Natural Splendour of the Arrow Lake

/ Peter Klopp / 16 Comments

This post is one day early.  We are having internet problems. I need to post whenever it is available. Thank you for your understanding.

Wednesday’s Photos

Small Sample of the Flowers in our Yard

Two weeks ago we looked at the Alberta rose as it dominated with its soft colours and its very own peculiar pleasant smell the landscape across the three western provinces of Canada. Today it is time to view some of the many flowers of our own yards in the Arrow Lake region. Here are five flowers that attracted my attention today. The bottom flower is actually a weed and I would have pulled it, if its tiny petals had not ‘cried out’ not to do it. The flower head across does not measure more than 3 mm and its beauty can only be appreciated when taken as a macro photo. If anyone knows the name of this lovely flower, let me know.

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Heaven’s Portal for the Bees

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Flower of an unknown Ornamental Shrub

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Rose Buds after the Rain

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Pansy’s Intricately Lined Face

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Tiny Weed and yet so Pretty

Chapter 39 of the Peter and Gertrud Klopp Story – Part I

/ Peter Klopp / 26 Comments
bk-paus12372_city-of-calgary

Calgary with the Rocky Mountains in the Background – Photo Credit: aagroup.ca

Biene Hitting Rock Bottom

“I think this is what we all want to hear: that we are not alone in hitting the bottom, and that it is possible to come out of that place courageous, beautiful, and strong.” – Anna White

Biene in Distress

February 6th,1966, Velbert

My beloved Peter,

I have not been feeling well for quite some time. I must come quickly to you. Every day I am expecting news from the embassy. I received my first salary today and now have saved up over a thousand marks.

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Biene wrote this letter at the back of this early Picasso card.

At the moment I feel so depressed that I am not as strong as you would like me to be. But this time will also pass. I don’t want to see anybody and yet I have to put up a nice front every day, which is getting on my nerves. I feel totally run down. But Peter, I must quickly come to you. Do not be distressed; otherwise I become really sick.  Hopefully my father didn’t write you anything bad. I can’t take it any more! Dear Peter, if you don’t lose your trust in me, I will find it also again in me.

After all I belong to you! Your Biene

February 13th, 1966, Velbert

My dear Peter,

In what kind of painful unrest must you have been through my silence! Peter, please forgive me. Now I feel better, and it seems to me as if I had gone through a dangerous illness. Peter, my nerves and my entire being were completely out of balance to the point that I had almost lost myself in something at the end, which would have ruined our entire life. But now I have overcome this weakness and I feel my faith and strength return again. How I yearn for that day, when the long wait will be over! O Peter, I am ashamed of myself that I almost did not succeed in fending off the insidious indifference, which suddenly appeared as an enticing way out. But now, Peter, you need not be worried about me any more. I only hope that you are fine and that no treacherous temptations seek to lure you, when you suffer too much from loneliness.

When I am with you, Peter, it would be perhaps best to go and see a doctor to get some professional advice. For I feel we should not have a baby for the first little while. Do you think, he might be able to help us?

My dear Peter, when you are lonesome, always think that one day it will be like in Michelbach again, where together we were happy and sad. And for our wedding, Peter, we two drink a bottle of Moselle wine just like we did on that evening in the thunder and lightning storm.

All my desires and dreams still live in me and still have the same power.

Yours in love, Biene

Natural Splendour of the Arrow Lake

/ Peter Klopp / 31 Comments

Wednesday’s Photos

A Canoe Ride and a Nice Find

The other day my wife and I went for a canoe ride on our beautiful Arrow Lake. It was a big surprise even for us that there was no other boat on the lake on that Saturday morning. From Detta Beach we decided to head north for a change. It was a perfect day: no wind, only a few clouds in the sky, and the temperature just right. Feeling happy and relaxed, we let the electric motor do the work for us. Of course, we had taken our cameras with us to capture some of the magnificent scenery. After about 4 km we found a good spot to pull our canoe ashore. A beautiful piece of driftwood attracted my attention. The thought immediately occurred to me to load it onto the canoe and let Biene use it to decorate our garden. Here are the pictures of our trip. Enjoy.

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Chapter 38 of the Peter and Gertrud Klopp Story – Part IV

/ Peter Klopp / 45 Comments
Campus sign by the arch with the new logo. 2016

University of Calgary –  Image courtesy University of Calgary

Peter’s Pleading Letter and Biene’s Reassurance

(Conclusion of Peter’s Letter)

Dear Biene, I also want you to have your freedom to decide. During the first six weeks here a double burden will rest on your shoulders. I have no choice any more, since I have made mine already in December. So your yes will also be my yes and your no will be my no. Look at everything carefully when you come including the things that might shock you and then decide whether you can bear the absence of your relatives and friends for a long time. If you think you can, then throw our love onto the scales for the final decision.

