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Editor: Nell Zink
Web: Avner Shats
With
contributions by: Nell Avner
Zohar
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Letters to the Editor
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Animal review for August 12,
2005
Orchard of Broken Dreams
Max Goldt once wrote a nice book, Quitten für die Menschen zwischen Emden
und Zittau. The title means „[fruit everyone has heard of because it’s often
in jelly, but which almost no one can identify on the hoof] for the people
who live between [two places no one has heard of, both presumably in the
former East Germany].“ After five or so years here, I met one of the race of
amiable, forthright nerds (they were hunted almost to extinction during
Germany’s „Troubles,“ but the population is slowly recovering) who give you
straight and accurate answers when you ask questions like, „What on earth
are Quitten?“ And what are they? They are huge, lumpy, rock-hard pears. That
is, they are the pears of Uzbekistan, but only when seen from a distance
through the eyes of wistful longing. Up close they are something you can
boil for jelly.
Triffids
I was disturbed by the presence of evil (nine feet tall, avidly branching
and flowering, spiny, metallic) thistles. There were only two of them and
they were a good mile from our house, but I share the reader’s deeply felt
concern for the welfare of future generations, so I felled them one evening
with a serrated knife. Their thick, tense, hollow stems snapped like cables.
It was nearly a month before I returned to the scene of the crime. They were
still something along the lines of dead. Neighboring thistles had resolved
to escape my attentions by not growing any taller, so when they take over,
at least they’ll be short.
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