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Weber Woman's Wrevenge No.52 June 1998 Diary Notes GUFF Report Easter Bilby Modern Rituals Peanut Allergy LOCs Contacts Background by Windy |
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Letters
Brad Westervelt
Hello, been a long time since 50. Nice to read your travel report. I like to read such things, as I am a frequent traveller. I've written up and shared trip reports for years, and my vacation trip this last August [to the Yukon] was no exception. I'm still into boomerangs, and it's a shame that my sport is not going to get even a nodding recognition when your country hosts the Olympics. The boom community is saddened...
Bob Smith
Your Cape York Trip was of interest and neatly enhanced by reasonable photos, and will no doubt have the overseas fans impressed with good 'ol Aussie rugged scenery. The fannish equivalent of Malcolm Douglass, perhaps? When my son was in the army reserve he did the trip Sydney, Cairns to Weipa, and says he found the natives friendly...(I spent about a year in Townsville in the late 1960's during my military career, and found it a laid-back atmosphere. Visited the rain forests north of Townsville, but it was all very civilized.) I had laser work done on my eyes some time ago, to repair leaky blood vessels caused by my naughtiness regarding sugar levels, but correct multi-focal optics to combat ageing has me viewing the world with the usual mixture of Rose and Jaundice eyes. Hope all is well with your peepers by now. Not a great deal to hook on to in the letters, although I personally feel Karen Herkes' capsuled description of prison problems says it all, and you wouldn't want to know what I'd do with most prisoners if I had Absolute Power... Sue Thomason: Ah...I remember the good times my Mum and Dad had in Whitby in the late 1950's, but then they settled down in Cornwall in their declining years. You are of course entitled to your opinion (oh dear!), but I suspect not everyone feels that way about "music." But...I can understand your feelings, because my recollection of staying with friends in Ripon (whilst stationed at Catterick) around 1948-49 did give that impression. Big sing-a-longs in pubs and halls, with broad Yorkshire voices swaying and thumping their great glasses of thick dark beer on the table... I couldn't wait to get back to the Army Education Centre and play some soothing Bach, Beethoven or Mozart...Hmm. As an ornithological minded person you probably wouldn't like my back garden: my cats lie around in the lazy sun, and the pigeons, doves and mynah birds walk all over `em! The bulbuls and finches stay in the trees and abuse them. In any case, the questions you ask regarding the habits of birds over there might be slightly different in this rugged country (as Jean keeps discovering) ...The cockies can be a noisy nuisance, as the dry weather brings them closer to suburbia.
Buck Coulson
The camping trip sounds strenuous, though interesting. I've pretty much avoided camping trips as an adult; I got enough of that in the Boy Scouts. Of course, as a Scout, I didn't see much of anything that I couldn't see at home, which would make a difference. Congratulations on the successful eye surgery! And on the prospective move out of the city, for that matter. I never wanted to live in a city, and never did. Juanita and I lived in small towns when we were first married, but when Bruce started to toddle around we moved to the country and have lived in farmhouses ever since. (One of them outside Wabash; 3 different ones outside Hartford City.) Of course the country has drawbacks; right now we're getting a bee colony moving in where the power lines enter the house. Might be honeybees - in which case we can have them removed free by a man who wants to add them to his own honey-making business. Or they might not be, in which case we can handle them ourselves. So far, the man hasn't shown up to look. Susan Margaret says that prisons are overcrowded, unsanitary, and full of drugs and criminals. Certainly, but so is street life in any large city, according to reports. (I admit I've never lived in a big city.) Plus, while it seems to have become all too easy to obtain weapons in prison, it's even easier in a city. The left wing here thinks it can reduce crime by outlawing handguns, which is one of their more ridiculous ideas. The idea was tried very thoroughly during Prohibition in the 1920s, and instead of doing away with alcohol (which was the scapegoat at the time), it spawned smuggling and home stills. They're still arguing over whether alcohol consumption went up or down; there's no question but that crime went up. Certainly, prison hardens a first-time criminal; so does street life in a city slum. There is a general disrespect for law in this country, which has become much worse in my lifetime. (Or perhaps just more publicised? Possibly, but I don't believe so.) I think it's due to a perceived lack of personal space, which is a good a guess as any. People want to be noticed, and will go to almost any lengths to prove