POSTING # 6: The Ice Wine Harvest; Mince Tarts in Hilton Head; Canadians Celebrating the U.S Presidential Inauguration; Arrogant Bankers; Short Stuff

The Ice Wine Harvest

While we were on holiday and enjoying the sun in South Carolina, we did take time--- now and then---to worry about the ice wine harvest back in the Virgil area. (I know this may seem hard to believe but you’re just going to have to trust us.)

Picking ice wine grapes is a tricky business. As you know, they stay on the vines after the normal grapes are picked, waiting until they have frozen and thawed enough times to bring the sugar and acid content up to the desired levels. When the berries become brown they are ready to harvest but the actual picking has to wait until some night when the temperature is -10C or colder.

Some vineyards had picked their grapes during a cold spell in December but other vineyard managers felt the grapes weren’t quite ready and gambled on a cold spell in January.

The gamble paid off. The second week of January was ideal for picking and the 2008 crop is now safely in fermentation vats.

I hear that the yield was large and the winemakers expect that 2008 will prove to be a very good year for ice wine.

I like to think that our worrying helped.



Mince Tarts in Hilton Head

In the Posting #5, I mentioned that we were taking mincemeat with us so I could have my 12 tarts between Christmas and New Years. Our plan, you will recall, was to buy frozen tart shells and fill them with good Canadian mincemeat.

But, there were no tart shells to be had in Hilton Head! And we weren’t about to try to make pastry dough in a skimpily-equipped vacation kitchen.

Happily, Mrs. Smith came to our rescue. One supermarket had two frozen mincemeat pies made by Mrs. Smith. Pat used her skills in geometry and quilting to calculate, with great precision, slices of pie that would be exactly equal to a normal tart.

According to Pat’s calculations, I have had the equivalent of at least 14 tarts.

We feel well prepared for 2009.

Canadians Celebrating the U.S Presidential Inauguration


After cheering, holding our breath, biting our nails etc. for Obama last fall, it didn’t seem right just to sit in our rented condo and watch the inauguration on television. It was a time to be with others. But, how to do that?

Then we saw an advertisement announcing an inauguration lunch at a local restaurant, Dye’s Gullah Fixin’s, that we had visited the week before. (The Gullah are descendants of blacks who settled along the coast of North and South Carolina after the Civil War. Dye offers some wonderful dishes from her Gullah ancestors including light, rich corn bread served with home-made sugar cane syrup, fried oysters, and peach dump---sliced peaches are ‘dumped’ into a baking dish with batter.)

The lunch was sponsored by the Beaufort County Democratic Club South of the Broad (the Broad is a river that divides Beaufort County between the city of Beaufort in the north and Hilton Head in the south). We sent an email to the organizer (to be honest, we were a little economical with the truth and didn’t say we were Canadians just in case…). He replied saying he had reserved tickets for us but warned the restaurant would be crowded.

We got there early and found space at a table with two other couples, from Pittsburgh. We shook hands, “Hi, I’m John and this is my wife Pat.”

One of the women said, “You’re Canadians.”

Pat looked at her, “How did you know? We haven’t said, ‘Out’ ‘About’ or ‘Eh’?”

“It’s your accent.”

Pat explained that we weren’t going to say we were Canadians for fear they would think we were crashing their party.

“Oh, you’re very welcome.” (And, indeed, we couldn’t have been treated more warmly.)

We learned later that the woman who ‘outed’ us attends the Shaw Festival with her husband every May and October. She certainly knows her Canadian accents!

The restaurant filled quickly and the organizer kept wandering around, wringing his hands, and saying, “I hope the Fire Marshall doesn’t drop in.”

We noticed there was a reporter with a notebook interviewing three women at a table behind us. Here is part of her article as it appeared in the Island Packet on the day after the inauguration. The reporter captured very well the mood and emotions of the party.


