Christmas 2024

 Nadolig Llawen!        Merry Christmas!        Buon Natale!

Christmas 2024.

From our home to yours, dear Family and Friends,

As we come home from a Winter Harp concert, 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.  2024 brought us mostly very routine living.

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 continues to seek opportunities to apply her new skills with digital modelling while expanding her portfolio preparation. She continues as a ceramics artist, throwing new pieces and showing with the Dusty Babes collective.

David remains active with his music. As principal violist with the New Westminster Symphony  Orchestra, he retains special musical responsibility. We enjoyed their Christmas concert, this year as a full orchestral concert. David also continues to perform with the VSO School of Music’s Camerata Strings adult ensemble, most recently in 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. While the Tsawwassen store was closed for renovations, he enjoyed a brief reassignment to Meridian’s Ralph’s Produce store in Langley late last spring. David travel interest took him to Yellowknife to experience Summer Solstice with very long days and night twilight, no full darkness. He now looks forward to a trip to Florida earl/y in the New Year.

David ’s adopted vegan lifestyle remains important to him. In response to his ASD, David continues to see his local support counsellor at Alongside You. Tina and Ted remain thankful for such readily at-hand support.

Tina continues to suffer ever stronger back pain that increasingly limits her general activity and requires her to use a disability tag on our car and her walker when out and about. She particularly enjoys Ladner’s Shirley’s Walk as a walk she can handle. Tina now has a new surgeon for her back but has to meet a new weight loss target before surgery can be scheduled.

Tina. David, Angela, Belle, and Adam along Shiley’s Walk on a lovely May Day yeah

With exercise and prescribed medication, Ted remains in good health, feeling 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. He, Tina, and David did catch Covid-19 in September but, being fully up to date with our vaccinations, its impact was mild. For Ted, he experienced three days of total exhaustion, then it was gone.

Ted continues to use long walks as his primary mode of exercise, usually twice daily and a shorter walk before putting Belle to bed for the night, every day of the week. He easily to exceed the recommended minimum 10,000 steps per day. With Tina taking up swimming as gravity free exercise, he resumed semi-regular swimming, getting back up to 2500 metre swims fairly readily. Ted enjoys his camera, often carrying it while walking Belle. His collection of photos, here around  Ladner and south Delta, certainly continues to grow.

Ted is the one invariably behind the camera and not inclined to take selfies so, instead, here is his view of Saturn from September 9^th at 12:39 AM, a few days after opposition.

(Stack of 53 exposures on Olympus Pen-F at ISO 800 and ⅒ sec. with Dynamax 8 telescope, 2110 mm  f/11 projected through 20 mm eyepiece)

Belle remains our delight, filling life with love and laughter by her spirited dog personality. She remains fascinated with balls, especially well lost ones she finds during her walks and carries home, filling the house with dog balls, tennis balls, lacrosse balls and baseballs! Her susceptibility to ear infection remained well controlled all year. Thankfully, with veterinary care and prescribed medication, last year’s frightening liver condition has not reappeared. Belle is her cheerful self

Beyond the immediate family, we continue to enjoy our extended family, although mostly only virtually still. Email and Skype keep us in touch with with John and Liz. We get together with Norman and Barbara for a few occasions, especially when Gareth and Rosy came up from Oregon to visit them, but will miss them this Christmas with Rosy reaching an age that it is more appropriate to mark the occasion in her own family home with her grandparents visiting.

As winter returned to us, we again 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 less readily noticed than last winter. Resident Bald Eagles returned early, starting to renovate their nests before the end of October but transient Bald Eagles have been slower to return. 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 feeders 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. Three seem to be constantly together and we suspect they are siblings that must have hatched very near us last summer.

