This
year, Mira was vigorous in her support of the Democratic candidate.
She maintains her US citizenship (I switched and am now firmly a
Canadian). She made sure to vote for Obama, and went to the Toronto
Democratic election-eve party. The first black US President is an
important step. Obama may be untested, but he seems open to new ideas
and new solutions. He's less likely to try yesterday's solutions to
today's problems. Canada's Conservative PM has effectively forced a
strong leader on the opposition Liberal party and is now being forced
to reach out to all parties for advice on how to address the Canadian
version of the global economic crisis. That economic crisis continues
to unfold.
This has been the first year in which I paid active attention to stock markets, made possible by our broadband Internet connection. The derivatives chaos and its unfolding market consequences seem to be challenging the underpinnings of our financial system. The past is not always a good indicator of the future – there are discontinuities which can invalidate any smooth mathematical model. We're living with the consequences triggered by the sub-prime discontinuity.
We are in reasonably good shape. A few years ago, we simplified things by flipping most of our assets to annuities. We lost the recent market gains, ... but have also lost the more recent, and dramatic, market declines. Which leaves us in not bad shape, with only a nagging concern that governments may inspire high inflation to reduce the debt they are acquiring in their efforts to turn around the economy. The outcome is uncertain, but not overly worrisome.
Spring
arrived, with little hint of the economic chaos that the Fall would
bring. Paul and Jonathan made their way to Toronto for what has
become a welcomed annual visit. This year, Vinnie came along – he's
part of their extended family group. The snow disappeared from our
cottage, and the waterfowl returned to the lake. It was warm enough
for an early Spring meal in the sunshine.
Our “big” trip this
year was a few days with Mira's cousins in Germany and then a week in
Budapest. Mira's
cousins are ethnic Germans who repatriated back to West Germany after
the war in 1970. They settled outside Heilbronn (near Stuttgart). Most of Heilbronn was
leveled by allied bombing, but the central church has been fully
restored. Here's a photo of Mira and
her cousin, Maiti, talking in
that church. This was also an opportunity for Mira to see some of the
family photos that her cousins had brought with them as they left
Romania.
Budapest,
and Hungary, have always been significant for us. My parents were
born in Hungary and Hungarian was one of the languages spoken as Mira was
growing up. But we had never been for a visit. We didn't know quite
what to expect. Mira's Hungarian was good enough that native speakers
regularly answered her in Hungarian when she spoke to them. And
Budapest is a beautiful European capital, albeit not fully recovered
from its Communist interregnum, nor fully adjusted to the global
free-trade economy.
I
don't have any active connections to family in Hungary, but Mira has
multiple connections through her sister Doris and her husband Zoltan.
Zoltan's brother Laci and his wife Kati invited us for a meal in
their home in Budapest. This was a high point of our visit – it was
great to connect to “family” in a foreign city. We went to both an
opera and a symphony concert. The Hungarians complained that all of
their best singers were bought out by the West, but it was still a
solid, international class opera performance.
It
was just about the right amount of time in Budapest. We had enough
time to explore several interesting parts of the city, but not so
much time that I would begin to pine for Toronto. Back in Canada,
Mira's attention turned to the cottage and its need for an internal
face lift. Mira painted the first level a light color (I really did
offer to help, but she wanted to do it herself) and we replaced the
two couches that we acquired with the cottage. The new look includes
a great Serbian cilim wall hanging, a gift from Mira's sister. I was more fixated
on replacing our old boat – last year, it failed in a way likely to
be expensive to fix.
With
Mira's help, I acquired a new used boat from a dealer just down the
road. It's just a bit larger and just a bit more comfortable than the
old boat. The cottage and the new boat were ready for visitors. The
first to arrive was Dora, Mira's niece, her husband, and their twin
boys. This was their second visit to us and, fortunately, they were
able to stay long enough that we could spend time with them in the
city and at the cottage. We hope this will become a regular annual
visit. We're looking forward to watching the twins grow up.
This year also saw Doris and Zoltan visit with us for a week. Mira and Doris have always been close, and we feel privileged to be included in many of their family events. But this was the first time that we had a chance to spend an extended period of time together – one of the important benefits of being (semi-) retired. It was a good visit. We spent a day and night at Stratford, seeing an excellent production of the Music Man. And we spent time at the cottage.
There's
an interesting story which accompanies this photo. The maiden name of
Mira's and Doris's mother was Bertani. A few years ago, we found this
box (with wine inside) in our local Liquor Control Board Outlet. It
was too good to pass up. Doris and Zoltan had never seen it. This led
to an Internet search, which identified the country estate near Verona, Italy shown i
n
this photo. Zoltan was convinced that this must be the Bertani family
estate, and should be open to an ancestral claim by Doris and Mira.
Interesting speculation.
We
returned to Stratford, this time to see a production of Hamlet.
Priscialla, an old friend from our days in Cleveland came to visit
and we took advantage of her visit for a second trip out to
Stratford. Both Hamlet and The Music Man had received excellent
reviews. This Hamlet did not disappoint. It's interesting how we seem
to reconnect to our past as we get older. For years, we didn't see
Priscilla. Now we're fortunate to see her more or less regularly. And
other old friends from the past have reconnected. Anita Klein, whom I
knew back in high school, came for her first visit to us in Toronto.
Must be another of the benefits of being (semi-)retired.
It
seems somehow fitting that, given the financial mess in which we find
ourselves, we looked to cleaning out our septic tank at the cottage.
We've owned the cottage for almost eight years now (how time flies)
and had yet to clean out the tank. With considerable encouragement
from Mira, I finally located the tank, ... under the deck at the
entrance to the cottage. Once I knew where it was, it was a simple
process to clear enough room to allow it to be pumped out. It
happened on one of the last days before the temperature began to
drop. It should be good for another few years.
Would that the process of cleaning out our global financial mess were as simple. It looks like we're in for continued financial turbulence. Fortunately, the simpler things of life continue to satisfy, ... like the sunset at our cottage.
Bob
Fabian
2008
December 21