Julie Cordray of Sun City Hilton Head is black and grew up in South Carolina during the civil rights era.
Ina Takashima of Hilton Head Island is a Japanese-American who was incarcerated with her parents in an internment camp during World War II.
Lena Epps Brooker is a Native American who grew up in a part of North Carolina that had three-way segregation separating whites, blacks and "Indians."
“For the three women who sat among a larger group of friends, Obama's swearing-in was the culmination of lifelong hopes -- hopes their parents told them to hold onto from the time they were girls -- that one day a racial minority would win the White House.
"My parents told me that change would come, that barriers would come down," Brooker said. "Today, it did."
"Minorities are in board rooms and running businesses," she continued. "This is the last barrier. It's been reached. What my parents told me about -- it's here."
Cordray said she felt a "sense of completeness" as Obama took the oath. "It empowered all of us," the Georgetown native said.
Takashima still had tears running down her face 10 minutes after the new president finished his inaugural speech.
"This means the world to me," she said. "After suffering prejudice and hatred in my life, this day has finally come."
The three women weren't the only ones moved by the historic inauguration.
Obama supporters at Tuesday's gathering watched the event on two televisions placed on opposite sides of the small Gullah restaurant. One was propped up on a yellow ladder, a microphone perched next to it to amplify the sound. Beneath the television hung a poster with an image of Obama's face and the word "hope."
People stood and wept and cheered during the swearing in and after the inaugural speech. They sang the national anthem along with the United States Navy Band Sea Chanters as though the Hilton Head gathering was actually taking place at the Capitol.

It seemed to me that the whites, although pleased with the election of the first African-American, were rejoicing primarily because the Bush years were over and because the Obama victory promised more responsible national and international policies.

For the non-whites, the inauguration meant all of that but something else. They were celebrating the beginning of a new era, an era that promised greater fairness in the pursuit of the happiness promised nearly 250 years ago in the Declaration of Independence.

A remarkable day.

A remarkable nation!

Arrogant Bankers

The media are full these days of stories about Wall Street Bankers, their greed, conceit and, often, plain stupidity.
It remind me of a story that a friend tells of a run-in she had a few years ago with her banker. She lives in a small U.S. town and was having a contractor replace her sidewalk, steps and patio. When he had finished he gave her a bill for the price they had agreed upon---$7000---and asked if she could give it to him in cash (I hope neither she nor he is ever offered a job in Washington that requires them to reveal all their tax histories!).
Our friend went to her bank, was greeted by name by the teller and gave her a withdrawal slip for the $7000.
The teller started when she saw the amount, “I’m sorry but I can’t give you that much cash”.
“Why not? There’s enough money to cover it.”
“I just can’t.”
“But it’s my money.”
“I better let you see the manager.”
Our friend, keeping her cool remarkably well, sat down in front of the manager’s desk. He engaged in some small talk about her family and then said, “Now tell me dear, what are you going to do with this money?”
Our friend told us that she considered and rejected several options in the second or two after the banker’s question. Should she tell him the truth? Should she tell him it was none of his business? Should she tell him that his question was insulting and demeaning?
In the end, she leaned forward and whispered in a confidential tone, “Well, you know what young lovers are like.”
The banker had the decency to turn red. He quickly initialed the withdrawal slip and passed our friend back to the teller.

Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)

Last month, coming back from a stroll by the ocean, Pat and I were crossing the narrow wooden ramp over the dunes and met a couple with two Prince Charles Spaniels. The man was about 20 feet ahead of his wife, being pulled along by a lovely dog, with a tennis ball in its mouth. The dog paused to sniff Pat, keeping the ball in its mouth. Pat leaned over, let the dog smell her hand, and then ruffled his fur and told him what a fine dog he was.

Suddenly, the dog with the woman began to bark furiously. The woman tried to shush it but finally had to pick it up. We left the man and walked to the woman and the still-barking dog.

The woman frowned at us and said accusingly, “You touched her sister.”

We didn’t know what to say.

Then the dog stopped barking and leaned over to sniff us. After the hand-sniffing ritual, we told her what a beautiful dog she was and played with her ears. If she had been a cat, she would have been purring.

The women, a little friendlier now, told us that her dog couldn’t stand anyone paying attention to her sister.

Apparently, sibling rivalry is not just a human condition.

We asked if her dog also liked to play fetch on the beach.

“No, she can’t be bothered. She just chases the birds.”

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Years ago when the children were young, we went for a swim at an ocean beach that was new to us. The waves were fairly high and I wasn’t sure whether there might be an undertow. The two boys knew about swimming in the ocean but they were getting quite far out. I thought it would be a good idea to give them a warning.

“Watch for an undertow”, I shouted.

Our daughter (who was younger than the boys, didn’t have any ocean experience and had no idea what an undertow was) stopped what she was doing. She decided that it would be a good idea to repeat the warning (she had a fine set of lungs and as is normal with youngest children she loved a chance to tell her older siblings what to do). She let out two good shouts, repeating what she thought she had heard.

