Season’s Greetings from Bob Fairchild and Jan Pearce! We are enjoying our first Christmas as a newlywed couple here in southern New Hampshire at Bob’s parents’, Bob (the elder) and Pat’s, house where an historic ice storm took down the power lines, leaving 700,000 homes in the state without power. About 18”of snow has fallen, and it still continues to fall. This is a community coming together to support each other by fetching gasoline for one another’s generators and providing showers in the homes lucky enough to still have hot water. Bob’s parents’ house has now been without power for more than a week and a half, so they are very happy to have Bob here to help. For those of you with whom we have shamefully not been in touch in the last few years, we will try to catch you up in this letter, and in the future, we plan to keep our letters shorter and more frequent! We met contra dancing in about 1992, and both enjoyed dancing together, but for many years we remained only dance acquaintances, interacting little beyond the dance floor. Since Bob stopped contra dancing in about 2002, in an attempt to concentrate on house-building on weekends, Jan had not seen him in several years. In an odd freak of coincidence, we each separated from our then respective spouses in late July 2006, unbeknownst to one another. Bob heard first about Jan’s separation, and we began dating in February 2007. If you are interested in more detail about our first few dates, see http://www.janandbob.us (Is that cute or what?) Bob has been building a special house since 1997. It is being built with boards that Bob has milled himself with his portable sawmill almost entirely from trees he cut down on his property. It is super-insulated, off-the-grid, passive solar, and incorporates a lot of other innovative environmental technologies. We did some dry-walling this year, but progress has been slow. Bob is part of a partnership that bought a 2 megawatt hydroelectric plant from the local utility KU/LG&E in December 2005, saving the plant from being filled with concrete, saving the rate payers from paying 3.5 million dollars for the expense of decommissioning, and saving the planet from some of the carbon expended by coal-generated electric power. Bob and his partners got the first turbine generator unit up and running in March 2007, the second in October 2007, and hope to get the third running before the end of this year. For more see: http://www.kyhydropower.com Jan has been teaching math and computer science at Berea College since 1992. Founded in 1855, Berea College was the first co-educational and interracial college in the South, and Jan is proud to teach at an institution with Berea’s unique mission of educating poor but talented students without charging tuition. Recently she has been involving students in robotics research focused on search and rescue. Jan is worried about the serious impact of the current financial crisis on the college’s endowment. We both enjoy dancing, and Jan is an admitted dance fanatic, especially contra dance, vintage dance, and Argentine tango. Some of the dance performances Jan has been in with her dance troupe, the Lexington Vintage Dance Society (LVDS) during our time together include performances with the Lexington Philharmonic Orchestra, the Kentucky Ballet Theatre, and many throughout Kentucky in honor of the 200th anniversary of Abe Lincoln’s birth. Together we enjoy dancing at the monthly “Mostly Waltz” dances which Jan organizes as part of the dance outreach of the LVDS. We have also enjoyed a few contra dance weekends together, including Berea’s Hands Four Dance Weekend, and Lexington’s Dance Trance Weekend, at all of which Jan taught dance classes. In April and May
2007, Jan graciously agreed to take beginning tango classes from Ron and Judith Gariepy with Bob in Lexington. We have since taken several sets of intermediate tango classes together, as well as special tango classes from traveling instructors, and have gone to tango weekends in Asheville and Atlanta, and dances in Ann Arbor. (We seem to especially like dancing in cities which begin with “A”.) We also share a love of the outdoors, and many of our treasured moments together have been outside. Some highlights include hiking with our friends Thom Price and Paolo Capretti in the Berea College forest, camping with our friend Tomás Edison outside of Harrodsburg in Kentucky, hiking to Anglin Falls near our home, and hiking near Bob’s parent’s house in New Hampshire, where serious protection is needed from the mosquitoes in the summer! Jan’s parent’s Fred and Dorothy Pearce had retired to Asheville, NC more than a decade ago. In recent years, Jan and her brother Doug had begun recommending with some insistence that they move nearer to one of their two children because Dorothy’s health had been in decline for about the last five years, precipitated by the failure of her kidneys. So, during the first eight months of their relationship, Jan and Bob made many trips to Asheville to work on readying Jan’s parent’s house for sale. In late May 2007, we drove to Rochester, NY to attend a retirement party for Dr. Joe Neisendorfer, Jan’s Ph.D. Thesis advisor and long-time friend. From there we went on to New Hampshire, where Jan got to meet Bob’s parents, Pat and (elder) Bob Fairchild. In early June, Jan’s brother Doug and his wife Amy gave birth to a beautiful daughter named Addison, and Jan was able to fly up to Detroit to