December 31, 2006

(Note the date on this 2005 Holiday Letter.)

 

Belated Holiday Greetings to All!

 

 

          Here I am, here I am!  I got stuck in traffic.  I’m not too late, am I?

 

          Well, folks, I may have set a new record for incredibly late holiday letters.  This was supposed to be posted around January 1st of 2006.  It’s way over at the other end of the year now.

 

          Why did I take so long to write this letter?  Well, I was rather busy, but there were other factors involved.  For one thing, several things were in a “state of flux,” as it were.  This was the case with the 2003 and 2004 letters, and in both cases certain things came to pass within scant days of my posting the letter on my website for all to see – things that kind of rendered some of the information obsolete very quickly.  I expect that things like that will probably happen in regards to this letter, too.  After all, there’s always something going on over here.  But there’s a bit more: at the end of December 2005, there wasn’t much GOOD news to report!  At this moment in time, there’s a better balance of good tidings of great joy, so this shouldn’t turn into the Most Depressing Holiday Letter Ever.

 

          Okay, first things first.  The baby Stefan & Heather were expecting to arrive in January 2005 decided to make her grand entrance a bit early: December 29th, 2004.  She crashed her Uncle Jordan’s birthday!  Jordan doesn’t mind at all, though; he thinks that’s really cool!  I don’t think anyone could ask for a better birthday gift than the arrival of a shiny new “geebee.”  (That’s Dollak-ese for “baby.”)  The wee offspring’s name is Tanith Queen Dollak – T.Q. for short (which she still is, although she looks like she might grow to be rather tall).

 

          In April 2005 I flew out to visit Stefan & Heather & T.Q. in Arizona.  I did a book-signing at a Borders superstore in Phoenix, got to admire the little cutie, and generally had a good time, although the heat and the time-zone difference left me feeling very tired & grouchy for a couple of weeks afterward.

 

 

Interesting view of the Arizona landscape, as seen from a parking garage.

 

 

Mother & child.  T.Q. doesn’t seem too keen on the hat.

 

Nick conquers Squaw Peak.  (Well, half of it, anyway.)

 

Uncle Nick bounces his little niece!

 

          On April 23rd of that year, my grandmother (on Mom’s side) passed away at the age of 93 years.  She was always very supportive of me, and I’m glad that I got to know her.  On September 1st, the family held a memorial service at the house in Milwaukee, Wisconsin where she had lived most of her life.  There, her ashes were mingled with those of her husband beneath a maple tree they had planted together upon moving there in 1949.  I was unable to attend, but my parents and all of Grandma’s children and my cousins were there, and I hear that it was a lovely service.  My brother Stefan made a nice picture of two leaves nestled at the foot of the maple tree for the cover to the program, Mom and Cousin Beth provided music (as did some old recordings of Grandma and Grandpa singing made “back in the day”), and I wrote a short essay illustrated with a Christmas card design I had created for Grandma several years ago.  I’m glad that she got to see pictures of her first great-grandchild (T.Q.) before she left us.

 

Grandma Myra di Dio in 1994 or 1995.

 

          Speaking of great-grandchildren, in November I spent Thanksgiving at the home of my sister Joelle and her husband Don, where an announcement was made: another baby was on the way!  Boy or girl?  It was to be a surprise!  Actually, I’m sure Joelle’s obstetrician knew; but Joelle & Don wanted to find out the old-fashioned way.  Of course we were all excited about the new geebee.  Family announcements like these bring to mind a heartwarming exchange from an episode of The Simpsons, in which Marge, already a mother of three, suspects she might be pregnant again…

 

Lisa (to Baby Maggie):  Did you hear that, Maggie?  Another baby in the house.

Bart:  Oh, cool!  We can race ’em!

 

          … and, at 10:05 PM on Monday, June 19th, little Meghan Joelle Gray popped into the world!

 

Fresh little geebee Meghan Joelle!

 

… and again at 3 months old, looking very wise.  “Mmm…  You seek Yoda?  Powerful Jedi master is he…”

 

          Over the summer and into the autumn, I worked on my music in my spare time.  Just in time for the holidays, I finished my second CD, Return of the Electronic Philharmonic.  It includes the first two pieces I wrote (three little waltzes for piano and an ambitious symphony) and a piece I started writing in 1990 and finished at the end of August 2005: Lily’s piano concerto.  Learning from my previous CD-recording experience, I was able to make this recording much better than my first attempt.  I have a back-burner idea for a new, large-scale piece (another symphony), but before I really get into it I have some other music-related things to take care of.

