Christmas 2022

Nadolig Llawen!        Merry Christmas!        Buon Natale!

From our home to yours, dear Family and Friends,

Again, at this very special time, it is our pleasure to share a little bit of our lives over this past year.  May you enjoy a full and restful Christmas/New Year season.  2022 certainly kept up the flow of different and more limited life experiences.

As the year winds down, Angela has just completed her studies in computerized three-dimensional modelling at the British Columbia Institute of Technology. Angela’s artistic talent has always been primarily three-dimensional. This BCIT course of study was very intense, demanding her full-time attention but she excelled. What Tina and I have seen of Angela’s digital creations so far impresses us as amazing.

Angela, Christy, and their dog, Adam remain well-settled at their leased townhouse in Richmond. Christy continues working her job with Microsoft from home while Angela worked hard at her studies.

David continues private study on his viola, with Thomas Beckman, Principal Violist with the Prince George Symphony, online through most of the year with occasional in-person sessions. David remains a violist with the New Westminster Symphony Orchestra. Much to David’s delight, the orchestra continues with in-person rehearsals but he is concerned that concert opportunities remain disrupted. Happily for David, the Camerata Strings ensemble at the VSO School of Music also remains active and gave a public performance at the Vancouver Playhouse earlier last month.

Apart from his music, David remains happy with his part-time employment with Meridian Farm Markets at their store in Tsawwassen. He has had his working schedule increased. As a grocery store worker, David is among “essential” workers and experiences no loss of work as a consequence of COVID-19.

As a change in David’s life, he has adopted a vegan lifestyle. Following David’s ASD specialist psychiatrist’s retirement, David continues to see his local support counsellor at Alongside You. Tina and Ted remain thankful for such readily at-hand support.

Tina among spring blossoms with David and Angela at Paulik Garden in Richmond

Tina continues to enjoy complete retirement from nursing but her health remains a challenge as she continues to suffer increasing back pain that imposes increasing limits on her general activity. She uses her walker when out and about, a great help when Tina has to walk more than a few steps. Tina did receive intermittent treatments giving tiny and only temporary relief. Finally, in January after a three and a half year wait, she will see a surgeon for a first appointment whom we hope to find helpful

Ted with Belle at the North 40 Park Reserve, Delta’s large off-leash dog park

With exercise and prescribed medication, Ted's health continues stable; in fact, he feels very well indeed. He remains a participant in the atrial ablation study out of VGH and periodically wears a monitor for a few scheduled weeks. Otherwise, he is bothered only by occasional colds.Ted continues to use long walks as his primary mode of exercise, usually twice daily with our Poodle, Belle, as a companion, every day of the week. Belle fills our lives with her spirited dog personality. These long walks allow Ted easily to exceed the recommended minimum of 10,000 steps per day. Otherwise, Ted enjoys his camera, often carrying it while walking Belle. His collection of photos, here around Ladner and south Delta, keeps growing.

Belle among summer buttercups at the Patterson Park off-leash area

COVID-19 remains the dominant unsettling factor in our lives. Even with eased restrictions, public indoor mask-wearing, physical distancing, and limited public gathering all remain our norm. All of us accepted COVID booster vaccinations throughout the year. On top of continuing COVID variability, flu is expected to be particularly nasty this winter. As usual, we all had our Flu shots soon after they came available.

A bit of drama came our way during the summer when Ted had a car accident. ICBC ruled our Mazda MPV as a write-off and we had to seek an alternative. The insurance settlement allowed us to replace it with a nice little used Kia Spectra.

Beyond the immediate family, we continue to enjoy our extended family, although mostly only virtually still. Email and Skype keep us in touch with John and Liz. COVID-19 restriction relaxation throughout the year did allow us to get together with Norman and Barbara on a few occasions, especially when Gareth and Rosy came up from Oregon to visit them. 

Weather variability extremes have become more to be expected with anthropogenic climate change but we really feel the past week’s sharp cold snap. Heavier than usual snowfall even proved challenging for Belle as she preferred being out on previously tromped paths over pushing through deep snow.

