1987

Annual (Christmas/New Year’s/Easter) Greetings!

My apologies for not keeping up with my Christmas cards very well the last few years, and thanks to all of you who keep sending me yours, in spite of my lapses. A friend loaned me a computer right after Christmas to try and get my address lists into order and to produce some mailing labels, which took about two weeks (not completely finished yet). But I had to drop that project and spend many more weeks getting financial records ready for the accountant to do my income tax. So now I’m hoping to get these notes off by Easter!

To summarize events of recent years, having resigned from my work at Stanford Medical Center in 1984, I have been back in my family’s house in Morro Bay, where I’m STILL trying to sort out and dispose of endless “things” and do renovations on the property. The work goes very slowly, since I’m doing so much of it myself, on top of my full-time job at the local high school library. I escape on occasional weekends by going up to San Francisco and environs to see old friends and catch up on movies, operas, art exhibits, etc. I’ve also made a few trips to Los Angeles and Santa Barbara. But I haven’t had a “real” (i.e. overseas) vacation since the literary tour of Russia in 1982.

Last summer the Carmel Art Association borrowed four landscape paintings by my father (A. Harold Knott, 1883-1977) for its special 60th Anniversary Exhibit, since he had lived there during the 1920s and was one of the original members when that organization was formed in 1927. (For non-Californian readers, Carmel is about 100 miles north of here, on the coast, a “picturesque” village originally founded as an art colony around the turn of the century, and now much frequented by tourists and vacationers.) The exhibition comprised works by members from the Association’s first 10 years, 1927-1937, and was a wonderful show, enthusiastically  received by members and public. I was so pleased to see my father’s work shown again among that of many of his old friends. And it is gratifying too to see the work of this particular generation of painters enjoying a resurgence of interest. The CAA held a lovely reception to launch the show, with music by a string quartet adding to the happy ambiance. The highlight of the summer.

In October an abandoned cat insisted on taking me over. Starving, shabby and dirty, but with a cheerful, eager and determined little spirit, he ingratiated himself into my household. Barely past the kitten stage, he was quite unprepossessing in his looks, tabby-colored with assymetrical white trim, his only distinguishing feature a huge set of white whiskers and eyebrows, so I named him “Whiskers.” Afterseveral weeks of good food, he began to flourish and drew two neighbors into his orbit. From a starving homeless waif he became a success with two houses and an apartment, a luxurious fur coat, free medical care, and three human beings to cater to his needs. His long fur expanded out to the dimension of his whiskers for the cold winter. But he is now shedding down to a lightweight sports coat for spring.

A childhood friend and her husband came to visit at Christmas who have been living in the Midwest for years, so they were keen to look at the ocean and for mountains as much as possible during their stay. Christmas Eve we drove along a lonely road on the rugged coast south of the Bay to watch the sun set over the sea from the Montana de Oro State Park. Southern California was having its coldest winter since 1883, so it seemed bleak and chill as we watched the goldenorange sun sink into the ocean’s horizon, and we turned to drive back on the deserted, rugged winding road in the dusk between mountains and the waves crashing on the rocky coastal inlets below.

Suddenly we were startled to come upon SANTACLAUS in full costume, getting out of his car. He waved, we laughed and waved back, and a DEER bounded across the road just in front of us. It felt like Christmas Eve in the “Twilight Zone” - and what a delightful surprise! A perfectevening was completed with roast Christmas goose at an Inn directly over the quiet Bay, where herons nest in the Eucalyptus groves and small boats rest at anchor.

A replica of the “Golden Hinde,” ship of the 16th century English privateer Francis Drake, sailed into our port last week, and I just dropped by to have a look. Swarms of tourists and school children have been going through it steadily, as it sits berthed between the U.S. Coast Guard cutters, large fishing boats and smaller pleasure craft.

BEST WISHES FOR WHAT’S LEFT OF THIS “NEW” YEAR--AND HAPPY EASTER!