Last issue, after stalking the Schafers to NZ— via Georgia (U.S.), Amsterdam, England, back through the States— we set you down in Auckland with your hosts in a Hertz renter, and off you all went to adventure. The Ransom Winery, Sheep World, fish and chips on Doubtless Bay, Ancient Kauri Kingdom, the Tasman coast, Saddle Mountain: all taken by your gaze and absorbed into your globetrotter's consciousness. Now the spectacular journey nears its end, your education perfected by the final dash of experiences hereinafter described. Passport, please! —Eds.

As always, our time in New Zealand has run out way too soon.  The summer school course ends this week, and L. J. and I finish reading final essays and final exams next week.  We will stay on in Dunedin till March 1 and hope to get local travelling and visits in before we fly up to Wellington, where we’ll spend the last 10 days here touring around our usual haunts—Wellington itself, the Hawkes Bay region, the Chateau resort in the volcano region and then up to the little resort town of Whangimata near Auckland and the Coromandel Peninsula.

The most notable fact about our stay this year has been the spectacularly great weather from December till mid-February.  It has been uniformly sunny, clear, warm but not hot, very pleasant.  Everyone here has been extremely pleased with it, most people saying, “This is how I remember summer always being in my childhood.”  It has been an El Niño summer, driven by global warming, and maybe this is the only good thing to come out of the planetary crisis—it gives the South Island of NZ superb summer weather.  There has been a deepening drought here and some wild weather in Australia and the North Island, but Dunedin has been like Arcadia.  There are smallish silver linings in the huge black cloud of the problems global warming is creating for us already.  NZ has coped with the huge hole in the ozone over Antarctica for decades, and this year is some small compensation for the long run of crappy summers over the past 10 years.

So—great, consistent weather.  We’ve gotten together with most of our friends here, including a trip up to Christchurch to see R. and A. P. and all their cohorts.  An excellent weekend, with weather just as fine up along the beach in Sumner.   The P.s are well, though R.’s deafness is by now profound.  He is thinking about an implant operation, if it is feasible.  We found a very good restaurant about 6 blocks from their house for one evening meal.

On our way back to Dunedin, we stopped at Fleur’s, which I think is the best seafood restaurant in a nation of fish cookeries.  Also took D. R. and M. W. out to Plato’s back in Dunedin, a fish restaurant very nearly the equal of Fleur’s.  We have had many good meals and evenings with M. M. and R. S., with the J.s and various combinations of people, with anyone we can pin down. 

Martha has been knitting and needle-pointing like a demon, turning out wonderful stuff for A. from her stock of old yarn.  There are even more supplies at home, and we hope to reach Alexandra and Touch Yarn before we have to go.  We plan to ship a new bale of vibrant colors back.

Time is running out now, with just a few more days of classes, a final essay and final exam to see the Depression/Cold War course off for good.  L. J. and I are trying to cook up a 2009-10 summer course.  We’re thinking now about a variant on our previous jazz course, which would be on jazz and biography/autobiography, or a course on the 1960s in American lit. and film.  We’ll get something cobbled together over the next 6 or so months, I expect.  Then a hunt for accommodations and all the other logistical stuff (not to mention money).

Our agenda ahead includes trying to round up a few folks here we have not yet seen, getting out to Central Otago (the high plains desert region) for a couple of short jaunts and general mopping-up operations.  Then we plan to travel on the North Island for about 10 days (see above). It gets a bit harder to do all this year by year, but NZ is its own reward, and nothing is ever boring or irritating here, so we’ll hang on as long as our stamina lasts.  Then we’ll settle down to watch the political scene and find out if we can ever get a government again that is not staffed by submoronic criminals and thugs and designed to subvert the US Constitution, bankrupt the economy and sell the remnants of the USA to Saudi Arabia.  We’ll all just see about that in November . . .

Hope you are all well and awaiting the arrival of whatever season now follows winter in our whole new scheme of climate change.  It’s a brave new world.  Remember:  read THE JOURNAL OF PROVINCIAL THOUGHT at www.provincialthought.com 

Issue NO 6, St. Valentine’s Special, on the Web now!!!

Bill & Martha Schafer