2007 December Bulletin

Hello Y’all,
Anyone who is in my monthly email group please bear with me as I address an opening request to people who will receive this by snail mail.

Please, please, please. If you haven’t given me an email address, please seriously consider doing so. And if you think you have but did NOT get an electronic Christmas card from me this year, it means one of two things: you haven’t given me an email address; or it’s not current.

Of course, not everyone has the means of using email, so I will still stay in touch if you don’t give me an email address, but for those with the means, I really would prefer it didn’t have to be by snail mail.

You can give me your email address simply by emailing me at

paulvincentsmith@hotmail.com

You don’t have to write a letter: just put “Add my address to your contacts”, and it shall be so.

Furthermore, I have personal email addresses of 146 people in my list of contacts, of whom 44 have elected to be in my monthly bulletin group. If you would like to be on the list, please send an email with the words “Add my address to your monthly bulletin group”. I will NOT be overwrought if you do want to receive a monthly email from me. It would be nice to have an email address for you for occasional contacts – like Christmas, and maybe even birthdaze if I can get my act together and resurrect my birthday list. If you haven’t told my your birth date just…. you know… do it.
˜ ™

Some of you may already know that John has finished his Diploma in Ceramics and was selected to represent the North Coast Institute of TAFE at a state wide ceramics exhibition in Sydney in January. We were going to drive, but now we are flying, and will consequently be away from home for only three days instead of nearly two weeks. John has enrolled in the Advanced Diploma in Ceramics for 2008 and has been offered an exhibition at the Regional Gallery in Murwillumbah – normally he wouldn’t be able to get in until late 2009, but the gallery director was here on Sunday to see his work and offered to squeeze him in so that he can fulfil the requirements of his Adv. Dip. AND… BREAKING NEWS!! He’s just had an intriguing offer from Newcastle University. We don’t know what it means yet, but we’re hoping ……..well we don’t know what we’re hoping. We’re just hoping.

The choir I am in did its thing in November – a two hour programme, the major item of which was Vivaldi’s Gloria. Apologies to those who have already heard this: it went like a Harley – you know, better than a Triumph!!. I am now setting out on The Messiah. I’m also adapting about half of Leonard Bernstein’s Mass for solo work; and transliterating the 4th movement of Mahler’s 4th Symphony. My music teacher is very happy with my progress. I am also getting quite serious about sewing – mainly from a problem solving point of view; but having found out how much better hand made clothes are than shop bought ones, I am sneaking into the TAFE library photocopying parts of books on tailoring; and getting interested in geometric theorems and their application to drafting. I’m not talking fashion design, by the way. Think shorts, t shirts, trousers, long sleeved shirts, that sort of thing – although I have not forgotten the idea of ceremonial clothing that I mentioned to a few people some time ago. I’m also making soft toys with a view to making stuff for John to turn into porcelain fossils. See

http://www.flickr.com/photos/7899872@N08/

for pictures of his final year exhibition; and also the designs for a set of Stubby Coolers I have just made. You are invited to see innuendo in them. Consider the range of occasions when you might select on for a specific purpose. If you like I’ll design a set for you too. You can supply the pictures or consult my extensive collection. And while on the subject of Flickr, I’m still waiting on courageous individuals to email photos of themselves to caricature. For those hearing about this for the first time click on Caricatures in the right hand column of my Flickr page to see my what I mean – and then send your picture for inclusion in the Hall of the Game. Maybe you’d like a set of stubby coolers with pictures of yourself/family/friends looking frighteningly fiendish.

I very bravely set out to write a blog around the middle of the year, and was going gangbusters for a while, but, as I was warned, I stopped rather suddenly because it was taking up too much time. I’m not sure that I will ever get back to it, but it is going to be a convenient place to post documents such as John’s Artist statement. I have posted it today, as well as the monthly bulletins from June to November. If you want to read John’s artist statement click on

http://twogreytoes.blogspot.com/

Finally, have you been watching the series Monarchy on TV? Last night it was about how the Stewarts (James I, Charles I, Charles II, James II) adopted a self serving ideology and tried to make Britain in their own image, resulting in Charles I losing his head. How strangely familiar that tale is – vaguely reminiscent of a certain politician who came to believe his own publicity that he thought he could remake a certain wide brown land in his own image, and ended up losing his seat!! Not that I’m gloating or anything. But, with apologies to those who have already heard this line, we must have all died and gone to Kevin.

Go Jollily!!
˜ ™
PS
Sox and Boof send their blessings.
See Flickr The Household for pictures of both of them and other family members who have joined the Communion of Saints.

PPS
After a couple of years of regular visits to a Urologist, I finally have a combination of medications that works. If you didn’t know I had been going to a specialist, you have missed all the drama. But don’t worry, I’m sure that at my age, there’ll be more. Life really IS short. I can remember so vividly that brief period of my life when mortality seemed like something that other people had to think about. And I look at bright young things now and relate as never before to poems like To his coy mistress (Type the following into Google if you are not familiar with the poem – or simply click on this link if you are reading this in an email Andrew Marvell: To his Coy Mistress. "Had we but world enough and ... )