During the summer of 2006 I composed a short “soundtrack” for a DVD of Preston McClear’s children’s book The Boy Under the Bed (which yours truly illustrated).  Plans are afoot to make DVDs of the other two children’s books he wrote (The Sailor and the Sea Witch and Frannie & Pickles), but it takes a long time to create a DVD and I’ve been swamped with other work.  Ultimately, the music for these three DVDs should form a sort of musical suite.  Anyway, the DVD is available now at our kiosk or from the Malibu Books for Children website.  One of its programs is a timed slideshow with only the soundtrack for audio, for those who want to hear the music without the narration.

In November and December of 2006 I decided it was really time to re-record my first CD, fixing some of the technical problems.  I made a number of adjustments to the string quartet, placing some of the instruments into their correct register.  I had planned to edit some bits out, but they actually sounded much better after I’d fixed the register problem, so I left them in.  For All In a Garden Green, I trimmed the Basse Danse down a bit and sped up the tempo; it really sort of dragged in the original recording.  I also fixed some problems with the strings in The Light In a Stranger’s Eyes.  Then I re-recorded everything.  I ran into a few weird new technical problems in burning them to CD, but I overcame them and took notes on them for future reference, and now have a CD I actually enjoy listening to more than once!

 

          Lily and I were working on getting married in autumn… then in December of 2005.  Unfortunately, between her running out of vitamins (We’ve been using vitamin therapy to improve her health), her Mom’s ongoing poor health and a lot of other little problems, she was too stressed-out to even think about the wedding, and the big event ended up not happening.  We had a serious discussion after I returned to south Jersey after spending the holidays with my parents (and all of my siblings, under one roof for the first time in ages!), and I told her that, if she wants to marry me, she’d have to work at it.  Her Mom underwent an operation to install a small defibrillator, and it’s improved her health greatly.  She’s having trouble with her left arm now, but she’s able to walk again.  Anyway, now that Lily wasn’t worrying about her Mom’s condition, she could concentrate on tying the knot.  (To be continued…)

 

          Concurrent with the wedding failing to materialize was, as I mentioned, the Dollaks all getting together in Fair Haven, New Jersey from as far afield as North Carolina and Arizona.  It was very crowded, but it was great to see everyone again.  Little T.Q. enjoyed her very first Christmas and her very first birthday there, right along with her Uncle Jordan.  We honestly thought she’d take her first steps there, but she was content to “cruise” (walk while holding on to furniture for support) and crawl for a few months longer.

 

Left to right: Jordan, Mom (pointing to her “Grammy award”), April and Haidee (with T.Q. on her lap).  Haidee and April taught their niece how to blow raspberries, so now she can give a hearty Bronx cheer.

 

 

Mom and Stefan holding Tanith the Queen.  I love her facial expressions!

 

 

Baby meets ’droid.

 

Fortunately, her mother’s parents, who take care of her while Heather and Stefan are at work, shoot lots of video footage of their little granddaughter and send home-made DVDs to my parents.  Over the past few months, we’ve seen her go from sitting to crawling to cruising to walking.  In the videos from May 2006, it sounds a little like she’s saying a few words.  She also walks a lot, plays imaginatively and defies her Grandma by “eating” a pebble after she was told not to!  In the October/November videos, she’s singing her ABCs and “Frêre Jacques” (in English), and counts to 10 – but skips the number 4.

 

          Another thing that failed to happen was the kiosk Preston McClear and I were planning to open at Newark International Airport.  We were planning to sell our children’s books there.  We were hoping to have at least signed a lease agreement before the end of the year, but delays kept happening, and finally the concessions management turned us down.  Not willing to quit just yet, we applied at several other locations.  In March we opened a kiosk in Freehold Raceway Mall.  Although our little stand looked great, the sales were abysmal.  We barely made enough in the month to cover… well… the rent for one month!

 

 

Our little kiosk in Freehold.

 

          However, good news was not too far away!  On May 11th, we opened a new kiosk, in Terminal B of Philadelphia International Airport.  Sales aren’t spectacular, but they are MUCH better than they were at Freehold.  We make enough in one week to cover a month’s rent, so it looks like this is working.  Lily joined us as an employee and helps us by running the kiosk at times.

 

Our little kiosk in Philadelphia.

 

          There may be other good news on that front.  The bookstores in Newark Airport, where our sales had always been fantastic, have re-opened after some heavy renovations.  Preston spends the first Friday of each month there, doing book-signings.  Word on the street there is that Continental Airlines is greatly displeased with the concessions management (the one that turned us down).  It is expected that the concessions management will be completely replaced soon.  We plan to re-apply for a kiosk.  Of course, it will be absolutely necessary for us to hire staff if our wish is granted.  But that shouldn’t be a problem!

