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Has it been 14 years now since the old millennium and the XXth century ended, how time flies so quickly. We saw the turn of the new century in Warsaw, the famous night of Y2K, we can all laugh now at the nonsense of it all. Since then we returned to Canada bought a heritage home, renovated it and then, I went to Beijing on posting and in 2007 to Rome, our old dog Reesie died in Rome on Boxing Day 2008. We had sold the house prior to our departure for Europe. In 2009 in February we met our new puppies Nicky and Nora in Capena. In 2011 we returned with much regret to Canada and I retired at the end of 2012. Since I have been doing volunteer work in our National Museums and built a new life here. But this has not stopped us from traveling to Europe again and again and visiting our friends. We discovered Spain by visiting many wonderful cities, Valencia, Seville, Granada, after seeing Barcelona, Madrid and a stop in Gibraltar.

Among new people we have become friends first through our blogs I believe around 2010 and then in person in 2013, Dr. Spo and DAW from Arizona. We went to  Stratford Ontario for the Summer theatre Festival and again this past Summer. Both are delightful people and have become good friends.

So many things have happened in the last 14 years and 2014 was also full of events.

Will continues to work at the Foreign Ministry and I at the Museums. We travelled with our friend Madame J. to Austria and Germany, we visited Salzburg for the Pentecost Music Festival during a heat wave which made going to our concerts unpleasant since most halls are very weakly cooled. I saw two exhibits on Otto Dix in Munich and in Dresden and learned much about his paintings and his life. In Dresden I saw his masterpiece Der Krieg which had jus been cleaned. I wanted to learn more about Dix since I was working on the Exhibit of war paintings entitled Transformations at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa. I am now juggling the National Gallery of Canada where I work as a docent and coordinator of Art Lectures and the CWM.

What will 2015 bring, well we will have a National Election for Parliament, the $100,000 dollar question is ”will the evil Mr. Harper win another mandate” The Country is badly divided again. There will be other things during the year, maybe a visit to Ottawa of our friends MCR and DAW, more Museums and trips and who knows what else.

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DAW and MCR from AZ at a great restaurant Pazzo in Stratford.

I leave you with this piece of music Dubinuska composed by Nicolai Rimski-Korsakov composed for the first anti-Romanov Student revolt in 1905.

Dubinuska (Russia 1905), l’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Ernest Ansermet, Conductor.