M and D blog

It’s time for the yearly retrospective post again. This time, because previous such posts on this blog often seemed to bog down when trying to display the many photos in them, we made a separate album on Flickr with a selection of photos with captions, as they would normally appear embedded in this post.

You can view the album at https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjB8BcV. It is set to appear in a separate tab of your browser, which we hope will make it easier to go back and forth between this text and the photos. In any case, the text in this post and the captions of the photos should make following the album easy. One video of the many we made with the GoPro during our USVI St. Thomas trip is worth sharing separately. It is a video made by M off St. John, during our snorkeling cruise, showing a Manta Ray: https://gopro.com/v/QoGveNwQDZ5EP

On with the story!

January found us visiting Longwood Gardens. We had spent New Year’s Eve with our friends Ellen and Jim at their house, joined by Reiko, Troy, and their kids Jordan and Kitt. In anticipation of this, we had booked an AirBnB in West Chester, so it was easy to pop in to Longwood Gardens to spend New Year’s Day. We had dinner at their 1906 restaurant and went around their Christmas light display.

Soon after, we went to Mohonk Mountain House to celebrate our anniversary. There was massive fog around the mountain which led to some very moody pictures but prevented us from getting interesting views from the path around the mountain during a guided hike. We retreated indoors and enjoyed a bit of archery (see photos).

Near the end of February we attended an impressive Lyric Fest concert, Cotton, at the Philadelphia Episcopal Cathedral. It was a multimedia event with commissioned songs and photos of cotton by Philadelphia artist John Dowell. Details here: https://lyricfest.org/commissions/cotton/

In March we again did not have the same Spring break, as we have not had in many years, but we at least had an overlapping weekend. We went to Mohonk Mountain House once again, where we found very pretty snowy scenes (see photos). We also took part in a cocktail competition by Mohonk employees, which was great fun. Upon our return home, we had opportunities to hang out with D’s brother Kostas, who was visiting the US to collaborate with a coauthor of his, while on sabbatical. We showed him a number of our favorite spots, such as New Hope and the Washington Crossing State Park. In the photos, you can see a pic of Kostas and M during a wine tasting at Terhune Orchards in New Jersey.

An event D enjoyed a lot in April was the induction ceremony for the International Honor Society Omicron Delta Epsilon, of whose Temple University chapter D is the academic advisor. We included a photo of D speaking at the ceremony, taken by our friend and D’s colleague Charlie. Also memorable in April was yet another Lyric Fest concert, the first one to be presented in Longwood Gardens, in their music series, on Earth Day. The concert was named The Metamorphosis of Plants, and it was another multimedia affair, in which photos of flowers were projected while the singers performed. Thanks to our dear friend Suzanne, cofounder of Lyric Fest, photos by both of us were included in the event, alongside photos by a few other photographers. You can see us in the photo album in front of a screen that shows some of the flower photos. It was kind of mind-blowing to see your Very Own Photos on a large screen.

May found us being social butterflies and enjoying yet more musical events, including a performance by Itzhak Perlman in the Kimmel Center with friends Nicki and Charlie, and, later, a great Piffaro concert, “Entre Dos Alamos”.

There is not very much to say about our Spring semesters at work. D had a chance to teach Game Theory (first time was in Spring 2022) and had a strong contingent of students at the top of the class, but the rest showed the terrible effects of COVID on students: a lot of them seem to have forgotten how to study and have lost the motivation to do so. D also had a section of Microeconomic Principles, where the terrible effects of COVID were even more pronounced. M’s semester was only ok, for many of the same COVID-related reasons along with the ups and downs of being Departmental Chair.

June started spectacularly with a week-long trip to St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands. In preparation, we had bought a GoPro camera (these cameras are waterproof and perfect for underwater photos and videos). There was good snorkeling there, and we also took a sunset cruise and ate at some really good restaurants, as well as enjoying the pool and bar of our resort. (We stayed at the Margaritaville — it was a very affordable option and we have to confess we had fun with the frozen concoction maker in our room.) The album linked above has a photo from our snorkeling and the link below the album link will take you to a video of a Manta Ray M made on a snorkeling trip we took. In the album you can also see an action shot of M from the snorkeling trip.

