Homeside

January 21, 2002-Pregnancy
(photos: Sheep herding,
Sheep sheering)

We spoke to our granddaughter Alex today & got the latest on life in Akron. It’s a prolific place. She bought a hamster with her own money & set it up where it would be "safe" from the cats. She thinks it’s pregnant. She named it Hannah the Hamster Horowitz, but Daniel thinks that Macabee, the cat, has named it "Lunch." The son of friends once did a funeral in Indiana for a Henrietta Hamster. I do believe that David obtained the Jewish grave marker from the funeral home. They decided the original owner determined the religion of the hamster. She was a teacher who happened to be Jewish. The hamster was given to one of her students at the end of the school year & subsequently died. At her school, Alex is a primary caretaker of the school's hairless rat. She told everyone that it was getting bigger every day & she thought that it was pregnant. They thought she just had babies on her mind. The rat now has 14 ratlettes. At least Alex was wrong about Vikki's pregnancy. The ultra sound revealed there’s only one baby. Alex predicted twins.

January 22, 2002-Safety

I knew that you wanted to stay abreast, as it were, of the developments in the sex industry in Australia, so I’ll include the following article. The headline was, “Prostitutes to get on top of safety issues.” It seems there are dangers of “repetitive strain injury…The guidelines, believed to be a world first, also advise brothel operators to reduce accidents by avoiding dim lights and fixing loose bed frames. Wrist injuries are apparently common….as are back injuries caused by poor quality beds.” The safety booklet is “Getting On Top of Health and Safety.”

January 24, 2002-Scouting

We just got an email from someone in Akron who told us that Hannah the Hamster bit Vikki the day after they got it. If Hannah isn’t careful, Macabee, the cat might get his wish.

We spoke to Wendy & her partner yesterday. They’re putting a major effort into rehabbing a duplex. Her partner is a carpenter by trade, but seems to be able to do a lot more. Wendy has been in charge of assembling kitchen cabinets & painting. They do this after work & on weekends. It keeps them off the streets.

We’ve added an Aussie word to our vocabulary. A spruiker (sprew’-ker) is someone who stands outside a business & promotes or hawks its wares. We’ve seen them here using a microphone & giving their spiel. They pronounce it “sprew’-kah.”

We went to the Woolshed today. We wanted to check it out for friends who are coming next week & for other friends who will be here the week after. Its main draw is a sheep-shearing exhibition & sheep herding show. They also have the requisite koalas & kangaroos. It was amazing to see how passive the sheep was while it was being shorn. It was almost as if it enjoyed the process. There was no fighting or squirming. The shearer held the sheep’s shoulder & foreleg between his own legs to immobilize the animal. The coat came off mostly in one piece. All they do in Australia is grow the sheep, shear them, bale the wool, & ship it out of the country for processing. The have no wools mills here. They used three dogs for the herding. One was a longhaired border collie. It was originally a breed from Scotland. Australia adapted it by breeding a shorthaired version to suit the climate. They then bred dingoes with shorthairs & got the kelpie. They use all three varieties now.

Although the facility was not as nice as others we’ve seen, we decided to stay for lunch. We heard a couple at the next table speaking “American.” They were from Cincinnati and had just ended a 14-day cruise of New Zealand & Australia. They were staying on in Australia for two more weeks. We exchanged travel tips & had a good time hearing about what they’d already seen.

Toby