When I returned from the Christmas/New Year’s holiday, I opened our mailbox to a spilling, envelope flurry of cards from squash friends. One was from James D. Marver. Jim is a bi-coastal player (he hosted a strategic retreat for U.S. Squash at his home in the Hamptons four years ago) and USQ board member. It depicted his three kids in Uganda, with a couple of gorillas climbing around them.

An hour after opening up his card, I was reading the end-of-year double issue of the Economist and came upon a full-page ad for First Republic Bank. Most of the ad was a photograph of Jim standing in front of some bamboo stalks (which reminded me not Uganda but panda bears in China). He was smiling and looking fit—but sadly with no racquet in hand. (See more: http://www.firstrepublic.com/)

After New Year’s, I also received that curious artifact of the electronic age: the emailed holiday letter. One came from Ralph Howe, the many-time national champion and pro player in squash singles, squash doubles and court tennis doubles. “Shooting the surgical moon,” Ralph dutifully limned the latest medical issues (new knee in December 09, new hip in December 10 and arthroscopic surgery on his shoulder later this month). Instead of gloating about the nice winter weather in Florida, this year he noted that nearly forty years ago, the Ford Administration got blasted for having a $60 billion annual deficit. If only that was the problem today.

The other letter was something out of an old Nadine Gordimer story. It came from Peter Pearson, a South African squash player. Peter has a gorgeous plot of land in the Overberg mountains, a couple of hours inland from Cape Town. It’s named Houw Hoek (after the gorgeous mountain pass nearby) and is a farm, officially, though Peter doesn’t farm anything there and the house doesn’t have electricity. I’ve been lucky enough to spend Easter weekend there twice, in 1989 and 1994. It was a lot of lumbering hikes through the veld pulling up invasive trees and delicious naps after lunch and fascinating conversations with Peter’s parents (his father is still with-it at the age of ninety-four).

In January 2010 a fire swept through the Pearson farm, burning half of it and coming within two hundred yards of the little cottage. Five days later, another fire completed the job and burned the other half of the farm, but again, with Peter directing a firefighting team to backburn, the house was saved.

It was arson, both times.