We packed another trip in June, this one to Connecticut, to check out the Madison Beach hotel, visit our friends Sierra and Jacob and Sierra’s family, and stay once more at the Thimble Islands Bed and Breakfast. The beach of the Madison Beach hotel is very nice and it has drinks and snacks service. However, the weather was unseasonably cool and very windy, so we didn’t really have a beach time there. We did get to see a cool double rainbow while there, though, and visited some great restaurants and the Book Barn in Niantic, which we were introduced to on our first visit to the area.

July started with a dinner at Vernick for M’s birthday and on the 2nd we attended Melanie and Gavin’s wedding at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. Melanie is the daughter of our dear friends Mike and Eva. It was a wonderfully spirited celebration, one of the most exciting and uplifting weddings we have attended. In the photo album you can see our Photo Booth contribution to their guest book.

Before our Fall semesters started, we paid a visit to Longwood Gardens again (photo in album) and we had one last hurrah of a vacation, this time in Cape May, NJ. We had a number of beach visits, nice dinners, and a spirits tasting (photo in the album).

September started with a visit to Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, NJ. We had been there only once, many years ago, and we really liked wandering around and admiring the sculptures. We also had a lovely lunch at their unfortunately named restaurant “Rats” (photo) unless you are a fan of the Wind in the Willows and are familiar with the character Rat.

We planned two trips to get photos of Fall foliage in October. The first was in mid-October, once more to Mohonk Mountain House (our third visit there in the year). In the album, you can see two photos, one of Mohonk lake and the resort at the far left, taken from the most remote part of the hike around the lake, and then one photo of M at the top of the mountain, near an artificial pond. The second leaf-peeping trip was at the very end of the month, together with Mike and Eva, to Shawnee, PA where record highs in the upper 70s were reached on Saturday while we were hiking. You can see three photos from this trip in the album, at Dingman’s Falls, at the Silverback Distillery (we two are fans and went for a tasting and some purchasing, Mike and Eva gamely joined us and Mike was our driver, since he didn’t drink), and at Hidden Lake. The leaf report from those trips is that we were too early for peak conditions at Mohonk and a little too late in Shawnee but we were not deterred by this and got some fabulous photos in both locations.

November found us paying several visits to the Morris Arboretum, still in search of Fall foliage, and we have included a photo from one of these visits in the album, where you can see a strikingly red canopy. We had Thanksgiving at Suzanne and Kevin’s, continuing a tradition (that goes back to 1995 for D) where we chatted with Suzanne and Kevin’s daughters Mei and Lily, whom we see less frequently these days than we’d like, and their partners’ lovely families. We also had a lovely conversation with Charlotte, a recent voice student of Suzanne’s at Bryn Mawr and currently a graduate student at MIT in atomic physics. We had seen her before at Suzanne’s parties and we always appreciate chances to catch up with her.

December came with the end of the Fall semester (both of us had to wait until the 20th to be done with grading) and one extraordinary Lyric Fest concert of Benjamin Perry Wenzelberg’s winter cantata, commissioned by Lyric Fest, on poems by Jeanne Minahan. Benjy is a remarkable 24-year old composer and conductor, and we are very happy to have been able to sponsor one of the songs in the cantata, Winter’s Antidote, an ode to hot chocolate. You can find more information about this concert at https://lyricfest.org/concerts/any-of-those-decembers/ and a video excerpt just appeared a few hours before the writing of this sentence, at https://youtu.be/kyiOqR_y6nE?feature=shared. On Christmas, we were lucky enough to spend the evening having dinner with Suzanne, Kevin, and Charlotte (last photo in the album). For New Year’s Eve, tomorrow, we are looking forward to a repeat of the gathering at Ellen and Jim’s.

In terms of our teaching work, in the summer we were both hit by the Generative AI tsunami that threatens to negate the value of the college essay (by making it easy for students to outsource most of the writing to ChatGPT) and to make the life of everyone in the “knowledge professions” massively interesting, to say the least. M attended seminars on this in the summer, got D interested about it, and we both did our best to adapt our course assignments in the Fall semester to be impervious to AI cheating. For D, this worked OK in his economics of risk and uncertainty class, where he decided to make the “homework” be in-class exercises once a week, but it caused a big problem in his writing-intensive economic inequality class, where his modification of the paper requirements to make them AI-proof made the course too hard for most of the students. M became an expert of sorts on AI at her University and led faculty workshops and small group discussions. She also finished her term as Chair.