We remain attentive and concerned with events in our world beyond our family. The electoral decision by our neighbours to the south shocked and deeply troubles us. We continue to pray that peace may be restored to a fully intact Ukraine with the ignoble invader driven out. The Israeli/Palestinian conflict keeps us alarmed, such a complex problem! May Israelis find a way out from brutal suppression of their Palestinian neighbours and Palestinian terror extremists moderate their responses so both can find peace together. We accept an apparent end to the civil war in Syria with concern about the successful rebel group. How can that horrible civil war in Yemen and the new outbreak in Sudan resolve? May this season of peace touch all these and other conflicts.

And now we look forward to 2025.  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.

The day after opposition, on the night of December 9^th at 10:53 PM, Ted enjoyed an opportunity to connect his camera to his Dynamax 8 telescope and photograph Jupiter with its four Galilean moons.

(Stack of 6 exposures on Olympus Pen-F at ISO 500 and 1/15 sec. with 2110 mm  f/11 projected through 20 mm eyepiece)

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

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

Christmas 2023

                         Nadolig Llawen!        Merry Christmas!        Buon Natale!

Christmas 2023.

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.  2023 gave us a mix of very routine living and a substantial challenge within our life experiences.

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 seeks opportunities to apply her new skills with digital modelling. Angela’s year  has been filled with portfolio preparation. The ceramics artist shows through in her digital works and Ted and Tina remain constantly impressed by the beauty in the creations she has showed us As an additional expression of her creative inclination, Angela has taken up sewing and found a wonderful opportunity to purchase a top-of-the-line but antique and fully functional sewing machine, at less cost than current bottom-of-the-line counterparts.

Angela, Studying Her First Sewing Creation

David remains active with his music and continues private study on his viola, with Thomas Beckman. As principal violist with the New Westminster Symphony Orchestra, he has special musical responsibility. We enjoyed their Christmas concert with a Richmond dance ensemble. David also continues to perform with the VSO School of Music’s Camerata Strings adult ensemble, most recently in performance at the Vancouver Playhouse earlier last month. The highlight of the year came last Spring the Camerata Strings included David’s composition, Memories, as part of a public concert.

Apart from his music, David remains happy with his part-time employment with Meridian Farm Markets at their store in Tsawwassen. He recently received recognition for his five years’ service to the store and enjoys an increased but somewhat variable working schedule. David has picked up an interest in travel, arranging and taking his first ever flight on his owner a trip to Ontario. He now plans two trips away in the new year.

David ’s adopted vegan lifestyle remains important for him. In response to his ASD, David continues to see his local support counsellor at Alongside You. Tina and Ted remain thankful for such readily at-hand support.

Tina continues to suffer ever stronger back pain that increasingly limits her general activity. She qualified for a disability tag on our car and uses her walker when out and about, a great help when Tina has to walk more than a few steps. That scheduled initial appointment with a surgeon in January only led to heartbreaking disappointment for Tina in particular and for our whole family. With new referrals, she is back to waiting on other scheduled initial appointments with different  surgeons, one not until 2025, November, the other pending the result of an upcoming MRI.

Tina and David at North 40 for Belle’s Second Birthday, July 1st

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 has not even been bothered by any occasional colds this year.

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, allowing him easily to exceed the recommended minimum 10,000 steps per day. Ted enjoys his camera, often carrying it while walking Belle. His collection of photos, here around Ladner and south Delta, certainly has not stopped growing.

Belle remains an utter delight, filling our lives with love and laughter with her spirited dog personality. Her fascination for balls, especially well lost ones she finds during her walks and carries home, gives us dog balls, tennis balls, lacrosse balls and baseballs everywhere! Ear infections and a frightening liver condition worried us but with veterinary care and prescribed medication, Belle is her cheerful self.

Ted’s Favourite Belle Portrait

With its diversifying new variants, COVID-19 remains an active concern. All of us have kept up to date with booster vaccinations and strive to avoid exposure. As usual, we all had our Flu shots soon  after they came available.

Beyond the immediate family, we continue to enjoy our extended family, although mostly only virtually still. Email and Skype keep us in touch with with John and Liz. We get together with Norman and Barbara for a few occasions, especially when Gareth and Rosy came up from Oregon to visit them, as will be for this Christmas.

