Mike & Clark's 2023 Year-End Newsletter

Seasons Greetings

from Mike and Clark!

First a mea culpa if you did not receive our 2022 Holiday letter. It was only after we started getting a fair number of them returned to us that we realized that the city, state and zip code were missing from some of the mailing labels we had printed. “UNABLE TO DELIVER” snarled the hand-stamped response from the USPS. But by then daffodils were starting to bloom so we abandoned a resend effort in favor of correcting the problem this holiday season. If you get this, we’ve succeeded!

Our 2023 began with the completion of a 6-month exterior renovation of our Richmond home, which we and our housemates and co-owners David & Cheryl Lederle-Ensign refer to as “3 Chimneys.” We were very pleased with the work and had only a few items remaining on the punch list when we made our final payment in late February. A mere ten days later, however, our contractor, Fabling Built, abruptly ceased operations leaving some 80 other projects in various stages of “unfinished,” and whatever monies they had invested, lost. The owner later left town in the middle of the night and is supposedly now doing renovations in the Denver area. We feel a weird mix of horror at what could have occurred, and relief that it didn’t happen to us, although we have since learned that some of the subcontractors and vendors who they engaged for work on our project were never paid by Fabling, even though we promptly paid every Fabling invoice upon delivery so that they could “pay their people and subs.”

Apart from the house, this was a year for putting down roots and integrating into our new town through connecting with various communities of shared interests. Clark is now performing with 3 different singing groups (as well as serving on their boards): The Virginians (a barbershop chorus), the Richmond Men’s Chorus and the acapella group, the Noteables. He loves singing with all three, even if he sometimes gets the music for one group confused that of one of the others. When you have to learn three different arrangements of “Silent Night” for the holiday concerts, that’s bound to happen. Our new church, St. Thomas Episcopal, has communities within a community. We’re now in our second year making music with their delightful church choir. Mike has become a regular volunteer at the St. Thomas Food Pantry helping to distribute food for nearly 400 households every week. Clark also serves on the Altar Guild, which helps keep the sanctuary pretty, and Mike serves on the garden guild, which helps keep the church grounds pretty. One community we hadn’t expected has formed with folks we’ve met through Performance RVA, a nearby gym that we both joined in January. We’ve met up for a number of art and food festivals all over the city. And Richmond has lots of both!

Although our primary purpose for moving to Richmond was to retire here, we both decided to work at least another year or two and stash a few more bucks into ye olde retirement fund. That plan got a bit complicated in April when Clark’s job went from being 100% remote to 75% remote and he’s now having to work a few days a week at his company’s HQ in McLean, VA, over 100 miles from where we now live. Luckily, David and Cheryl still have their home in Arlington, he has a place to stay when he’s up there. Mike, too, went through an unexpected transition with his job when his company lost the contract for the project he’d been managing for the past five years. It was a great gig with some wonderful people, so it was hard to say goodbye to it. Fortunately, he was able to move to another project of his company’s fairly quickly, and although there are mountains of information he has yet to learn, the government customer and his new colleagues seem to be nice folks and he (at least) is still able to work 100% from home.

Our travels this year—though mostly to familiar places—were no less welcome and wonderful. A weekend of Broadway shows and great museums in New York with David and Cheryl, our annual midwinter respite in Rehoboth Beach, DE with our dear friend David Schairer, a Chesser family reunion at a big beach house in Gulf Shores, AL in June, a return to bucolic Afton, VA for a lovely long weekend in August, and a reunion weekend in September with our longtime friends Ron Bookbinder and James Fisher to attend the wedding of newer friends Stuart Robbins and Michael Barnett. Clark’s parents, Bill and Chris, visited in July to join us in our explorations of Richmond, and we reunited with them in November to celebrate Thanksgiving in beautiful Highlands, NC. In October, we traveled to Harrisonburg, VA to meet up with Mike’s sister and brother-in-law, Katie & Bryan Bowen, and niece Jenny Bowen, for the wedding of Mike’s other niece, Amanda Bowen, to Mike Woods. It was a beautiful celebration of a wonderful couple and a joyous event for all!

Speaking of travels, we’d love for you to drop by and see us if you’re ever in the Richmond area. If you can’t tell, we’re in love with this place and would welcome the chance to share it with you. Wishing you and yours a wonderful 2024 filled with love, laughter, and fabulousness!