December
2017
Dear Family and Friends,
From
our family to you and yours, we wish you a happy holiday season, whatever your
faith, whatever your traditions, whatever your politics. But it cannot be
denied that this is not a happy time for many of us here in Washington and not
a happy time for our great country or for millions of people in many other
troubled countries around the world.
In
brief, the adult Jost-White children are both happily married, and they and
their spouses are all advancing in their careers. Ken continues to write Supreme Court Yearbook (CQ Press), now
in his 26th term, and to write weekly columns for his blog, Jost on Justice, about to start its tenth
year. James marked his 20th year in the world of IT consulting at Total Resource
Management.
Nicole
and her wife Lily Rea are in the third year of Nicole's three-year master's
program in playwriting at San Francisco State. Nicole's play The Terror Fantastic, in development for
several years now, was produced in a two-week run at Minneapolis's 20% Theater:
Ken was there for opening night; Katie and the rest of the White family
attended the next night. In San Francisco, Lily continues to gather experience
as a theater techie, helping produce audio and video for the Jewish Community
Center. They live in Hayes Valley, with their cat Molly.
Andrew
(AJ) and Robbie Rogart Jost celebrated their first anniversary in September,
five months after taking on a mortgage for a three-level home in the close-in
DC suburb of Arlington, Va. AJ continues as an investment analyst with Clark
Enterprises, with increased responsibilities in his second year in that
position. Robbie was just promoted to counsel in her sixth year with the
Washington office of Crowell & Moring. And they have a new puppy: a golden retriever
they named Henry and dressed in Washington Nationals gear as the baseball
season came to a disappointing end.
Ken
wrapped up Supreme Court Yearbook for
the mostly boring 2016 term with Justice Gorsuch's confirmation and the end-of-term
challenge to President Trump's Muslim travel ban. The 2017 term opened with a
goodly number of high-profile cases. On Jost
for Justice, Ken has criticized several Trump administration policies, such
as his judicial appointments, and laid out the case for impeachment in a pair
of columns in November. He also contributed a review of two recent impeachment
books for the online Washington
Independent Review of Books.
Ken
and James traveled to San Francisco in September for a sad occasion: services
for Ken's former reporter, Philip Carrizosa, who died from complications
following a long-awaited liver transplant.. Ken traveled to Italy and Sweden on
his own in August; James went to Taiwan on his own in November to spend time
with his aging parents. His father, now housebound, is weaker but in good
spirits; both parents were glad to have James there for two weeks. James also uses
various modern technologies to talk or "visit" on a weekly basis. On
tap for us, an African safari in February.
We
closed a year ago with wishes for greater tolerance and compassion; those hopes
have not been realized. Americans are more divided than perhaps at any time in
our history. But to you and yours best wishes at this season and for health,
success, and happiness throughout 2018.
Ken
& James, Nicole & Lily, AJ and Robbie (and Henry!)
