Adaptations

The other day I was reading the hunting column in the Free Press. A bad idea because the guy usually makes me mad and I really have no interest in hunting. But the subject was albino deer-seems like they are popping out all over. But this guy is on a personal mission to kill everyone he sees. He smugly writes how he is improving the herd as the albino gene is clearly defective in his inane eyes. As proof of his progress, there was a picture of a whole pile of his kill. The deer weren't even true albinos-they just had white spots on them. I was tempted to write him on how his white skin was probably due to a similar 'defective' mutation thousands of years ago but I have enough on my plate without dealing with hunters, alot of them taking the opposite tact-killing the most fit buck with the most points. Muy macho! So much for improving the herd. But with the deer herd growing tenfold in the last ten years in SE Michigan and my drives to Josh's or Brenda's or now, anywhere becoming increasingly hazardful due to deer popping out all over the place, I guess I can't complain too much about hunters.

So Shanna's family is now here. Yay! But an issue here is the temperature of the house. Steve likes to keep it cool, which in general I agree with but maybe not with a baby in the house. The kids took a child raising class before Oliver's birth. The Northern-European background instructor had said that 68 deg is warm enough for babies. Ramy was mad that she was culturally insensitive ignoring the fact that many in the class came from places where it is never that cold and their babies would have difficulty adapting to such coldness. Nevermind that he has spent most of his life here in Michigan. And Steve's, the temperature czar, ancestors came from the Middle East though they had 2000 years to adapt to coldness-before coming here, they found themselves in Northern Poland/Russia. Hopefully Oliver's quarter European genes will help him survive here. They came back in the middle of the night and I woke Steve up. Get-up! You have to get the house warm! Now! He got up to raise the temp to 58 deg ( I wasn't specific enough) but not warm enough for them.

This adapting to cold reminded me of my Nigerian co-worker's story. Communist Romania was offering free medical school educations for Nigerians for whatever reason. He decided to take them up on it and as a 17 year old, found himself there in the dead of winter, in the worst winter on record-he checked-there without a coat. At the last minute, his aunt had taken back the one she had offered him. Wasn't it a women's coat? It was a coat, we aren't as picky as you Americans. His cousin was already there to meet him but he was very cold waiting for him. They had to take a bus to their final destination but stopped at a village to have lunch. Soon they were surrounded by villagers who never saw Black people before apparently. Finally his cousin got up and said in Romanian "Alright, show's over. Mind your own business and leave us alone." They were shocked. But he had to make many adaptations while there. New language for one though fortunately Romanian is a romance language (surrounded by much more difficult language speaking countries) and he knew some French. But the cold was a hard one. And he ended up being expelled soon due to the fall of Communism.

A few years ago I took Naomi to the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago where they had an albino walrus. Apparently it had escaped the Free Press writer's sharp shooting. It was very strange looking but now, I look just like it minus the tusks: pink, bald and puffy.