An Aussie

An email sent to Lib and her sisters from cousin Druscilla in San Diego California came today. I copy it below as it has great sentiment.

I've been putting off this letter for weeks because I couldn't think how to say what I'm feeling about Oz. It seems like you've all been chosen as the poster children for global warming and yet I have the feeling, over here anyway, that no one is listening. Our national head is too deeply dug into the sand...I resisted saying where I really think it is. Now that I'm an old woman, I feel the occasional need to be dignfied. Anyway. First hand, I have no experience with rain as it was experienced up north. Honestly, the idea of a meter of rain in 24 hours is incomprehensible to me. Especially since I spend a lot of the year longing for rain. But I do know a little about fire and I can only say that my whole body grieves for Australia, for the animals and plants and people. I was first and will always be an Aussie. XXX

Dru's mum Pat, Molly's sister, alive and well in her mid nineties, grew up in Melbourne. She married a yank who was in Australia soon after WW11. He was a crew member of a US freighter berthed in Melbourne. He had the Browne's phone number if I recall correctly, how I don't know, it may have had something to to do with Molly's brother Lin who worked as a journalist and had OS connections, and in a communication at some point said to one, "If ever you're in Melbourne give us a call, I have five sisters." It's vague and I might have it wrong, come to think of it now it was Gordon the Canadian who had the phone number, I'm only going on recall of a conversation I had with Molly perhaps ten years ago. Anyway it doesn't change the fact that Molly's sisters Pat and Margaret met and married the two Nth Americans and relocated to that continent.

Dru came to Australia as a teenager say 1960's and stayed with Molly and Bill in Wangaratta for an extended holiday. In turn Lib's sisters, Pat and Margaret, went to California and stayed with Auntie Pat and second husband Jim in a big house on a hill in Los Gatos not far from San Diego. Lib and I visited in 1979. Jim was a wealthy surgeon, a staunch republican, and successful share market investor. Pat was a democrat true to her Australian Labour upbringing and the arguments were fierce. He smoked Salem cigarettes heavily and died of lung cancer many years ago. Pat had three children from her first marriage. The Meek girls, Lib and her sister's, have always had strong connection with these cousins and the two Canadians, sons of Margaret and Gordon. We visited Canada also in 1979, and Gordon and Margaret were at our wedding in 1981, January 31, thirty-two years ago to the day (in about 40 minutes). Gordon died many years ago but Margaret is well, in her nineties.

Dru is a successful novelist, a delightful lady who reminds me much of Jane Fonda. I'm glad that through Lib I have had these connections, to give me a more balanced view of the USA that I would not have perhaps enjoyed otherwise.

The sad thing is about Dru's email, if no one there is listening, well here, with it staring us down, half the political spectrum in this country does not listen and even strongly denies, and the better half of the spectrum is pretty gutless anyway. Politics is as sick here as it is there.