reactions and replies

A rather grey drizzly Monday was enlivened by several letters from New Zealand, almost all with newspaper cuttings of the damage done by the magnitude 7.1 earthquake near Christchurch. One graphic description of the noise sounds almost identical to but much louder than the noise I heard when we had a 6.0 tremor here a few weeks ago. But ours was not only a rare event in these parts it was far less devastating. The Christchurch earthquake and its aftershocks collectively did damage amounting to several billion dollars, but unlike the earthquake of identical magnitude some months earlier in Haiti, it caused no deaths whatever. We can thank New Zealand's rigorous building standards for this. We'd heard all about the Christchurch earthquake before today of course, in TV reports and numerous emails, some with photos. But actual letters in envelopes bearing stamps, evoke the reality in some indefinable way, bring it home to us more vividly than the email messages. Is it just me, and my age, conferring on handwritten and typed letters with or without enclosed newspaper cuttings a greater authenticity than electronic signals?

One of these NZ letters had a photo of two recent additions to the human race, a toddler and a newborn baby; the toddler's name, I was delighted to see, is Caleb. That's a very uncommon name nowadays; it's the name of my father's uncle, who was a signalman on the Great Western Railway, operating signals and switches near Warwick; and I have on my wall a meticulously accurate pencil sketch of Kenilworth Castle, or rather of its ruins, dated 1886, by Caleb Last, who, I suppose, had no art lessons; nor did my father or my son David; but all three use exactly the same technique to draw meticulously accurate pictures. I suppose this is a genetic characteristic. I wish I shared it!

Today's emails were interesting too. One from my friend Jeff House in San Francisco echoed a plea from another friend in Chicago last week: why don't I write an Op-Ed, a panegyric singing the praises of the Canadian health care system. Why indeed! Well, entrenched opinions aren't swayed by the kinds of facts, figures and anecdotes I could muster. Minds are made up, and aren't going to be swayed by facts or by eloquence greater than mine. Thanks for the thoughts, but I'll count our blessings and sit this one out.