Seasonal letter and Annual Report

For the record, here's this year's Seasonal Greeting e-letter, which went out in batches of 20-30 to several hundred friends scattered about the planet. Because I relied mainly on the electronic memory of my iMac to identify the targets, some people got several copies and others didn't get one. If you are in the last group, you can read it here if you are interested.

Dear Family and Friends

Am I lazy, or super-efficient? Whichever, this e-letter is going to relations and friends in New Zealand and Australia. I’ve pasted my ‘Annual Report’ in this email.

Are all you Kiwis excited or perplexed about choosing  a new flag?  Too bad Janet Wendy isn’t still here to weigh in with her views! I remember talking about flags with her, her brother John Wendelken, and several others years ago, long before you got as far as choosing between several alternative designs. Way back then we would have preferred flags for both NZ and Oz without the union jack but with well known and easily recognized symbols like a boomerang for Oz and a silver fern for NZ

Winter is heading our way, but so far it hasn’t been too bad: no snow, but cold enough to make me wish I was back in Sunny South Australia.

Seasonal greetings, and Love and best wishes to you all,

John

Annual Report, 2015

I’ve had a quiet year of vicarious pleasure, enjoying my progeny’s experiences.  Jonathan advanced the plans for his ecologically sustainable off-grid home; David and Desre traveled most recently to Finland, and will be in Adelaide over Christmas; Rebecca and Richard continue to make delectable jams and pickles, and Rebecca’s garden draws praise from everyone.  My three grandsons are all doing well, Charles in Victoria BC, Peter in Toronto, and John in Halifax, Nova Scotia - scattered literally from coast to coast. 

I prefer to avert my eyes from the wider world. Looking back from my 90^th year, I don’t think there’s been a day of my life when the whole world has been at peace. Terrorist atrocities have lacerated Paris, glorious city of some of my happiest memories; and the Middle East is a festering mess. In Canada a bright spot is replacement of the dreadful Harper by young Justin Trudeau and a government that shows promise of being enlightened and progressive. 

These days I seldom venture beyond the city limits of Ottawa, this year just twice, a flying visit to Karen and Pradeep Kumar in Hamilton, with an excursion to the Shaw Festival Theatre where we saw a splendid production of Pygmalion; and I attended a stimulating writers’ workshop at Arnprior, where I fine-tuned the story described below. 

Writing has been my main activity.  I’ve been writing a story for children in the 9-12 year old age range. This departure from all my previous literary efforts has been great fun.  The story is derived from one I made up in 1962 when we were on a cargo ship carrying 12 passengers, returning to Australia after a year in London. About halfway between the Red Sea and the Western Australian coast we ran out of books to read to our two toddlers, Rebecca and David. They didn’t want Wendy and me to read yet again from Winnie the Pooh, Wind in the Willows, Charlotte’s Web, or The Magic Pudding. They said they were tired of all these. Wendy and I were fed up rereading these books too. So I made up a story to tell them. I’d forgotten this until I was reminded by reading Wendy’s diary for 1962. When I began to write the story down, the characters came to life in my head and took over. The heroine is the parrot who once sat on the shoulder of Long John Silver, the villainous pirate in Robert Louis Stephenson’s adventure story, Treasure Island. She is a brilliantly coloured Australian rosella. I named her, and the story, Gloriana, the poets’ name for Queen Elizabeth, Good Queen Bess, and gave her a very long life span: in the early 1930s, time of my earliest memories, she is rescued from a pawnshop at Port Adelaide by 9-year old twins. Gloriana is old enough to have learnt human speech, and tells the twins she knows where the pirates’ treasure is buried.  There’s a road trip through interesting parts of eastern Australia to a little island off the Great Barrier Reef. Gloriana and the twins are pursued by 3 villains who had tried to extract directions to the treasure by getting Gloriana drunk, and want to try again. Writing this has been more fun than anything else I’ve ever written.  About a dozen children have read a first draft of the story. One said he thought it was boring, but all the others said they enjoyed it, several said it’s exciting and they want to read it again after I’ve polished it a bit. I’ve spent the last few months polishing.

I’ve kept my blog going too, writing about once a week on whatever catches my fancy.  You can see this at http://lastswords.blogspot.com

I hope it’s been a good year for you, that you enjoy Christmas, Hannukah, Diwali, the solstice, your own private festival, whatever, and that your future is happy and bright.  

Yours ever, 

John