Christmas Letter '13

Nadolig Llawen!               Merry Christmas!                      Buon Natale!

Christmas 2013.

From our home to yours, Family and Friends,

What a pleasure to share a little bit of our lives over the past year at this very special time of year.  I am slow getting this out, more of a New Year greeting than a Christmas greeting.  We hope you are enjoying a full and restful Christmas/New Year season.  2013 has been very much a typical year for us, a happy year with very ordinary challenges.

Tina has settled into her retirement but still takes the occasional casual shift, nursing at VGH.  Ted's health continues as stable, with only occasional colds.  He continues to alternate 3 days of swimming (2000 m. in roughly 40 min.) with 3 days of cycling (nearly 14 km. in roughly 40 min.), with this exercise and prescribed medication, Ted remains well.

Angela completed her studies at Emily Carr University of Art and Design and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in May.  Her graduation show presented more of her remarkable ceramic objects.  She joined the Delta Potters Association and, since graduation, spends much of her time on a potting wheel, at a working table, or with a kiln at either the guild studio in Tsawwassen or her own studio here at home.  Angela still loves to carve her ceramic pieces and the results show ever growing sophistication with freed imagination.  She presents some her works on her ceramics web site, http://angelahopkinsceramics.com.  She and her ceramics classmates from ECUAD remain together as the Dusty Babes Collective (http://www.dustybabes.com/artists.html), taking part in as many art and craft shows as they can enter, including the Yellow Crane Festival at ECUAD last summer and the big Got Craft? Christmas market early in December.  She had the privilege to get selected as the “featured artist” for the month of September at the British Columbia Gallery of Ceramics on Granville Island and had two mugs accepted at the Autumn Cup Show at prestigious Medalta Potteries in Medicine Hat, Alberta.  Angela also participated in the Delta Potters Association Autumn show in October.  Before Christmas, Angela also completed a small two piece commission from Australia.  Now, out of school, Angela and the Dusty Babes strive to find their place among British Columbia ceramic artists.

In May, David completed his mathematical studies at Langara College, earning an Associate of Science degree.  He remains on very much a part time studies program as he moved on to continue at Simon Fraser University in September. David excels in his Mathematics courses, especially with pure Mathematics. Course work of a more pragmatic nature continues to give him more of a struggle.

David continues very active with his music, still studying viola, clarinet, and piano.  He has now moved on from the Delta Youth Orchestra to play with the adult Richmond Orchestra but remains welcome to return as a guest alumnus with the youth orchestra, as he did this Autumn for Classical Cabaret and the opportunity to play Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony, “The Pastorale.”  This symphony holds a very special place in our family’s memories of David’s growing up.  When David was two and a half, Ted gave Tina a CD of the Sixth Symphony that immediately caught David’s fancy.  Every day, at least once a day for two months, our little David would ask to have “Dakoven” played and would stand, enthralled in front of the stereo through the entire symphony.  This was our first indication that music would hold a special place in David’s life.

For the 2013/14 orchestral year, Ted now serves as immediate Past President of the Delta Symphony Society, the sponsor of the Richmond Delta Youth Orchestra (the Society changed the orchestra’s name last spring in recognition of the participation we draw from Richmond).

All of us felt loss when Ted’s half-brother Bud (Edward Joseph Hopkins) died in June at eighty years of age after a long bout of illness that had put him in hospital in January.  We were prepared, yet found this unexpected as he had shown good recovery for weeks prior.  Bud went through a very good day’s physiotherapy, then quietly died in his sleep the following night.  At his specific request we held no memorial service, but, in September, Norman, John, and Ted, along with David and Angela met Bud’s request and took his ashes and those he had kept of his much loved horse, Swedan, up into the Cascade Mountains along Whipsaw Creek off the Hope-Princeton Highway, Bud’s favourite wild place get-away, and scattered them.  We miss him but feel confident he has found a better place.

Our getaway this year was again our usual escape to Cusheon Lake resort on Salt Spring Island, a trip early in the summer for Canada Day, another at the end of summer, and a third, quick trip for the Salt Spring Apple Festival at the end of September.  I had the privilege to find and reconnect with an old schoolmate, John Sutherland, now living on Salt Spring.  We always make this a relaxing time, paddling on the lake or swimming, fossicking at Beddis Beach or Beaver Point, and visiting in Ganges.

