Nadolig Llawen! Merry Christmas! Buon Natale!
Christmas 2017.
From our home to yours, dear Family and Friends,
Again it is our pleasure to share a little bit of our lives over the past year at this very special time of year. We hope you enjoy a full and restful Christmas/New Year season. 2017 has remained a typical year for us, happy with mostly ordinary challenges.
Tina continues to take casual shifts, nursing at VGH while she enjoys her retirement. She also keeps up her cello lessons at the Delta Community Music School under the tutelage of Bo Peng, accepting gradually increasingly more challenging music to learn. When Bo introduced Tina to a cello that more suitably matched her stature, she readily accepted the opportunity to change instruments. Now, Tina also enjoys the new cello’s music.
With exercise and prescribed medication, Ted's health continues as stable except for a bit of a cardiac scare earlier this month from atrial fibrillation that doctors assured us posed no threat. Otherwise, he is bothered only by occasional colds. He continues to alternate 3 days of swimming (2500 m. in roughly 50 min.) with 3 days of cycling (16.4 km. in roughly 50 min.), sometimes substituting a good stiff walk (a little over 4.3 km. in roughly 45 min.), although through the current month that schedule has been somewhat disrupted. In addition, Ted often walks Adam once or twice a day, depending on Angela’s working and studio activities. With stops for sniffing and other doggy business, these walks do not constitute measurable exercise but can take an hour or more each.
Angela and her friends in the Dusty Babes Collective continue to work in their studio in south Surrey near White Rock. She has spent much of Tuesdays to Fridays with her own works at the studio. Angela continued her part-time position as Monday ceramics studio technician for the South Surrey Recreation Centre in addition to her Saturday ceramics studio technician work for Vancouver’s West End Community Centre but added periodic stints teaching ceramics classes at South Surrey on Tuesday evenings. Angela’s immediate supervisor at South Surrey moved on to other opportunities at the beginning of December and Angela promptly received the call to take his place as the lead studio technician. This is still part-time work, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but, when she teaches on Tuesdays, her schedule becomes quite full. Busy Angela, the West End Community Centre has called her to take selected extra Tuesday and/or Thursday shifts this month. Tina and Ted both remain in wonder at the beauty of Angela’s ceramic creations which range from handcrafted ceramic buttons through cups and bowls of various sizes and exquisitely delicate ceramic sculptures to large vases. Last spring, the Dusty Babes received the honour of having two members, Angela and Amelia Butcher, accepted to have their works on permanent display at the Gallery of BC Ceramics. The Dusty Babe’s open studio, earlier this month, successfully presented and sold works by the entire collective. In addition, the Dusty Babes look forward to fulfilling their invitation to present a group show at this prestigious gallery of ceramic art, not yet scheduled in the new year, and at a scheduled showing of their works at a gallery in Gibson’s Landing, come spring.
Outside of her art, Angela continues her interest in sophisticated board games which she shares with her girlfriend, Christy, enjoying relaxing time to play each Sunday.
David continues his musical studies as a founding student in the new strings music program within the Music Department of Kwantlen Polytechnic University, commuting to the Langley campus for his final year. His focus remains on his viola, giving him great success while he really enjoys his studies. The strings program remains very small which means that no large ensemble (required as part the music degree program) exists, although the university attempted an approximation of a large group by forming a chamber orchestra with instructors from the Borealis String Quartet. This did not persist with the new term in September and KPU welcomed the Langley School District Honour Orchestra onto campus for rehearsals while taking the KPU string students into that large ensemble. David plays Principal Viola. Kwantlen also requires music students to participate in small ensembles and kept the chamber orchestra with Borealis as a small ensemble. We enjoyed the end-of-term recitals and concert performances by David as a solo performer with piano accompaniment and by his trio (David, a cello student, and a piano student from Kwantlen Music’s piano program) in March and by his solo performance with piano accompaniment and with the chamber orchestra at the end of term this month. Outside university, David continues with private study on his viola with Robert Hirschhorn Rozak.
David continued private study on piano, at the Delta Community Music school, in Garth Preston’s studio, through the spring but did not resume with autumn, concentrating on his university studies. David anticipated being free to take his viola to play and perform with the Stradivari Ensemble in the New Year but their rehearsal scheduling just did not work for him. As anticipated, David did accept the Vancouver Welsh Mens’ Choir invitation to audition to join the choir and was accepted. He attended a few rehearsals in the New Year, welcomed warmly, but found that learning choral music distracted him from his studies and regretfully decided he could not continue. He did want to keep up with some form of orchestral playing beyond what KPU offered. With a bit of investigating, David learned of the West Coast Symphony Orchestra, semi-professional organization that mixes professional and amateur musicians. He auditioned, was readily accepted in the viola section, and joined rehearsals late in the autumn. David looks forward to being part of his first concert with the WCSO in the New Year.
David continues to enjoy writing, especially fiction, with which he extends his imagination. He is currently in the midst of a major rewrite of The Stolen Treasure, a novel he had originally developed as a young teen. His novel, The Sheltered Life of Betsy Parker, published two years ago as a digital copy continues to draw ongoing interest and responses on the GoodReads literary sharing site. David keeps the second addition available both digitally and as hardcopy on Amazon. From the events in the novel for which wrote piano tunes, David and his Music Technology instructor for developed a musical media project during the spring term. That instructor also introduced him to the Sarah McLachlan School of Music as a volunteer supporting young music students who share in David’s ASD, a very satisfying experience for David.