The poem expresses the worry that dream and reality are no longer as close together as they once were in Michelbach and that the role in a family as wife and mother would no longer mean as much as then. How can I possibly explain that later after a few years, when we will be doing better, you would want to study from morning till evening  and to withdraw  as wife and mother from the family just to obtain a diploma? Biene, please understand me correctly. At the university there are many inspiring individual courses, which offer opportunities for intellectual enrichment. I would be the last one to oppose such desires. But a full university program as you desire indicates that you have begun to look at life, love, and marriage with different eyes. The goal that I once vaguely and exuberantly set in our book of dreams is still worth striving for and has already taken on clear and concrete forms. Yes, we evolve and we must work on us, but we should never ever attempt to change our character. Actually I don’t worry too much about you. For I know how much you are exposed to your mother’s influence. She planted contradictory ideas into your heart. Here her endeavors for your security are going too far. Perhaps in her fear about you she believes that one day I could abandon you or we could separate and then you wouldn’t have a profession to fall back on. Please reexamine earnestly if such wishes in you are genuine or if they merely represent a favor towards your anxious mother. For me this is a question of utmost importance and I hope it is for you as well.

Again I seem to be so stiff-necked, and it hurts to be like that. Just follow that one path that once had been the right one for both of us. In fact I am not commanding you to do anything Rather I am imploring you not to deviate from our life’s ideals. Even if we cannot reach them completely, the work and the endeavour towards them will provide sense and purpose of life. In an active and meaningful life true happiness will not be very far.

Give my kindest regards to your parents and your brother Walter

For now be lovingly embraced by your Peter

January 31st, Velbert

My dear Peter,

just a few lines! How much I feel for and understand your worries! Have no fear. All my dreams about our future are still the same. And I will try everything to realize them with you, believe me. As to the money my parents (my mother actually) are prepared to pay the return fare. But I will do it only as you suggested, because I know my father has enough money. If only I were already with you, then everything would be easier. I am waiting for more information from Cologne. At the moment I am completely exhausted; but I will soon answer all your questions. I am so happy that you passed your exams. Peter, I shall always be, God willing, a good wife to you.

I love you.

Your Biene

Chapter 38 of the Peter and Gertrud Klopp Story – Part III

/ Peter Klopp / 33 Comments
The University of Calgary campus in the winter of 2015.

University of Calgary –  Image courtesy University of Calgary.

Peter Offers Three Choices

January 22nd 1966, Calgary

My beloved Biene,

I passed the exam, also the one in English. But this appears unimportant to me in the light of your coming this spring; I will write you the details of the exam some other time.

I fear that a few things I wrote must have hurt your feelings. I am sorry and apologize. You are in the least responsible. Rather the causes for all the troubles rest with me. That’s what I think; for I have critically examined myself. You know, when I am separated from people and I am sitting for hours at the same spot and study, then painful loneliness takes control over my heart. It comes from nowhere, from the silence of a tortured soul. However, I am aware that this pain can be alleviated by a sociable life and above all by the giving and receiving of love. You see, dear Biene, in our separation I often did you wrong, when unexpected news and such moods came together in a perilous brew. From now on I will make an effort to separate the two from each other.

O Biene I appear to me like a stubborn grumbler, because I must voice my objections all over again. I worked out with my brother that as a typist in an office you will barely earn enough money for the flight back home. And how do you propose to get to Canada, if your father is not willing to pay a single penny for the fare? Biene, forgive me please, if I seem to be so harsh; but you appear to dream about a happiness that still needs to be acquired with all our strength. The wedding is just the beginning of a lengthy struggle and not the final station of perpetual bliss. Whether we stay in the basement or whether we move (by the way I found a three-room apartment with a balcony, shower, bath etc., which will become vacant in the spring), we will be lacking everything. I am still eating from the plastic plate my mother once gave me when I was a boy scout. We will need tableware, cooking utensils and a few pieces of furniture. My brother is willing to pass on a few things to us. But it goes without saying that he can’t give away everything. I got to know many student couples, who started like this and have been quite happy all the same, because they could watch their day-by-day progress. But they did not start with debts, which would be the case, if we worked all summer not for our apartment, but for your return flight.

I see only three solutions out of this miserable situation: EITHER you follow completely your mother’s advice, come here for the summer, make your decision and work in a household, where you don’t have to pay for room and board, OR we get married after a certain waiting period and we let your father pay for the flights to and from Germany OR in case he doesn’t, you stay in Canada and we invite your parents to come. Later when we are financially better off we could fly together to Germany. I think this is a reasonable and responsible suggestion and I wished you would think it over during a quiet moment.

Peter’s letter to be continued

Natural Splendour of the Arrow Lake

/ Peter Klopp / 42 Comments

Wednesday’s Photos

Introducing the Alberta Rose

The Alberta rose is the provincial emblem of the eastern neighbour of BC. It is such a beautiful flower that I am inclined to call it the queen of the wild roses. It thrives in cold climates, but it does not disdain to grow in milder regions such as the area around the Arrow Lake. I took the photos in a single session late in the evening as the sun was setting. One landscape shot with a rosebush in the foreground shows the Needles ferry as it was crossing the lake. Enjoy.

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Three Stages of Development in one Photo: Buds, Flowers and Seed Heads

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Rosebush decorating the Lakeshore

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Rosebush against the Evening Sky

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The Needles Ferry making its 15 minute Crossing of the Arrow Lake

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Close-Up of the Queen of the Wild Roses