Dear Friends


As the world's nations sign on to a climate change agreement that may or not mean anything, I'm trying to adjust to the fact we don't have any snow.  The Christmases of my childhood were far from white--I think it snowed once when I was growing up in San Diego, and then only for 10 minutes.  But having passed most of my adult life in Montreal, I've grown accustomed to mounds of snow reflecting back brilliant, frosty light.

That's not the case this grey year, which is why I've chosen a photo of melting snow for the background to this greeting.  It was taken in March when ordinarily the snow begins to clear out, but who knows this year?  Who knows whether 20 years from now we'll even have snow at all?  Some would like that I know, but it would take a whole lot of adjustment. Of course, life requires constant adjustment.  For us this year, adjustment has meant watching our nearest and dearest pass a few milestones and completing some projects that have been under way for a few years.


Lukas--insert drum roll here--handed in his Phd.D thesis on Nietzsche in the fall and will defend it next spring.  In the meantime, he's teaching one philosophy course at the Université de Montréal next term, as well as looking for a more permanent post.  His wife Sophie continues to teach first grade French immersion: she has some very lucky students because she's a great teacher.  Their little guy Thomas turned three in September, talks a mile a minute and is crazy about firemen, construction and hockey.  The photo shows him in happy anticipation of Halloween.



This year Elin had a major music project, playing Henry Purcell with La Nef in concert and then recording the music for  a CD.   In addition to teaching viola da gamba, she works full time at McGill University's Schulich School of Music as Associate for University Advancement.  The photo shows her daughter Jeanne--a real sweetie and quite a clown--the first day of kindergarten: she wasn't excited a bit, of course.  We got to go with her, Elin and Elin's friend Stuart Lee to Jeanne's first Nutcracker performance earlier this month: great fun.

Lee spent a good part of his time "making sawdust:" that is, working on his furniture-making projects.   The highlight this year was a seven-drawer dresser made from yellow birch that he made for Elin.  Next up will be dining room chairs for us and, soon, a dining room table for Lukas and Sophie. 

He also spent much time this summer trying to pin down New Democratic Party candidates for the October Federal election on where they stood on enforcement of the Canada Health Act.  It was an almost thankless work, since the NDP waffled on many issues including this one, and allowed the Liberal party of Justin Trudeau to make a run to the left and win the election.  While I'm very glad that our terrible former Prime Minister Stephen Harper was soundly beaten and on the whole pleased by how Trudeau has performed so far, the NDP collapse was  a great disappointment.


As for me, I finally got my novel River Music published, ten years after I began it.  I also signed a contract with the University of Regina Press for a new non-fiction book that will be out in Spring 2017.  Called Road through Time: The Story of Humanity on the Move, it is about roads as vectors for change and exchange.  To give you a taste of it, here are two photos of many roads I write about, the international highway between Peru and Brazil over the Andes and a Roman road in Portugal.  


And I have a couple of other projects in the works.  One is a novel (working title: Happy Endings) that follows up on one of the characters in River Music.  The other is another non-fiction book tentatively called Unidentical Twins, about states and States that are similar in some ways but also very different.  So far the pairs I'm considering are Vermont and New Hampshire, Alberta and Saskatchewan, the two Vietnams, Burundi and Rwanda and, of course, Canada and the US.  But more about that later....


Just checked the weather forecast--temperatures falling with a chance of flurries early next week.  That's more like it!  But we mustn't let that lull us into not thinking about the big picture.  In many respects the current concern about terrorism is a diversion from bigger battles, fighting inequality at home and around the world and struggling to set things up so we aren't so dependent on carbon fuels. It's not going to be easy, and it's very hard for an individual to figure out how to make a difference.


We'll try though.

Mary