(NOTE: this currently would be printed in 17 cpi Sanserif, half-height)

Dear Theresa,   30 November 1996
 
     I'm starting this "story of my life" that you asked for, while sitting in our living-room with no-one up yet: it's quiet except for the birds' dawn chorus and the fan in this IBM-type 486 computer.  There are a tui and a blackbird disputing ownership of the silver-dollar tree next to the road.  Being Saturday, there is the rare car going by, but since Rame Road goes down under the water at its end (a boat ramp), there's not a lot of traffic, even on week-days. (I [was] using Word Perfect and converting to DOS-Text before I attach it to the e-mail.)

(Bera's just got up; her tea's in the pot.)
 
     My father Don MacClement was raised in Ontario, Canada, being proud of many of his ancestors who were United Empire Loyalists who emigrated to Canada from E. USA in their Civil War.  He was in England working for his PhD in Botany from Cambridge University when he met my mother Alison Richardson.  The main reason for our support for Ruth doing her OE just now, was that Don was born in 1905.  His being married (again: divorced Alison in 1948), is probably the main reason he's still alive; that's one reason I married: to live longer. There's a lot more I could tell you about Don since he's been sending us his memoirs over the last few years; like watching the Reichstag being burnt in the early '30s, probably by the new N.A.Z.I. party.
   { Bera's just called Nain: Ruth has arrived there safely "today".}
 
     My mother Alison was the youngest (& only girl of 4) child of Henry Hay Richardson, a secondary schools inspector in N.Z. (Don's father was also in education: a professor at Queen's University, Kingston, Eastern Ontario.)  The Richardsons all went to England in the '30s so one or more of the boys could do graduate work while Alison attended the Royal Schools of Music in London.  Her G.R.S.M. was very valuable after 1948: we 3 grew up poor, but not deprived. Don and Alison spent many months camping around Europe in 1935 (Don doing some gliding), before returning to England.
 
     I was born in Cambridge in November 1936; my older sister Kathy was also born in England (Sept.'39), then we all went to Canada so that Don could work (training recruits) in the RCAF.  He couldn't be a flying instructor because his knee had been pinned after a car crash in Canada when he was a teenager (he'd been driving too fast). Ruth's other Aunt Lisbeth (born May 1945, in an attempt to stave off the separation & divorce), married my best friend Peter Fraser (one-legged): they,with their son Sam, will be hosting Ruth in Nova Scotia from 31 December till mid-January. Lots of snow and cold, but Ruth was born in Ottawa, so she may as well be familiar with her heritage!
 
     Both Kathy & Lisbeth (she now calls herself Libby) can be reached by eMail: the latter's address is: plsf@north.nsis.com . I've told them about you: however, I called you a new sister-in-law to Sam when you're more of a new cousin (Geoff's and his common forebears are Alison & Don, not me or Libby).
 
     Back to my favourite topic: me!
 
     I have no recollection of being held up to see over the crowd at King George VI's coronation, but I have a vague memory of climbing a wooden frame near the corner of a pebble-dash cottage probably in southern England.  My earliest real memories are of our time in Nova Scotia and Ontario during the War: watching a winter storm crash waves onto an Atlantic rocky beach, and exploring the waste ground and concrete structures near where we lived in London, Ontario
 
     I think I'll send this one page at a time, & this is it.
 
     Love,  David.

(DsLife_2)
     1 December 1996
 
     The travel across the Atlantic in early 1940 must have been scary for Don and Alison, since there was the constant danger from submarines and icebergs, though I believe there was a convoy.
 
     Alison set up house in the equivalent of a bach, at Boutilliers Point, part of south-facing St Margarets Bay, west of Halifax on the Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia.  I don't remember feeling cold, either in the house or on the way to & from school at the settlement a mile away, but I do remember fogs and storms, and some spring flowers.  I also don't remember Don being there or at our next (and better) house at Lower Sackville, (in the Shubenacadie River valley, I believe).  Once again, I walked to school about 2 miles away, and learnt a _great_ deal about nature and other things that way.  For instance, I discovered frog spawn in a flooded patch, in the spring, and remember being fascinated to see the tiny tadpoles inside the clear jelly bubbles.  Also in the winter I loved seeing the snow-laden branches of the fir trees, though didn't appreciate pulling the snow out of my neck when some slid down on me!  Standing at the side of the stream in the early spring watching the water slid over and drip off the remaining ice was the first time I remember discovering beauty, in something not usually pointed out as beautiful.  I was almost always alone and didn't regret that: I gained self-confidence (at age ~7) exploring, sliding down snow slopes, and learning to skate on a pond over the road.  However, I was also frightened by having my tooth go through my lip, when I slid over on an icy patch and was taken to get it sewed up; this was also the time I had my tonsils cut out, and later my adenoids.  It was routine then, (I did get sick quite a bit, and have always breathed through my mouth), but I now regret it, in that there is now an empty space at the back of my mouth that doesn't ever completely close.  Ages 5 to 10 were most important in my life.
 