meet her newest niece before she was even a week old. In late September 2007, Jan’s parents sold their home in Asheville, NC and moved to a condo in Belleville, MI to be nearer to their son, Doug, daughter-in-law, Amy, and granddaughters, Taylor, Nicole, and baby Addison. Living so close, Jan’s mother Dorothy was able to watch her newest grandbaby, “babydoll” Addie, grow from baby to early toddler. We made a number of trips up to Michigan by car, and Jan was delighted that her brother Doug, who is a professional pilot, was able to fly down to Kentucky to pick up Jan so she could attend Addie’s christening with the rest of the family. Shortly after moving to Michigan, Jan’s mom Dorothy’s general weakness was finally diagnosed as serious heart trouble. Dorothy needed to have open-heart surgery to have blockages removed, a valve fixed, and another valve completely replaced. The doctors said that it was extremely risky because of Dorothy’s other health problems, but if successful, it would dramatically improve the quality of her life, so Dorothy decided to schedule the surgery. Jan and Bob made many road trips to Michigan in order to spend quality time with her in advance of the surgery, but Dorothy had am amazingly positive attitude and was absolutely certain that all would be well. She had her surgery only a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving, and we were planning to drive to Michigan to spend Thanksgiving dinner with her in her hospital room. Amazingly, Dorothy both came out of intensive care and home from the hospital faster than any of her doctors had predicted, and in plenty of time for Thanksgiving. So, at the home of Jan’s ex-sister-in-law, Bridget Pearce, we gave thanks for Dorothy’s health while sharing a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner with both of Jan’s parents, and extended family members: Bridget Pearce, her daughter Rachael Riley, and her sister Lori Reno and Lori’s husband Fred. The 15th Annual Hoot’N’Holler at Bearwallow was held on the fifth weekend in June 2007. We had our usual potluck, swimming, campfire, and waffle breakfast, all shared with great friends. For Christmas 2007, realizing we had close family members in two locations, we started a new tradition. We drove to Michigan a week before Christmas and then flew to New Hampshire to spend Christmas with Bob’s family, Pat and the elder Bob, as well as with Bob’s maternal aunt Nancy. Then the day after Christmas, we flew back to Michigan for a belated Christmas with Jan’s family and extended family.
After a late Christmas in Michigan, we drove back home to Kentucky. For the last several years, Jan’s good friend Demi Miller has come from Saint Paul, MN to Kentucky to spend the week after Christmas dancing and singing at Christmas Country Dance School, a week of traditional music and dance, so we spent a nice time with Demi. In addition to teaching mathematics and computer science, Jan sometimes teaches dance, and Jan spent nearly all of January 2008 in the Río de la Plata region of South America (Buenos Aires, Argentina and Montevideo, Uruguay) with her colleague Eileen McKiernan González and twenty Berea College students team-teaching a course devoted to avant-garde art and Argentine tango dance. It was the longest Bob and Jan had been apart since they first began dating. In mid-March 2008, Jan’s mother Dorothy had a serious stroke which caused left-side paralysis. Although Dorothy kept her sense of humor and positive attitude, after a month of struggling and physical therapy, she made very little improvement, remaining bed-ridden and needing to be transferred by ambulance from her long-term care unit to the hospital three times a week for her kidney dialysis. When she began to have uncontrollable and persistent pain, she decided to take herself off of kidney dialysis. We were able to move her into a hospice facility in Ann Arbor and along with the rest of the family we were able to spend her last week with her. She passed away peacefully on May 16th. An avid nature-lover and gardener all of her life, Dorothy had asked to be cremated and buried in a garden. On May 24th, after a lovely memorial service during which a hummingbird buzzed about the chapel sipping from the memorial flowers, and the grandchildren hung birdhouses on nearby trees, Dorothy’s ashes were interred at Michigan Memorial Park. She was a woman who embraced life to its fullest and was a mother who encouraged her children to find and be themselves, so though the service was quite beautiful, Jan prefers to remember her in her more youthful vibrancy. After 47 years of marriage, Jan’s dad Fred took Dorothy’s passing very hard, telling us that he did not want to stay in Michigan. So, we began looking at assisted living facilities near our home in Kentucky. Then in early June, we rented a U-Haul trailer in Kentucky and pulled it up to Belleville with Jan’s truck. We packed up and loaded Fred’s possessions before attending Jan’s niece Addie’s first birthday party. Bob drove the truck pulling the trailer and Jan took Fred in his car and we took him to Lexington. After a couple of nights in a hotel, his room at the assisted living facility was ready and he moved into his apartment at Liberty Ridge in Lexington, KY. Bob’s Birthday Bash and 16th Annual Hoot’N’Holler at Bearwallow was held on the July 12 weekend at Bob’s farm. We had our usual potluck, swimming, tours of the house under construction (yes, still, thanks for not asking,) and waffle breakfast, all with great friends. th
