Lighter Fare

November 20, 2001-Moving On
(photos:Giant Rocking Horse,
Norm, Coolies & Me)

I promise this will not be as weighty an email as the previous week’s lot.

The UPJANZA (if you don’t know what this stands for, you haven’t been reading your last few emails) has two categories of membership. Associate members are congregations that pay no dues, but do get a minimal amount of services. Constituent members pay full dues. As if that wasn’t confusing enough, the Moetzah has a full membership for rabbis that entitles them to voting privileges as well as an associate membership. There were no associate members until this morning. The category had been established last year, but they hadn’t decided on the fee that would be charged at this membership level. They were debating between $18, $36, & $50, when David placed a $20 bill in front of the treasurer & said, “We’ve now established the dues, let’s move on.” By the way, the #18 & multiples of 18 are significant because the Hebrew letters that comprise the #18 spell the word “chi” which means “life.” It’s a commonly used design in jewelry.

There was an interesting tidbit that the Maori Rabbi, as I’ve come to call him, told about a problem with race relations in New Zealand. Maoris & Samoans are extremely closely related & share a language. There are grammatical differences in that language usage that sometimes go beyond altercation & lead to battle. Among the high school set, it’s common for Maori students to stick together & for Samoans to do the same. The school staff has narrowly averted riots over issues as abstruse as the gender of a verb & what pronoun should be used with it. On the one hand it’s ludicrous, but on the other hand these kids actually know what verbs, gender, & pronouns are. Our gangs couldn’t measure up on the grammatical field of battle.

We shared a mini-van with the rabbis for our return trip to Adelaide. It was very pleasant & we really enjoyed their company. In fact, we spent many pleasant hours with several of the rabbis in between heated discussions with them. It’s funny how differences can be set aside & commonalities discovered.

City of Roses

I don’t know if I’ve told you about the flowers of Adelaide. We were fortunate to be able to be here in the spring. This is truly a city of roses. There isn’t a street or corner that doesn’t have rose bushes. The displays are enormous, odoriferous, & breathtakingly colorful. We’ve tried to capture them on film, but I know we cannot do them justice. Our memories will just have to hold fast to the images. We walked to the Botanic Gardens this afternoon after returning to the city from Hahndorf. It’s a small but lush area that easily blends into the circle of parklands surrounding the city. We met a charming man along one of the paths. He was quite garrulous & wanted to be sure we saw the huge plane tree down the path. He’s an engineer & quality control manager who still consults. He just returned from Outer Mongolia where he’d been invited (I know it sounds like a joke). He’s been to Japan & the U.S. over 20 times. His home is in Melbourne, but he was in Adelaide for a 57th reunion of his university engineering class.

I want to alert you to the possibility that Max, a dog we know in Akron, might have escaped from his yard & emigrated to Australia. Although he might have been accepted under the law of return since he is part Border collie, there’s a chance he’s still in Akron, but his clone is alive & well & dining at a café in Adelaide. The dog we met was a dead ringer for him, sock & all. The only issue you might have is that there was a sex change involved. If this dog was truly Max, she is enjoying her transgendered life here as a female.

To Vikki, who’s keeping mental notes of upgrades we’ve gotten….when we got to the room in the Adelaide hotel, the A/C wasn’t working. They moved us to a larger room with a slightly more elegant bath. This was not a biggie, but I think it counts.

November 21, 2001-Wine Country

We headed for the Barossa Valley this morning along a fabulous scenic route. We followed a gorge as it paralleled the Torrens River up into the Adelaide Hills. As we drove, I thought I was seeing a lake, but as we got closer, we realized they were purple wildflowers. They’re called Salvation Jane & are a noxious weed. Farmers hate them, but they’re all over the place & add a vibrant touch of color to the green hills.

German Lutherans who were looking for religious freedom settled the Barossa area. They were from Silesia & brought their wine making, baking, & cheese making techniques with them. They set up a different way of wine making. Instead of farmers making the wine from their own grapes at individual wineries, they sold their grapes to a central winery that made wine for each cellar based on the recipes & grapes provided by that particular vineyard.

As we climbed through the gorge, we saw a sign to the big rocking horse. Australia is known for its oversize, larger than life, tacky sculptures of pineapples among other items. Bill Bryson, in his book In a Sunburnt Country, is fascinated by them. These structures are as large as a building & as unsightly as lawn trash, but for some reason, Australians love them. We didn’t even have to get out of the car. We rolled down the window, took a photo, & rolled on.

We were fortunate enough to be going by way of Gumeracha & so were able to be introduced to the concept of Country Killed Meats at the butcher’s. They’re a popular item in the Barossa area & each little town has its own shop. I’m not really sure what it is, but I imagine it has something to do with meat slaughtered on local farms.

We went to a recommended winery & ate lunch at Maggie Beer’s, a restaurant next to a tranquil pond. We bought burnt fig jam at the restaurant & a bottle of Shiraz at the winery. It's for people from Akron who live here and have invited us to their home for dinner tonight. We’re not wine connoisseurs, so we rolled on until we found a fruity Riesling more to our taste. We had a sip here & a swallow there, but didn’t manage to consume much.

Really Cool

I ‘d seen an ad in a brochure for Norm’s Coolies. They’re dogs that put on an obedience demonstration & do sheep herding for the public. The ad didn’t list show times, so we asked directions & headed down a gravel/dirt road that was under construction. We arrived just after the only show of the day. As we approached the gate, Norm was pulling out in his pick up truck with at least 15-20 dogs loaded in the back & on the roof. He wanted to know why we were so late & offered to unload the dogs for us right there on the roadside & give a mini-demo. They were so focused on him that it was eerie as if they were hypnotized. They leapt off the truck and stopped instantly on command. He then loaded them up again & it seemed they went right to the positions they’d been in before. He told them to stay then lowered the tailgate & had me sit on it with him. The dogs are a special breed called Coolies. He’s refined the breed & developed some with blue eyes. I didn’t know who was more interesting, Norm or the Coolies.

Toby