Wednesday, May 4, 2005

     Here's a sentence for you... "The details she gave me included... problems in the village with hoof and mouth disease that greatly reduced the number of women in the group." That was part of my last journal entry.

     Herbert normally reads my entries before I post them. However, he didn't read the last one until this evening. I was cooking dinner and he was at the table working on his computer. He had come close to accusing me of missing an entry last month when I reminded him that last Friday, while he was taking a bath, I told him that I was working on my web site. He read it and asked if I really wanted to write what I had written. I thought that he was, once again, trying to edit in an effort to make my web site an 'always and only positive outlook' on my life. When he read that sentence to me, I laughed so hard that I almost dropped the shrimp that I was cleaning. It came across in an entirely different way than I had intended.

     Editing the entry was my first thought. Then I realized that some people may have already read it and it needed to be clarified. Besides, I saw some humor in the way that it was originally written. I decided to leave it as is and explain it here. I had written it as a simple example of the history of the trachten group and hadn't planned on expanding it unless I ever wrote something more detailed about our group. So, here's the 'rest of the story'...

     Women in Oberwil did not die from hoof and mouth disease. But, due to the fact that the disease was rampant, peoples lives were affected. If the disease was found on a particular farm, the people associated with the farm were quarantined to the house. They had to hire outsiders to come and care about the fields and remaining livestock. Not only could a woman have been prevented from going outside the house to attend the weekly dance group, but even after she was cleared, she was so behind on work and cash that she didn't have time for the more frivolous things like social groups. After a while, some of these women gave up their membership which "greatly reduced the number of women in the group."

     That's more than what I wanted to say last Friday, but a much better way to explain it.

     Well, it's Wednesday evening. I normally have dancing tonight, but there is another dance function tonight for the entire region and since I'm not going, I have a free evening. Some of our friends play a dice game every Wednesday night that Herbert and I usually miss. Tonight we're going.

     And tomorrow is Auffahrt, Ascension Day, which is a holiday in Switzerland, Germany and many other part of Europe. Every year, Herbert and I go on a hike and picnic with 15-20 neighbors on this day. I always vow to put a photo page on this site of one of these events. Tomorrow we will go, rain or shine, and if I have good photos, I'll share them with you. Until then...