Happy New Year!
We hope that you and yours will have a happy and healthy 2026. We are doing well and are looking forward to the year to come - especially after this awful winter weather which has really just started!
To recap our 2025 —
In February Rick travelled to Charlotte and Florida to visit with friends. While in Charlotte he attended a production at Theatre Charlotte where he had volunteered when we lived there. In Florida, he visited his brother who was recovering from a health issue. He enjoyed meeting up with old friends as well as missing out on some Ohio winter!
Carolyn accepted a part-time, temporary job at Davey Tree Expert Company in Kent. She started there in June. Davey was completing a new training and research campus across the street from their headquarters in Kent, Ohio. This new facility includes archive space for all the artifacts that the 145-year-old company has collected but did not have a single location to maintain them. For six months she received, indexed, and shelved all of these items. She enjoyed her time there and may be asked to do some follow-up work this year.
Carolyn continued to volunteer at the Cuyahoga Valley National Park library. Her boss, Kelsey, invited us to participate in a park trivia team. Together with some of her friends we competed twice and came in first place both times! These were very fun event and we appreciate being included.
This year saw a significant milestone for Kent State University Libraries as they retired their decades-old library system. To mark this momentous event, the Libraries hosted a gathering for people who worked on the system over the years, including us. We got to see many former colleagues who we had not seen for a long time. It was a wonderful event and a significant change for our old workplace.
The local No Kings protests had two gatherings in Cuyahoga Falls. The first was a rainy day but Carolyn was a trooper and stayed for the entire event. The second was a much nicer day and Carolyn’s sister Sue joined us to voice our opposition to the current administration. It was gratifying to be part of a community for an important cause.
We always love having our grandkids come to visit! This year we took them to see a performance of School of Rock at Porthouse Theater, operated by Kent State University, and to see Weird Al Yankovich at Blossom Music Center. Blossom is just a few minutes from our house but this was our first time there since we moved into this neighborhood. (As Northeast Ohio natives, we’ve each been to plenty of concerts there as teenagers and young adults, of course.) We all had a good time with Weird Al and his quirky opening act, Puddles Pity Party. Our second visit there was for Dolly Parton's Threads - My Songs in Symphony with the Cleveland Orchestra.
In August we traveled to Portland Oregon. While there we visited two of our friends who live in Oregon and Rick’s cousin Shari and Shari’s daughter, Anne-Marie. It was wonderful to be able to get together with people we don’t see often enough. We took the opportunity to do some sightseeing along the Columbia River and Mount Hood. You can see more of this trip here.
Sadly, shortly after returning from our trip, one of our kitties, Romy, became sick and we had to say goodbye to him. We posted details here.
We got to tour the Akron Water Treatment plant which is located about a mile from us. You might not think this would be fun tour but it’s amazing. The Plant does an incredible job of processing all of the waste from Akron and other communities in the area. The science and engineering at this facility was enlightening and fascinating.
We have been slowly making changes to the outside of our home. Carolyn replaced our backyard with Ohio native plants. Other areas got some landscaping love. Erin came up to help Rick install wood stairs where the gravel ramp was behind our house. Caroln and Rick cut the posts for the steps but Erin did all of the hard work and the result was great. These steps make it so much easier to access the back patio.
We have had a few neighborhood cats come around since we moved here. Most are skittish and run away if we show up. But one cat was different. She was so friendly that we were pretty sure she belonged to someone and had escaped. Carolyn began putting out food for her and eventually she started to trust us and come into our basement to eat. We then kept her inside and she warmed up to us quickly, purring and playing and happy to hang out. Carolyn posted photos of her on the neighborhood Facebook group but no one knew her. We took her to our vet (where we gave her the name Jane Doe) and we learned that she was neutered but not chipped. We decided to try to find someone to adopt her. Carolyn’s colleague at the park library mentioned that his daughter was looking for a cat, so after a few calls and FaceTimes, Rick packed Jane Doe up and took her to Toledo to make the transfer. She was renamed Soup and now has her forever home. Success!
Our love of music continued throughout the year. We were fortunate to see Steve Earle, Brit Floyd, KT Tunstall, and Vienna Teng. We also went to Weathervane Theater to see the musical Come from Away, a wonderful show about people who were diverted to a small airport in Canada on 9/11. Carolyn and her sister also saw the Cirque Dreams Holidaze show at the EJ Thomas Performing Arts Hall.
Living in a community surrounded by the Cuyahoga Valley National Park means that we get regular visits from many different animals. This past year we had visits from a wild turkey, deer, raccoons, possums, an eagle, red, black, and gray squirrels, and several bunnies in addition to chipmunks and many other bird species. And the coyotes aren’t too far away as we can tell by their yips and howls.
We are grateful that we have so much, including friends and family like you. We wish for you a wonderful and joyful 2026.
Getting Updates
We will be posting update messages here. If you would like to be notified by email when we post an update and are not already on our mailing list, please email me at rickwiggins@me.com. I know that many of you already get too much email but I can assure you that I will only be sending updates a few (probably two) times per year. Of course you can unsubscribe at any time. I will not take offense if you unsubscribe. I unsubscribe from lists with a vengeance. And of course we can always stay in touch by phone, text, or email! My cell phone number and email address will appear on every message I send.
So if you would like to be notified about updates in the Radcliff-Wiggins household, just drop me an email!