Merry Christmas! A holiday card from Norway, and another from outer space …

Håkan

It’s Christmas, and perhaps our favorite electronic card of the season was from a Swedish friend and poet, currently living in Oslo, Norway. We’ve written about Håkan Sandell before here and here. In the note he sent with it, he addressed Humble Moi this year in terms of Propertius‘s Cynthia, but we reminded him that she was a hell-raiser and a bad ‘un, not like our self-effacing, book-loving self. Moreover, as I recall, she died young. Too late for that, I thought, as I shoveled clothes and papers into suitcases for a trip.

Guy

“Arizona sounds more exotic than Swedish X-mas cards to me,” he wrote, when I asked permission to reprint his card. The occasion for the trek to Tucson? The wedding of a bro. And that brings up the tied frontrunner for the best card of the year.

Another of my tribe of brothers is an astronomer, long associated with the University of Arizona. You might gather that from his Christmas card at bottom, which features his 2017 photo. He also fits in with our literary preoccupations, as he is currently collaborating on two books with his friend and colleague, the renowned astronomer Guy Consolmagno who is featured in the current Newsweek article “God and E.T.: Vatican Astronomer Would Baptize Aliens If They Ask.”

Hard to beat a headline like that. Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and raising a glass of bubbly to distant friends! We’ll catch up with you from a clime that is less chilly than northern California, and far less chilly than outer space.

Tags: Guy Consolmagno, Håkan Sandell

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 24th, 2017 at 10:31 pm by Cynthia Haven and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.