Then she turned to me, with a growing look of horror, “What’s an undertoad, Dad?’

(I still wonder what kind of ugly, threatening reptile her imagination had conjured up.)

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See you next Sunday for more stories from our family’s universe!

POSTING # 5---CHRISTMAS STORIES

POSTING # 5:
Niagara-on-the-Lake at Christmas: Henderson Christmas’s; Hunter Christmas’s; Henderson-Hunter Christmas’s; The Magic of Mince Tarts; Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)


Niagara-on-the-Lake at Christmas

One of the prettiest Christmas sights is Niagara-on-the-Lake at night.

Pat and I drove through the town the other night and marveled at how beautiful it is. The masses of tourists have gone, replaced by a few Christmas shoppers bustling from shop to shop. The stores give off a warm and cozy glow---not garish or trashy---and the trees and shrubs along the main street are decorated discreetly with strings of white lights.

A horse beside the Prince of Wales Hotel stomps its feet waiting for a young couple on a get-away weekend who would like to snuggle under a buffalo robe and tour the town.

The local Chamber of Commerce claims that Niagara-on-the-Lake is the prettiest town in Ontario, or perhaps Canada. From their advertising, it seems they are referring to the town in the summer, with flowers in hanging baskets and well-tended parks. And it is lovely then.

But Niagara-on-the-Lake at Christmas time is wonderful, soothing, reassuring, and magical.

Henderson Christmas’s

On Christmas day, the tradition in Pat’s family was to open the presents from Santa Claus and from each other in their home in Aurora, have breakfast and then set off for the farm in Oro, near Barrie where Pat’s mother grew up.

For the first 6 or 7 years of Pat’s life, until road plowing improved, Pat’s father drove them to Murdoch’s Service Station on Highway 11, north of Barrie. There, they waited for Pat’s grandfather to come in a sleigh to get them. The family would load the gifts for the grandparents, Aunt Margaret, Uncle Bob and the cousins onto the sleigh. Pat’s grandfather gave them warm robes and shouted, “Gett yup” to the horse.

When they arrived, Pat and her family would rush out of the cold into the solid brick farmhouse built by Pat’s great grandfather and revel in the smells of a real Christmas tree and cooking food.

Later on when the road snow plowing improved, they would drive right to the farm.

But some years there were problems. Barrie is in the middle of the Ontario Snow Belt and cars then were not as reliable as they are today. Sometimes Highway 11 was blocked by huge snow drifts and they had to turn around and go home to a Christmas dinner of bacon and eggs or ‘chicken a la king’ (toast with cream of chicken soup mixed up with some dead chicken leftovers.

On one occasion, they spent the Christmas day in an unheated garage in Barrie waiting for the mechanic, who had kindly agreed to forego his own Christmas dinner, to fix their car.

Pat says, “A feeling of fun and adventure prevailed on these occasions----the very idea of having bacon and eggs for Christmas dinner had us howling with laughter”.


Hunter Christmas’s

My family always celebrated Christmas at our home in Arthur.

During the year, Dad was normally serious and stern at dinner, but Christmas dinners were different and I remember them fondly. The ‘dinner’ was at noon after we had opened the gifts, passed around bowls of nuts, chocolates and oranges. We would start dinner by pulling Christmas crackers, reciting the silly jokes and putting on the ridiculous paper hats (dad included).

Dad would have a glass of sherry, the only meal in the year that Mom permitted any alcohol at the table---she didn’t want to set a bad example for the kids.

Mom would bring in the roasted goose and slice it. (It was always a goose, never a turkey. This was part of Dad’s heritage---his father had a bakery in Wales and he would roast the geese for all his customers, deliver them around the town and only then did the Hunters sit down to their own goose dinner.)

For dessert, we would have rich, dark plum pudding, made by Aunt Millie who lived in Perth, and mince tarts.

I remember one or two Christmas’s when the monthly cheque from the Ontario Provincial Police didn’t arrive on time. We were not poor but despite pretty careful money-management there was usually little money left by cheque time. If the cheque that normally arrived around the third week of the month was held up in the mail or by a snow storm, there was a problem, and the problem was magnified if this happened in December.

I can remember Mom explaining to us on one occasion that Santa would not be able to bring us the hockey sweater, skates, toboggan or whatever we had asked for. It was hard to understand why Santa with his unlimited resources would not be able to call at our house.