their personal value, and for a lot of poor city kids, the method is violence. (For rich city kids, the answer may be law school and learning how to get their clients freed.) Admittedly, other countries don't have the same problems with weapons. Neither did the US, back before Prohibition. That's when weapons became status symbols to a lot of people, thanks to all the publicity about them. We may have more prison space than any other country; we certainly have more violent people than any other country not in or recovering from a revolution, or civil war. (I'll grant that Bosnia or Zaire have more violence.) As for picking your own name, why not, if it makes you feel better? On the other hand, why, since it hasn't changed your personal circumstances? You're the same person, whatever name you go by; you're the same person, however you identify yourself to other people. Sure, I go by a nickname. I picked it myself, in the third grade, for games of cowboy and Indian (which was what we played back then, instead of spaceman and alien). I never intended for it to be generally used, and certainly not for it to be picked up in fandom, but it was, and so what? Doesn't bother me any. I first read the quote from Alfred Korszybski (or however you spell it): "The name is not the object" in an A.E. von Vogt story. My reaction was, "Everybody knows that." It seems I was wrong. Juanita says her favorite quote was the title of a Richard Feynman book: "What do you care what other people think?" Feynman credits it to his first wife, but Juanita says she lived it from childhood, long before the book came out.
Adrienne Losin
I've been in Far North Queensland escaping Melbourne's Antarctic winter (and its associated illnesses). This year's Dry Season has been remarkably cold and wet. I flew to Lizard Island, off Cape Flattery on Cape York Peninsula, seeking some heat and sun. I found it, too, as my sunburn will testify. Now I'm heading south, doing lots of sketches and some scuba diving and visiting lovely tropical islands: Green, Fitzroy (again), Dunk, Hinchinbrook, Magnetic, etc.
Teddy Harvia
Diana and I took a trip to the tropics with friends, although not quite the rugged adventure yours to northern Australia was. We flew to Cancún, Mexico, and stayed in an air-conditioned room overlooking the beach. We took an air-conditioned bus to the Maya ruins at Chichén Itzá. Diana, who has trouble with her legs, gave out near the end of the guided tour because of the jungle heat and humidity. Our current adventure is in downtown Montréal, where the temperature today should reach 22ºC.
Harry Cameron Andruschak
WWW-51 arrived today, welcome as always, and especially this week when I am in a lot of pain and inclined to feel sorry for myself. Unlike Australia, we have no national medical service (DAMN!!) and private insurance tends to be spotty. My coverage at the Post Office does poorly on dental needs, and this last month has seen me shell out, after what little the insurance would pay, $3,200 for a massive amount of work, including 4 crowns. And last Tuesday all my wisdom teeth were removed. Can you pronounce "ouch"? I knew you could. Of course I was just thrilled to read of your account of the 4WD trip in the Australian Outback. I was on a 5 week truck trip in Africa in 1990 and have always wanted to do something like that again. I do know that Australia has companies that offer such trips, although I have never come close to being able to book one. Thanks for the wonderful account and the reminder that I should keep such a project in mind. Actually, I have already booked some budget vacations. I will be cruising in the Antarctica area 7-30 November this year [1997], then sailing on a solar eclipse cruise next February, and top it ail off with a 3 week trip to Turkey in November of 1998. So 1999 would be the earliest year for a trip to Australia ...the year of the Australian Worldcon, but I am not sure I can get time off in the summer months to attend. As for the eye surgery, I would have to pass. My glass prescriptions have never been stable for 12 months, and I have astigmatism in both eyes as well as a high refractive error in both eyes. The right eye is particularly bad. And insurance wouldn't pay for it anyway, regarding it as "cosmetic" surgery. {Same here; Eric and I had to pay for our eye ops ourselves. - Jean}
Lloyd Penney
I love the little old lady koala on the cover [of issue 51]. Craig Hilton is a twisted man, and I hope he's paid well. I've seen many episodes of a programme called My Australia, where the host tours many of the less-explored areas of the continent and profiles interesting people and places and things, such as the railway that goes up the Cape York Peninsula. {Er, Lloyd, there is no railway up Cape York. Perhaps it was the Kuranda Railway from Cairns to the Atherton Tableland? - Jean} I remember those programmes well, because they were well done and showed areas I'll probably never get to. Bugs are a type of crayfish? I have a button that says "I had bugs for lunch." A bit of a gross-out for North Americans...