     This period made me aware of others than my family, not usually favourably.  The doctor above was one, an older girl who got me and an acquaintance to go swimming naked with her, then said we were to stand side by side while she pulled our penises like pulling a cow's teats (I refused, because she wouldn't let me feel her in a corres-ponding way), a clique of older kids in the one-room school who taunted me because I was a loner, and continually having my stuff stolen or messed-about.  I learned not to trust people.
 
     At some time during the war (I don't know the order), we also lived in Ottawa, London Ontario, and the MacClement family residence ("Ardlamont") west of Collins Bay, near Kingston, Eastern Ontario.  As a consequence of my later conclusions, Bera & I decided that we were going to stay put,at least while the kids were in primary school while they grew roots in _one_ place.  A way to find the date when I was living in the big old stone house "Ardlamont", was that I remember standing in the living-roon listening to the excited announcer describe the Allied armies crossing the Rhine river into Germany, in the final stages of the war.  I felt proud!  Rather differently, during the winter there, I remember feeling cold (and courageous) while going to the toilet in the dark, wind and snow: the 2-holer was built over a deep crack in the limestone bedrock of that part of North America, about 20 m away from the back door.  Again, my school days were a mixed experience: I generally enjoyed walking the more than 3 miles to and from school along the Lake Ontario coastal high-way, especially after Kathy was old enough to come with me, but I stood out in class in being able to answer most questions (when I actually chose to), and some guys who I had sort of trusted threw me into a stand of bamboos with their sharp leaves.  At least half of my clearest memories from childhood(perhaps because I refreshed them) were of bad events, mostly to do with other kids.  However, I do remember loving the swimming (underwater) and rowing on Lake Ontario, and just generally being out and about: this and reading have been my two loves: they still are.

(DsLife_3)
     2 December 1996
 
     In the autumn months (Oct.,Nov.) of 1946, when I was turning 10, Don helped me build a model airplane, rubber-band powered and covered with doped paper, but it wasn't finished before we four left for New Zealand so that Alison could look after her parents who were supposedly likely to die "soon".  They didn't.  Don and Alison's separation then divorce convinced me that I was never going to let myself get that close to someone else or them to me.  ("If it hurts that much, it can't possibly be worth it.")  At that time I also determined not to get married - as you see, that changed, but the earlier conviction didn't.  To look on the bright side, only about 5 years ago, after weeks and even months of increasing friction, Bera and I had a blazing row down at the Farm in which I told her I didn't _need_ to stay with her, and she said corresponding things to me; Ruth stood there with mouth agape, totally shocked, then tried to "get us together again" by saying things like: `surely you don't really mean that?'.  We didn't seriously separate, then or later, and _I_ think that's partly because I had always kept some personal distance from everybody (even the children).  I am not advising this for anyone else, but I _am_ saying that being true friends with your life's partner is more important than being "head-over-heels-in-love" with them.  Ruth didn't like it when I answered her question (to each of us) "Do you still love her(him)" with: "No; I haven't for a great many years".
 
     To get back to my life. We arrived in N.Z. around Christmas 1946 (after travelling across Canada by train for 3-4 days, then across the Pacific in the Wanganella, a smallish passenger ship, for 2 weeks. I look back on th  ...

{I've just checked your eMail of 29 Nov. where you ask for:
"**  ...  your life, how you lived it, where you lived it, and how you felt about it at those times. 
Please tell me more - about starting your career & your family, your goals, what you stood for,how it changed (if & when), etc... "  
  I'll go faster to get there}
 
     I was paired with an "office cat" Jonathan, to show me around, when I went to Titirangi School.  We stayed friends for many years, right into secondary school, but I wanted to be respected and didn't think I could be while I was his friend, so we stopped.  He became a lawyer.  Once while in Intermediate School,we and Kathy went swimming in a dammed stream on a neighbour's property in Titirangi, but after some time Jonathan didn't surface, so I dived down and felt around in the clayey water, found him and brought him out apparently dead.  K. went for help, but luckily just holding him upright got him breathing again.  I must have been about 12.
(faster!)
 
     Later in Sec. School, I was a 2nd. trumpet in the school band, and was reliable but about average as a musician.  I most remember being the Physics Monitor, bringing out and putting away special equipment for the demonstrations and/or the whole class.  Mr East was a little disappointed that I was not keen enough to do serious research on a project he gave me, just did what he said, but was too lazy to find out more in the Library.  I hadn't changed, even by the time I was a PhD student.
(end of page)

(DsLife_4)
3 December 1996
 
     At about age 16, I decided that the risks in getting tied up with a girl were too great.  These were that (i) she would use all her female skills to make me do something I wouldn't normally want to do, such as marry her, and (ii) my sex drive was so powerful that I would be unable to stop myself having sex with her (under the sorts of circumstances I would probably be in with a girl) and she would be disgusted with me or even have to have a baby.  I would therefore have nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with them: I wouldn't even look at them in case I got trapped.  This I carried out to the last letter, until I forced myself to "go out with" a girl, at about age 26.  She found me gauche and deep-down queer: "Don't talk to me again" was her last word.
 