As winter returned to us, we watched South Delta’s annual return of vast flocks of Snow Geese, many now continued on to the Skagit River delta and/or California’s Sacramento Valley. Trumpeter Swans are back but not as readily noticed as with other winters. Resident Bald Eagles have now returned to renovate their nests. Very soon, trees along Highway 10 will burst into our annual crop of transient Bald Eagles. At home, our bird feeder remains frequented by Chickadees, House Finches, Dark-Eyed Juncos, Song Sparrows, White Crowned Sparrows, Spotted Towhees, the occasional Nuthatch, Downy Woodpeckers, and Northern Flickers while Anna’s Hummingbirds use their feeder as frequently as ever (we have a heated feeder for the very cold weather). Steller’s Jays continue to take our steady supply of in-shell peanuts less frequently. The current snow has brought flocks of Red-Winged Blackbirds to our feeder. When we bought this house we gave it the name Ty Adar, Welsh for “House of the Birds,” and how right we were.

We remain attentive and concerned with events beyond our family. The attempted insurrection early in January to thwart the electoral will of our neighbours to our south gave a strong shock. As 2021 wound down we shared dismay with the rest of the world at the Russian military build-up on Ukraine’s borders but were really alarmed last February 24th when Vladimir Putin actually had his military invade his peaceable neighbour on very spurious grounds. Ted eventually had to have some say, sharing his thoughts on his blog. We pray that peace may quickly be restored to a fully intact Ukraine with the ignoble invader driven out of that sovereign nation.

And now we look forward to 2023, to hope for continuing COVID-19 decline, a flu season not as severe as anticipated, a return to peace wherever conflict threatens people’s lives all around the world, and a more normal year.  Recent weeks, of course, have filled us with Christmas preparations.  We hope yours have gone well and we wish you a Blessed Christmas and all happiness in the New Year.

Merry Christmas with our love,

Ted, Tina, David, Angela, and Christy

P. S. This letter was scheduled, with intent, to arrive on Christmas Eve. 

Blwyddyn Newydd Dda!        Happy New Year!        Felice Nuovo Anno!

My Thoughts on the Bullying, Ignoble, Invasion of Ukraine

     There is a well-known line in a 1948 speech to the British House of Commons, in which Winston Churchill paraphrased the philosopher, Santayana, saying “Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.” In 1938, the world appeased the nazi tyrant, Adolph Hitler who had previously pulled Germany away from its fledgling liberal democracy. Western European nations allowed Hitler to steal Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia thus prompting then British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberland’s infamous announcement, “Peace in our time.” We all know where that bit of history led: the nazi German ignoble and unprovoked invasion of Poland and the subsequent horrors of World War II. History’s lesson for all to learn remains very clear, appeasing a tyrant only whets that tyrant’s appetite for more, making greater conflict become inevitable.

In 2014, the nazi-like tyrant, Vladimir Putin who had previously usurped Russia’s fledgeling attempt, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, to achieve its own liberal democracy, moved to invade and annex the Crimean peninsula from Russia’s peaceable neighbour, Ukraine. The world refused to recognize this theft but otherwise appeased Putin with no more than soft words of objection and ineffectual sanctions, allowing him to hold the stolen territory.

True to an appeased tyrant’s whetted appetite form, late in 2021, Putin started amassing the Russian military on Ukraine’s borders, then launched an unprovoked ignoble full-scale invasion (“special military operation,” what an absurd euphemism for such an unjust action) this past February 24th on the pseudo pretext of the very nazi-like Putin “denazifying” Ukraine and to keep Ukraine out of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). He set the attack from the north, quickly repulsed, from the east, with the help of Putin’s sponsored and supported separatist rebels (more on them later), and from the south, clearly demonstrating why stolen Crimea must return to Ukraine and remain Ukrainian.

I have read a few items by apologists (sadly, including one Canadian purported historian) for Putin's ignoble invasion of Ukraine and the most striking element of each is that they ignore what must be the twentieth century's most profound event to form the modern Ukrainian national identity, the Holodomor. With an estimated nearly four million Ukrainians starved to death through that synthetic famine, it should be no surprise to any thinking/caring person that Ukrainians feel the need to shun identification with Russia and Russians. Similarly, It should be no surprise if Ukrainians resent the Russian speakers whom the, then, Soviet Union planted among them, following the Holodomor, in order to repopulate the depopulated parts of their country. I feel confident that most Ukrainians do welcome those descendants of the Russian-speaking plants who choose to identify with Ukraine (after all they enthusiastically elected one as their President during their last general election). On the other hand, there are descendants of the Russian-speaking plants who insist on retaining their identification as wholly Russian. Some of them have accepted Putin’s agitation to seek separation from Ukraine and turned to active separatist rebellion with Putin’s instigation, following his 2014 theft of Crimea. These should simply step across the not-so-distant border into Russia.