In the Spring semester of 2024, we both have sabbaticals. We are looking forward to doing our sabbatical projects and doing some traveling, including a short trip to Cincinnati to see the total solar eclipse in early April and a visit with Jelena and Rob in Belfast in May (hopefully!).

We wish everybody peace and health for 2024!

The year started with a clean bill of health for M after the usual tests. We spent our anniversary in Princeton, doing the things we love doing there (a meal at Mediterra, a visit to the Lindt chocolate shop and to the Labyrinth bookstore). D started teaching a brand new undergraduate course, on the economics of inequality. It’s the hot topic of the day, of course, and it is remarkable that D’s department had never offered a course on it. The course was well attended and well received. D is planning to apply to make it formally a part of the economics department’s course offerings. He also has started writing a book to serve as the text for such a course, based on the lecture notes he made while teaching.

In February, notable events included a visit to a hugely photogenic Longwood Gardens and D’s second appearance in the Meet Me at the Music event at the university. This time D sang Prince Gremin’s aria from Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin and the “La ci darem la mano” duet from Mozart’s Don Giovanni, joined by an undergraduate voice student and an undergraduate pianist. It was fun as usual.

In March, M had two of her photographs included in an exhibit about flowers in the Philadelphia Sketch Club.

In April, both M and D had photos of birds exhibited at the John James Audubon Center at Mill Grove, not too far from our house.

April also saw D’s first ever participation in a rally, the Philadelphia March for Science, on Earth Day, April 22. He marched with three Temple University undergraduate students. The crowd marching was substantial and only started to disperse when a downpour started.

April was also when M was approached by a publishing company that wanted to produce a new edition of her Personality textbook. This was welcome news, as her previous publisher had decided against producing a new edition. The new publisher found that there was keen interest by many professors who had adopted the textbook to continue using it, so they made M a nice offer. As of today, December 31, M is doing the last bit of proofreading, and the book will be available to be used in teaching in the spring as an e-book and from the fall and later as both a hard-bound book and an e-book.

May saw D perform his last official act as director of graduate studies in his department; he is vastly relieved to not have to continue in this burdensome role, so he can spend more time in his scholarly writing. May also saw Temple U’s graduation and a sendoff of a graduating advisee of D’s who is going on to pursue her PhD in economics. She has done some projects with D starting in 2014, and was instrumental in inspiring him to create and helping him teach the economics of inequality course. D is happy to see her spread her wings, having flown the coop, and is glad to be in touch with her as she moves to higher achievements.

M and D each had two photos included in the Philadelphia Sketch Club’s New Member exhibit in June, with the opening day of the exhibit the day before our departure for the adventure described next.

June saw us visiting Ireland and Northern Ireland for a momentous event in the life of our good friend Rob: his wedding. Five years ago, Rob met Jelena, who had just arrived to teach at his university. On June 23d, they were married in Belfast; Rob asked D to be his witness, an honor D was very happy to accept. Here is the happy couple seconds after being proclaimed husband and wife:

It was really nice to have a chance to explore Dublin, where our visit to the Emerald Isle started, then go to Belfast and see again Rob’s parents after 15 years, and meet his sister and aunt, as well as Jelena’s brother and her lively and lovely witness, and of course celebrate their wedding. We still have not dared watch ourselves in a short video the brother made of our blind tasting of whiskeys. We were pretty buzzed by the end of that event! Also notable was a visit to the Belfast Botanic Gardens, where we saw an amazing collection of roses. You can see one rose below, and more here.

Just a week after we were back from Belfast, M visited Greece for a week. She spent a quality week with my mother, brother, and my brother’s family, and got to see just how nice it is to swim in the Aegean Sea.

The rest of the summer felt like it went by very quickly. We did not rent a big house in Ocean City this year, preferring to spend the money on the big trip to Ireland, but we missed spending two weeks surrounded by our friends at the shore house. Mid-August found us visiting the Woodloch Lodge and Spa for a few days. On August 21, we headed to Princeton to catch the solar eclipse. While this location did not get 100% occlusion, it did get 79%, and the town turned the occasion into an outdoor party, complete with a telescope for everyone to use for a brief glimpse of the event and free safety glasses.