     During these years I was cycling to Avondale College (10-12 km from Titirangi), later down to New Lynn railway station whence I went in to Auckland University (the Physics Department was in the Old Choral Hall), and at 23 I, Kathy and Lisbeth went to Canada to finish "growing up" with my father in Hamilton, Ontario, where I shovelled a lot of snow off the drive every winter.  Also during teen-age, I taught myself electricity and radio (using the Radio Amateur's Hand-book), and built several of them, often using biscuit-tin lids for the chassis.  One of these, I think my first one-valve radio, I put together from a circuit diagram, carefully scraping each wire and terminal as I wired it up.  I didn't have a soldering iron (I had almost no money), so took it in to the metalwork teacher, asking if I could use his.  He didn't believe it could work in the unsoldered state I had brought it, but because I'd been very careful, it did! This gave me considerable self-confidence: I think there are 6 to a dozen critical moments in a person's growing up which do a lot to mould who (s)he turns out to be.  _My_ view is that these usually occur when the child/youth is on their own; the parents have little or no effect then, they can only (a) do a really good job of raising the kid before age 8,and (b) provide a supportive, caring & listening environment (the youth needs to "belong" and be valued), later.
    At Hamilton I attended McMaster University, filling out my course with English, Russian and Philosophy (none of which were required for a BSc at Auckland then), and taking 4th year courses for an Honours BSc which Don expected of me.  Up till then I had just coasted along, having crashed out in my first year (all 4 courses), and getting C-passes from then on, so working hard so as not to disappoint my father was a real shock.  In those days, honours science graduates were sought after by high-tech companies, so Canadian Westinghouse came to Uni., rather than vice-versa.  They were much more interested in what I had done in my spare time over the years, and hardly at all in my course results.  Having taught myself electronics successfully seemed to be the main reason they hired me to work on the airborne radar in the RCAF's new (in 1961) CF104, their "flying power-pole" supersonic fighter-bomber.  One of my (graduating) friends took a very prestigious job in non-linear optics and lasers in the States, but it was part of the nuclear industry and even then, I wanted no part in that.  On the other hand, the "beat generation", California hippies, flower power versus the Vietnam War,and Woodstock were all happening, but I don't remember being more than interested [Oh, all right, I did wish I had gone to Woodstock!]. 
     (end page)

(DsLife_5)
     4 December 1996
 
     My 4 years at Auckland Uni. finished at the end of 1958, and in the first third of '59 I worked on a production line in Mt Wellington (that made Murphy valve radios), spending about 1 hr. 20 mins cycling there in the morning and the same home at night.  I was 23, and in late May I went to Canada by ship, stopping in Fiji then flying from Vancouver to Toronto, on my own (Kathy and Lisbeth came just before Christmas).  Within a year or two, Don had got me started on gliding, and not long after going solo I wanted to use a club aircraft to go cross-country [for my "C" badge], and had to be "checked out".  I was told to land on a short piece of grass, by "flying down-wind, turning right, then right again onto final approach, then land starting at the down-wind end of the grass patch".  I misinterpreted this to mean that the _track_ of the glider had to go through the right-angles, and ended up facing up-wind ~100 ft above the point I was to touch-down on, and moving _very_ slowly.  I stalled the plane while going still slower, so it nosed down, heading vertically for the ground.  I made sure of this by quickly pushing the control-stick forward.  In the next second or two I broke out in a cold sweat, but hoped we would speed up sufficiently for me to pull out of the dive.  By tentatively pulling back a _little_ I could tell that this might happen, and in fact it did: I levelled out not more than a foot above the ground, put the air-brakes on, touched down, and stopped on the patch of grass!  Besides boasting to you, I'm trying to say that one of my characteristics is not to panic (but in fact, to appear to think much quicker) in emergency situations; in this case, facing almost certain death.  (Barbara Durbin's husband Peter 3 years ago died in the way I've described: Barbara and the girls still live here in Greenhithe.)
 