Nor should anyone be surprised that a few Ukrainians have taken their desire to shun all things Russian and their resentment of the Russian-speaking plants to an ultra-nationalistic extreme (these few are the ones Putin and his apologists keep labelling as nazis). Such nationalistic extremists are most certainly a problem, but they are a problem for Ukraine to deal with and none of Putin's business.

As far as I can tell, I cannot see why Putin apologists insist on putting the current Ukrainian government down as unworthy of help because of corruption. Yes, unfortunately, corruption does pervade Ukrainian society but certainly less so than that in Russia under Putin (Ukraine, 32 and Russia at 29 as of 2019, December – the lower the number, the greater the extent of public corruption according to the corruption index), with his Black Sea palace, severe oppression of active loyal (to Russia in contrast to Putin) opposition, and his lackeys. It appears that the current Ukrainian government’s efforts to curtail corruption had some success until distracted by Putin’s invasion.

I have also read claims that democracy is under threat to be dismantled in Ukraine. The most recent Ukrainian election appears to have been a fair, reasonably democratic, and truly competitive contest that had to go to a run-off vote giving strong results. This can hardly demonstrate any sort of an example of democracy dismantling and is a huge contrast with Putin's dismantling of the limited democracy Russia gained after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

So, Putin wants Ukraine to remain out of NATO, claiming NATO seeks to tear Russia apart. No, NATO has no interest in threatening Russia. In contrast, I anticipate that NATO would welcome an intact, free, prosperous, and liberally democratic Russia as a neighbour with an open society that welcomes free speech, independent media, dissent, loyal opposition, and fully competitive elections. NATO is entirely a defensive alliance. Why else did so many central and eastern European nations choose to rush to liberalize their societies, apply, and join NATO after release from soviet control but that they saw in NATO protection from the oppression they had previously experienced? NATO poses no threat to anybody as long as nobody threatens any NATO member. Prior to Putin’s ignoble invasion, Ukraine had contemplated applying to join NATO but had not yet met NATO’s conditions for membership and had not even applied. Who Ukraine does at any time choose to associate with for whatever reason, including for defence, must remain Ukraine’s own business as a sovereign and independent nation and certainly none of Putin’s business.

I have also read complaints that Volodymyr Zelensky, President of Ukraine, and his government are unwilling to negotiate with Putin. Who negotiates with a bully? One either caves and submits to bullying or resists bullying. Ukraine has clearly chosen justly to resist with honour. What does Ukraine have to negotiate? Negotiate over stolen territory? Who negotiates with a thief to determine what that thief may steal and may not steal? Unless a nation has a territory that it actually does not want to hold (Russia did willingly sell Alaska), no national leaders, anywhere, would reasonably negotiate the surrender of any of their national territories without totally discrediting themselves as leaders of their nations. Nor can any national leader negotiate away a nation’s sovereign right to choose with which other nations to associate without subordinating the nation as a subject of another. I can only think that the only possible point of negotiation would be what to do about those descendants of Russian-speaking plants who insist on identifying themselves solely with Russia and eschew any identity with Ukraine. Yet this should not require any negotiation; they need only be permitted with a hearty welcome to relocate to Russia.

Putin seeks to bully Ukraine with an unjust and blatantly aggressive invasion. He even uses the bully’s call as unfair when neighbours and friends extend their support and material assistance to the bullied. Currently, Ukraine's just defence of itself drives the vulgar invaders back from their gains. All that Putin can truly achieve will be to drive Ukraine and Ukrainians into deeper distrust of Russia and even farther into rejecting any connection with his people. May western nations’ assistance and Ukrainian success continue and bring peace back to a fully intact Ukraine, as it was before 2014.