Do you receive family newsletters? I get a couple, usually in the spring of the year. These are epistles that were once started as annual Christmas newsletters and they just fell behind schedule after that.

But this one from some cousin of my mother’s is probably the most unabashed heralding yet of the most audacious bunch of overachievers that any one family ever hatched. Braggadocio fortissimo. That’s what the whole page is devoted to. The other side includes pictures of their beautiful selves, grinning in beautiful places.

"She loves her work, which is in her degree field, and is grateful for her recent promotion," the family’s mom states after the lines describing her daughter’s degrees and near-miraculous rise through some very prestigious company. "In addition, she is working with friends on a start-up company whose launch date is not yet confirmed. Stay tuned!"

Then there’s another daughter, equally gifted, "double majoring in Russian Language and Culture, and Russian, Erasian, and East European Studies … while pursuing yet another graduate certificate" prior to landing herself an important job in Washington.

Then the mom describes – writing about herself in third person – her many accomplishments and numerous correct memberships, before moving on to the dad, who is equally over-accomplished, and their travels to exotic destinations.

So I’m planning a little family newsletter of my own, writing it in my spare time. No, it’s going to include an update on the Howells. It’s going to be from a fictitious character who will share their same last name. Here’s how it starts:

"Hello to all you [the family’s name to be inserted here] cousins. I was really tickld to find out we had so many kin peeple we had not knowed before. Now that I got your address, less keep in touch and get to know eech other. Next year I am coming up for parole and if I get it I can come visit ya’ll since I got your address now."
 

The Panolian co-owner and publisher John Howell writes about New Orleans, Panola, and the strange and mundane between there and here. Contact him at johnhowl@bellsouth.net