Sue Thomason
Your trip to Cape York sounded fascinating. Rory and I have just taken the opposite approach to holidays and spent a week at home. It was lovely to remind ourselves of the beautiful countryside we live in and never normally have time to appreciate. We had a couple of very good walks, and spent an afternoon at the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust site in Washington. Saw loads of wonderful birds there - they keep and breed a lot of endangered ducks and geese, and have also created a set of wetland habitats managed for the benefit of migrant wildfowl. My favourite exotics were nene, which are essentially Hawaiian Canada geese. They are Hawaii's national bird {State bird? - Jean} and are named after what they say. Something you might be able to supply informed comment on: I'm currently interested in a microgenre that I'm rather clumsily describing to myself as "alternative-values ecotopia". I'm thinking of books like Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time, Ursula Le Guin's Always Coming Home, Starhawk's The Fifth Sacred Thing, and I suppose Ernest Callenbach's Ecotopia. I've never met a story of this kind set in the UK - it seems to be an American microgenre (the British write disaster stories/dystopias instead). I don't know if this is because the Brits are natural pessimists, or whether it has more to do with our lack of "wilderness" country and "primal/native" culture (there is some wild-feeling country in Scotland, and I think some of Margaret Elphinstone's writing comes closer to ecotopia than anything else British I can think of). So, there is wilderness and primal peoples in Australia -- are Australians writing ecotopias? If so, please let me know what they are. If not, why not?? (In general, I feel many fine Australian writers are nothing like as well known as they deserve to be in "the rest of the world" -- I fear they either get swamped by the American publicity machine, or join it...)
Mae Strelkov
... particularly enjoyed your tale of your trek to Cape York Peninsula. Several years ago, I was studying whatever material came my way on native traditions from those parts, where surely first arrivals from further North and China landed. I found curious counterparts between archaic Chinese words and symbols and what got illustrated in the rock art of the early aborigines; very haunting. The mention of "Peanut Allergy" interested me for I seem to have passed on from my mother's parents a strange condition ("overfat white blood cells", now being studied by researchers in Calgary, Canada), very rare, indeed unknown formerly. (Some sort of mutation I believe occurred centuries ago in England.) Whatever! Nuts are not for us, supposedly, though I've always eaten them and had no trouble myself. Our children had the problem, and take medicine against t he cholesterol that results. (Meat is no problem for them; it's okay to eat, even the fat. Weird, isn't it? Only vegetable oils they can't take.) Surprising to learn now that "tree nut sensitivity has been discovered in children on the Isle of Wight". Might they be distant relatives of ours perchance, sharing ancestors? Here our kids keep busy, with increasing contacts made with other young Argentines interested in defending our ecology, and they all hope that eco-tourism will start up a new approach to defending the fantastic wilds we here so enjoy. Our son Tony at the Hot Springs further north with his family, are very happy and busy there, but I have postponed visiting them as yet -- it's a long, hot drive, and I am 80, and feeling it sometimes. When our son and family from Patagonia come on holiday soon, I'll go with them (they've a new imported car, so it won't be so hard, the long drive). Each winter season, crowds swarm at the various hot springs located throughout Jujuy Province; but where our son is, it's particularly famous. Now it's been fixed up nicely (including a hot water swimming pool, restaurant, etc), people come in crowds there in the holidays too. More and more, the type that comes, even from distant regions, is fun to get to meet. I also heard fromLots of people, including Pamela Boal, Bruce Pelz (who sends potscards from all sorts of interesting places), Lyn McConchie (numerous times, often on business matters), jan "wombat" finder. If you wrote, and aren't mentioned, it's most likely that I received and read your letter, and it's here somewhere... (waving vaguely at piles of packed boxes). |