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IN THIS ISSUE

• Dixie Augusteijn visits a musk ox farm in Alaska
• Jack Peaker reflects on the New Years´ eves he has experienced
• Sid Tafler interviewed the editor some eight years ago
• Dick Monaghan formulates laws for living
• Rafiki explains why some men wear earrings
• Bruce Galway tells the secret of a successful marriage

Dixie Augusteijn has just left Anchorage on their

ALASKA/YUKON TRIP

Leaving Anchorage and following north along the Cook inlet , we met up with the Glenn Highway, which would eventually lead to the Alaska Highway. Just out of Palmer in the Matanuska Valley was a must-see on our list - a musk ox farm. I believe it is the only one in the world, but may be mistaken.

Musk ox had been hunted almost to extinction until in the ´50s a John Teal got the idea of domesticating the animals whose underwool - called qiviute in the Eskimo language - produces one of the finest fibers in the world. This became known as the Alaska Musk Ox Project, funded by the Kellogg Foundation and under the auspices of the Alaska University. The first farm was in Fairbanks in 1964.This was followed in 1968 by workshops teaching women in the outlying villages how to knit with this very fine yarn. A cooperative, called the Oomingmak Musk Ox Cooperative, was formed, and now there are more than two hundred women developing their own patterns, and each village produces its own unique design.

The farm was moved from Fairbanks to Palmer, where there was more acreage available. The people now running it, I believe, are from the Cooperative, but was not entirely clear on that. They obviously had a love and understanding for the huge animals.

The calves, handled from birth, are accustomed to humans, but the big boys certainly give the impression they are not to be taken for granted. It is difficult to know exactly how large they are with such a heavy coat of wool. They shed the fine undercoat in the spring, which is hand combed or pulled; each animal can shed between four to six pounds a year. The wool is very clean, not greasy, and they say - if the animal was willing - it could actually be spun directly from the beast!

I am rather vague as to what happens to the wool once gathered, but believe it is sent to a special factory in the east, which also handles the fine cashmere yarns. Once spun, it is only available to Co-Op members. They do have kits available and to give you an idea of the value - a kit with pattern and a 2-oz. skein of Bulky Quivute yarn for one cap costs $80. Taking this price, an animal walking around with six pounds of wool is a walking gold mine!

To be continued.

NEW YEAR´S EVE

There will be fun welcoming in 2007 at our local Seniors´ Centre on December 31st at midnight, and in many other places at a much higher cost.

Your $40 there includes dancing and listening to the Twilites and their old and new music, and a buffet dinner, with a free glass of wine before midnight. Wine is available for purchase too. The evening starts at 8 p.m.

The seniors, along with millions of others, at the stroke of midnight will be singing "Auld Lang Syne". Guy Lombardo´s Royal Canadians began the traditional song in 1929 at the Hotel Roosevelt Grill in New York city.

In Ottawa, where I came from, New Year´s Eve left many memories. It seemed that blizzards, freezing rain, and icy roads always happened on the evening of December 31st. On more than one New Year´s Eve at house parties, it was deemed advisable for guests to stay the night. No, not for fear of breathalizer tests; they were not used that long ago.

After moving to Toronto, where I had some well-to-do friends, places like the Old Mill made for an enjoyable way to welcome in the coming year.

A most forgettable New Year´s Eve was at Hart House at the University of Toronto on a blind date. In 1952, when living in Vancouver, an elegant New Year´s Eve was celebrated at the Vancouver Yacht Club. Tuxedos, long gowns for the ladies, and champagne at midnight made for an unforgettable welcoming in of 1953.

Here in Guelph, I spent four New Years´ Eves at an exclusive Golf and Country Club and they were expensive. This year´s cost at $80 includes dinner. After a lovely meal, finishing about 8.30, there is another 3 1/2 hours until midnight. Conversation starts to lag and some celebrants order costly cocktails to fill in the time. By midnight they are slightly inebriated. At midnight they will have champagne and a sweet buffet.

It is interesting that with close to 80 December 31sts in my history, there are not many that I would like to have repeated.

