|
|
Merry
Christmas
|
|
See Pictures of this Christmas Letter |
||
The deeded name of our beach lot „Shores of Treasure
Island” hits the
nail on the head. This Treasure Island is a paradise and we are
grateful to be able to live here. It is now already the 4th year that
we are enjoying paradise and gradually we are adjusting and
temperatures of more than 70°F no longer prevent us from getting
into the seasonal mood that is usually brought about by snow and
coziness in
the north. This morning thermometer indicated 50 °F which we sense
as being ice cold. That is all we need to celebrate an
appropriately tempered Christmas. This Christmas will be special: Our
entire family – , Dietmar and Heidi, Annemarei, John and
Syrah, Mark,
Lisa, Fritzi, Sabine and Meike
will reunite here on Casey Key to celebrate the event under a
similar tree as the one of 2001 shown above. We are eagerly looking
forward to this year’s Family Christmas.
What happened 2004? Again, many dear friends visited
us. First John’ s
parents came in January, Dietmar’s Mother in February, Schedewies in
March, Dietmar’s dear friend Charlie and Pat in April, Dietmar’s nephew
Nils in June, Don and
Diane Herron in July, Annemarei und John with
Syrah in August joined by hurricane Charley, Ingrid Kracht and also
Sven Schiller with his wonderful Fabienne in September. Similarly
Hurricanes Francis, Ivan und Jeanne honored us with their intense
visit in Sept., damaged a lot of plants, tore down some roof tiles and
brought
incredible amounts of sand to our beach. Unfortunatedly the last
hurricane took the sand off again. Now
shores of Treasure Island are 6 feet lower and much broader. The
crystal clear turquoise waters of the Gulf, however, remain unchanged.
This year Dietmar walked about 1000 km on our paradise beach
and played
with our smart wirehair fox terrier Milou. Dietmar became an
official turtle watcher and was busy during the turtle season
that lasts from May 1st to the
end of October (this year the hurricanes ended the season
prematurely). He has watched, registered,
and reported all turtle nesting and hatching activity and photographed every
week all
49 nests of zone 7 on Casey
Key. Some pictures became promptly part of the summary presentation of
this year’s turtle activity at Motes Marin Research Lab.
Heidi, on the other hand, became very interested in
nature printing
techniques. We had been introduces to the art of nature and
fish printing by Erika and Klaus from
Hamburg who are friends of Helga Wendt .
Erika is a professional goldsmith and very involved in the
international activities of nature printing. Heidi is in the process of
learning the art and has already produced satisfactory pictures in her
own studio and in the club study at Selby Gardens here in Sarasota.
(see web pictures
)
When you live in Florida there is no need to travel.
Nevertheless we
did travel this year and left our house 3 times. In August we went to
Hamburg to celebrate Lona’s 90th birthday. We also visited friends in
Hamburg, Antonia and Klaus Jaenecke, Ingrid Kracht and importantly
Helga Wendt an all her children whom we had not seen for over 30 years.
We were amazed how little they have changed over the years.
Dietmar
went with his friends Peter and Wolfgang on the obligatory and
traditional biking tour through the Kloevensteen Woods and adjacent
para-elbian marsh land. He later went together with Gisa Tolksdorf to
her cottage at the Baltic Sea in Neustadt/Ostsee. Dietmar spent
also a few days with Walter & Uschi Zinner and aunty Mie in Karden
within the Moselle Valley and enjoyed after that the 5 hours train ride
with his mother to Hamburg Klein Folttbeck to visit Antonie and Klaus
Jaenecke.
During that time Heidi prepared Lona’s Birthday that we celebrated
with many guests on the sail ship Rickmer Rickmers and
that
became a
great success (see pictures). Memorable too is the nice evening we
spent together with our Blankeneser friends in Ingrid’s garden, and
Antonie’s birthday party in the Blankeneser Waldschenke.
From October 9 to 12 we were in New Orleans at the
ACS meeting. During
the beautiful car ride along the Gulf shores to New Orleans we
witnessed the impressive
destructive power of hurricanes. In some subdivisions almost every 2nd
roof had come off and in the woods of every 2nd tree trunk was broken
not
to talk about the I-10 highway bridge that had been blown apart for
over a mile or so.
The big event of October was Pat and Charlie
Aprahamian’s 50th wedding
anniversary, celebrated at Elmgrove’s Women’s Club, the same place
where we had celebrated Mark and Lisa’s wedding some years ago. –
That party was a full success, on one side because Charlie’s six sons
performed a great, entertaining and witty show, and, on the other hand,
because it was wonderful to have such a friendly reunion with almost
all of Dietmar former colleagues from the Department of Surgery.
Dietmar, all of a sudden, realized how much he had missed his friends
from the department and stated having second thoughts about his early
retirement.
We stayed in Wisconsin in the very beautiful log
house of Don and Dianne
located in the middle of a subdivision on Diane’s former farmland. Don
and Diane also introduced us more intimately to US politics by taking
us to an election rally for John Edwards in Racine. John and his
presentation were impressive under blue skies on the background of Lake
Michigan . The potential Vice President, amongst other things,
addressed the
issue of medical advertising abuse. It sounds to us like a great plan
to outlaw medical advertising like in Germany. Medical advertizing is
misleading
anyway, like one add for example, that deceitfully promises to help
patients by stopping hyperacidity but in fact keeping the disease going
while the add conveniently avoids mentioning that a one week therapy with certain drugs may eliminate
the disease forever.
This is a nice paradigm to discribe current President who repeatedly provides
similarly flawed information and creates artificial problems to suit
his agenda, which is different from the agenda of most. We did not
understand that so many fellow Americans voted for this man, whose
hypocrisy to be a Christian is too obvious as he is constantly
violating the 9th and 10th commandment. When I asked friends why
they voted for republican I got always answers telling me how bad the
democrats were, never how good the republicans are. I think Bush is a
big problem for GOP at the long run. It is amazing how much the
political climate has deteriorated since the “Fin de Siècle”
enthusiasm
that we tried to discribe in our Christmas Letter at the
conclusion of last century.
Finally we do not want to miss mentioning some
important issues
of this year. Anna has completed her postgraduate fellowship at the
University of Virginia and is now partner in private practice in
Atlanta, an exciting and very integra- ted city that seems to be
entirely
located in forests. We drove already twice the 500 miles on I-75 to
visit them. Anna, John and Syrah enjoy living in a small neat house in
Atlanta’s forests. John is a graduate student of the School of
Philosophy and seems to enjoy philosophy very much. We are very proud
to have a philosopher in our family. You may find more information
about John, Anna and Syrah at the following link on our website:
Yours Heidi und
Dietmar
|
||
