The Three-Week Wedding

It's good to be back!
     After three weeks in Cape Town for a most successful wedding in and around the coastal fishing village of Kommetjie, Johannesburg has been very welcoming.
     John and Greta are also back, having decided to take their honeymoon in August when they'll be going to Croatia and Italy.

Winelands weddings create a beautiful backdrop for the photographers. Here John and Greta take a stroll at Cape Point Vineyards just after the ceremony

     Whether we'll be able to prevail upon John to attend a few meetings every now and again now that he's a married man with responsibilities, remains to be seen!
     The wedding was a whirlwind of activity with functions on the Friday and Sunday. On Friday we had a South African braai vs American barbecue with crafted local gin vs bourbon, and smoked pork ribs, the overall winner, vs lamb chops and boerewors. We planned for 90 and about 70 turned up. On Sunday we planned for 60-70 people and about 90 turned up, but at various times of the day, so that it was a long, lazy afternoon. And of course there was the wedding itself in Noordhoek on the Saturday.
     There were about 40 American friends and family and they saw Kommetjie and Cape Town at its very best, despite the drought there.
     Chris, Greta's sister Anna's partner, won the prize for the worst flight. It took him two days to travel from St Louis to Cape Town. His first flight to Washington DC was postponed because of the storms, so he flew to Chicago, where the plane sat on the runway for three hours due to technical problems, causing him to miss the direct DC-Johannesburg flight. He therefore flew from Chicago to Frankfurt, Frankfurt to Istanbul, Istanbul to Johannesburg and Johannesburg to George (all the Cape Town flights were fully booked.) In George he took a chartered propellor driven small plane to Cape Town and arrived at the height of the Friday night function, exhausted.
     He flopped down into bed only to find he was sharing it with a breastfeeding mother. Undeterred, he apparently fell asleep on the spot!

Julian Nagy in familiar pose in Kommetjie

     Jankees and Judy Sligcher, Julian and Debby Nagy and Graham and Joan Donet all attended and Rotary and New Dawn even got a mention in the speeches. After all, it was Rotary that brought John and Greta together in the first place.
     It was also good to hear that New Dawn soldiered on in our absence, thanks mainly to the efforts of Paul Kasango and Carol Stier and of course every other member.

He's back! Greg Smith shows off his set of new old hickory wood golf clubs to fellow golfing enthusiast Mike MacDonald while Judy Sligcher and Julian Nagy look on

     Greg Smith returned to South Africa in triumph after a round of 75 in the Arizona Desert Hickory at the Pebblebrook Golf Course, Sun City West. Carol Stier says she thinks this was good enough to earn him a second place.
     Greg got his score using only the allowed six clubs. One of his co-players bought the set for him after his round.

The set of hickory wood clubs

     Last week the club had a notable visitor in the person of Ross Davis, the new principal of Macauley House, a Catholic Independent school in Parktown, with which the Rotary Club of Johannesburg New Dawn has had ties for many years. His predecessor, Eleanor Hough, was a very active member of the club.

Bob Wahl and Ross Davis at the meeting last week. Davis is the new head of McAuley House

     Thanks to Paul Kasango's efforts Davis paid a visit to the club and expressed interest in the revival of the Interact club that New Dawn previously sponsored there.

Karen Robinson

     Speakers during the past weeks were Karen Robinson, company secretary at Gladafrica Holdings and a member of Lions, who spoke in her capacity as a volunteer who visits women inmates at the Johannesburg Prison, more commonly known as Sun City, about their crimes.
     Claudine Ribeiro, director of the Johannesburg Parent and Child Counseling Centre (JPCCC) spoke on Wednesday with educational psychologist Gill Berkowitz about the centre's dealings with the impact of, among other things, death, divorce, unemployment, depression and HIV/Aids on children and their families.
     Carol has arranged a speaker for the meeting tomorrow, but her attendance had not been confirmed at the time of writing. Come to the meeting tomorrow and all will be revealed!
     And finally ... a personal word of thanks to Paul for standing in for me as president, to DGE Jankees Sligcher for constantly stirring things up (as in poking a hornets nest with a stick!) and to Carol and others for keeping The Link Literacy Project going strong. A big thank you also to those who attended the 5Cees evening.
A Thought for the Week: The hardest thing to open is a closed mind. - Ahmed Kathrada (1929-2017)