These days, at home, staying awake until midnight, after perhaps a couple of supermarket lobsters, or a few oysters, can be a challenge. The television is the centre of attraction for the countdown to midnight. Perhaps champagne? and a chorus or two of the aforementioned Auld Lang Syne to welcome the new year.

As we reach the end of 12 years of publishing the Tale Spinner, you may be interested in an interview I had with Sid Tafler, a writer, editor, broadcaster and media consultant based in Victoria. Eight years is a long time in the computer world, and things have changed a great deal since this interview, but all the people mentioned are still readers and contributors:

YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED

1. How long have you been online? What inspired you to go online and who first introduced you to the Internet?

a. I´ve been on line for six years, I think. My son, Jay, twisted my arm until I finally logged on. He had been a member of Mindlink almost since it started, and was sure I would like it. He was right, but not for the reasons he thought. He was interested in all the files he could download, and all the groups he could access; I fell into the social end of the bbs and became part of a group that chatted on line after midnight. Many of these people have met in various places around Vancouver, and at the first one I attended, one of the young ones, who had been flirting with me in a mild sort of way, nearly fell off his chair when he saw me. "THAT´S Jean?" He spent the next few days apologizing, until I told him to forget it.

2. Can you give me some examples of some of the best writing that has appeared in the Tale Spinner? The best humour? Writing that made a difference? That inspired? That lifted someone up or changed their life in a small or large way?

a. When I first started with the relatively small number of 40 readers, we had many stories of how people came to this country; of where they were during the war; of childhood memories. Most of them were sobering. My best humorist is a man from Vancouver, Wash., who has a refreshingly sardonic view of life.... I don´t think any of the stories changed anyone´s life to any great degree, except that some of the contributors were inspired to write stories they had long meant to write but had never done. One example of that is Dixie Augusteijn, 86 years old, who wrote voluminously but always interestingly about the years she spent in Ecuador. (She is either there now, or has just come back - I expect to hear about this trip soon.)

3. Do you and your readers consider each other an affinity group or club, in a loose sense? Do readers correspond with each other, meet each other in person, help each other?

a. Indeed, there have been many on-line friendships inspired by the newsletter, and people have visited others who have written stories. One man in Ontario visited Dick Monaghan, the humorist, at his home in Vancouver. I know of regular correspondence among many of the readers - sometimes they send me copies of their letters to each other. As for helping - there is always someone ready to help with technical problems. I don´t know about their helping each other, but they certainly help me!

4. Have you ever done this kind of thing before - edited a publication? What is/was your occupation before? What has editing the Tale Spinner done for you? Has it changed your life in any small or large way?

a. I was a commercial printer for 30 years. The Spinner is as close as this old-time printer will ever get to having her own newspaper, and it has its advantages over the real thing. I served my apprenticeship in a Salmon Arm Observer and subsequently worked in Quebec, Ontario, and Alberta before returning to B.C. I worked at Pacific Press in Vancouver for 10 years, as a Linotype operator, then as a teletype operator, and finally, on a computer. When my husband died at the age of 39, I went to UBC and got a teaching degree, and I was a school librarian for 17 years. I majored in English.

5. Can you give me a sense of the technicalities of publishing the Spinner? How you assemble the stories, e-mail to 160 and maintain mailing lists? What software do you use?

a. Editing the Spinner is not difficult - just time-consuming. Stories like those written by Charles King, a former journalist, are a joy - I don´t have to change a thing. Others are more challenging, though I have been very lucky in having a group of literate people who contribute all the time, or others who send me occasional stories.

I edit the stories offline, then upload them to my local in Mindlink, where I collate the stories. Also in my local, I have my mailing list. When a letter is complete, I send it by bulk mail, using ML´s facilities. It is done automatically, and very quickly.

6. When will the Spinner be on the Web? Do you have the URL?

a. The Spinner is already on the web, I understand. [At that time, it appeared in Jim Olson´s Silver Threads.]