In September and October, we had our second photography exhibit at Elcy’s coffee shop in Glenside. We were happy with the success of the exhibit. All in all, a good year for our photography! To bring the year to a good conclusion in that area of our lives, M took an intense landscape photography class during a weekend in October, in Chanticleer Gardens, and came back with new tricks and great photos. It was a good conclusion to a year of photography classes to which M dedicated many a Tuesday evening, when she was not taking her other art class, that is! Tuesdays were art evenings for M for most of the year. Here is a photo M made in Chanticleer Gardens:

In early November, D’s brother paid a quick, almost-one-week-long, visit to a coauthor of his in Princeton. It was nice to have the chance to see him.

M had another routine battery of tests in mid-December to close the year, with excellent news.

To cap the year in style and comfort, and to add to our photography œuvre, we travelled to Captiva Island, Florida, for an almost week-long stay spanning Christmas. This is now the third year that we’ve spent Christmas in the subtropical weather of the Captiva / Sanibel islands. We had a lovely time, enjoyed the warmth while our own neighborhood was freezing, and made some photos. We paid two visits to the J.N. “Ding” Darling National Wildlife Refuge this year (up from one last year), and also rented a telephoto lens to help us photograph birds there. Here is a selection of our photos, starting with four of D’s and ending with three of M’s. You can see more of our photos on Facebook, of course, and M has not finished editing her complete set, so look out for more later.

January

We celebrated our anniversary in Philadelphia, with a tasty dinner at the chef’s table in a.kitchen.
Later in the month, we visited Baltimore, MD, with nephew Dominick and his wife Margherita and their daughter Caterina. I was lucky enough to capture a nice image of the Inner Harbor, which became part of our first joint photo exhibit (about which you can read a bit later in this post):

Near the end of the month, we had a substantial snowstorm that forced Lyric Fest’s Brahms concert to be rescheduled. As it happened, we then attended that great concert on D’s birthday, and at the reception he (and Laura Ward, the Lyric Fest cofounder and brilliant accompanist who shares her birthday with D) were serenaded by some superb singers and offered delicious cakes. No photos to share from the reception, but here is one to indicate the snow level (that is our car there in the driveway under a mound of snow):

Snow does make for some nice glowing sunrises though:

February

The big event on February came on the 25th, when D sang in an event sponsored by the Temple University Honors program and organized by Temple University Honors music students. The event is called Meet me at the Music, and it brings together Temple University faculty members who have some performing skills and Temple Honors music students for brief performances on the stage of Rock Hall. D was hesitant to accept the invitation to participate, as he had not sang in public since 2010, but he did accept, had a voice lesson with Suzanne to dust off some technique, warmed up his voice every morning for a few weeks, and did sing well two pieces, a song by Schubert from the Winterreise song cycle, and a really fun aria from the Abduction from the Seraglio by Mozart, “O wie will ich triumphieren!”. D is really proud to have (1) made the audience laugh at the end of the Mozart aria, and (2) to be told by the soon-to-retire former Honors Program head, Dieter, that he has such a deep voice that Dieter would hire D as his henchman, should the need for a henchman arise.

March – April

Starting in January, a very time-consuming aspect of D’s role as the graduate director of the economics department of his university really heated up in February and March and caused him stress: admissions. It is perhaps surprising for those not in the know how hard it is to attract a good cohort of graduate students when one has only a very few teaching assistant positions to offer. After causing D a lot of stress (along with some other, very unpleasant, aspects of the graduate directorship), most of the admissions job was finally done by mid-April.

May

May saw the end of the Spring semester for both M and D. One more academic year became a memory. M had her graduating students over for a backyard party, which was a very nice occasion, as they were nice, sociable, and interesting people, even from the point of view of D, as an outsider.

D continued to sporadically make photos of the sunset from the back windows, keeping up his photography skills. Here is a decent one:

May was also when we discovered a new place to visit nature and make photos, Bowman’s Hill Wildflower Preserve. A couple of sample images D made:

And here is a yellow lady slipper orchid, captured by M:

Near the end of May, we had a wonderful lunch in Center City, and on the way back to the train station the sky presented an irresistible spectacle that D captured with his iPhone, not having the big camera with him. This photo was well liked online and was even selected out of thousands of entries to be part of an iPhone photo exhibit and competition a few months later.

For Memorial Day we spent a few days in Ocean City, NJ. Here is a street musician on the boardwalk, by M:

June

June saw the beginning of a still secret online writing project by D, which will take years to complete. The mystery will be lifted in good time. But we can reveal already that the project will be an effort to convey some of the hard-won knowledge of economics D has acquired over the decades in a form easily digestible by everyone.