     I won't tell you about "drifting" around fast corners in my first car (a '59 Mini), or travelling across North America in my Austin-Healey Sprite with my french horn just behind me in the luggage space (un-sprung: after most of a week's travelling to the Pacific coast, the horn was considerably dented!), or about learning to handle my third car, a rear-engined (flat-6, aircooled) Corvair; yes, the one made infamous by Ralph Nader as being too dangerous if driven fast, to be sold to the general public!  It was fun!  I won't even talk about learning to fly power planes at the Airforce base in northern Alberta (where I was the Canadian Westinghouse rep.), or finding myself in a winter "white-out": fortunately I was in a car, and just had to wait a while.  No-one depended on me, and if I killed myself only my sisters would grieve (and maybe my mother; I hadn't seen her for over 5 years, though).  I also watched my 1st eclipse of the sun (the 2nd was in Nova Scotia).
 
     When I was 27 (in early '64), I was driving along a _very_ empty N. Alberta gravel road in the late evening, and saw an isolated house right up against the dark north woods, with-a-light-on-in-the-window!  I suddenly realised that I wanted someone to hope I'd get home safely and to be very glad to see me when I arrived.  So I signed up to a proper "computer" dating service, with a large battery of tests,  psychological interviews and questionaires, followed by a sorting of computer cards to match the men and women clients of the "Scientific Introduction Service".
(more next page)

(DsLife_6)
     5 December 1996
 
     There were a few decisions I made (i) when I was in my late 20s and (ii) that required using my ethical system (somewhat undeveloped) to help choose which organizations I would stay with, and for how long.
 
     When I joined Canadian Westinghouse in ~Aug.'61, I was aware (maybe told) that they would be investing some effort & "unproductive time"in training me,so I chose to stay with them for 3 years minimum. I stuck with this at the beginning of the 3rd year, when I was start-ing to plan my next few years; I knew I wanted to get back into the academic world, and in fact applied to McMaster University 1/2 way through the 3rd yr.(~Jan.'64) and was accepted into a PhD programme there, starting Sept.'64.  Cdn. Westinghouse said I was most welcome to rejoin them at any time.
 
     Then, after doing well enough in my first graduate year, I found I wasn't intellectually able to succeed at the next Mathematical Physics courses and dropped to an MSc.  At about that time I told myself I was being quite selfish to spend _so_ many years solely for my own benefit.  This lead me to my next choice, Secondary School teaching in Physics (since I had found myself interested in, and good at, sunday-school teaching in Titirangi in my late teens). 
That earlier reference to wanting to stay away from Nuclear Physics was at this time too.  I was "head-hunted" by a school principal from the District High School in Fergus, a small country town north of London, about the middle of Southern Ontario.
 -{inserted, Dec 2003: In Guelph I rented an apartment on the Fergus side, sharing it with a Turkish grad student: Özdemir Gulen.}
  By this time I had bought (with the major pay I had got from Cdn. W.) a REALLY nice car, a black with red leather Corvair Mk II, and when I started teaching and taking one or two girls out, it did what I wanted: created noticeable envy!  It was also quite good as a sports car, though it _was_ sedan shape, i.e. didn't have a soft-top.
 
     A third, small thing , maybe ethical but certainly showing my attitude to money and the future, was to take out a "whole-of-life" insurance policy, that was essentially compulsory savings on top of life insurance.
 
     Returning to the Scientific Introduction Centre (- Service?: I don't remember now).  We had to go to Toronto several times for 1 hr. (or more) tests or interviews; unbeknownst to me, Bera was also driving from Guelph in her Bug ('59 VW).  After the Hollerith-card-matching, the woman would be given 1 to 3 1/2-page descriptions of apparently good matches to choose from.  Both of us specified good academic ability and aptitude in music, and were non-committal about height, looks and largely age.  She told the SIC who sent her 1/2 page summary to the guy, asking him to phone her for a date.  I did this for a couple of young women, one of whom was hesitant about telling me she had made her own kit-set stereo system, soldering and all: I assured her it was an ability I valued!  After I had my only car crash in N. America with her in the passenger seat (we had seat-belts, and only got bruises - car written-off), I felt I couldn't hold my head up in her company any more since I was somewhat at fault so I broke off with her.  Finally I got Bera's summary, and knew at first reading that this one I was going to marry, come what may! Even before meeting her!  Her classical good looks were a bonus, as I found out later.  In my first phone-call, I started as I've gone on, telling her what to wear while we were out on the ski-slope to keep warm. That was Feb.'67; we married on 18 June '68.
(end page)

(DsLife_7)
     7 December 1996
 
     Bera and I spent a lot of time together; in the summer of 1967 we drove down to Montreal for Expo 67 - the one with the US exhibit in a Buckminster Fuller geodesic dome having the monorail going right through it and the actual Gemini and Mercury spacecraft in it, burn marks and all.  The N.Z. building was also marvellous, in a VERY different way.  The next spring, after Bera'd finished her two-year course at Althouse Teachers Training College, we moved into our own apartment living together as man and wife, but that autumn the two of us stood one evening on a hill near Guelph and pledged ourselves to each other; on that basis (un-public), we've been married for over 29 years.  During the winter in between, I drove down to London _every_ weekend, storm or no; on one occasion I was the first to drive along the "401" throughway after the heaviest snow had stopped, and you couldn't see which was road and which was snow-filled mowable-ditch.  I was acutely conscious that most cars after me would drive in my tracks, so did my level best to stay inside the two east-bound lanes of the divided motorway.  It wasn't easy, but I succeeded.  This was the winter in which I gave Bera the first Beatles LP, being unsure whether she would appear to like it to save my feelings, or ...  She really loved it!   She had grown up in a very establishment-oriented way (Cheltenham Ladies College, Girton College), so perhaps my ability to broaden her experience was one of my attractions.
 