One Christmas, Mom decided it was time to introduce a little culture to the four men in her house (Dad, my two brothers and me).

On a visit to Guelph, our nearest city, she bought a 12 inch, 78 RPM record of John Charles Thomas, a famous American baritone, singing the hymn, Jerusalem.

Mom played the record and we were all impressed. He had an amazing voice.

Then one of us, I forget who, looked at the B side, something Mom had forgotten to do. It was Thomas singing Kansas City from the musical Oklahoma.

One of the verses goes:

Everything's up to date in Kansas City
They've gone about as fer as they can go
They got a big theatre they call a burleque
For fifty cents you could see a dandy show!
One of the gals is fat and pink and pretty
As round above as she was round below
I could swear that she was padded from her shoulder to her heel
But later in the second act when she began to peel,
She proved that everything she had was absolutely real!
She went about as fer as she could go
Yes, Sir! She went about as fer as she could go!

Dad smiled broadly, we boys giggled and Mom looked down at her fingernails, as much as to say, “That’s the last time I try to bring any culture into this family”.




Henderson-Hunter Christmas’s

We have generally had our Christmas’s at home but the dates have bounced around a bit, to fit in with people’s work schedules and relatives’ commitments. This year, we are in the midst of our Christmas as this posting is being finalized.

Our tradition has been to have pancakes and maple syrup first thing and then open the gifts under what was always a real tree until recent years. (Our trees were usually bought at the last moment and often looked a bit like something Charlie Brown might have selected. A neighbour up the street looked at our tree one year, shook her head, and said, “It’s people like you who give real trees a bad name.”)

The trees were decorated with a mish-mash of treasured items. Arab headdresses I had brought from a trip to Lebanon when the children were young, kindergarten creations made from toilet rolls and pipe cleaners, and assorted balls, glass angels and other bangles acquired around the world---all items rich in memories.

Early on, our daughter, Jen, appointed herself the distributer of gifts, even before she could read the names on the gift cards. What a wonderful job she did, making sure that everyone got a gift, including our dog Cassidy, before starting another round.

This early demonstration of family organization has carried on and developed, and everyone looks to Jen (and Pat, her husband) for the planning of family events.


The Magic of Mince Tarts

As I mentioned earlier, we always had mince tarts at Christmas time and I grew up believing that to have 12 months of good luck in the upcoming year you had to eat 12 mince tarts between Christmas and New Years. If you ate only 11, you would be OK until the end of November, but watch out for December!

Now, part of me likes to think that I am a rational, no-nonsense, non-superstitious person, but there is another part that doesn’t walk under ladders, that ‘knocks’ wood, and dodges black cats (except when I am in Britain, where a black cat crossing your path is considered good luck---go figure).

If there were a support group for superstitious behavior, I would have to say, “My name is John, I believe in mince tarts”.

It is hard to know where this belief in mince tarts came from---perhaps from my Welsh, Scottish or Yorkshire roots.

Or perhaps there is another explanation. As far back as I can trace our family tree, the Hunters were all master bakers. Did the guild of bakers dream up this idea a few centuries ago just to boost year-end sales?

(By the way, the Wikipedia Encyclopedia claims that in the 17th century, Oliver Cromwell, that Puritan spoilsport, outlawed the eating of mince tarts on Christmas Day, because, I assume, he was worried that the succulence of a warm tart would distract people from the religious significance of the day.)

Anyway, I brought this idea of the magic of mince tarts to our marriage and although Pat grumbled a good bit about getting out the rolling pin each December, she did it. I got my 12 mince tarts and although our fortunes went up and down, overall we have done pretty well.

Truth be told, Pat has bought into the idea so much that most years she forces me to eat 13 or 14 tarts just to be sure I haven’t miscounted. It should be noted that she has never joined me in the dozen of tarts tradition---she really doesn’t enjoy mince tarts.


All of which brings us to Christmas 2002. Pat and I were in Baku, Azerbaijan, where I was heading a project to reduce corruption in the public service (I can guarantee that future postings will have some stories about that experience).

We had gone out for dinner on Christmas day (to an Azeri restaurant---no turkey with cranberry sauce). As soon as I woke on Boxing Day, I thought, “We have forgotten mince tarts!”

Off we went to find some mince tarts or at least some mincemeat. Grocery stores in Baku had never heard of mince tarts or mincemeat. We kept getting shunted to ground meat in their butchery section.

