The Makin Year (With Abject Apologies)
The Makin Year (With Abject Apologies) at our house. We and our friends Zhenya and Lena Not without reluctance I sit down, finally, in mid- Poplavsky hosted the New Year’s party which December, to compose this document (I don’t even Alina and Lena insisted had to be appropriately know what to call it), since I am all too well aware formal. Hence all the men were “encouraged” to that what I should really do – and what I always wear dinner jackets — a rarity in the US, and re- intend to do – is write “proper letters” to everyone. sisted by most of us, but, I have to admit, a good However, the truth is that I never manage to write way of making the girls feel that all their efforts to even half the letters I intend, and those comprising dress up were not entirely undermined by husbands the fifty-percent of the intended total are always and the like in their usual inappropriate garb. All written at the last moment, with much of the con- the same, when I sent copies of the photographs to tents of each new letter culled from the “.doc file” of the last. So, with apologies (but also fully aware that I shall receive a number of similar documents from friends this year), I sit down to write a little general epistle on our year… As I write, the second stage of the first major snow storm of our winter is blanketing not only our own Washtenaw County, but the entire Mid-West.
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