     A little, before, and much more, after we were married, were the negatives of being tied up with me, mainly the strong arguments we had, sufficient to frequently cause Bera to storm out and go for a walk. On one of these (I thought fairly ordinary) occasions, Geoffrey Timms (Bera's father) spoke worriedly to me about going to find her, presumably to soothe her feelings, but I told him that this was one of the things you should expect to happen when people used to living on their own decided to live with someone else. (In 1968 at our wedding, I was 31 and Bera was 27.  When Ruth was born, B. was 36, which was why she had amniocentesis to check for abnormalities, which increase rapidly [on the average] after the woman passes mid-30s.)  Another negative was that I was a very ordinary lover, and Bera ceased to really enjoy sex with me in less than 5 years.  We stopped completely more than 10 years ago.  And it wasn't anything to do with worry over the possibility of an unwanted pregnancy: B. got herself sterilised by tubal ligation right after Ruth was born.
 
     And now for something completely different!  One of the best things we did together in the first few years was to buy (for $100 !) a 2-person 100% styrofoam sailboat that you could lift with one finger.  I gave the outside a layer of glass-fibre cloth and epoxy resin, and painted much of the inside with the resin.  We would be driving along a country road near a lake, see a bay or an island we'd like to explore, whip the boat off the roof and into the water ready to sail in 5 minutes (literally), and off we went.  We had wonderful times, those summers!  It wouldn't hold more than 2 and a bit (Geoff, at 10 months): we sold it shortly after G. fell over the back, I dived in immediately and held him up to breathe while I was under, then held him under so I could breathe, and so on: the heels of my plastic sandals had caught under some water-weed which had grown up from the bottom of Lake Erie's northern shore.  I was losing out, and considering leaving G. on his back at the surface while I tried to disentangle myself, when Bera sailed the boat back and picked us up. (It was so narrow we had to get in over the stern.)  Geoff, who I had almost tossed onto the floor, coughed a wee bit and was fine and in a few minutes, happy again.
(end page)

(DsLife_8)
     12 December 1996
 
     I don't look back on my life as a string of "good, enjoyable" experiences, rather as "satisfying, worth-while" ones: I'm now quite willing to end such a life; I don't feel cheated or missing something, and certainly don't (at this late stage) _expect_ more enjoyment.  I think there are things one should do well in one's life, and if there's enjoyment as well, that's an unexpected bonus. (Like seeing Geoff at around 1.5 years old studying the words on the back of our shelves of books: in our view, clearly trying to read!  We read to him a lot.)  You asked me:
 
     " Do tell me what memories you treasure most, and which ones you use to guide your current life & plan your future.  You've had good & happy times too ...".
 
     I don't use memories, that way or in any other: the nearest is when I'm talking to Bera, and occasionally one of us says: "Remember ..."; these shared experiences brought us together at the time, and remembering them reinforces that; we would do this a maximum of a dozen times a year.  Our talking about our current common interests (being green, trying to counter the over-emphasis on the "market", and always, Physics) is far more effective, in us staying good friends.
 
     What I've read has (looking back) had an easily identifiable effect on my present opinions, while in my life, the events I've been part of have largely moulded my current views, but there was always the combination of impulses that began those events.
**  Example:- Bera and I were somewhat adventurous, she to leave England for Guelph Agricultural College of Toronto University, and me to leave a relatively secure (certainly sheltered) life as a grad student and take up Sec. School teaching at a high level, in Fergus.  In both cases, we had background sufficient to persuade our new boss that we were a good bet: it wasn't JUST our own choice; and there were several people to give help and back-up if needed. So a willing-ness to take a certain level of risk and a reasonable range of experience were pre-requisites.  Being at least a moderate success at these has been a determining factor in the rest of our lives.

**  Example:- In the '60s, much more than now, there was a widespread belief that progress was real and the future would be better than the past if enough people did enough good things (e.g. U.S. Peace Corps, and Canadian Univ. Service Overseas), so Beras & my interest in "bringing light to darkest Africa" wasn't unusual. The actual change-point for me (at least) was at the end of our first year in Ghana, when it was made clear to us that, while our presence was valued, doing our work at least as well as anyone else was the reason we had the job, not our feeling that we were superior beings, bringing education and enlightenment to the deprived.  Very kindly yet definitely something like this was said: "If you don't measure up to what we want, we'll get someone better."