Getting desperate, we went to the restaurant in the Radisson Hotel---a favourite of western expatriates. The chef said they had made mince tarts for a special Christmas dinner the day before but the tarts were all gone.

Could they bake some more? No, they were too busy preparing for New Years. Could they sell us some mincemeat. No!

We decided that we had made a good faith effort, that the fates would hopefully take that into account, and wouldn’t punish us. We had tried.

And anyway, it was just a superstition, wasn’t it.

The first indication that the mince tart fates were annoyed with me came on the evening of January 10th. Hans (not his real name), a German lawyer arrived in Baku. He was to help me by re-writing public service legislation to prevent (or at least reduce) corruption in the hiring, promotion and firing of Azerbaijan public servants. He arrived with all kinds of legal texts---plus a very high temperature.

It turned out that he had had an intermittent temperature in Germany after returning from a Christmas holiday in Kenya. His temperature would be normal during the day but high at night. His doctor told him it was just a virus.

I suspected malaria especially after he told me that he had not taken anti-malarial drugs while in Kenya---because, he said, he wanted to be able to drink and one can’t drink alcohol while taking those pills.

We took him the next day to one of the two clinics that western oil company employees used (there is a lot of drilling for oil in the Caspian Sea off Baku). His temperature was normal and his blood test showed no malarial infection. The Azeri doctor (trained in Moscow) thought it was probably a virus---take Aspirin, drink plenty of fluids and get lots of sleep.

Hans wasn’t sleeping, wasn’t eating much and was getting weaker and weaker, and I was getting more and more alarmed. Finally one night when his temperature was high, we took him to the other clinic. The doctor was a South African who had worked in the Canadian north and, more importantly, in Indonesia where malaria was common.

He immediately suspected malaria and the blood tests confirmed that Hans did indeed have malaria and not just that but a particularly nasty type that if not treated promptly could destroy organs. The doctor explained that blood tests can only detect malaria when the temperature is high---when the temperature falls it means that the ‘bad guys’ have temporarily left the blood stream and hidden in body tissue.

The doctor gave him a drug that he said would help but the best drug wasn’t available in Azerbaijan. He said we should use medical evacuation to get Hans back to Germany right away (a medevac jet with a doctor and a nurse could fly in from Moscow and take him to Germany).

At that point Hans told us that his travel insurance didn’t cover medical evacuation. His contract with the project included funds for insurance, but he had opted not to buy that insurance, and, instead, had pocketed the money.

He told us he couldn’t afford the $100,000 cost of an evacuation. He couldn’t even afford the $15,000 for a nurse to accompany him on a commercial flight to Germany.

Right!

His doctor took me aside, “This is really serious. He has to get back to Germany right away. He’s not infectious---Malaria is spread by mosquitoes. Get him on a commercial flight, tonight if you can.”

I called the agency in Germany that Hans worked with and the official said that if I could get Hans on a plane for the four hour flight, he would have a doctor and ambulance waiting when the plane arrived in Frankfurt.

Pat and I took Hans back to his hotel, packed his belongings and set off to the airport. Hans was wearing a brown, wool duffle coat with the hood up. He kept dozing off but I would wake him and coach him on how to behave at the airport.

“You will have to put the hood down.”

“But I’m cold.”

“It doesn’t matter. You’ve got to convince the airline people you are OK to travel. Put the hood down, stand up straight, and don’t shuffle.” (Pat says that I added, “Right now you look like an idiot!” She remembers thinking that that was out of character for me, but it was a pretty stressful time.)

At the airport we helped him through the outgoing customs screening and then just watched and held our breath as he approached the airline counter. He held himself together until he had checked his bags, and got his boarding pass. Then the stiffening seemed to go out of him, he slouched, put his hood up and shuffled off, out of sight, toward the departure lounge.

We waited until the plane had left, just to make sure.

The next day the agency phoned to say he had arrived safely and was now in hospital.

A week of so later the agency sent us an email saying that Hans was now at home and recovering well. The agency thanked Pat and me for our help, saying, “If you had not done what you did, the result would not have been good.”

Looking back on it, we were enormously lucky that the SARS epidemic did not become headline news until several months after Hans was safely home.

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The mince tart fates had one more nasty surprise for us at Baku.

