Elgan speaks
...and her words thunder across the land

The year, in a tortilla wrap.

Friday, Jan. 6, 2006
10:57 p.m.
I tried to help Patsy move data from her old PowerBook to her new iBook, but for some odd reason, the former wouldn�t read the iomega guest and let me use the zip disk. We�ll work something else out.

This followed a trip to the mall where we lunched on cream of spinach soup and she bought herself pantihose and panties and a lovely stainless steel pot she can use on the stove and in the oven; I bought a cheap bra to wear with my gold gown (it looks rather terrible by itself, but underneath clothing it will have the desired effect) and redeemed my birthday coupon at my favourite cosmetics store. I hate the mall. So does Patsy.

After dinner tonight Hubby and I folded the annual end-of-year letter (which is horribly late) and stuffed envelopes, affixing address labels and adding personalized messages. This is what a whole bunch of people we know are receiving in the mail soon:

Dear Family, Friends and Foes:

Ha ha ha ha! and you thought that you were safe from the annual Elgan family solstice/new year�s letter. Christmas rolled around and you looked at your collection of cards and letters and thought: �Hmm� What gives? Usually by now we would�ve received a piece of Elgan�s scintillating prose. I hope they�re okay.� Fear not, we are all in good health, I am in possession of all ten of my fingers (that includes both thumbs) and most of my mental acuity, but it has been a very hectic time and I have found myself distracted by diverse diversions (and distractions), hence my tardiness with the emission of this missive.

Yes, folks, it has been quite a big year here at the Elgan family household. First off I shall brag about our children. Little Princess (19) graduated from CEGEP this spring, sweeping all the prizes, coming away with some rather hefty cheques, and even delivered the valedictorian address, a speech which the audience and her fellow graduands loved, but which left several of the profs onstage a little discomfited as she praised sloth, that deadly sin which has been the impetus of so much energy-consumption in the pursuit of the invention of time-saving devices. She is now in her first year at Bushop�s in the physics/math programme, with her eye on astrophysics, and has also landed a full scholarship due to her excessively high CEGEP marks, coupled with her tuition waiver (since her dad is a full-time prof) and rent-free residence (that means she�s still living at home, folks), she�s probably got more money than any of us. She also has a guaranteed summer job (it started this summer when she wasn�t even an actual B.U. student) as a research assistant to the astrophysics prof. Not too shoddy.

Unfortunately, her brother has a very difficult act to follow here. Buddy Boy (16) is probably the coolest teenager I know. He�s in his last year of high school (CEGEP next), doing tolerably well, and is extremely interested in film making. For his media class he has put together several very fine videos, which necessitated me going out with him and buying a digital video camera, something I vowed I would never purchase (this is how I keep promises!), but it has proven to be a very handy item for the rest of the family as well. He also had a close brush with stardom as he applied for the CBC-sponsored film series on the Great War. It entailed researching his great-uncle R.M., a WW I flying ace who was killed in action over France, as the project was open to descendants (I guess he wouldn�t actually be a descendant of Roddy, but close) of WW I vets. He was gently turned down in his bid for a starring role, but was invited nonetheless to join the cast of thousands next summer when they shoot the battle scenes.

Hubby has had a very successful year compositionally. His first full-length symphony was premiered by the CPO in April to incredible acclaim. The CBC recorded it and it was broadcast on Tw0 New H0urs for their September 11 show (unfortunately they were on strike on that date, but they aired it very shortly after they went back to work). The piece is an homage to the victims of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and I for one found it very moving. The orchestra needed the score and parts a full six weeks before the performance, which meant that we both pulled several all-nighters preparing the performances materials. They had to be in the mail on Saturday, March 26, the day that we were flying to Trinidad & Tobago or, quite simply, we weren�t going. After staying up all night, printing out the final corrected pages, Hubby got the package to the courier at 9:30 a.m. and we locked up the house and drove to the airport at 12:30. Never have we needed a vacation so badly. The kids visited their grandparents in Florida for the week, returning home on JetsG0 just days before the airline declared bankruptcy!

And what a vacation it was! We had an absolutely wonderful time, staying at a resort hotel in Tobago for four days where we partook of the scenery (a ride on a glass-bottom boat over the coral reefs and a swim in the Nylon Pool; tramping through the rain forest while our guide imitated bird calls to draw the creatures closer for our cameras, followed by a refreshing swim in the pools of the Argyle Waterfall), and Hubby even got a couple of tennis games in with a fellow who worked for the hotel. Then we were in Trinidad for four days where I have a friend who planned all sorts of fun activities for us, including a tour of the Angostura plant where they make the world-famous bitters as well as many other alcoholic beverages, including the best rum I have ever tasted (and I don�t even like rum).

In November we drove to Toronto for the world premiere of Hubby�s first commissioned work by the TSO, a 10-minute work inspired by a J. Hendrix protest song. It was played on the same programme as Beethoven�s Symphony No. 4 and Vaughan Williams� D0na N0bis Pacem on a Remembrance Day concert, and struck a responsive chord with the audience, both audiences, even the second matin�e filled with bluehairs whom my mother informs me usually despise new music.

There is a story connected with the preparation of performance materials for that piece too. After I had already copied the score and was making corrections to it, my computer stopped talking to my printer. I fixed that problem but disaster struck, however, when I went to save the score on the Zip disk I was using (my hard drive was too small to save to, so I was using an alternate format) and I heard the �click of death�. The disk was an unreadable mess of data which contained the score and parts for the above-mentioned symphony as well as the piece I was currently working on. My biggest fear was that I had lost the former piece as well as the latter, a representation of hundreds of hours of work. As it turned out, a good friend of mine was able to reconstruct the disk and save the other data on it (phew!) but the new piece was gone forever, which meant I had to recopy it from scratch. This threw a pall over my whole summer as I toiled at a task which I had already performed once. As well, the printer problem recurred, this time without cure. Yes, thoughts of lying down on the railway tracks did cross my mind, but that�s all they did.

Anyway, what this episode taught us is that we needed to upgrade, which we did, already having an iMac G5 which we purchased a year ago, buying the latest version of Finale� for it (even though everyone is insisting that Sibelius� is the way to go) and I have started working in that newer medium. Hubby is hard at work on several commissions, including a solo marimba piece which will be premiered early in the new year, songs for one of Canada�s premiere sopranos, and an accordion-oboe duet to be included on a CD that will be recorded next summer. He�s had quite a few CDs released this year and lots of prizes.

We went to two family weddings this summer, one in Toronto and one in Nova Scotia, and on the way to the latter I visited with a dear friend in New Brunswick whom I had not seen since her wedding 18 years ago. That was a very special treat. We also visited for an afternoon in Ann Arbor (after beach hopping along the shores of Georgian Bay and Lake Huron) with some of Hubby�s colleagues from the U of M. We�re aiming for a 25th-anniversary reunion next July, considering that�s how long ago he and they started in the graduate program there.

The big news though is Hubby�s new archtop guitar which he had specially built by a master luthier and which he played (along with his other guitars, of which he has more than most people now) in a concert of blues music which we, yes we, performed in early November at Bushop�s music department. I sang and we were joined by three other very fine musicians playing guitar, bass and drums respectively. It was a smash hit, and we are looking to reprise it (just Hubby and me and possibly the bassist) along with some jazz standards mid-January at the local coffee house/caf�. In mid-life we have discovered we have new talents.

With best wishes for 2006,

Elgan, Hubby, Little Princess and Buddy Boy


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