**  Example:- (this one fits here, in the DsLife_n series.) Bera and I really enjoyed (OK, I did, _sometimes_!) exploring our surround-ings, whether the vicinity of Koforidua, Ghana where we were teaching in the first year, or Southern Ontario after our return.  So we worked together to fit out an old Ford Econoline van,and went camping on summer weekends (both days).  I used a steel-cutting disk to fit windows into the sides, and she painted an apple tree on the sides. I still remember waking up with unseasonal snow outside!  And seeing a rattle-snake, on the shore of a wild northern lake.
(end page)

(DsLife_9)
13 December 1996
 
  {Pete's just driven up the road in our un-WoF'd Sunny with a flat tyre.  He's about the only one to use the car these days, so his taking the down-side with the up-side is perhaps fair (he'd gone by the time I could get outside to warn him). }
     I realise I'm leaving out a lot, like my experiences in my late 20's at Cold Lake Airforce Base in northern Alberta (incl. my gliding with the Edmonton Gliding Club and my great height [above the Rockies] and distance flights in gaining my Silver "C" badge), and the time I was driving too fast on a gravel road on the flat prairies, then came to the sharp drop & left turn to go down into a river gulley and only by doing _exactly_ the right thing (feathering the brakes just right) _precisely_ soon enough, did I stay on the road.  This was the second time I have looked death in the face; both times because I wasn't paying enough attention.  I suppose _you_, Theresa could say my staying alive and undamaged has benefitted the future, in that there'd not be a Geoff for you to marry if my life story had stopped back in the mid 1960s!  (I'm sure Bera wouldn't have married a cripple.)
 
     Here I've slightly modified what you asked for:
"..tell me what experiences you treasure most, and which ones you use to guide your current life & plan your future" 
     When in Ghana in mid-'68 to mid-'70, we chose not to have any child there, because of the uncertainty about how good the medical services would have been if something went wrong.  I think Bera used The Pill for most of a year about then(though with her family tendency towards strokes/heart-attacks she soon stopped), and we used a combination of spermicidal gel, condom, rhythm and later: diaphragm for contraception (though I have a vague memory of Bera trying an I.U.D. for a short while).  This was before any but the most far-seeing (like Grndad) were concerned about how world population growth rates affected the couple's own choices. My eyes were opened in '72 with the Ecologist's publishing of their "blueprint for survival" in the January issue.  I know Bera and I talked about us having 3 to 5 kids, since we thought we could do well by them, in contrast to the poor people in all the countries we'd lived in (i.e., we actually _had_ 1st hand knowledge). Consequently, we decided that,with the quite major Government support ther was then for grad students(free housing and a good scholarship), we'd immediately start a family in the year we returned.  It actually worked out well: the married students' apartments were in a wonderful little wooded valley behind the University with sheltered areas for the children to play in, we could walk to & from our Departments(Bio-physics & Physics) easily, and the ~$5000 p.a. Province of Ontario Graduate Fellowships made living a pleasure.  All generations before and since ours have had a much harder time of it. We were truly lucky
 
     We had a number of memorable experiences in those years, most of which were out of doors and km or 10s of km away from other people. I'm thinking of our decision to join the Thames Valley Trail Assoc-iation at its inaugural meeting (a N.Z.er organised it), and the _many_ really pleasant walks and working-bees (with the boys in back-carry-frames) we had along the Thames and its tributaries.  On one of these, I remember clarifying my nascent ideas while expounding to someone, about how, with there now being for the first time in the history of the world, more people than jobs needing to be done, the individual's efforts were no longer automatically needed, i.e. there was in most cases someone else not too far away who could do the same job at least competently.  Another was, while we were sailing our trailer-sailer (which came out of savings from Cdn. West.se), a wild wind came up blowing us out into the lake, but my earlier experience (gained in my free time)of sailing in N.Z.brought us to harbour.(end)

 { Don't forget that "addenda & corrigenda: DsLife_9" goes in here }

From ???@??? Fri Dec 13 20:29:23 1996
To: Geoff
From: Peter MacClement <peter@ihug.co.nz>
Subject: addenda & corrigenda: DsLife_9

        (1)     Bera would have used The Pill for the whole of the 2 years we were in Ghana to make as sure as possible that we had no child(ren) there, and expected to stop a little before we left, for the reasons I gave.  However, she stopped before the end of the first year because we both got infectious hepatitis (I almost went out of my mind with the headache-type pain).  She didn't use an I.U.D.

        (2)     The grad students' housing wasn't free: it was low-rent, which came out of our income.  Bera (we think) had money supplied by the Biophysics Dept., perhaps from a research grant to them.