 

          In mid-May, my parents moved into a smaller house a few towns away from where they were.  Nice little home!  Its backyard is much smaller than the old one was, but has some very unusual flora: some strange grass-like plant that reminds me of the truffula trees from Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax, and a many-trunked tree that one can actually step into.

 

          And on June 3rd, Jordan and his girlfriend Cathy announced their engagement at a great party at Cathy’s parents’ house.  Lily and I were able to attend, and we had a lovely time.  The happy couple has moved to Virginia, where Cathy is completing her law studies.  Their wedding date is set for next May.

 

          Meanwhile, all this time, I’ve been continuing to substitute-teach.  I re-applied for full-time teaching jobs several times, but once Preston and I began working on the kiosk situation, I concentrated on that.  Manning a kiosk that needs to be open all week for 15 hours a day is a LOT of work, and would very likely prevent me from holding down a full-time teaching job.  However, if it works well, it will allow Malibu Books to publish other titles and may open other doors better suited to my artistic talents.

 

          I’ve also been working on Preston’s manga Honshirabe.  In March I finished the “sloppy copy” and discovered that the finished product will be, minus chapter breaks, 288 pages.  No newsstand funny-book this!  This, my friends, is a graphic novel.  Upon completion of the rough draft I began drawing and inking the pages on Blue Line Pro board – a heavy paper specially printed for comic book creation.  It’s 11x17” and has the “live area” outlined in pale blue ink, as well as marks to assist the artist in evenly dividing the area into panels.  (The blue ink is invisible to black-and-white copying machines.)  Progress has been slow; but I expect it may pick up during the summer once Preston, Lily and I are able to divide the kiosk operation into convenient shifts.  This will make life a bit easier for all three of us, and allow me time for my artwork.

          In addition to the “sloppy copy,” I created a model of one of the set pieces to Honshirabe: a gigantic grocery store.  I also made a scale model of a suit of police armor as a visual reference.  These aids are to assist me in maintaining continuity from one panel to the next, as the store and the armor are rather complex structures.

 

Three pages from Honshirabe.  Text and word bubbles will be added later.

 

 

Photographs of part of the model supermarket.  The dark blobs are little Plasticine people for scale.  We call the picture on the right the “Kubrick shot” because it looks like something from the film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

 

 

   

… and we call the picture on the left the “Fritz Lang shot,” because it resembles the Art Deco-style poster art for the film Metropolis.  On the right, we see the model police body armor frightening Park Crest Village residents with a weapon…

 

  

… and entertaining them with some mean electric guitar riffs.  For those with more highbrow tastes, he also plays violin.

 

          A little scary news: Mom had a heart attack in September of 2006.  She’s doing well now, thank goodness.  She underwent double bypass surgery and has now joined the ranks of that august body known as The Zipper Club.

 

          My pen pal Ewa in Poland is continuing to strive for the coveted Ph.D. at the University of Warsaw.  Although it keeps her very, very busy, she still finds time for dancing and a few other activities, and recently sent me a DVD that was made at a dance tournament she was in.  She is indeed a multi-talented young lady!  And – and this is very important for her Ph.D. – she was informed in mid-December that her thesis paper on the revision of classification of feliform carnivora was selected for publication!  (For those of you who haven’t boned up [pun intended] on their palaeontology, that means that her paper is about changes in the way scientists classify prehistoric cat ancestors – their relations to each other and in some cases to modern descendants.)

 

 

Ewa and her troupe at a dance tournament.  Yes, that’s Irish step-dancing, which Michael Flatley helped popularize abroad during his recent tour.  I believe Ewa sewed the costumes as well!

 

          (Continued from an earlier page)  Ah, yes, the wedding.  Well, for a while, it seemed like the wedding was going to happen!  Lily was getting things done, we had a minister and a wedding date all set.  We even sent out announcements.  Then, the day before The Big Day, Lily did a “runaway bride” stunt.  I enjoyed a very nice get-together with my family in Monmouth County… but no wedding.  Lily eventually came home.  She apologized for what she did.  We decided to “call it quits,” and now we’re friends again.  A most amicable divorce, as they go.  I know, it’s hard to believe – 16 years of engagement and four failed marriage attempts, and we’re still friends?  Yet there it is.  Yes, I’m not happy that it didn’t work out.  But she’s still a great friend, I’m still one of her favorite people in the world, and we have no reason to be angry at each other.

 

 

Lily & me at Jordan & Cathy’s engagement party, and later bouncing little Miss Meghan around.  I’m proud to say that I’ve slimmed down a bit since then!

         

          … Which brings 2006 to a close.  I hope that 2007 marks a fresh start for some of us, and that the next holiday letter is full of wonderful news.