David’s ASD remains a significant factor in his life, limiting his social connection among his contemporaries and gave him a second crisis mental health issue early in the year. He had the courage to share this publicly and his ASD specialist psychiatrist and our minister at Ladner United Church, together, give David wonderful support in response through that issue. Tina and I feel deeply thankful for such readily at-hand support.
Other than a few quick trips to Vancouver Island, our only get-away this year was a return to Cusheon Lake Resort on Salt Spring Island for the Canada Day weekend. This brought us our familiar enjoyments of the lake, Beddis Beach, Ruckle Park, Ganges, and Salt Spring Island Gelato at Harlan’s as well as their, remarkable for a small community, Canada Day fireworks.
This year brought two significant life events for us to mark. We helped Ted’s immediately younger brother John celebrate his seventieth birthday in Calgary in September. In the extended family, Ted has become a great uncle once more. His nephew, Gareth and wife Zoë remain at the University of Melbourne where Gareth works on a post-doctoral fellowship studying the effects of artificial lighting on cricket and other insect populations. They now have their first born child making grandparents of Ted’s little brother Norman and his wife Barbara, just born as Ted writes this.
Also with the extended family, in March Ted went Calgary with Norman to support John as he proudly presented some of Dad’s memoirs and poetry to the Calgary Welsh Society at their annual St. David’s Day luncheon. John’s wife, Liz, daughter Leah and our Cousin Iris Macleod also attended. The membership received the presentation and accompanied by a PowerPoint slide show very well. Ted’s extended family also grew as he located a long-lost family member. Several years ago, Ted had done genealogical DNA testing with 23andMe. As part of their service, they advise of others in their database with closely matching DNA. One such person turned out to be Crystal Adamek, the daughter of Ted’s late half-brother, Bud (Edward Joseph Hopkins)’s only son, Ted’s nephew, long lost to the family ever since he was adopted as a young boy by his mother’s second husband. Born Victor Warren Hopkins, he is now Victor St. Laurent and lives in Swan Hills, Alberta, sharing Ted’s interest in amateur astronomy. Victor and his wife Della with Crystal, her husband Wayne, and baby daughter give new branches to the Family Tree! Ted and John keep occasional contact with them both as we delight in welcoming them into our extended family and Ted and Victor sway comment on night sky events.
Looking beyond ourselves, Ted remains troubled by the direction Canada’s new federal government continues to take: not enough of the promised “real change” and too much keeping the destructive policies of the defeated previous government. This applies most strikingly to the government’s approach to so-called free trade treaties (more accurately characterized as international corporate protection deals) containing the sovereignty-attacking ISDS provision that treats international business corporations not as subjects of nations and welcome guests within other nations but more as non-territorial kingdoms apart from and equal with nations. Ted’s concern impelled him to prepare a petition in response to NAFTA renegotiation, focussed on this element of the treaty. He copied the text to his blog. He is deeply disappointed with the lack of participation in this petition as Canadians seem either no longer to have care about retaining our national sovereignty or do not understand the threat. We also share a certain unease with many around us at the actions of the new President of our neighbours to the south and his Republican-dominated Congress.
We continue to share many Canadian’s concern for the plight of the many refugees from those horrible civil wars in Syria and Yemen. May a way to peace be found quickly. Our congregation at Ladner United Church still supports one Syrian refugee family after two others attained sufficient independence to make their own decisions and relocate closer to relatives in Ontario.
Catinka, in her eighteenth year, remains very much queen of our house, while Angela’s ducks continue to hold authority over our backyard. Jemima and Rebeccah again resumed their egg production with the new year, just as heavily as last year, then slowed and stopped completely when they moulted with the end of summer. They have not yet returned to laying again. Adam, Angela’s red-haired standard poodle, continues to endear himself to us all. He keeps quite the collection of “friends” that he loves to greet and engage in play when out and about, his favourite game being “Chase Me,” running in great circles centred on the one of us who is out with him while his “friend” chases him along an inner circle. To Adam’s dismay, many of his “friends” still give up on this game. He runs too fast for them.
As winter came back to us, we have enjoyed south Delta’s annual return of Trumpeter Swans and the vast flocks of Snow Geese. Very soon, trees along Highway 10 will burst into our annual crop of Bald Eagles. At home, our bird feeder remains frequented by Chickadees, House Finches, and Juncos while Anna’s Hummingbirds use their feeder more frequently and Steller’s Jays enjoy our steady supply of peanuts.
Ted continues to seek players to experiment with his invented team sports of Two Ball and Delta. Lacking sufficient contact of his own among sports-minded youth, he continues to approach schools as their Physical Education and intramural sport programs likely offer the best chance of drawing sufficiently large groups of players together. This remains disappointing as no schools have taken up either game yet. Ted also keeps up his web presence for the games, periodically posting to the site blog, and on Facebook. These continue to catch some attention worldwide, but he still awaits word of anyone actually playing either game. You are most welcome to have a look and draw the games to the attention of sport-minded people you may know.
And now we look forward to 2018. 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.
With our love,
Ted, Tina, David, and Angela.
P. S. That this letter arrives on Christmas Eve is entirely deliberate.
Blwyddyn Newydd Dda! Happy New Year! Felice Nuovo Anno!
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