Is it the economy? Or is it the Internet? Have we lost patience with the U.S. mail? Perhaps we are all just too busy…or dare we say, lazy? We ask you all: What has happened to the homemade, printed, original holiday/Christmas card?


Each year we get fewer and fewer. Okay, I guess this could be because we have fewer friends. (There, we said it so you don’t have to.) Or perhaps it is because we stopped making the effort to send out our own. And we just use them as coasters or throw them out anyway, so why do we care? Well every once in awhile we get one that is impossible to throw out because it is sooo funny. It restores our faith in human creativity. So in the spirit of the post-Oscar season the funniest card goes to (envelope, please) Alix Madigan Yorkin.


Alix has been a film producer in Hollywood almost since graduation. (By way of a Wharton M.B.A., of which she still wonders, why?) She has been working hard to bring quality stories to the big screen so it is no surprise that as a creative she sent out such a clever and entertaining card this year. The stars of the card were her adorable twin daughters Delores and Dinah. In her ongoing naughty/nice theme (she does this every year in some fashion) she posed her twin 3-year-olds wearing Santa hats and overall fatigues in front of Bogie’s Liquor (imagine Compton), each carrying a 48-ounce bottle of Old English out of the store. (Naughty, in case you hadn’t figured that out.) Inside the card, of course, the girls were in dresses, being perfectly behaved (nice).


While Alix is not tending to her daughters’ drinking habits or playing dress up she is hanging out in places like Park City, Utah, where her most recent film, Winter’s Bone, won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize! She’s actually had the pleasure of receiving this coveted award twice in her career so far. She produced the movie Sunday in 1997 for director Jonathan Nossiter. Jonathan has also been busy making movies that are continuing to catch critics’ eyes. In 2004 he directed Mondovino, a documentary about the wine industry. It was nominated for a Palme d’Or at Cannes. He currently resides in Brazil with his wife and three children. Alix tells us that he just finished production on his most recent fictional feature and is editing in Paris.


Also spotted at Sundance this year was Betsy Burnham Stern, in attendance to celebrate the debut of the latest film from her sister-in-law (Ricki Stern ’87), Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work. Betsy lives in L.A. with husband Mark ’85 and her two kids Carson (16) and Will (13). Betsy, who started out in the fashion industry in product development and design at the Gap after college, has distinguished herself more recently in the interior design industry. (She did take a swipe at full-time motherhood in between, but says it was way too hard. She was very good at it, teaching us more than a decade ago how to cut our newborn’s fingernails. The key? Make sure they are sleeping). Now she heads Burnham Design, where she has taken on high-profile clients and challenges, including the interior design of a 15,000-square-foot house on a private island off the coast of Michigan! As times change, though, Betsy says the days of diva decorating are over and she has created an alternative to full-service design called instant/space. Go to www.instantspacedesign.com and check it out!


—Jan Gordon and Derek Chow, 132 Wildcat Lane, Boulder, CO 80304; (303) 448-1580; janandderek@comcast.net