What is more provincial than a round-robin newsletter designed to fob off the 100s of people to whom you owe letters? Here is a sample at hand from one of our editors' wandermundts in the Antipodes, far from the sound of perpetual war and economic collapse in what once was^@ the U.S. of A. It is offered as a specimen of middle-class myopia in the face of universal doom incurred by allowing religious maniacs and Ohio-Floridian zombies to vote en masse^@. Yes, there is another hemisphere, Alice, and no, you don't fall UP if you go there. --Ed.
^@I condemn these intemperate sayings. Jeess! --Another ed.

Reached R. and L. S.’s home near Cuscawilla (the resort at which he is the executive chef) next day, visited with them plus Mike (18) and Robbie (15) for a day and a half.  L. then drove us to the Atlanta airport (now the biggest/busiest in the world) and we flew KLM to Amsterdam, thence to Bristol.  Never KLM again!  The Dutch eat weird food (corn relish, cheese and strange veggies for breakfast!), they are only vaguely punctual in flying and their planes are old, grungy and over-packed.**

We took a taxi from Bristol airport to teeny Aylburton (ca. 50 miles) and arrived in grey British winter to see A., S., W. (4) and F. (2).  We stayed just 4 days but unloaded a humongous suitcase of Christmas gifts, got to be with the kids (including an underground visit with S. and W. to visit Santa in an old tin mine).  It was fun to be with them in their jampacked house in their teeny village but a tiring round-trip in all.

Back in the USA with funky KLM, we stopped a day in Atlanta to catch up with the body clock, and L. drove over with our NZ-packed luggage and took away our British gear.  Or so the theory ran.  We actually managed to leave some NZ-bound clothes but got all the vital stuff over.  We flew United to LA and then United/Air NZ to Auckland.  Suffered the usual jolting 12-hour+ trip over the Pacific till we reached Auckland on December 11, losing a day somewhere en route.  It was bright blue-skied summer there, we picked up our Hertz rental car and I steered us through the hideous Auckland traffic up to Orewa, the last big beach north of the city.  We stayed 3 days there and toured around.  The first day we hit the Ransom Winery, because Ransom is one of Martha’s family names and R. and L. had stopped there 2 years ago.  “Ransom” is R.’s middle name and the NY state Ransoms were big deals in settling Michigan—producing a governor, founding Kalamazoo College, etc.  These NZ Ransoms turned out to be genealogy bugs and very cordial.  We swapped genealogy tales and bought a couple of bottles of their wine for R.  They did not have any of their real speciality—a rare carmeniere Bordeaux from old grapes, the only such productive vines in NZ.

We found restaurants, a honey farm, a tile works and other see-and-buy sites, including Sheep World, a huge place further north.  Martha insisted we had never been there (“Who would stop at a place called ‘Sheep World’?”), but I had clear memories of it from 1995.  We bought a big sheepskin for ourselves and a nifty little “sheepy” (lamb’s skin) for B. and D., who are our house-minders in Berea and who expect a baby in late spring.  While we were checking out, the elderly saleslady said, “I know you two!  You were here years ago, from Dunedin and the University of Otago.”  She supplied other details that refuted Martha’s insistence that she would not have been caught dead in any place labeled “Sheep World.”

We drove up into Northland and around the top of NZ, stopping at the country’s second-best fish and chips shop on Doubtless Bay and at Ancient Kauri Kingdom, where we found a load of kitchen implements carved from wood about 5000 years old.  Then we drove south on the west (Tasman Sea) coast to our favorite hotel at Omapare, taking a wonderful ferry across the long Hokianga Harbor.  The hotel is owned and operated by Maori, and we always enjoy the staff, the food and the spectacular views toward the harbor mouth and huge golden sand dunes.

I took a harbor cruise sponsored by the hotel one morning that was very good, with a couple of very entertaining Maori guides providing running patter and old jokes.  The weather was fine if a little cool.  Then we drove down to the old forests to see the giant kauri trees and other wonders, then left for Auckland a day later to a motel at the airport.  We returned the rental car, found an excellent pub and caught an early morning flight to Dunedin on December 21.  Scenic and uneventful flying—Air NZ always delivers!

We picked up our long-term rental car (a somewhat elderly Corolla sedan) from our old friends who once ran the Thrifty franchise but who are now independent.  Leaving Dunedin airport we drove more or less straight up Saddle Mountain to the Pacific coast and reached our apartment on the seaside.  We look out on miles and miles of ocean and endless yellow sand beaches (usually empty) in all directions.  Some fun!

We watch the fishing boats (squid boats over the horizon at night jacklight the critters with bright searchlights), the gulls, some foolhardy surfers in wet suits and a few shivering swimmers.  It’s 20 minutes to town, my university course is nearly half over (18 students, no strain—the same 20^th century American lit. course on the Depression and the Cold War we did last summer). 

We are running through the usual whirl of visits to friends, suppers with the large cast of people we know here.  We have reconnected with the local Friends meeting and everyone is in fine fettle.  We are well away from the fears, anxieties, political disasters, cultural lunacy and the detritus of life in the 21^st century USA.

Martha has gotten time to walk on the beaches, knit up a storm with old yarn, get into more needlepoint work and do some reading.  She comes into town sometimes to deadhead and tend the wonderful flowers at the meetinghouse while I’m on campus.  She is feeling better and even losing some weight.  Her legs are strengthening, so long as she doesn’t push herself too much.

Some NZ old guard are dying:  recently, Hone Tuwhare, the first significant Maori writer published in English, and Sir Edmund Hillary. The nation gave “Sir Ed” a grand send-off with full military and royal honors on a grey, windy and rainy day—perfect setting for it all.  He was a much-beloved figure and a genuinely great human being.

Will try to send more detail later, but time runs out, I am having a broken molar crowned, and other such stuff intervenes daily.  We’ll be back in Berea shortly after March 15, if we stay on schedule.  I should be able to send e-mails till about February 28.

Hope you all are intact and surviving whatever nonsense this winter has dished out.  Pray that the whole bottom doesn’t fall out of the US economy!

Love,

Bill and Martha Schafer

REMEMBER:  READ THE JOURNAL OF PROVINCIAL THOUGHT, free online at wwww.provincialthought.com   We are coming up on our 6^th action-packed and thrilling issue!
_____________________________________

** Look how fast things date in our crumbling world!  Now ALL airlines are as dire as KLM and most will probably disappear on the last fumes of the last gallon of jet fuel, in the very near future.