Catinka remains very much queen of our house, while Angela’s ducks hold authority over our back yard.  Jemima and Rebbecah have turned out as prolific egg layers, keeping our home well supplied all year long.  Tango remains convinced that he should not let any of us exit the back yard from January to August.

Ted continues to seek players to experiment with his invented team sports of Two Ball and Delta.  His first approach was to schools as their Physical Education and intramural sport programs likely offer the best chance of drawing sufficient groups of players together.  This proved very disappointing as no schools have taken up either game yet.  Ted also gives the games a web presence at http://twoballanddelta.org and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/TwoBallAndDelta.  These have caught the attention of well over three thousand people, world-wide, but he still awaits word of any of them 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 2014.  This will be a remarkable year simply because Ted will mark a half century since his graduation from Southern Okanagan Secondary School.  Wow, amazing!  Just for that occasion he is including more of his former classmates while sending these greetings.

Recent weeks, of course, have filled us with Christmas preparations and Christmas itself.  We hope yours have gone well and we hope you had a Merry and Blessed Christmas and wish you all happiness in the New Year.

With our love,

Ted, Tina, David, and Angela.

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

WestJet Christmas Miracle

My Daughter at Medalta

Juried acceptance and showing at the first International Medalta Cup Show.

On God's Creativity

I recently encountered a link (http://imgur.com/a/pPJmj#0) to a posting of a grade four Science quiz that I thought must surely be a parody.  It turns out to be real, the mother of the child who brought it home sent Snopes.com a message to verify the child as hers and that she will transfer her child to a different school next school year.

“Oh Lord my God When I, in awesome wonder, Consider all the worlds Thy hands have made: I see the stars; I hear the rolling thunder; Thy power throughout The universe displayed.  Then sings my soul, My Saviour, God, to Thee, ‘How great thou art.’”

Every autumn, if I get out to a dark enough night sky, I look out at M 31, the Andromeda Galaxy and the most distant object visible to the naked eye.  I always feel awe at knowing that that the light falling into my eyes from M 31 has taken a little over two million years to reach me.  Yet this is our closest neighbouring spiral galaxy, with thousands of millions of others extending thousands of millions of light years in every direction.  I am reminded that God’s scale is not human scale, God’s scale extends across thousands of millions of cubic light years of space and over thousands of millions of years through time.

When I was a teen, in personal conversation with the Reverend George Searcy, our minister at Oliver United Church, he pointed out that the Bible is not, and does not purport to be, a scientific text.  This freed me to recognize that the knowledge our God given intellect discovers through Science does not threaten faith in God.  Rather it enhances my wonder at God’s creative power.  God’s creative dynamic can most surely encompass evolution by natural selection, just as it involves relativity and quantum mechanics, along with much else still totally unknown to us.

I object to that quiz purporting to be Science, yet containing the utter nonsense of denying God’s own scale with the absurd suggestions that dinosaurs and humans coexisted and that our Earth cannot be a few thousands of millions of years old.

Christmas Letter '12

Nadolig Llawen!                    Merry Christmas!                           Buon Natale!

Christmas 2012.

From our home to yours, Family and Friends,

What a pleasure to share a little bit of our lives over the past year at this very special time of year.  I have rather deliberately scheduled this to come to you on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day depending on where in the world you live (actually, rather ordinary events waylaid us and I did not finish when intended, thus the late arrival).  We hope you are enjoying a full and restful Christmas season.

But for one significant change and a lesser change, 2012 has been very much a typical year for us.  It was a happy year with very ordinary challenges.

Tina continued nursing at Vancouver General Hospital, then took her retirement in June.  She does still take the occasional casual shift.  Tina had looked forward to getting back into her art but has found household projects to which she feels need to give priority.  The New Year should see us convert an area in our basement into a printmaking studio.  Her press awaits her there.

Ted's health was more stable this year, with only occasional colds and one cardiac false alarm just a few days ago.  He continues to alternate 3 days of swimming (2000 m in roughly 40 min) with 3 days of cycling (nearly 14 km in roughly 40 min) and with this exercise, Ted remains generally well.  Ted had a special opportunity to reconnect with an important old friend from his days with the Royal Life Saving Society.  Now in her 90s, Jean Lathwell still lives in her own home and keeps in touch with RLSS developments Commonwealth wide.

David continues his mathematical studies at Langara College.  He remains on very much a part time studies program because of his disability and continues to excel in his Mathematics courses, especially with pure Mathematics. Course work of a more pragmatic nature does give him more of a struggle.