At the end of July 2008, Jan travelled to Madrid, Spain to attend an International conference on computer science education. The conference organizers had invited the conference attendees to come a day early to go on one of two planned tours of the major sites in the area. Two days before Jan planned to leave she received an email saying that the tour she had signed up for had been cancelled due to having too few registrants. After receiving a negative response to an email to the conference organizers to see if she could join the other planned tour, Jan decided to organize her own tour, so she sent an email to the nine registrants whose tour had been cancelled to see if there was interest in doing the same tour on our own. There was, so having never set foot in Spain, Jan ended up leading nine people on a cost-saving and fun “tour of the disenfranchised” to El Escorial, the castle from which Phillip II had led the Spanish inquisition. In late June, Bob headed to New York State where his dad was inducted into the Marathon Central School Athletic Hall of Fame in its first induction. Bob stayed with Joe Neisendorfer in Rochester, NY on the way up and tracked down another branch of the Fairchild family in Geneva and Cortland, NY. Jan flew from Spain to CT, and we spent a few days in New Hampshire including a small town Fourth of July parade in New Boston. We then went to Bob’s 30th high school reunion in CT. Jan flew back to KY to continue teaching her summer course, and Bob drove back to KY.
In late September, Jan’s dad Fred decided that he felt too isolated up in Lexington and wanted to move closer to us. Coincidentally, the assisted living facility in Richmond, KY called and told us that dad had moved to the top of their waiting list which we had placed him on in May, so we rented another U-Haul and moved him again, this time to McCready Manor in Richmond, KY. We are relieved to report that he is now much more satisfied with his newest place. It has also been a very difficult couple of years for us with regard to pets. Jan’s long time German Shepherd companion, King, died of old age in August of 2006 less than a month after Jan’s legal separation from Kent. Gretchen a funny white Boxer, that Bob had shared with Kathy, began having seizures in early 2008, so Bob put her on Phenobarbital to control the seizures, but in spite of this, they worsened. Gretchen died of a massive seizure in March 2008 at only two years of age. Also in March, Apollo, a happy-go-lucky Samoyed, and one of two dogs that Jan and Kent had shared, disappeared in a major storm while Kent was out of the country. Even after searching and posting signs, he could not be found. The other dog which Jan and Kent had shared, Bennu, a huge sweet Great Pyrenees, was diagnosed with metastasized cancer in the summer and given little quality time remaining. The miracles of pain medication and canned food kept her happy until she finally stopped eating in November of 2008, turning up her nose at even the tastiest of bacon-grease-covered canned food. So, after a week of no food-intake, we decided that it would be more humane to have her put-to-sleep rather than letting her starve. On a happier note, after having her two Morgan horses, Eddie and Appendix, for more than a decade, Jan decided that it was time to find the horses a new home with someone who has more time to groom and ride them. When our friends Debbonnaire Kovacs and her daughter Sally Christopher recently bought a small farm in Berea, we were absolutely delighted that they wanted Eddie and Appendix. We continue to enjoy having them visit occasionally. We now share Jan’s house with Jan’s mother’s aptly but not kindly named cat Fatso, and Jan’s mother’s loving dog Freeway. The cats, Rigley and Mitsy, continue to live happily in the small cottage that Bob shared with Kathy. After a year and a half of a relationship with more love, support, and connection than either of us ever imagined possible, we decided to marry, and held our ceremony on October 18th. The matron of honor was Jan’s dear friend and College colleague Keila Thomas. The best man was Bob’s business partner and long-time friend Dave Brown Kinloch. The ring bearer was Bob’s nephew Luke Fairchild, and the flower girls were Jan’s nieces Taylor and Nicole Pearce. The officiant was the Reverend Gloria Johnson, Berea College campus minister, with whom who Jan spent two weeks in Brazil in 2003. The wedding opened with two 1860s dances danced by friends from Jan’s dance troupe, the LVDS and played on piano by our friend and professional musician Elise Melrood. Readings were read by Jan’s sister-in-law Amy Pearce, Jan’s brother Doug Pearce, and Bob’s sister Jane Fairchild. A duet was sung by our good friends Gina Chamberlain and Thom Price. The ceremony portion of the evening ended with a dance in which we danced a set waltz with the LVDS dancers. Both of us care deeply about issues o f sustainability, so decided to host as sustainable a wedding as possible. In addition, we wanted as much as possible to choose our wedding elements for their meaning to us. To minimize driving, we decided to hold all of three parts of our wedding celebration in a single place, at the building where we met dancing in 1992, Berea’s Russel Acton Folk Center. Following the celebration, we had an amazing pot-luck supper followed by an evening of dancing.
