous and joyous--at home on the couch or out at dinner. We don't get out-out together much because of our differing schedules, but when we do it's filled with laughter and love. Pub crawls and music and, okay, well, our time out usually involves alcohol and sometimes our siblings and sometimes movies. Let's measure our year in long hugs, too, and the conversations that spelled out dreams for our future.