There are times when it's best to keep your eyes on the sky and to let the rest tumble down. Or so it seems on this December day when the early morning sky is fresh-scrubbed blue, there is a coating of fresh snow on everything, and the tips of next summer's greenery show above the parapet.


That attitude will be necessary next year as Canadians have to figure out a way to defeat Stephen Harper. His minority government has never represented the majority of the country (just look at the election results) but by targetting particular groups he's been able to act like it does. The situation has resonances with what happened South of the Border in the midterm elections: nobody on the progressive side of the political spectrum can figure out how to work around the obfuscation, nastiness and divisiveness spewed by their opponents.

The political situation is almost enough to make you decide to concentrate on cultivating your own garden. Yet if you give up nothing gets done. Keeping your eyes figuratively on the buds lying dormant on winter branches helps keep you going.

On a personal level, that's true too. We had eleven terrific months but November 30 things fell apart in a rather dramatic way.
For more than three decades we've lived in a row house built nearly a century ago, but that afternoon a fire (electrical? we don't know) broke out in the house just to the north. By the time the firemen were called that house was a near-total loss inside, and the heat and smoke were damaging our house as well as the one on the other side.

In the end, nobody was hurt and we've lost relatively little definitively, but we're out of the house for a miniumum of 2-3 months because of smoke and collateral damage. Our appreciation of the hardships faced by people who find themselves homeless because of war or disaster has grown exponentially.

The picture of the blue sky was taken from the top bedroom in the quite nice apartment the insurance company found for us. There is room for office space for me and for Lee's photographic endeavors and for all of us to get together for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

We will be seven this year instead of six, because--as announced Dec. 24, 2009 to our delighted surprise--Elin and Emmanuel decided to be fruitfull and multiply. Their daughter Jeanne was born August 26, and she is as wonderful as you might expect. Elin also finished her doctorate in performance at the Université de Montréal while Emmanuel spent the late spring and summer as a guide/interpretator at the Parks Canada fur trade historic site, and doing presentations on 18th century New France in schools and universities. A very productive year!

Lukas and Sophie have also been very busy. Ace teacher that she is, Sophie now has a challenging class of first graders in French immersion. She had been headed for a long-term substitute post in a second grade class, but the week before school started she was offered this new group which may turn into a permanent position.What lucky first-graders! It has been fascinating to hear her talk about the strategies she's using to get through to them.

Lukas is advancing on his Ph.D in philosophy. While he'll get it through the Université de Montréal, he has a thesis co-director in France and spent two weeks in Paris in October (during considerable and very interesting protests over pension reform) meeting with him. He was able to stay with Emmanuel's brother and family, which made the trip doubly interesting. He and Sophie are hoping that she'll be able to accompany him at some point when he goes to consult with his prof again.

To the right, is Jeanne at three and a half weeks, being held in place by her grandfather on top of his woodworking project that took nearly as long as her gestation. Lee began consulting with Elin and Emmanuel about what they wanted in the way of a piece of furniture last Christmas day, he bought the wood in January, and started work in earnest in March. He has several other projects in the works--and luckily none of his wood inventory or tools were damaged in the fire except by smoke and dust--but until things are cleaned out at the house, he'll probably turn to photography to keep himself out of mischief.

We had the book launch for Making Waves: The Continuing Portuguese Adventure the Wednesday before the fire, and one of my first thoughts when what was happening began to dawn on me was that least our party was Wednesday Nov. 24, not the following Wednesday, Dec. 1.

But, O irony!, it turns out that the place we're now living is not only three blocks away from the bar where we had the party, but also it's owned by a Brazilian. There is a Brazilian flag on the wall of one of the bedrooms, we found a famous photograph of São Paulo in a closet, and several bookshelves of books in Portuguese. (For more things Portuguese, check out the Facebook page and the blog I started to keep working on my Portuguese A Aventura Portuguesa.)

And that's about it from us--quite a year!

Do hope that you had good things comparable to our high points, and none comparable to our low ones.

Boas festas and best wishes for 2011 on all fronts.

Mary