Dear Folks,

Tomorrow I leave for a month in Vienna.  I’ll be working there at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), which many of you know about because Dennis and I work there often.  It’s an East-West institute, co-founded by the Americans and the Russians, and despite the Reagan administration’s best efforts to kill it off, it still is limping along.  I love to go there because it’s a place to work with my friends from Hungary, Poland, Russia, and other East-bloc countries.

I’ll be working on two projects during the month I’ll be there.  One is a book on world food trade that my dear Hungarian friend Ferenc Rabar is working on.  I was at IIASA at the very beginning of the project that has resulted in the book, and now Ferenc wants me to help conclude it.  The other project is the enormous textbook on resource management that I am doing with the Balaton Group and that has been stalled for more than a year.  I can’t explain why it’s stalled.  I have plenty of other things to write, of course, but the problem is more than busyness.  I think maybe the problem is that it’s too ambitious a project to keep going in isolation.  I need the continuous input and ideas of the whole group.  Some of the group already work at IIASA, and I’ll see others during the time I’m there.  So I hope I will come back energized and full of ideas to finish that project.

You will hear all about it next time.

Dennis is also leaving tomorrow, for a lightning trip to Moscow.  He’ll be back in 5 days, believe it or not (he has to be, because he’s teaching this term).  He is one of 700 or so delegates to the big Soviet peace conference that you probably read about in the papers.  Both Gorbachev and Sakharov will be there.  It sounds like an extravaganza in the best, or worst, Soviet tradition.  I’m hoping Dennis will write a guest column about it!

I just finished the last of the 4 columns I had to write ahead in order to leave, and I’m a bit punchy and very eager to look at something beside this word processor.  But writing to you is fun — my reward for having finished the columns.

Outside the snow is about 3 feet deep.  This is the best winter we can remember.  There were 3 big storms in January, and the skiing is outrageous.  John and Kat packed down a trail with snowshoes out to the back swimming hole and back, which we ski on now (it’s impossible to get around out there without snowshoes or skis).  The snow is piled so high under the windows that the dogs can climb the piles and see in for the first time in their lives, which they find terrifically exciting.  They watch us moving inside and bark at us to come out and play.

It was about 10 below last night, with a full moon.  It hasn’t been disastrously cold (which means, around here, 30-40 below).  The woodpile is holding out and so is the hay in the barn and the veggies in the freezer, so we’re snug and happy.  We’re glad to see the sun coming back.  We already notice that the days are longer and the sun is warmer.

Suzanne is back from India, tanned and relaxed and full of new enthusiasm for her job.  Kate is off on a two-week winter mountaineering course in the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming.  John is spending his days feverishly building cabinets in the basement for a kitchen he’s remodeling.  Brenna is skiing every chance she gets.  She’s been spending quite a few weekdays with us lately.  Right now she’s downstairs working on her spelling and watching TV.

Many of you were surprised when I mentioned last fall that a TV set has entered Foundation Farm for the first time in 14 years, and you’ve asked what has become of it.  Well, it’s sitting right there in the living room.  It seems that a household that has formed all its habits without a TV ends up not having much time for TV.

I watch about one program a week, always something neat on PBS, which is the only station I can stomach (the only other station we get is NBC).  Dennis hardly ever glances at the screen.  John watches Celtics games and an occasional movie.  Kate and Suzanne aren’t around enough to watch it.  Brenna, when she’s here, can watch for hours and hours, and much prefers NBC to PBS.  She knows we don’t like her to watch, so only turns it on when her homework’s done or when we’re not around (she always turns it on when we’re not around, but not in a sneaky way, more as an expression of loneliness).  She’d actually rather be with us, doing whatever we’re doing, so when the TV is on, it’s almost an accusation of our neglect of her.

There are times when I’m tempted to throw the thing out the door, especially when someone else is watching and I’m not.  The sound of it is a real imposition in the normally-peaceful space of the house.  The yammering pace, the laughtracks, the highly-excited tone.  It makes a kind of uneasy, charged-up feeling that I don’t like.  None of us watch the news, because of that bullet-like pace.  We’re too used to “All Things Considered” on the radio.

But then I have to admit that the TV has brought me some wonderful moments.  The series on “The Africans”.  The live-from-the-Met “Fledermaus” on New Year’s Eve.  The documentary on Mother Theresa.  We all like to watch figure-skating championships with Brenna.  We all watched the State of the Union message, though Dennis stomped out after about 3 minutes.  It was much more informative to see it than to hear it, as I have heard all the others.  I guess on the whole I’m glad we have the TV.  And I wouldn’t mourn if it disappeared tomorrow.

I have heard from several upset subscribers that the last page of last month’s letter didn’t get duplicated, and they never found out what happened about the sponges.  I think the problem was limited to people in the middle of the alphabet (sorry, all you M’s, N’s, O’s, P’s, Q’s).  For them I enclose the omitted page here — if I have missed anyone, please let me know.

I’m afraid that mistake is a result of the increasing size of this operation.  I view the monthly mailing of the News Service as a lovely opportunity to think about and get back in touch with a wonderful list of friends, and I try to do it with the highest Mindfulness.  But duplicating, stuffing, licking, and labeling 60 copies of anything is a severe challenge to Mindfulness, especially when I let myself get too busy, which I clearly did last month.  I will not only try to do better, I will rethink the (very primitive) mechanics of this whole operation to see if I can make it more efficient.  It’s time to do that anyway.

As a start, I’ve redated all the mailing labels.  Yours should now have a date on it that will tell you when your current subscription ends.  I’ll also write you a note to remind you.  Renewals are still $20 ($30 for European air mail) and are likely to remain so unless postage rates go up.

Hang in there, folks, this operation may start getting professional!

I’m sure there’s more news, but what I really have to do now is start packing.

Love, Dana