Jam-packed

Let's see, it's hard to know where to begin to keep you caught up on our adventures.  Early in the week, we had found a pick-up basketball game for John, including some grey panthers of both genders.  All of New Zealand is abuzz with the beginning of the Rugby World Cup. (This picture is from S. Africa Day--one of the cultural festivals associated with the World Cup.) Add our plans to celebrate my birthday and the strong, mixed emotions that come with the tenth anniversary of Sept. 11, and you have a jam-packed, multi-layered week.
Since I am still recovering, I think I will offer this blogspot to guest-blogger, John:
"The weekend had a variety of goodies for us. Friday night was a going-away for one of the nurses, Tim, a sad occasion for me as he has been my principal guide to the city and region. We went to a cafe where I had slow-cooked pork belly atop mashed potatoes, yum. Saturday was the local time zone Sept. 10 so we celebrated the blessed day (Judy’s birthday) with a pancake breakfast, then headed downtown for Rugby World Cup events including a South Africa carnival with various food tents (we didn't) and live Soweto-style music (we did). After an hour of juju beats and booty shaking we went into the City Gallery and saw the second half of Oceania, this was a fine arts display, mainly from 1980-present but with a few wooden goddesses and other outstanding native artifacts from before 1900 also. One small striking goddess (fertility, I expect) from Tonga with an inscription indicating the chief had hung the goddess in 1737 following the tribe's conversion to Christianity.  Some of the modern art dealt with nuclear testing in the Pacific islands--Bikini atoll, etc.--including a long percussion piece (3,2,1) on video by a trio (From Scratch) done in 1986, eerie. Awareness risen, we moved on to the Downstage Theater for a performance of "On the upside-down of the world", a one-woman play based on the memoir ("Our Maoris") of Mary Ann Martin, wife of the first chief justice in New Zealand, and her years in NZ, changing from a NZ-naive newlywed into a disillusioned middle-aged woman forced to return to England after her husband was relieved of his post after advocating for Maori rights (esp. land rights). Remarkable performance, 90 minutes of acting. Exhausted, we crawled home and revived just enough to eat cauliflower-cheese pasta. Sunday we were out early so Judy could join the 9:30 pre-meeting singing group and I could go down and get vegetables at the market. After meeting we has a nice tomato soup with pesto at Strawberry Fare, followed by a concert by the Wellington Vector Orchestra, equivalent of the GBO Symphony, at a very downtown nice venue, the Michael Fowler Hall. The concert started with a rushed and uninspired Beethoven 5th, but improved with the Mozart Piano Cto #24, mainly because the soloist (Deidre Irons--chair of piano at Victoria Univ.)--took control. Wonderful. The final and keynote piece was John Adams 9/11 piece "On the Transmigration of Souls" (composed 2002) for orchestra, separate adult and children choirs, and tape. Wow. The piece starts out with a child's voice reciting names of 9/11 victims, and the voice is on/off, adult/child, at intervals throughout the 20 min. piece. "Harrowing" said Judy, and I agree.  (Judy:  We had thought Sept. 11 would be a hard day to be in a different country and were thrilled when the hospital volunteer office offered tickets to this concert.  It was very moving, although as we heard the names of the American dead from 9/11, I also kept wondering how long it would have taken to read the names of Iraqi, Afghan, American and other dead who have died in the wake of this terrible event.  I guess we would have been there for days if someone had tried to read them all.)

We went home after a trip through the gathering rugby throngs, highlighted by the Wales fans, one with an outstanding dragon hat, and had a brief rest before going to dinner with Michael and Ronis, the Aussie couple who are the hosts of the Quaker B&B next to the meeting house. We swapped focused life stories and had a nice meal before coming home for lights out.

The spring has officially begun (Sept 1) which means it's been warmer but also wetter and much windier. Welcome to NZ!'

P.S.  (Judy here).  Thanks to many of you for the very fine birthday greetings.  I talked to all of the girls and to Paul, who was Skyping from his observation post at the desert station of the UT telescope.  Got some lovely flowers.  Also a hat and gloves made of the merino/possum mix favored for knit things here.  I know what you're thinking, but their possums are not exactly like ours--they have long, soft fluffy brown fur and faces kind of like lemurs.  Our friend Ronis came thru with a banana birthday cake complete with candles, so I go into a new year feeling well-feted and grateful.