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.
Here's the Little Shakespeare in yesterday's Christmas production (Silver I see your eyes rolling). The boy corrects me from yesterday's erroneous blog-quote. His line is actually: "we wolves have a bit of a reputation" which immediately becomes my mantra to his and Madeleine's distress. Roger and I used to say: "repetition is the best form of comedy" or at the least, irritating. From wolves to teen sex, the Church of England is Up In Arms as under-16s will be allowed birth-control without parental or GP consent. BTW this only became an issue when girls allowed birth control - condoms have been a drug-store staple forever. Britain, you see, has the highest teen pregnancy rate in Western Europe at 42.3 conceptions per 1,000 girls in 2003. For 13–15 year-old girls, it is 8.0 conceptions per thousand according to the British government (by contrast, her holy of hollies the United States sees 79 pregnancies per thousand for the 15 to 19 year old crowd). Any way, I am all for free birth control until Madeleine becomes a teenager. Then I am against it.