        (3)     The T.V.Trail Assoc. was started by Chris Horne, who returned to N.Z. before us and helped to start the environmental umbrella group in Wellington: ECO.
        The reason I was late getting to the inaugural meeting of the Thames Valley Trail Association was that I had been helping Bera get to hospital for her first child: Geoff!


(DsLife10)
     14 December 1996
    Bera in those days was working on the biophysics of nerve conduction, studying the changes in infra-red absorption between when the nerve had a signal going along it ( & therefore 10s of millivolts across the cell membrane) and when it was quiescent.  This detected changes in shape of a certain type of molecule in the membrane when the nerve was active.  To get long nerves we had to catch and sacrifice one of either frog or garfish, and I have many memories of helping her net them in ponds or the shallows of Lake St. Clair (near Windsor and Detroit), then bringing them back in large buckets, driving carefully, and keeping them in good health in aerated aquariums.
 
     Another memory from then was of looking out the (upper-floor) window of the main hospital a day or so after Geoff was born, and seeing that the snow had become thinner and patchier, telling me for the first time that Spring was on the way.  A great deal of my memor-able experiences have been to do with Nature, certainly the more pleasant ones. 
(I also remember the weeks of frustration in trying to get the equipment built [to my own design] and running reasonably well, in my research project; I was totally alone in this: my supervisor was virtually useless,in contrast to Bera's [Marvin Sherebrin], who became quite a good friend [with his wife & family].)
 
     I suppose I'm saying, in addition to my life being largely what I did in my own time, that sticking at _something_ even when no help was available but the _something_ was worthwhile, has been reinforced ever and again. 
Now I come to think of it, I probably saw this first when I was a young-teen-ager and the 4 of us were out in a dinghy off the north end of Takapuna Beach when Alison saw that the wind and tide were taking us further out into the Pacific Ocean (eventually), so she started rowing back, but didn't seem to be getting anywhere.  I offered to row, but Mum wouldn't hear of it and kept going even after she was too tired and pained.  We did eventually get out of the tide rip and in to shore, but I was most impressed: I had been scared. There have been other times: on my first tramp with the Auckland University College Tramping Club from the Ranui rail station up into the Waitakere Ranges to the AUCTC hut, I wasn't fit and wanted to stop for 1/2 an hour, but kept on climbing those bush-covered clay hills.  Gaining self-confidence comes from a series of such things.
 
     In a negative way (I suppose), our experience in the early '70s with an allotment garden (to which we walked with the boys on our backs: 2 boys, 2 backs), which we started with high hopes and regular watering but which only produced tomatoes and beans in the end, convinced us (me at least) that gardening is too much work and time for the amount produced.
 
     At around Christmas '73, we went to N.Z. for a 4-week visit, largely for Bera to see what it was like as a place to bring up kids, and to visit Alison and Kathy for the first time after wegot married.  (Kathy _had_ attended our wedding)  The steeper, non-glaciated slopes struck Bera, with the friendliness of the people and the great green-ness and blue-ness of everything.
 
     Grndad had by now sold his last property in England and moved to a basement apartment in London Ontario, and by walking or bussing he was able to visit frequently, and sometimes we'd walk (with back-pack and push-chair) to his place. A few years of this showed us that we'd all be better off if he was closer, and when we moved house to Ottawa to be nearer Bera's job at N.R.C., we included him in the household.

Ð(DsLife11)
 
     15 December 1996
 
     One of the families we liked a lot, in the Married Students' Apartments came from Korea: I think the man was working toward a PhD. We often ran into them around, and I think had one or two meals with them (& their likeable children).  My main memory was of realising that they were VERY like us, in humour, abilities, hopes for the future and to some degree in personality (I was like the woman, Bera was like the man).
 
     I've said nothing about our connections with the Church so far; we were married in a United Church of Canada in Hamilton, Ontario, and went to church most Sundays,but there wasn't much that was memor-able there.  The nearest was a fairly famous (in London Ontario) preacher who was quite outspoken in his philosophy, and often had sections of his sermons broadcast on radio.  We considered ourselves thoroughly Christian, at the time, though we knew we were at the liberal end of the spectrum in Canada.  After continuing in the same way after arrival here in N.Z., with Bera even being a member of the ( Anglican-Methodist Co-operating) Parish Council, the Council decided to get a new (middle-aged) minister whose world-view was limited to preaching to his parishioners, with NO attention to the mess everyone was making of the world, and the consequent need for a much-modified philosophical and religious view of Man's Place in the world.  Bera wrote, resigning her position on the council and giving reasons such as this, and since then we've seen the Church as being almost useless in the present and future world that is over-run with people.  By the way, I recognise in quite a bit of L. Ron Hubbard's writings, a very 1950s and 1960s view of Man's purpose, and what the future should be like.  As I've said before, I and everyone else thought that way then; almost no-one saw the consequences of the shape of the world population curve (super-exponential): Grndad and Professor Paul Ehrlich of California are the only ones I know of.
(exponential: the _rate_ of change is linearly proportional to the _amount_, at each and every point: the higher it gets, the faster it goes up.)
 
