Checking In

Okay, I know we've been home a week and I still have yet to blog about our trip to England. But this week I am a fellow at the Obermann Graduate Institute on Public Engagement, and I am blissfully preoccupied with thoughts of civic engagement and public research. Like Princeton in Avenue Q, who sings wistfully "What Do You Do with a BA in English?," I think I might have finally found my purpose.

Hopefully, I'll get a chance to write about our trip soon, but for now, here is a photo to tide you over:

And here's a daily anecdotal dispatch from the Pleiss Morris house. Yesterday I showed Ben Joanne and Arlyn's beautiful Christmas letter. Ben looks to Arlyn as a sort of benchmark for his husbandhood (i.e. if Arlyn does something, Ben thinks he might be one day obligated to do likewise, and if Arlyn doesn't do something, Ben feels he, too, is off the hook). So when I told him Arlyn wrote the Christmas letter, the following exchange occurred:

BEN: Hmmm...does this mean I'll have to write a Christmas letter one day?
ANN: No. Well, maybe. I mean, you would write a funny letter.
BEN: Yeah.
ANN: We could write one together someday. Bridge the spectrum between reflective and touching and -
BEN: (interrupting) And whatever it is that you write?

Yeah, that's my husband.