THE VIEW FROM HERE
Clarksville
Melton Mowbray
We are delighted to present this third set of excerpts from communications with Melton's friends in Clarksville. We will be adding extracts from letters sent by other friends on a regular basis in this new feature of the Melton Mowbray & District Twinning Association website.
Do you remember the TV programmes about 12 year old Julian Bliss, the clarinet player who went to America to study?
Lynn Lewis (pictured above) wrote -
- March 20 2002
"Julian Bliss and his mother have come to Indiana University so that he can study with a clarinet teacher here. They have been here for two years. Julian has played for many of the events that Ray and I have attended, and we have struck up a friendship with his mother Maureen. Julian is quite a marvel!
The weather here is trying so hard to be Spring-like. It was 75ºF yesterday, but was so windy today that you could hardly get the door open!
Trish and I have been invited to attend the annual meeting of the Louisville Sister Cities Association tomorrow. They have six Sister Cities, and Quito, Ecuador will be the hosts tomorrow - Latin food and music. It should be fun. Louisville has been most supportive of our endeavours."
(Trish White is the President of Clarksville's personal assistant. She came with the group that visited Melton.)
- March 22 2002
"Ray and I travelled (with thousands of others) about an hour and 15 minutes to the East last night to watch our Indiana University basketball team do "the impossible" and upset the defending national basketball champions. We got home after midnight, having yelled ourselves silly and feeling as though WE had played the entire game. Whew! And I thought March would be a quiet month.
We send love to you all and hope all is well in Melton.
Lynn"
- March 25 2002
"At our Sister Cities meeting we talked about a new idea we would like to hear your thoughts on. We think that we have enough money in our treasury to begin thinking about student exchanges. At this point we are wondering about the possibility of sending two high school students for one week on an every-other-year basis. We know this is a big project, but wonder what your thoughts are about it.
We have included in David's letter an invitation for the members of Melton and Bewdley communities to come here for the last weekend in October 2002 for an "official" signing of our Friendship Link proclamation. I think you know that this is the weekend of our Lewis and Clark festivities. We'd love that to happen.
I shared the information About the Melton & Oakham Waterways Society with our board, and I think you will be receiving a membership from us in the next month or so.
All the quilt pieces are just about all in and our ladies have travelled to their favourite quilt shop about 30 miles from here to buy the slashing, etc.
Love to all our Melton friends.
Lynn"
- April 2002
Thank you so much for the package of newspapers about the Queen Mum, we shall pass them on to others in our group - but not before sharing them with my Mother, who will absorb all of it.
As we begin planning our Queen's Birthday party, we were sorry to hear of the death of the Queen Mum. She has been such a fixture and we have read so much about how much she meant to Britain during WWII.
She always seemed such a pleasant person.
Thanks for offering your expertise about our party. It should be fun. The balloons and colour scheme are a great idea."
- 18th April 2002
"Our board met yesterday and had a good meeting. We loved your idea of the red, white and blue theme for our Annual Meeting on June 30th. We will ask our Girl and Boy Scout troops to demonstrate some English games, and we think we shall play Beatles' music in the background! Also a table of books about the UK, and that little British/American word game." *
(* A quiz that we sent out with English words to translate into American-English, and vice versa! The Clarksville group were better at it than we were!)
"I think Stuart Williams has sent a possible text for an official Friendship declaration to you as well as to our group and us was excited about that.
Believe it or not it has gotten too hot here. Everyone is complaining and many have turned their air conditioners on. We used our ceiling fan in the bedroom last night, but the storms are already coming through and we will be back closer to normal soon. Isn't the weather amazing?
This weekend is the giant fireworks show on our waterfront called "Thunder over Louisville". The fireworks are all on barges in the river. If the weather is good there will be 600,000 people spread on both sides of the river will be watching.
This is the first event in our two weeklong Kentucky Derby celebrations.
Love to all in Melton
Lynn"
- 16th May 2002
"We had our Board meeting at the high school rather than at the town hall yesterday, since the French 11 class asked to share their semester project with us. The geography portion of their final was to study a section of France, and then make recommendations as to what might have characteristics in common with Clarksville.
The students attend school for 180 days each year with the teachers meeting five extra days for training. That's not nearly as long as in other parts of the world.
The quilt blocks are just about all collected and the ladies are anxious to begin the piecing. There is still a chance that we will have the quilt finished by this October. If not, at least it will be ready for the big celebration in 2003.
The sun is now shining after a terrible lot of rain. The river is shiny brown from all the run-off. We are so glad that you received our membership in MOWS. We thought it would be fun to support your project and be a part."
Lynn
MELTON & OAKHAM WATERWAYS SOCIETY's website can be viewed from this link
- 8th June 2002
"Ray and I do have some exciting news. I have been serving this year as the chairman of the Board of our Indiana University Alumni Association. It's been a great year with lots of travel and meeting with so many interesting people... On May 17th out of the blue, the Dean of the Indiana University School of Music called and asked me to take the position of Director of Development for the School. ...The job begins on July 1st. Whew!"
(This is the school of music which Julian Bliss, the young clarinettist shown in series on British TV recently, attends now)
- 5th July 2002
"Greeting from the terribly hot and muggy Clarksville. The temperature has been in the 90's here of late!
We had our annual Sister Cities meeting. We met at the Lodge in our local park, had a nice crowd, and a lovely time. We had small British and American flags and paper crowns on the tables, and large American and British flags from the balcony inside the hall. Our local librarians put up a table of books about Britain, and we had a silent auction on a small quilted wall hanging. We, of course sold memberships, and offered Clarksville bags for sale.
The hit of the evening was the debut of the Quilt. The ladies had basted it on the backing and sketched the quilting lines and we hung it at the end of the hall.
Before I hand over to Trish, who will be our new Chairman, I want to complete our semi-annual newsletter, and wonder if you could give me an up date on your trip to Bewdley. How did it go? What did you do? Who did you meet? What do you think might come from this? In other words, all the gossip!
Hope all is well with all our Melton friends
Lynn"
(Melton's Twinning Association Chairman, David Morris and his wife Margaret, with John and Dinah Rudman spent a day in Bewdley meeting members of their Twinning Association. It was a very enjoyable time. The people are very nice, Bewdley is beautiful, and we all felt very positive about a three-way link.)
Regular correspondence zooms by email across the world to and from Clarksville. We shall quote more extracts soon and would earnestly encourage others to involve themselves in this extremely interesting and beneficial exchange - virtually "instant twinning".