Angelika We can't close this year without another Christmas newsletter. 2018 was exciting and eventful. We finally had visitors from Germany again, and in August, after 12 years, I changed my job. Globally, the world seems to have gone a bit off the rails, but surely I have thought similar things during many previous Christmases.

In California, for several weeks, it felt as if the apocalypse had broken out, as a large part of the state was shrouded in a haze due to devastating fires in Northern and Southern California. The town of "Paradise" was completely consumed by the flames and no longer exists. Everything is gone, everything is lost. The rebuilding will take years, and it is already known that the fires in California will not end.

As every year, I created a collage for our Christmas newsletter. It is part of a so-called shadow box that I built myself some time ago in a class at the "Center for the Book" in San Francisco. An older gentleman also participated in the course. When we introduced ourselves and explained why we had signed up for the class, he said that he had lost his house in the fires in the wine country around Santa Rosa and that only ashes were left of the house he had been living in for 40 years. As he and his wife carefully raked through the ashes to look for anything still usable, they came across some Christmas tree ornaments. Although they were charred, blackened, and deformed by the heat of the fire, the items were still clearly recognizable. The ornaments now looked like antique toys, as if they had been rotting away in an attic for decades. The friendly course participant lovingly built his shadow box over the weekend with his rescued treasures from his burned-down house. He wanted to give the shadow box with the Christmas ornaments to his adult children so that they would have a keepsake from their parental home. There is probably no better Christmas message than this.

In this spirit, I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Angelika and Michael