On Wednesday 19 December 2007 00:55, Melissa Reese wrote: > Hi Tord, > > Tuesday, December 18, 2007, 3:06:26 PM, you wrote: > > Wish we were closer, so we could give them some spare tools! > > > > Just now extremely low on cash as well - sorry! > > Thank you for your concern, and I can certainly appreciate your > circumstances. There is some good news though (I posted an update to > the PW list a couple days ago about this). Just quickly though... Hi Melissa, I get the digest, usually once a week, but this is great news! My parents lost their summer cottage through fire (lightning struck the phone lines - the power was off), and my dad never recovered fully, and died prematurely. He was 51 when the house caught fire ... We didn't own the house, we just had a 49 year lease, and while this blockhouse-like building had been damaged severely, it was very much repairable (some blasting and repairing the holes in the roof and floors and new cupboards in the kitchen would have been enough to make it OK), but the owners wanted to destroy the remains and build a modern house instead. It was generally the interior that was smoke damaged, and all dad's documentation of the year in the countryside was severely damaged, or plain destroyed. Being a professional botanist, and an avid ornithologist, those documentations would have been something for researchers to bite into later. He planted about 2,500 different spieces in the garden - all carefully reigstered with latin names, et cetera (most eaten by the rodents, deer and hares). When my father found the abandoned house in 1958 it had a small maple behind the kitchen entrance (still there, but now gigantic - checked a few months ago - first revisit in a few decades) and in that tree 'our own' black bird spent most of his time when he was in a singing mode. Mr Black Bird loved to imitate other birds - I think my dad had registered that it did 84 other spieces of birds, plus some other animals, and sounds, like a steam train's whistle. My dad wondered where this little bird had met up with all these spieces, many totally unknown in our part of the world - where did our little friend go during the winter?! Today it would be possible to attach a little transponder and follow it all the way south, but it wasn't possible then! Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, by the way, to you and your friends! Tord & Ann-Christine, Sweden *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Wed Dec 19 2007 - 02:36:37 PST
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