7. This is interesting. If you can say more about this - who you met and how, that would be helpful.

a. A year ago September I met two groups of my Ontario readers. One meet was in Toronto, arranged by Ernest Blaschke, who lives there, and there were about 10 of us there. All of them had written for the letters, except for a couple of spouses. Dixie was there, and also at the one arranged in Guelph. This was a smaller meet, but again, everyone there was a contributor. I wonder if writing for the letters makes people feel more a part of it? Anyway, they were delightful meetings.

The most recent meet was a small one in Seattle, where Dick Monaghan and his wife had driven to meet Lotte Evans from Australia. I joined them at the Space Needle for lunch, and it was like meeting old friends.

8. Would love to see some examples of the Spinner....

a. I´ll see what I have of some of those issues. There is a problem. I have them all saved on disk, but because I recently switched from an Amiga to a Mac, they are on PC-formatted disks, which both machines could read. Unfortunately, the punctuation as viewed by the Mac leaves a lot to be desired. I´ll have to have a look at them and see how they came out.

9. If it´s available, can I see a copy of your first issue?

a. Same thing for the first issue. I have it, but....

If I find the stories are difficult to read as I have saved them, there are readers who have saved all the copies, and I can ask them to forward some of the stories to you.

ED. NOTE: To read Sid´s biography and information about his book, "Us and Them", go to his website at http://www.netbc.com

Dick Monaghan (along with Murphy) has formulated these

LAWS OF MODERN LIVING

1. If you set your cruise control on the speed limit, the driver in front of you will drive 5% slower than the limit.

2. If you find a short line at the grocery store, the woman in front of you will take 20 minutes to get out her checkbook, check each item on the receipt, write the check, complain about the prices, make sure nothing is broken, return the checkbook to her purse (which she may spill on the floor) and finally get out of the line.

3. If you find a short line at the bank, the person in front of you will have the week´s receipts for a small store in change and lower- denomination bills, all of which will have to be hand-tallied.

4. If a store is having a sale on clothing items, the only sizes left when you get there will be suitable only for pygmies.

5. If you think it´s too late to go to a movie and drive on home, you will find you forgot to set the car clock back one hour when daylight- savings time ended.

6. If you buy the latest "cutting edge" computer gear, it will obsolete before you get to the door on your way out of the store.

7. If you´re afraid an important package has been left at the door, and the doorbell rings while you´re in the shower, it will be Jehovah´s Witnesses.

8. If you´re looking forward to watching a TV program, some people you haven´t heard from in years will drop in unannounced.

9. If you change lanes in your car to try to bypass a traffic clog, the lane you just left will speed up immediately, while the new one slows to a crawl.

10. If you find a reasonably-good theater seat, the one in front of you will soon be occupied by a 6-foot-six-inch (1.98120 meters) 280- lb. (127.1 kg) pro football player. [Or a woman with a bouffant hair style who knows when you are trying to see around her and moves her head at the same moment. Isn´t that so, Kate?]

Rafiki´s story explains

WHY SOME MEN WEAR EARRINGS

A man is at work one day when he notices that his co-worker is wearing an earring. This man knows his co-worker to be a normally conservative fellow, and is curious about his sudden change in "fashion sense."

The man walks up to him and says, "I didn´t know you were into earrings."

"Don´t make such a big deal; it´s only an earring," he replies sheepishly.

His friend falls silent for a few minutes, but then his curiosity prods him to say, "So, how long have you been wearing one?"

"Ever since my wife found it in my truck."

Bruce Galway shares the

SECRET TO A LONG MARRIAGE...

At the church´s marriage marathon, the minister asked Ralph on his 50th wedding anniversary, to take a few minutes to share some insight into how he managed to stay married to the same woman all those years.

Ralph said to the audience, "Well, I´ve treated her well, spent money on her, but mostly I took her traveling on special occasions."

The minister inquired, "Trips to where?"

"For our 25th anniversary, I took her to Beijing, China."

The minister then said, "Ralph, you are a terrific example to all husbands. Please tell the audience what you are planning for your wife on your 50th anniversary?"

Ralph said, "I´m going to go and get her."

Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on. - Samuel Butler