Questions, comments

This day brought a flurry of (e)mail activity, some of which is worth noting.

First, I was amused with an email from a friend and reader from southern climes. She writes (clearly out-of-her-mind-jealous): “(Your blog) made me miss spring as it is perpetually spring or summer here; we never get the joy of a glorious spring day in the garden and mine will undoubtedly be a mess by the time I return (north) at the end of May.” Yeah!!! I am plenty sympathetic, even though in February SHE was out picking shells on a beach while I was scraping ice off of the sidewalk.

Then, my most distant reader and friend from Asia writes: “I think that once you get over the Big 5 things are supposed to be getting easier, slower and more peaceful.” He is referring to my turning 51 sometime very soon. Peaceful? Slower?? Easier??? He must be kidding. Richer maybe. Nothing more, nothing less.

So is it Slovakia or Slovenia?

There will be readers who will think this is a question worthy of a third grader. Yes, there will be one or two such readers. The rest of the world is confused. Separate countries? Do we know which is which?











An article in the IHT (here) reports the following:

Last December at a news conference in Rome, Italy's prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, introduced Anton Rop, the prime minister of Slovenia, which is directly above Italy's northeastern border. "I'm very happy to be here today with the prime minister of Slovakia," Rop recalled him saying, adding politely in a recent interview, "It was very strange..."

In 1999, when the then Texas governor, George W. Bush, was on the presidential campaign trail he puzzled a Slovak reporter by saying that "the only thing I know about Slovakia is what I learned firsthand from your foreign minister, who came to Texas. I had a great meeting with him. It's an exciting country."

In fact, Bush had not met the foreign minister of Slovakia, but the then prime minister of Slovenia, Janez Drnovsek.

The stories of wrong national anthems being played at state events and wrongly delivered mail are legion.
….
Erwan Fouéré, the head of the European Commission's delegation to Slovenia, recalls getting a memo recently intended for the commission's office in Slovakia. A Slovene ambassador in a European capital, who asked not to be identified. says his staff meets someone from the local Slovak embassy at least once a month to exchange wrongly-addressed mail.

Why the mix up? If one remembers that there once was a Czechoslovakia, then it’s easy, isn’t it? The word gets broken down into the two countries that were born of it. Slovenia thus is simply the “other one.” [The flags, of course, are also confusing. Note Slovakia is on the left here, and 'the other one" is on the right.]

The real challenge, I think, is to distinguish between something that is Slavic rather than being a Slovak or Slovene. For instance, being Polish makes one Slavic. So does being Belorussian, Bulgarian, Czech, Serbo-Croatian, Slovene, Russian, and Ukrainian. Thus, if you are from Slovenia, you are Slavic, but not a Slovak.

And as we’re brandishing national identities here, I may as well ask – if I am Polish (I have not formally relinquished my Polish citizenship, though I have become an American a decade or two back), does that mean, in addition to being Polish and Slavic and American, that I will be as of May 1st, also EU-nian? Does that make me a walking multinational treaty of sorts?

Correction: no droppings

In a previous post I claimed to have my grass fertilized with turkey droppings. Apparently this year my Green Earth guys have gone vegetarian. Their letter tells me that they have just sprinkled my grass with organic corn gluten meal. Like me, I am sure you’ll want more information on this yummy new product. Green Earth tells me to take my curiosity to their website at www.gluten.iastate.edu . My own report is that the bunnies appear pleased with the change to corn. I’m watching a monster rabbit outside at this very moment –he can hardly move, he is that obese. (Maybe it’s a pregnant ‘she’? Oh joy, I am supporting an extended rabbit family with a steady diet of tender flower buds and corn meal.)

Expect to see more pickled cantaloupe

Today’s WashPost (here) describes the migration of Amish families from Pennsylvania to Wisconsin. In an effort to escape the urban sprawl of the eastern states, families are opting to buy land in the pastoral farming communities of Wisconsin. According to the article, Wisconsin now ranks fourth in Amish population (with about 12,000), after Ohio, Pennsylvania and Indiana.

Most Wisconsinites welcome the new ‘immigrants.’ The Amish grow crops and make products that are well received on the Wisconsin markets: the article mentions good sales of goat cheese, rhubarb pie, furniture, leather harnesses, and a new one for Midwesterners – pickled cantaloupe ("people here hadn't heard of pickled cantaloupe, so we tried selling it and they really like it," commented a woman from an Amish household).

Is the migration always a complete success? Not everyone is pleased with the Amish swell here. Town meetings have helped build tolerance among those who have reacted less than graciously to the presence of the Amish. One Wisconsinite commented bluntly that “the Amish ‘are the worst thing that have ever happened to this area.’ [The long-time Wisconsin resident] owns a farm-implements store that has been in his family for three generations. Because the Amish do not buy mechanized farm equipment, he said, his business is struggling.” Others complain that the horse-drawn buggies are unsafe and that horse droppings ruin the country roads. Indeed, one Elroy resident got so angry when a buggy caused his car to go into a ditch that he went on a violent rampage against a local Amish family.

Overall though, the Amish appear to like the move to the north. The title of the news story is “For the Amish, the Grass is Greener in Wisconsin.” True, the article was written in April when it appears a lot greener to many of us. Against the chill of a Wisconsin January night (the Amish typically do not use electricity), these newcomers may have been longing for their more southern spaces.

[photo: Green Co., WI]