Fozzy
Fozzy here belongs to Halley and Willem, and was bred to chase foxes down holes, Willem tells me. These dogs travel with the hunt and when the fox makes a break for it down a tunnel, in goes Fozzy. Not surprisingly, he is irrepressible and chases everything from rabbit to dog, sometimes resulting in a a nasty growling or worse - a pit bull, for instance, recently got a clamp on Fozzy, who almost lost his front leg in the exchange. Eitan and Madeleine argue over the leash and it is questionable whether dog or child has the lead.
Meanwhile, in the afternoon, Halley prepares a 20 lb bird for our belated Thanksgiving - the meal is fabulous, with all the stuffing. I'm impressed as Halley and I have joked about cold turkey sandwiches on Wonder bread with mayonnaise so my expectations were, ahem, low. Any case with us are two of Willem's colleagues at Exeter University, who have joined Willem this fall from Duke and Michigan. In total, we are four PhDs, and seven MA's. Since it is Thanksgiving, I ask for a count on the Star Spangled Banner. There is some shuffling, but I think most of us can mumble our way through it. On the U.S. Constitution, it is dire: nobody is able to list the first ten amendments. If not this crowd, I wonder, then who? Bush and the Republic fight for our so-called freedoms, but how do we know when they have gone? In England, we will surely have identity cards and I am photographed 300 times a day in Central London - soon, no doubt, this data will be linked to the police, my medicals and etc. England has a parliamentary democracy and the Magna Charta instead of a Constitution - the politics therefore work, but our civil rights are greying. In America, perhaps it is the the reverse - for now, until your phone is generally tapped and habeas corpus gone, thank you Gitmo. But hey, man, if nobody knows what they are missing - what the worry?
Madeleine loses her second front tooth in the car-ride to Devon, and promptly loses it. It is somehow retrieved in the seat-crack otherwise, I tell her, "no Tooth Ferry." Those are the breaks, kid. Sonnet awakes at 5AM in a panic, remembering to put two pounds under Madeleine's pillow.