     After Bera graduated, in 1974, she worked on analysing sea-bed cores from the Glomar Challenger in the Deep-Sea-Drilling Project: her boss was Professor Bill Fyfe, the head of the Geology Department (and a Fellow of the Royal Society in N.Z., Britain and Canada). In Sept. '76 she was accepted as a researcher at Canada's National Research Council, using a REALLY high-power laser, so she moved to Ottawa while I continued (with the boys in day-care) in London.  We did the big move (drove our own moving truck with a tow-bar on the back towing the trailer-sailer: Bera drove the car), before Christmas and all of us (incl. Grndad) moved into 680 Rainsford Ave. opposite the Park.  I continued working on analysing my data and writing up my thesis, while lecturing to pre-university and first-year students.  I have good memories of cycling the ~7 km  to Carleton University in the Spring, Summer and Fall, and also, on Winter weekends skating on the Rideau Canal. 
 
     Life started getting a little harder for us in Ottawa: Bera's work was difficult, I had a lot to do, and bringing up the kids (Ruth was born there) created bad times as well as good.  Still, in my late 30s this seemed the sort of thing I'd been preparing myself for. (end)

(DsLife12)
     16 December 1996
 
     After Ruth was a year old, Bera resigned from NRC (I think they reckoned they had someone who could do a better job: Bera thought it was all the different disturbances in her abilities caused by Ruth's birth), and I was very nearly finished my thesis (on the radio-frequency emissions from lightning), so when Carleton University asked me whether I'd be willing to be the follow-on for another staff member who was then in Nigeria on an exchange programme, I said "Certainly!" For one thing, no-one else there had taught in a West African Uni-versity, and both Bera and I had.  By now we were sure we would be moving to N.Z. afterwards, (though we had considered the northern coast of B.C. for a while), so we packed everything in suitable containers for on-sending to N.Z. when we returned to Canada.
 
     We flew into Kano Airport in northern (the dry part of) Nigeria, and all 5 of us were brought by car to Zaria and Ahmadu Bello University.  We found everyone except the Uni. Administration very helpful; having to wait not just for 1/2 hour for someone to get around to you but for several days (going there every day), was sometimes quite frustrating!  However, it all worked out fairly well: we knew some-thing of the banking system (off-shoots of British banks), and bought a Brazil-made Volkswagen (a later design than the Bug, but same engine) with money brought from Canada.  (Oh! those long waits!)  The boys went to the on-campus primary school where the ex-patriate staff sent their kids, while Ruth went to a day-care and was looked after at home by Victoria (and her daughter Ngosi), a young woman from Rivers State in southern Nigeria; I think her Ibo people were close to the Ogoni that are in the news now, resisting Shell's incursions and persecutions.  Mr Sara-Wiwa (Ken's father) was murdered by the Nigerian State a year ago: given an unjust trial(as stated by Commonwealth observers) and executed by army firing squad very soon after.    During calendar year '79, I taught an undergraduate and a graduate course in the Ahmadu Bello Physics Dept., while Bera was a lecturer in the Biophysics Dept. (I was Mr MacClement, she was Dr MacClement.) In our weekends and other free time, we walked over the neighbouring landscape, took the car (if we needed LPG) or a "mammy-lorry" into Zaria for shopping, and travelled an hour or more over VERY rough roads to a "hill-station" called Jos, where we'd pay to stay a day or two in the Mission residences and visit the Jos Zoo (among other things).  On one occasion, during our year at Ahmadu Bello, the local Islamic fundamentalists got themselves worked up over the selling of beer and other alcohol-containing beverages at the University Staff Club, so they trashed it, after marching through the Campus waving machetes and shouting.  We stayed inside the house, and watched, wor-riedly. Geoff might still know how to sing Nigeria's National Anthem!
 
     I've sometimes been asked "where do you come from", which can mean: "which accent do you have", but could be: "where were you born" or: "What place do you consider Home?"  These all have different answers!  My accent came from my 20 years in Canada, where I met and married Bera and had 3 kids; I was born in Cambridge, England (unfor-tunately:I'm ashamed of my connection with class-ridden Tory England) but I consider the place I was brought up and found myself as a separate individual, New Zealand, to be my home.  So I usually say: "I'm a New Zealander, though I was born in England and spent 20 years in Canada."  However, I'd be quite happy to spend the rest of my life in Africa, specifically Ghana or Nigeria; I'd feel at home there too. Do you, Theresa have a strong connection with Australia, yet?
   My next page will be about choosing where to settle, in N.Z. 
(end)