Snail Mail: 6100 Bend of River
Austin, TX 78746-7201
Phone: (512) 327-5611

Cape Town: We stopped off in Cape Town on the way to Madagascar. What a beautiful place! The climate is wonderful, reminiscent of California, but with a strong wind, "the Cape Doctor," that blows away all the smog. We spent two days in the Cape area enjoying a magnificent hotel and restaurant, Hotel Alphen. It’s a converted farmhouse built about the turn of the last century. The building we stayed in was dated 1906. We both tallied our 2000^th bird the first full day there. Jim’s was the Zitting Cisticola, a birder’s delight. It is a small gray-brown bird identified mainly by call. Linda’s was a Pin-tailed Whydah, a spectacular species with flowing ribbon-like tail feathers.

Madagascar: Our first view of Madagascar from the window of the plane was not promising. Red barren hills of the southeastern desert stretched to the horizon, reminding us of the surface of Mars. When we landed, the pervasive odor of wood smoke reinforced the message from friends, "Go before it’s too late." The forests are being converted to ash, the hills cleared for firewood, as overpopulation claims another victim. Madagascar split from the rest of Africa 160 million years ago, when the super-continent Gondwanaland broke up. The island’s long isolation gives it a unique ecology: 80% of the plants and animals found there are endemic, found nowhere else on earth. The African mainland has one species of Baobab tree; Madagascar has twelve. Over 1000 species of orchids can be found on the island. The island has five endemic families of birds, and of course, the only surviving lemurs in the world. We sampled as much as we could, reveling in the chance to see 11 different lemurs, several chameleons, strange flowers and trees, and 144 different species of birds.

Linda still loves her job as a nurse practitioner for two family practice docs in south Austin. Jim confesses to be amazed that someone could like the same job for so many years. She has taken to mentioning her status as breadwinner a bit more often than last year. She remains active in the Austin Area Nurse Practitioners Alliance. She managed to pass along responsibility for the newsletter by accepting a position as recording secretary. Jim helps out a little with the membership list. She is still active in the Lost Creek Book and Gossip Society, especially when the book is by Barbara Kingsolver.

Jim loves his life in semi-retirement. He spends mornings studying the stock market, which consists mainly in watching Linda’s stock picks hit new highs while his languish. Linda has never forgiven him for selling Amazon.com for a quick profit. He spends his afternoons endlessly revising his novel, a rambling murder mystery about a socially inept computer wizard and his super-birder friend. Jim’s tennis game improved after he had his eyes fixed by LASIK surgery. He has reached a plateau where he is competitive with people old enough to be his father.

Charles visited us in Austin, where he fenced in the Nationals, coming in respectably in the middle of the pack despite having the entire family watching. Something about Austin must have appealed to him, because on August 30, he strolled into the family room unexpectedly and announced that he was moving back. He stayed with us temporarily, but will be in his own digs by the time you read this letter. He and Jim set up another computer in the office and managed to network both to the Internet using a cable modem, a feat of mind-boggling complexity. Charles now has a job thinking up questions for Trivial Pursuit. If you think you’re good at TP, drop us a line and we’ll send you some questions rejected as too difficult. When not working on trivia, Charles keeps busy transcribing letters George Egan Ward, great-great-great-uncle. The letters describe his adventures in Alaska during the 1898 Gold Rush, from which he never returned.

Claire continues to slog her way through medical school at Southwestern in Dallas. Whenever we try to talk to her on the phone, she is either studying or trying to catch up on sleep. She is now into her rotations and is quickly discarding specialties as each one comes up. Psychiatry: Those people are crazy! OB: Too many children having children. Medicine: Six patients with liver problems! I’m a liver magnet. We are waiting for an assessment of Pediatrics, Surgery and Family Practice. Claire now complains that the school is her life and Princess Moonbeam, her cat, is her Significant Other. Somehow, she managed to work trips to Seattle, San Francisco, and Portugal into her schedule, all using the kind of cut-rate deal she always finds.

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