Angela thoroughly enjoys her final year studies at Emily Carr University of Art and Design.  Angela keeps bringing home remarkable ceramic objects.  She is very independent minded at school and takes what she finds useful from her instructors and teaches herself where she feels there are gaps.  Angela loves to carve her ceramic pieces and took part of last summer to go into production in her studio, here at home.  Part of her output included a series of vases featuring various beautifully carved local songbirds.  She took these and other pieces to a summer outdoor art market in Langley.  Compared with other potters displaying at this market, her work was very much high end.  Although she did not sell much, Angela considered this a good learning experience.  She had much greater success at the Autumn student art sale at Emily Carr, selling all her most expensive pieces and most of her other works as well.

David also remains very active with his music, continuing to study viola, clarinet, and piano.  He is now the oldest regular player in the Delta youth Orchestra.  He just loves performing with this orchestra and delays moving on to an adult orchestra.  For the 2012/13 orchestral year, Ted continues as President of the Delta Symphony Society, the sponsor of the Delta youth Orchestra.  The DYO outdid themselves this Autumn with a wonderful Classical Cabaret with guests Infinitus string trio and a truly remarkable Christmas concert featuring Howard Blake’s music for The Snowman.  David just loved playing this special music.

Our getaway this year was again our usual escape to Cusheon Lake resort on Salt Spring Island.  We always make this a relaxing time, paddling on the lake or swimming, fosicking at Beddis Beach or Beaver Point, and visiting in Ganges.

One sad note in 2012, Mother’s Day evening a racoon killed Puddles, one of Angela’s pet ducks.  Tango got left as a lonely duck for a while but June saw the arrival of two Welsh Harlequin ducklings, Rebecca and Jemima,  Once they grew to near full size and could join Tango in the back yard, he became a much happier duck.  Catinka remains very much queen of our house.

Summer us busy with many changes to the back garden, new flower beds, new trees, and refreshed vegetable garden.  Substantial security improvements to Angela’s duck enclosure and a rebuilt night time coop for three ducks instead of two kept Ted well occupied.  The end of summer brought is a change of car.  Marvin, the Mazda WPV we bought in 1992 finally had it’s twenty years catch up with it as our service mechanic (not a dealer) warned us of impending very expensive maintenance that he could not recommend doing.  The car still ran well but he told us we could no longer trust it for any trips away from home.  We dithered a bit, seriously considering taking the expense, but found a replacement in a 2006 MPV, the last year they were built.

Many years ago Ted, rather uncharacteristically since he generally takes very little interest in team sports, hatched an idea of a novel field team sport.  He called it Two Ball and experimented with a bit when he was substitute teaching, but otherwise did not do much with it.  The idea kept rattling around in his head though and gradually developed into two games, Two Ball and Delta.  This year, Ted finally decided to do something with the ideas, seeking potential players to experiment with the games, and published rules of the games.  Anyone on Facebook can find out more at https://www.facebook.com/TwoBallAndDelta?ref=hl and the rules are available free at https://itunes.apple.com/ca/book/two-ball-and-delta/id518412984?mt=11, https://itunes.apple.com/ca/book/two-ball-and-delta-duplicate/id549644267?mt=11, or at the Two Ball and Delta web site, http://twoballanddelta.org/styled/index.html.  You are most welcome to have a look and draw the games to the attention of sport minded people you may know..

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.

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

Thoughts on Electing Legislative Representatives

As one who lives in a riding with an elected independent MLA, I would like to remind British Columbians of just what a vote does. We are voting for a person to represent us in our legislature. The legislature then creates a government from among its elected members and holds that government responsible to itself. We are not a republic and very rightly do not directly elect a government separately from the legislature. Vote the person; do not vote the party. Vote the person and you get a member representing you and your riding into the legislature; vote the party and you get a member representing that party back back to you and your riding from the legislature. A certain fashionable desire currently exists for proportional representation; sadly this desire is based on vote for the party thinking. Proportional representation will just perpetuate party structures (and place into the legislature people who have not necessarily received votes for them as a person) while a single transferrable ballot (multiple member not needed) will diminish parties, as it did the last time British Columbia used it. The real reform needed is to undo Dick McBride's big mistake when he introduced party politics into B. C. a century ago. Reduce the role of parties and eliminate party discipline and we can initiate policy right in the legislature, where it belongs, rather than on the convention floors and back rooms of political parties, have real debate focussed on actual issues rather party positions, and strengthen the independence of legislative committees.