three score years and ten

Queenstown, New Zealand, backdrop to a seventieth birthday. Nature joined in the celebrations with a show of all the extravagance she could muster...rain, snow, brilliant sun, all in the space of a couple of days.

In the words of Mark Twain on his 70th birthday: "The seventieth birthday! It is the time of life when you arrive at a new and awful dignity; when you may throw aside the decent reserves which have oppressed you for a generation and stand unafraid and unabashed upon your seven-terraced summit and look down and teach- unrebuked. You can tell the world how you got there. It is what they all do. You shall never get tired of telling by what delicate arts and deep moralities you climbed up to that great place. You will explain the process and dwell on the particulars with senile rapture. I have been anxious to explain my own system this long time, and now at last I have the right...and when you in your return shall arrive at pier No. 70 you may step aboard your waiting ship with a reconciled spirit, and lay your course toward the sinking sun with a contented heart."