As winter returned to us, we again 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 and more readily noticed than last winter.  Resident Bald Eagles returned early, starting to renovate their nests before the end of October. Now, trees along Highway 10 and in the North 40 Park Reserve have started to 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 feeders 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. Four seem to be constantly together and we suspect they make up a family that must have nested very near us last summer. As we write, a huge flock of Red Winged Blackbirds is settling into our backyard Hawthorne trees. They won’t stay long but they’re great to see.

Trumpeter Swans on a Ladner Farm Field, December 19th

We remain attentive and concerned with events in our world beyond our family. We pray that peace may be restored to a fully intact Ukraine with the ignoble invader driven out. The new Israeli/Palestinian conflict has us alarmed, such a complex problem! May Israelis find a way out from brutal suppression of their Palestinian neighbours and Palestinian terror extremists moderate their responses so both can find peace together. When, oh when, will the civil wars in Syria and Yemen resolve, sadly, not as long as other powers continue using the various sides as proxies. May this season of peace touch all these and other conflicts.

And now we look forward to 2024.  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 but has ended up delayed with our apologies .

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

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.

Christmas 2021

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, continuing unusual, year.  May you enjoy a full and restful Christmas/New Year season.  2021 certainly kept up the flow of very different life experiences, including major changes within our family.

Angela experienced 2021’s greatest change. With COVID-19, she and her friends in the Dusty Babes Collective had to remain with markedly reduced work in their ceramic art studio in south Surrey near White Rock. The property owner from whom the Dusty Babes rented the site finally moved to redevelop it and the Dusty Babes had to vacate at the end of October. Much of Angela’s equipment, supplies, and works came home to storage with us. Through the spring, Angela continued her part time position as the lead ceramics studio technician for the Semiahmoo Arts Society in the South Surrey Recreation Centre, working Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, and teaching ceramic art classes of limited class size to meet COVID-19 restrictions on Wednesday evenings. Late in the spring, Angela left that position to take up a new challenge and finished her work by training her replacement.

Angela’s new challenge? A big change, yet in many ways, not so big as she enrolled in a computerized three dimensional modelling program at the British Columbia Institute of Technology. Angela’s artistic bent has always been primarily three dimensional. This BCIT course of study is very intense, demanding her full-time attention. With her first term, she worked entirely online but the second term meant taking in-person classes at BCIT. What Tina and I have seen of Angela’s digital creations so far impress us as amazing.

Losing the the Dusty Babes’ studio, leaving her employment, and taking on new studies do not limit Angela’s changes this year. She moved out in May as she and Christy leased a townhouse in Richmond that Adam found for them (They had been looking for a place of their own for a while when, while returning to Christy’s car after checking possibilities in Richmond and walking Adam, Adam insisted on turning up a street they had not considered. On that street, they found a small townhouse complex with a vacancy, just right for them, and it also allowed tenants to keep a pet). The three of them are now well settled in with Christy working her job with Microsoft from home and Angela working hard at her studies.

David continued private study on his viola, with Thomas Beckman, online through the spring but in person this fall. In September’, he grieved the sudden passing of his previous viola coach, Robert Hirschhorn Rozek. David remains a violist with the New Westminster Symphony Orchestra, but really missed in person rehearsing and performing under conductor, Jack (Jin) Zhang as disrupted by COVID-19. The orchestra assembled another online performance this spring. Much to David’s delight, this October the orchestra resumed in person rehearsals but without a concert for a live audience. instead, the orchestra videoed this concert for release in the New Year. Happily for David, the Camerata Strings ensemble resumed in September and gave a public performance earlier this month.

Apart from his music, David continues to enjoy his Monday and Thursday part-time employment with Meridian Farm Markets at their store in Tsawwassen. As a grocery store worker, David is among “essential” workers and continues to experience no loss of work as a consequence of COVID-19.