Six weeks after Hans left, I developed some aches, pains and a temperature. I thought it was just a virus (shades of Hans!!), perhaps a cold or maybe at worst the ‘flu.

A friend working on another project called to ask how I was. Pat chatted with him and then I got out of bed to tell him it was nothing and I would soon be back to work.

Then, I started feeling dizzy and collapsed on the floor. When I came to, Pat was shouting at the friend telling him to come over right away.

It must have been a terrible time for Pat, not knowing what had happened to me---a stroke, heart attack, or worse (at one point she thought I had stopped breathing).

The friend arrived with an Azeri colleague with a big SUV. I was bundled into it and Pat told the driver to take us to the clinic with the South African doctor. The Azeri fellow didn’t know the way to the clinic---while Pat knew exactly how to get their because of our trips with Hans---but he was reluctant to take directions from a foreigner. After all, it was his city. In the midst of caring for me, Pat had to shout and argue with him.

We got to the clinic in record time and the driver was clearly impressed with Pat’s knowledge of the tricky streets in that part of Baku. He was one of many fine Azeris we met during our stay in Azerbaijan.

After tests, the doctor said that I had just fainted, that I had prostatitis, a bacterial infection of the prostate, and prescribed a heavy dose of CIPRO. He said I would feel lousy for a week or so but would recover fully in a few weeks.

As he was putting away his equipment, the doctor said he was quitting and returning the next day to South Africa. He wasn’t sure who would replace him at the clinic. One of his reasons for quitting was that he wasn’t sure how he would be looked after if he became ill in Baku. Not reassuring.

The prostatitis was the last straw. I had been having fights with the project contractor on how to manage the project and now with the illness and the uncertainty of medical care, I decided that the time had come to part company. The contractor agreed (I think they were getting fed up with my insistence on dotting ‘I’s” and crossing ‘T’s’ on contracts with local employees), found a replacement and Pat and I returned home.

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So, the events of Baku convinced us that the mince tart fates are not to be toyed with.

We are leaving for South Carolina on Boxing Day and. I will only have time for a couple of tarts before leaving for the South. We are not sure that tarts or mincemeat will be available in the land of the pecan pie so we are going to lug along some President’s Choice mincemeat and will buy prefab tart shells!



Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)

Brother Jim tells a story about a long-ago Christmas. He had written a letter to Santa asking for a sleigh, the kind of sleigh he had seen at the local hardware store. Unfortunately, when Mom went to the store to get the sleigh she was told that they had just sold the last one.

Mom must have been heartbroken, must have wondered what to do. In the end, she prepared a letter to Jim from Santa that started off “Dear Jim”. Santa said that he had got Jim’s letter and thought he would be able to provide a sleigh but things had come up, and he was so sorry.

Jim says that if he received the sleigh, he would probably have forgotten all about that Christmas.

But he has never forgotten the letter he got from Santa.

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We always got Cassidy a hermetically sealed tin of yellow tennis balls for Christmas, to replace the tired, grey slobber-stained balls from the previous Christmas. When the presents had been put out under the tree, Cassidy would circle around until he sniffed the tennis ball container. He would lie for hours on the floor, shivering, his nose pointing at his present.

When Jen put his present in front of him, he would tear away the wrapping paper and then look for someone to open the can.

Once he had one of the new balls, he would take off across the floor playing his version of hockey, batting the ball back and forth between his front paws. Sometimes he would forget and grab the ball in his mouth, a move that wasn’t permitted by the rules he had developed for his game.

Over time, he had discovered that if he kept an ear in his mouth he wouldn’t be tempted to grab the ball. So, he would swing his head back and forth until he could grab one of the floppy ears in his mouth and then resume stick-handling (paw-handling?) holding the ear firmly in his mouth.


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We once got Cassidy a soft rubber toy that squeaked. As he was sniffing under the tree for his tennis balls, he stepped on the wrapped toy. It squeaked and he yelped and jumped back.

He got his revenge after the presents were opened. He chewed the toy until the metal squeaker fell out and then pranced around with the vanquished toy in his mouth.


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THANK YOU----SEE YOU AGAIN ON SUNDAY, FEBRUARY, 8

I am grateful for the kind comments about Letter from Virgil and for the memory-jogging suggestions.

It is great fun rummaging through my attic of memories.

Pat and I are taking off for the next few weeks---the next posting will be uploaded on Feb. 8.

We wish everyone a wonderful holiday season and a super 2009.