Christmas 2024 Newsletter

My dear Friends

It has been quite a momentous 25th anniversary foundation year for myself and The Little Sisters of Joy. I was not too well in the ensuing months after the big March concert, but soon recovered and have managed to publish my 3rd memoir, entitled ‘Point of Departure.’ The title is adapted from a French poem by Rainer Maria Rilke, whom you may know better as a German poet. When I published my first memoir, The Moving Swan, in 2006, I took another of Rilke’s French poems as an introduction to the book and its themes.

Samuel Barber set six of Rilke’s French poems to music and I had hoped to sing them at one time, but my life, as you may know, took a different musical direction and the series of Concerts for Peace and Reconciliation began in earnest in 2004 and I returned to singing folk, Sixties, Jewish and other music with my guitar.

I had discussed this with the wonderful Dr Fay Sessions who was the real inspiration for these new concerts and really felt I was being ‘called’ to do something different. So that is how the Songs of the Sixties, with the Hebrew music and the help of the audience aspires to bring about the tikkun haolam, the healing of the world.

One of the recent highlights of my year was my first visit back to Glasgow in over 12 years. I have been tending, as you know, to go South rather than North, but this was a very poignant visit in which I saw my relatives and reconnected with several friends.The weather was clement and I enjoyed climbing up and down the Glasgow hilly streets. The University was in full swing and I enjoyed seeing the new students negotiating their way around this ancient University,the oldest in the United Kingdom after Oxford and Cambridge. I was staying in a private room in the Youth Hostel, situated on a hill in the loveliest part of Glasgow near the University. The hostel used to be two private houses in the 19th century, as reflected in its big drawing rooms and sweeping staircases, then a hotel in the 1970’s-apparently Bob Marley and other celebrities used to rent the place and  hold parties there over whole weekends.

Gila with cousin Freida.
 

I chose to stay there not only for the reasonably low cost but also because it was in an area familiar to me from my student days in the 60’s and also -you never know who you meet! Apart from the friendly and very helpful and welcoming staff (the reception area had percolated coffee on the go 24/7) I met Miriam, travelling from New Zealand, on a journey through Europe to discover her Jewish heritage.

On the following day after my arrival, I met with an old friend who had studied Theology with me on our distance Learning Course in Birmingham from 2001 to 2007. We graduated together there in St Chad’s Cathedral, a rather lovely space.My friend and I met in the wonderful Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, situated near the grounds of Kelvingrove Park with its ravishing autumnal colours. We had a long lunch and conversation, wide-ranging as usual, then wandered through the University neighbourhood while I reminisced about my time at the University between 1968 and 1972, a challenging time in which I managed to obtain some success in the English and German Departments while devoting quite a lot of time to learning the Songs of the Sixties then busking on the streets in Glasgow and Paris.

One of the highlights of my trip, a custom in the Jewish religion between the Jewish New Year and the Day of Atonement and in Christianity around All Souls’ Day is to visit family graves. I was privileged to be accompanied by the Webmaster of the Scottish Jewish Cemeteries, who has documented all the Jewish graves in Scotland.

It was incredibly moving to see where my grandparents had been buried; Samuel Solomon Samuel, my mother’s father, had been the first Jewish magistrate in Glasgow and President of Garnethill Synagogue, founded in 1879 and where my parents were married (on Christmas Day!) in 1929. Grandma Anna, who came from my Swedish Bergson family, was the only grandparent I knew in my childhood.

Back to the new memoir. There will be a postponed Book Launch in January 2025 to an invited group of close friends, taking place in Cambridge not far from my home.

If you would like a copy of Point of Departure I am offering it for £10 (+ £2.50 postage within the UK). Just please send me your donation and I will happily get one to you. It will go towards funding my next trip to Canada, planned for June 2025.

Wishing you all blessings, health and happiness in these difficult times

Your Friend Gila

The Little Sisters of Joy