Dec 1987: Xmas Missive

Dear

Ho! Ho! Ho! I realize it is getting close to Christmas, by looking at my calendar, but on the other hand the temperature reached 42 degrees C the other day (almost 108 degrees F), so it not easy to get into the proper mood. However, the social secretary, chief correspondent, family treasurer/accountant and boss (i.e. Dorothy) has asked me if I were going to write one of my Christmas letters this year (which means get to it), se here it is.

We will be leaving Alice Springs en December 19th to head back to the east coast of the U.S. for some R&R. I use that term R&R in the official sense (i.e., the govt. is paying for the transportation), since visiting the east coast of the U.S. (which has already had one major snowstorm), over the holidays (which are notorious for major traffic jams in the D.C. area), and traveling back and forth between Dorothy's parents in N.J., my parents in Hagerstown, and Alexandria is definitely not my idea of rest and relaxation. All that in addition to the long trip back and forth from here. So why are we doing it. Well, since it appears that we will be staying here until June 1989 (we originally planned to return in June 1988) we thought we should go visit our parents (and of course there are the grandchildren). In addition, my parents are celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary in January and I felt like I should be there for that. There are, of course, things we can do at the same time that we can't do here - some shopping for items that are difficult if net impossible to get here. I have also gotten an additional five days in which to do some business in the Washington area, so altogether we will be on the east coast almost 5 weeks.

The funny thing is that we could use some rest and relaxation. As I have often said, for a small town out in the middle of nowhere, we can certainly keep busy here. Dorothy continues to have a ball at the newspaper, though she created a lot of waves some time age. A big-time event - fashion show, dinner, entertainment - called the Concours d'Elegance - was held here in town. The planning for this lasted a year and Dorothy even agreed to be en the committee. (The admission by the way was $65 per person.) In her review of the event she mentioned that some of the scenes (like the one featuring a nude on the hood of a car) were a bit "tacky." The organizers, modeling agencies and models were, of course, not amused. As it was, some people told Dorothy that she had been too easy. Well, the letters poured into the newspaper criticizing her article. One letter said the models were so upset that many were in tears and some vowed never to model in Alice Springs again. The editor just chuckled. Dorothy also gets to go to the metropolis of Tennant Creek (population 5,000) up the road (ever 300 miles) to the opening of an art show there. She traveled with two other ladies who took turns driving. The one lady was pretty good, driving at about 120 km/hour (about 75 mph) and pulled over to the left for on-coming traffic. Much of the road heading north is only about one lane wide and so each car has to move ever to the left (since you are driving on the left) with one wheel on the shoulder. The other lady averaged 140- 160 km/hour (87-99 mph) and drove in the middle of the read at all times. Anyway Dorothy survived and get to see Tennant Creek. I get the opinion that it wasn't worth driving 300 miles to see.

Toby is currently counting the days until we leave for the U.S. I think he is going to take it hard to leave his grandparents again. He really misses his friends and family there. On the other hand he enjoys being able to have friends over just about every day, something he couldn't do back home, and he is in a lot of activities here. He played soccer this past year and I imagine he will again when it resumes. He also was in a bowling league, and was the captain of the "B" Chess team at his school - they went undefeated in matches with other schools. He continues to take guitar lessons, though with a little pushing to get him to practice. Dwight is busy with his schoolwork, his girlfriend, and working part time in a camera shop; the priorities change from time to time. He is scheduled to take the S.A.T. tests in two weeks, so that will give us some idea of what his chances are of getting into a college of his choice. Which brings up that subj ect - he has sent for info to a number of colleges and several have responded - those include Duke, Cornell, and Stanford I asked him about the costs and he told me I could buy a new BMW (a cheap model) for the cost of each year at Stanford. I wonder where he thinks I am going to come up with the money.

Dwight and I have made a few trips out fossicking. We had some success digging for garnets. We had four faceted and three of them are being set in earrings and a necklace. We did not have any luck on the last trip to look for zircons. We won't go again probably until after our trip, and it starts to cool off a bit.

I remain active in the Australian American Association. We hosted another group of Smithsonian Associates who were in town for 24 hours, about a month ago. Upcoming events include Thanksgiving dinner, and a Christmas party. We are also working on very tentative plans to host the 1989 Federal Conference (of the 13 Divisions of the Association throughout Australia) here in Alice Springs. We have to put forth a proposal shortly to form the basis for the decision about where the 1989 conference will be held. The 1988 conference will be held in Canberra, and I hope to attend that one.

We have not made any recent trips anywhere, but we have had two interesting events in town. There was an international race of solar powered cars held here in Australia, from Darwin on the northern coast to Adelaide, on the southern coast, and the cars passed through Alice on their way to Adelaide. The GM entry (built at a cost of $6 million) won the race. The other event has been a series of launches of large research balloons by two groups, one Australian: and one American. We have made numerous trips out to the airport in the hopes of seeing launches, only to be disappointed in most cases due to cancellations because of high winds or other problems. Dorothy, Toby and I finally saw an Australian launch, but heard later that the payload crashed about 1/2 hour afterwards. That was the smaller balloon - only about 2-300 feet high. I was lucky enough to see one of the American launches and that balloon was about 700 feet high. All of the experiments are to study the supernova that occurred back in Feb. The Americans have two more balloons and we hope to see one of them launched.

I think that is about all of the news from down under. We hope that you have a good holiday and hope to hear from you.