Please don’t all of you who are left die at the same time this coming holiday season. That’s a lot of memorial tributes to write.

I’m just putting together my Christmas list. The prezzie lists are easy because they are of people I see all the time, well, not all the time, with lockdowns and such, but I know where they are. My greeting list of people who are still here on the planet takes a bit of checking. Just starting it the other day when I had a phone call from a friend in Winnipeg, one of the ones on my greeting list, actually. She called to report the deaths of two old friends, one from university days and one from university, marriage, parenthood and couples-bonding days. Long time.

That finished my Christmas letter research for the day. I had to do some private memory searching. Which brings me to my Christmas Generic. (one size fits all??) One person and another, I’m remembering a lot of my past.You are, too, your past, I mean.

Moishe Black and I met at the beginning of our double honours French and English studies. We signed up at third year, though students were allowed to wait a year to commit themselves.. We were the only ones who knew what we wanted early on. He was even more specifically committed: he intended to go to the Sorbonne for his postgraduate studies. He did, too. He earned a PhD and returned to France to teach and write. It was years before I saw him again.

But during those first three years we coincided, taking an identical course of studies, we came to know each other intellectually better than I had ever known anyone in my life. We didn’t study together but we were reading the same stuff. It got so that durjng a seminar or any kind of serious academic discussion, one of us would hold up one finger knowing the other would have the same reaction. Thinking was fun. Learning was fun.

I learned more from him and his family. They were close, they were intellectual, classic and intent. His older sister was intent., too. She went to Radciffe/Harvasrd. They were all smart. They welcomed me into their midst and shared some of their passion with me. After dinner I would sit with them in the living room listening, not talking, just listening to music. That’s how I met Beethoven and learned to listen and went on from there. More anon, some time. Fun.

OOPS—As usual, I am pressing the wrong buttons and losing copy. Tired, I guess. So I’ll continue this tomorrow.

Not all of my goof-offs are useless.

I have offered the copyright of my book Letters to Icelanders: Exploring the Northern Soul, to the Icelandic Canadian Club of Toronto (ICCT) to publish and sell as a fund-raiser. I checked in advance and the Board approved. I never thought it would cost them so much work. They didn’t either and they delayed a bit, maybe too long. After all, they had other things to do.

My files are in the archives of the University of Manitoba, and I looked up my contracts to get my rights back to give away. The original contract was there but not my rights of reversion (much later, after the book was out of print). No hurry. Until now. We had to trace the history of my book back through three publishers. We found the reversion but the ICCT needs it in writing. So I had to write a letter stating my intention to give ICCDT the right to publish and to receive the royalties

Tricky—for me. I can write blogs (sometimes) but I’m not used to writing business letters.

That was my important letter.

You see, every day brings a different problem and project that must be dealt with. It’s late morning the next day and I just had my hair cut. Enough.

Try again tomorrow. Yoyu know what we say about tomorrow.