The Lamberts Living Life Fully….

The Year that Was….

The Lamberts Living Life Fully-2010

Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice.

Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.

—-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

To reduce the length of this year’s message and minimize redundancy, we suggest that you take last year’s letter out of your file and simply add one year to many of the stories contained therein.  For example, each grandchild is now one year older.  What…you can’t find our 2010 letter?…Shocking!  OK, we’ll bring you up to date.  Life at The Sea Ranch continues to be very satisfying—a gorgeous environment and an ever-widening circle of stimulating friends and activities.  We continue work with the Democrats United for Progress and write editorials (the latest enclosed), participate in two book clubs, Readers Theater, a writing group, a “Blue Brothers” luncheon group, as well as several circles of friends meeting for conversation and films.  Healthwise, Morgan has adapted fairly well to the limits on vigorous hiking imposed by his spinal stenosis and stays healthy generally.  Just this week, we learned that Linda’s sarcoidosis condition is improving (smaller lymph nodes).

Every year is a grandchild year for us—14 of them so far.  How fortunate we are! Entering the world: Abbey Morita (see Abbey’sFirstYear on the web), Feb. 11, 2010, daughter of grandson, Eric Morita and partner, Julie (who will begin nurse’s training this month).  Abbey joined the “month of great grandchildren,” Emily on the 7^th, Bradley on the 13^th.  Entering and learning in the world of higher education: Ashley Lambert, Santa Barbara, and Shannon Pintane, Ft. Collins, CO; Keely Lambert, a sophomore at Chico, Chloe Smock, a junior in the School of Education at the University of Oregon. In June, grandson Dylan Smock and granddaughter, Catherine Lambert will graduate from high school and launch their university lives. Our children have also had interesting years, including recognition of Citizens of the Year for son, Kent, and his wife, Darcy; and a 25-year anniversary for daughter, April, and son-in-law, David.  A June family reunion was beautifully hosted by daughter Laura, son-in-law, Terry, and granddaughter, Shannon (where we also spent Thanksgiving).  And daughter Ellen finally was able to sell her property in Somerset and begin a new chapter of her life.

Linda continues the joys of her writing life—and travels of research.  In March, Cairo Diary: an Egyptian fable was released. Etruscan Evenings, the sequel in this trilogy, will be released this summer. The research on Taos Sunrise (working title) led us into Queen Isabella’s Spain in April and the Taos (New Mexico) of D.H. Lawrence in the fall (for 3 months!).  While fiction is her primary passion, she continues to work with school districts and universities (mostly on Skype), review publications, and do some educational writing herself. On February 4, Dear Maxine, the Conversation Continues will be released at an event in Lincoln Center, New York, a publication to which she contributed a letter recounting her nearly 30 year relationship with the philosopher, Maxine Greene. On March 28, Morgan and Linda will conduct a workshop on transforming schools at the National ASCD conference in San Francisco. And, in May, we will both travel to Beirut, Lebanon, for a Middle Eastern conference of schools from Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan.  For more information on Linda’s work, see her blog at www.Lambertleadership.org.

Morgan’s current writing project is an article on school transformation; applying “lessons learned” in his career to the huge problems schools face today.  Ambitious readers can merely request a copy by February 1. He would really appreciate candid critical feedback.  One of his New Year resolutions is to expand on this theme in an “education memoir” over the next few months (hoping to complete it before Linda finishes her third novel!)??

Among the celebratory events this year will be our 30^th anniversary. My, time goes fast when you’re having fun!  We still have great faith and affection for our President, whom we consider to be extraordinary.  And we hope that today’s “Breaking News” about the tragic event in Tucson will lead to a reduction in vitriolic political rhetoric and to candid and respectful dialogue.

With much love, Linda and Morgan

Linda and Morgan Lambert

PO Box 135, The Sea Ranch, CA, 95497

707-785-1733; 707-328-4645 (cell)

Morganlamb@aol.com; LinLambert@aol.com

This entry was posted on Monday, January 10th, 2011 at 9:55 pm and is filed under Education, Family, Fiction, Leadership, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.