Adam Blatner

Dear Friends & Family,

We’re trying out this internet technology to post our news.

Happy Winter Solstice! Did you know that beginning on December 22 the days begin to get longer again and we actually head into springtime? It takes a bit of time for Mother Earth to catch up to that warming process, though, so winter is a time to be patient. Right now the leaves are turning lovely colors and beginning to fall. Some trees are bare and Texas is getting some desperately-needed rain!. This summer, Allee’s mom, Edna, enjoyed a second celebration of her 95th birthday when the whole family came. Here’s a photo of that event:

Our kids are all happy in their professional activities and very involved with their kids’ school and sports. All of the grandkids play Soccer. The girls also have gymnastics, Irish dance, theatre, and art. The boys also have softball, aikido, chess, and Legos. Of course the grandkids are at a time in their lives when they are exploring a lot of various interests. We get to hear about many new endeavors.

We, too have been very busy, happy, and pretty healthy. Allee had two minor surgeries at the same time in February to relieve pain in one of her knees (from many years of vigorous sports) and to correct an injury to her wrist so that she could use her hands again. This is an incredible blessing when surgery can remove pain and restore functioning to our old bodies! Allee’s been very active in the Sun City Creative Clay & China Club where she loves to paint ceramics, teach an orientation class, and monitor. We are members of the Sun City Ballroom Dance Club and go Round Dancing in association with square dances (couples progress around the dance floor in a circle doing ballroom dance steps, and there’s a caller, as in square dance.) Allee receives deep satisfaction from her spiritual studies, practices, and various workshops, as well as involvement in a women’s group. She returned to co-lead a workshop in November (see Adam’s presentations below). They hope to finish a revision of their book, The Art of Play, in 2012.

We both keep Allee’s mother, Edna, as a high priority in our lives. We really enjoy sharing holidays, special events, important University of Texas football games, regular visits, and helping her with a variety of things, including trips to the doctor. Mom has done pretty well this year after an unpleasant period early in the year as medications were re-evaluated and changed. She’s noticing a good deal more fatigue, but her pacemaker still helps. She has a wonderful spirit and attitude about aging, and we are fortunate for all the lessons we learn from her.

Adam sings in our Sun City Chorus and they rehearse once a week and give two major concerts a year. He just sang in the Holiday concert. He also square dances in Sun City and folk dances in Austin. He also remains active in teaching for Senior University Georgetown (still going strong after fourteen years!), and was celebrated as one of the founders at the beginning of this year. In February he gave a lecture series on Scriptology, the Lore of Alphabets and Writing Systems ;. In June a single lecture on Illusions; and this last fall a series of six lectures on Visionaries: What We May Yet Become. He has discovered that Power Point  can be another format for his artistic talent to illustrate talks. He loves to read and write about a wide range of subjects. He began a webpage series of ersatz philosophy (ersatz: an imitation or substitute, possibly considered inferior) called Confabulations. It is quite funny if you like that sort of thing.

You can read briefer postings on Adam’s blog.

Adam presented teaching sessions at several conferences. 
    (1). March: A History of Comic Books in America at STAPLE convention of comic and graphic novel art in Austin.
    (2) April:   Action methods to facilitate your spiritual journey at the national conference of the American Society for Group Psychotherapy & Psychodrama in Florida.
    (3). October: “Demystifying Mysticism,” (The need for and how to include spirituality in hospital pediatric medicine at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston.
    (4) November: “Using action methods for spiritual work,” co-led with Allee, at the annua. conference of the National Association for Drama Therapy in San Francisco. 

We truly wish you a warm and loving holiday season and a bright and healthy new year. We’d love to hear from you.