This year we made a major announcement in our Christmas letter: we’ve declared our psychic independence from the United States of America. Now that we have a full ten acres of south Salem land to establish our Hinesland realm on, the post-November 2 world we found ourselves in begged for an enclave where truly wise environmental, cultural, and spiritual values—namely, our own—could be practiced.
The full story of Hinesland, or at least as much as can be conveyed in a single page, is in our 2004 Christmas letter. Most of these were mailed out today to those on our Christmas card list, but if you aren’t one of these fortunate souls, or if you just can’t wait for the mailperson to deliver the letter to your door, click on the link below (you know the mantra of PDF files: “get Acrobat Reader if you don’t have it already”).
Download Christmas Letter 2004.pdf (15.7K)
Here’s the photo of Hinesland’s citizenry mentioned in the letter. Note: Serena the Wonder Dog usually is more photogenic. This shot was taken after numerous other self-timed attempts in which Laurel would grab our dog’s front legs and yell “Up Serena, up!” as I madly ran around the camera to take my position. Serena was waiting to go for a walk and by this point was rapidly losing patience with the photo shoot.
Soon this 2004 letter will be added to the nationally-renowned (within the nation of Hinesland) Collected Christmas Letters of Brian Hines. I have assembled these in one cyberspace accessible location in the hope, so far unfulfilled, that one day the brilliance, humor, wisdom, and simple majesty of these writings will be recognized by an audience hugely larger than the fifty or so people on our Christmas card list.
Well, I’d be content with something less than “hugely,” actually. For if there is one theme that runs throughout my oeuvre, it is that you can’t always get what you want. Strangely, the Rolling Stones who wrote that line did get what they wanted—great fame and fortune, plus beautiful babes.
I am still waiting for the first two and probably always will. But number three is mine--a lovely Queen of the Hinesland realm.
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