June also saw a momentous even in our new and ardent hobby of photography: our first joint photography exhibit! This was the outcome of chance conversations D had with the good people who run and work in Elcy’s Cafe in Glenside, where D often takes a few minutes to enjoy a coffee before taking a train to the office on weekdays. To cut the story short, we knew that Elcy’s often runs art shows, and indeed we purchased a beautiful collage of Philadelphia several months ago from one such show. So D asked and found out who is in charge of these shows, back in March, we met with her, and together we all decided on 25 photos by M and D to be shown from June 24 to early August. It was a bit hectic getting the photos printed and preparing our artists’ statements, SmugMug accounts, and business cards (!) and M did a tremendous amount of work framing photos. We were ready on time (with not a day to spare).

Speaking of our SmugMug accounts, here they are: Marianne’s and Dimitrios’s.

This album, captured in haste under difficult lighting conditions, shows the show right after it was set up, while this album shows photos from the opening party on June 26, taken by friends. The party was a blast, and several of our photos were sold. During the rest of the time the show was open, several of the notecards with M’s photos that were part of the show sold as well.

We also enjoyed the backyard gazebo with the good weather of June. Here is a sneaky capture by M of D reading there in the evening:

July

July started with us and friends and family spending two weeks in Ocean City, NJ. We had a great time, felt refreshed, and also had the chance to make some good photos (sense a theme?). The sunset of July 5 proved especially beautiful:

After our return home, D moved to a great big office that will be his until he steps down as graduate director of his department at the end of June 2017 (he cannot wait, despite the niceness of this office, as the job is just too tedious and stressful, as he never tires telling people, and he has a very capable colleague ready to take the reins).

For M, it was a very exciting time, with her having two photos accepted for an exhibit at the venerable Philadelphia Sketch Club. Here are her two photos and M at the awards party, where she inexplicably (says D emphatically) did not receive any award.

August

Rarely has a month started as well as this one. On August 2, M went for one of her periodic checkups with Dr. Hanjani, who, for the first time ever, said that it “may be that you are cured”. He has been studiously avoiding even hinting at such a possibility since M was diagnosed in 2000, and he was careful to insert that “may”, but we certainly took heart from this statement and went off to celebrate a bit (at Krater, in New Hope):

The month continued to offer goodness, with a road trip to Quebec City in Canada, to visit Dominick, Margherita, and Caterina in their apartment there. On the way to Canada, we stopped for two days in Lake George, where we had a nice time and photo opportunities, before our few days of running around Quebec City and the Ile d’Orleans, with some seriously delicious eats and beautiful views. M caught a great image of the bounty of the earth:

September

Another academic year started. We had a fun weekend in Ocean City with Dominique, Steve, and their girls. This was the weekend of the annual air show that is held there, and D was lucky enough to catch a clear photo of two Navy jets:

At the end of the month we visited Maryland for a baby shower for Marianne’s niece Christina and a small Miserandino family reunion.

October

Work continued to keep us busy, but we had time to enjoy some great concerts by Lyric Fest and Piffaro. Late in the month we escaped to the Eastern shore of Maryland for a weekend of exploration, where we were able to see some beautiful nature, such as this beautiful butterfly that M captured:

November

November was the month M’s photography class at the University of the Arts ended. M’s final project was a documentary photo essay about Elcy’s coffee shop, the very one where we had our joint photo exhibit in the summer. Here is one M’s photos for her final project:

We joined Suzanne and her family and our mutual friends for Thanksgiving, having a fantastic time as always catching up with dear people and meeting new friends. The Saturday after we paid a visit to Dominique and Steve’s in Jersey City, where we had a “leftovers dinner” with them, M’s brother Anthony and his wife Barbara and daughter April, as well as nephew Dominick and Margherita and Caterina, whom we had visited in Quebec City in August.

December

The last month of 2016 was a bit hectic until just about Christmas, as both of our academic schedules had us grading exams and papers right up to the 22nd. But we were able to make our escape to Florida’s Sanibel Island from the 23d to the 28th, where we enjoyed catching up with some sunny warmth, the beach, and dolphins and beautiful birds.

We are looking forward to 2017 hoping it will bring us and everyone continuing good health and our country and the world less acrimony and more freedom and progress, especially in human rights and the environment.