Jan’s mother Dorothy was a textile major in college and an accomplished seamstress who taught Jan to sew at an early age. Jan’s satin wedding dress is a reproduction of a ball gown from the 1860’s complete with hoop skirt, petticoats, and bloomers, and was made for performing with the Lexington Vintage Dance Society (LVDS). Dorothy helped Jan select the fabric, and Jan made this dress at her parent's house on her mother's sewing machine in August of 2004. It was the first dress Bob saw Jan perform in shortly after they began dating, and he considers it to be her most beautiful dress. Bob’s wedding outfit is a reproduction of a Civil War Union Infantry Captain’s uniform, which Jan tailored from vintage patterns. Though Bob's original inspiration for his outfit was to be appropriately dressed to accompany Jan to her 1860’s performances with the LVDS, Bob and Jan soon realized there were many other reasons for his choosing a Civil War Era Junior Officer's uniform for his wedding attire. Bob is deeply interested in genealogy and has identified many thousands of his ancestors and cousins. Bob’s great great great grandfather Abram Williams (Bob’s father’s mother’s father’s mother’s father) was a private in the 153rd NY Volunteer Infantry during the Civil War, and Bob’s grandfather Dr. Robert Fairchild was a Captain in WWII. Many of Bob's ancestors worked in the glove industries in England, France, and upstate New York, so his leather officer’s gloves are particularly meaningful. We plan to wear these outfits for many years to come. Many friends helped to make the evening enjoyable for all. The photographer, Chris Hayes, and ushers, Jesse Aidam, and Kwadwo Juantuah, were all Berea College students who had traveled with Jan to South America. Many other College students and friends moved chairs and tables. Rather than rent, we decided to buy real flatware and plates for the potluck which Shirley and Howard Carlberg located, hauled, cleaned, and stored. Demi Miller and his girlfriend Judy Ostrowski (both from Minnesota) helped to hem many tablecloths. Carol Lamm and Shirley Carlberg lead the blessing song and managed the potluck supper and drinks. Pat Barrett made twelve cheesecakes, and Eric Crowden helped with cheesecake presentation and serving. Merrell Fuson led the grand march which began the dance celebration. Charley Harvey from Asheville, NC emceed the dance portion of the evening. Joe Neisendorfer danced with Jan during the first waltz while Bob danced with his mom, Pat. Judy Goldsmith, Charley Harvey, Barbara Ramlow, Demi Miller, and Ted Hodapp (from DC) called contra dances, and Old Paris Elkhorn provided the evening’s music which included both contras and couples dances. Two local Morris dance teams: Squash Beatle Morris and Nonesuch Players danced to entertain.
We feel very lucky to have each another as well as wonderful friends and family. On Thanksgiving, we gave thanks for our family and our dear friends as we enjoyed a great feast in Lexington at the home of Keila and John Thomas. Bob and Jan are currently looking forward to honeymooning in February and March in the land of tango dancing and glaciers while Jan is on a sabbatical from Berea College. We plan to fly to Buenos Aires, take a ferry to spend a week Uruguay at an international tango festival run by dance teachers that Jan knows and respects, and then to travel to southern Patagonia to see some of the glaciers before they have melted away. With love from,
Jan & Bob