Trees and travel were the themes touched on by Peter Delmar last week; trees because of his role in replacing trees in Parkview that are being killed off by the polyphagous shot hole borer beetle ("not the only evil thing we got from China" he said, referring to the coronavirus) and travel for his work as a travel writer.
Peter addressed the club last month as a member of the Parkview Residents Association's trees committee when Bruce Fordyce was the main speaker and told how the association had managed to get a donation of some 500 indigenous white stinkwood trees to replace the jacarandas and plane trees being decimated by the beetles.
The PRA are looking for donations of R450 a tree, plus R200 if you don't have a pavement to plant them in Parkview, or if you're not a Parkview resident and want to donate a tree in any case.
He went away (to go and watch the first day of the cricket against the Indies at the Wanderers, he said) with a promise that New Dawn would discuss the matter and that we're keen to make some kind of donation.
Peter then turned to his career in travel writing, or more to the point, he said, to App Development, because that is exactly what he's doing these days.
He wrote a series of travel books where he chooses a route and then describes landmarks and attractions on the route after having dug up some interesting facts and angles along the way.
These stories and anecdotes will become the meat and bones of a series of Apps he is developing so that the traveller can listen to them en route, now that almost all phones have geo-location abilities to know where you are at any given moment.
It sounds as if it has the potential to make many a long journey seem a lot shorter.
Peter started off by telling how, while walking in George Hay Park with his pet Staffie, he started wondering who this George Hay was and what he'd done to deserve having a park named after him. He found out he'd been city councillor and chairman of the 1920s version of City Parks.
His name came up again while Peter was researching the 1922 Miners Strike for the centenary last year, especially an incident when an Air Force plane was shot down and had to make an emergency landing on the Parkview Golf Course, probably on what is now the 4th hole.
George Hay appears again in 1924 when he defeated Jan Smuts, the then Prime Minister, in his Irene constituency in the 1924 general election following a backlash amongst the electorate against the brutal suppression of the strike.
He told many more stories about the colourful past of the suburb and ended with a plea he received from the novelist Christopher Hope, who grew up there: Please treasure this "little piece of paradise" and keep it leafy green.
Peter is also the organiser of the Parkview Literary Festival which reappeared last year after a two-year Covid hiatus and will according to him be even bigger and better this year.
And in other news ... President Julian Nagy announced that Babette Gallard has been accepted to do a PhD in Creative Writing at Wits and is also getting involved in a major bio-diversity project in Limpopo, meaning that she's asked to be relieved of her pledge top become president after our now incoming president, Mbali Zulu.
She has, however said she's still willing to be secretary for Mbali's year.
In other feedback from the board meeting Carol Stier announced that she'd received a reconciliation for the Christmas Wrapping effort and that New Dawn will be gaining R10 000 for the hours members put in for that initiative in December, a princely sum indeed.
REMEMBER: There is NO MEETING on Wednesday morning this week. Instead, the focus shifts to the Bridge Drive in Ferndale on Thursday morning.
A Thought for the Week: We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand. - Randy Pausch (1960 - 2008)
Another Thought for the Week: Life is like a game of bridge. Only a dummy puts all her cards on the table. - Florence Broadhurst (1899 - 1977)
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.