David’s ASD specialist psychiatrist will retire with the end of this year, leaving him with his local support counsellor at Alongside You. Tina and Ted remain thankful for such readily at-hand support.

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 accepted buying a walker, a great help when Tina has to move more than a few steps, and she qualified for a disabled person parking tag for our car. Tina received a long anticipated treatment earlier this month and looks forward, with hope, to her next treatment opportunity in the New Year.

With exercise and prescribed medication, Ted's health continues stable; generally he feels very well indeed. He did experience another bout of atrial fibrillation in the spring, Again, his heart doctors decided he needed cardioversion to correct it in April and again used external stimulation instead of making Ted’s ICD jolt his heart. Having dropped into persistant atrial fibrillation three times over the past few years, Ted’s doctors saw need for more active treatment, atrial ablation. In spite of having remained in sinus rhythm since the last cardioversion, Ted accepted an invitation to participate in an atrial ablation study and received the procedure in the middle of September. Otherwise, he is bothered only by occasional colds but developed Plantar Fasciitis of both heels during the summer, relieved with physiotherapy and a pair of Strassburg Socks.

Ted celebrated a landmark birthday, his 75^th, and received the pooled gift from the whole family, including his brothers, of an Apple Watch.

Ted continues to use long walks as his primary mode of exercise, usually twice daily with dog companionship, every day of the week.  These long walks allow Ted readily to exceed the recommended minimum 10,000 steps per day. Otherwise, Ted enjoys in his camera, often carrying it while walking the dog. His collection of photos, here around Ladner and south Delta, keeps growing.

With the current situation, we again did not take a get-away this year, as so many of us have been obliged to do. As we are sure is the case with the rest of you, COVID-19 remains the dominant unsettling factor in our lives. Public indoor mask wearing, physical distancing, and limited public gathering have all become our norm. All of us accepted the two COVID vaccinations through the summer and Ted received the invitation to take the third, booster, shot late in the autumn and readily followed up. Both Tina and David are now booked for their booster stots early in the New Year. Angela awaits her booster invitation/notification.

Another change: with Adam gone with Angela, we missed having a dog around our home. Tina particularly missed Adam’s company and we filled the gap with a puppy late in August. She is also a Standard Poodle, this time from a breeder in Langley, also red but with white markings. Belle fills our lives with her spirited dog personality and, enjoying long walks just as much as Adam, guarantees that Ted exercises.

The new puppy, Belle has grown a lot since Ted took this photo at the beginning of September.

Beyond the immediate family, we continue to enjoy our extended family, although mostly only virtually still. Email and Skype keep us in touch with with Norman and Barbara and with John and Liz but COVID-19 restriction relaxation during the Autumn did allow us to get together with Norman and Barbara for a few occasions.

We share in the whole world’s experience of anthropogenic climate change. New meteorological terminology, “heat dome” and “atmospheric river” really hit home to us with extraordinarily hot weather at the end of June and early July and heavy rains late this autumn that isolated Greater Vancouver from the rest of British Columbia with flooding in the Fraser Valley and all mountain highways cut by numerous washouts. As the year ends, the highways are being repaired back into service.

As winter returned to us, we enjoyed 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, 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 ever. Steller’s Jays enjoy our steady supply of in-shell peanuts less frequently ever since the cedar hedge on the other side of Ladner Elementary School was cut down for redevelopment of a single house lot into two homes. The Jays must have used the hedge as their roost. We continue to enjoy the George C Reifel Migratory Bird Sanctuary although COVID-19 has drastically limited our visits.

And now we look forward to 2022, to hope for COVID-19 decline, 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 Merry and Blessed Christmas and all happiness in the New Year.

Merry Christmas with our love,

Ted, Tina, David, and Angela.

P. S. This letter was deliberately intended to arrive on Christmas Eve and Ted completed the first draft in time but simply living and keeping a puppy dog  active held priority over revisions.

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