Walnut the Guinea Pig

Last Sunday, my sister Joy surprised me with a text. "Check your email for important bulletin!" I was so intrigued I immediately opened my email.
I saw this:

 

A walking ball of fur with eyes! "Her name is Walnut." Our other guinea pig, Moonball, is an American shorthaired cavy, so the prospect of caring for a fancier breed was exciting. Walnut is approximately 4 months old, what they call a Sheltie or Silkie. A cavy with Justin Bieber hair. My brother-in-law Tristan picked her out of a lineup at the Northeast Greenhills Sunday Market, and paid P500. He says he was enamored by her black button eyes and teddy bear looks.

Joy and Tristan decided to get another cavy to keep Moonball company, because they'd read that cavies are social animals. Moonball is now a year and a half old, so it was interesting to see how she'd bond with another cavy half her size. Walnut was skittish, and tended to run away everytime Moonball would attempt to smell or lick her. Good thing we had a couple of shelters - a huge PVC T-joint and an overturned plastic basket with cut-out sides - inside what we like to call the cavy-tat.

 

Eventually, Walnut's hunger forced her to leave the T-joint and join Moonball (and her bulk) at the food bowl.

 

 

At first we were concerned that Moonball would hog the food bowl, but Walnut managed to get her share of pellets.

Tristan would occasionally capture Walnut so Joy could give her a dose of Vitamin C from a syringe, and so Walnut would get used to handling and grooming. Right now she fits on Tristan's palm:

 

Joy also rebuilt the cavy-tat from a 2x3 to a 2x4 Stack-and-Rack cage held together with cable ties with a coro-plast box inside. The coro-plast (corrugated plastic) box is lined with an extra-large garbage bag and old newspapers, followed by a green plastic mesh floor where poop and urine could pass through. This makes it easy for us to collect the poop and newspapers for my mom's composting needs.

 

In the evenings after dinner we like to sit on the sofa and watch Walnut and Moonball run around or eat. Since they're still getting acquainted, there's a lot of chasing going on. Walnut is a perky little thing; despite being wary of the bigger Moonball, she has learned to spend more time out in the open instead of hiding in the T-joint all the time.

Right now Moonball is about 800 grams and is about as big as a puppy. She is well socialized with humans, so she actually enjoys being picked up and cuddled every so often. She's also potty-trained - she only pees and poops on the old newspaper folded in the corners of the cavy-tat. We're hoping Walnut catches on.
Cavies have a lifespan of about 4-6 years, given the best possible care. We plan to enjoy these two pets for as long as we can.

Two Poems by Wislawa Szymborska

I just found out via The New York Times today that Polish poet and 1996 Nobel prizewinner Wislawa Szymborska had passed away.

I had been lucky enough to buy a copy of her book, View With A Grain of Sand: Selected Poems, several years ago at a local bookstore. Later, I found that my sister also owned a copy of her Poems: New and Collected, which contained basically the same poems as in my book, but including newer works.

A former member of the Polish Communist Party, Szymborska later turned away from her early "Stalinist" work. She was also an essayist and translator. Shortly after winning the Nobel Prize, she said in a New York Times interview that although "life crosses politics... my poems are strictly not political. They are more about people and life." Many of her poems that I have read deal with the aftermath of war, of people rising from its ashes. Her words can be stark, but manage to convey hopefulness and sympathy.

I wanted to share here two of her poems, which I enjoyed reading:

CAT IN AN EMPTY APARTMENT

Die -- you can't do that to a cat.
Since what can a cat do
In an empty apartment?
Climb up the walls?
Rub up against the furniture?
Nothing seems different here,
but nothing is the same.
Nothing has been moved,
but there's more space.
At at nighttime no lamps are lit.

Footsteps on the staircase,
but they're new ones.
The hand that puts fish in the saucer
has changed, too.

Something doesn't start
at its usual time.
Something doesn't happen
as it should.
Someone was always, always here
Then suddenly disappeared,
And stubbornly stays disappeared.

Every closet has been examined.
Every shelf has been explored.
Excavations under the carpet turned up nothing.
A commandment was even broken,
papers scattered everywhere.
What remains to be done.
Just sleep and wait.

Just wait till he turns up,
Just let him show his face.
Will he ever get a lesson
on what not to do with a cat.
Sidle towards him
as if unwilling
and ever so slow
on visibly offended paws,
and no leaps or squeals at least to start.

NOTHING TWICE

Nothing can ever happen twice.
In consequence, the sorry fact is
That we arrive here improvised
And leave without the chance to practice.

Even if there is no one dumber,
if you're the planet's biggest dunce,
you can't repeat the class in summer:
this course is offered only once.

No day copies yesterday,
no two nights will teach what bliss is
in precisely the same way,
with exactly the same kisses.

One day, perhaps, some idle tongue
mentions your name by accident:
I feel as if a rose were flung
into the room, all hue and scent.

The next day, though, you're here with me
I can't help looking at the clock:
A rose? A rose? What could that be?
Is it a flower or a rock?

Why do we treat the fleeting day
with so much needless fear and sorrow?
It's in its nature not to stay
Today is always gone tomorrow.

With smiles and kisses, we prefer
to seek accord beneath our star,
although we're different (we concur)
just as two drops of water are.

(translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh,
from "View with a Grain of Sand", Harcourt Brace & Co., 1995)

There are more translations of Szymborska's poems online on the Polish-American Network, Poets.org, and the State University of New York (Buffalo).

The Wahl Eversharp Doric

Sometimes I look for particular fountain pens to add to my collection. Sometimes pens find me. This is one of those pens - I am honored to be its current guardian.

This beautiful and iconic Art Deco lever-filling fountain pen is the Wahl Eversharp Doric. Its celluloid cap and barrel each has 12 sides, and it sports the very unique adjustable 14k gold No. 5 nib. The slider on top of the nib can be moved to any of 9 slots, which determines how rigid or how flexible the nib's tines will be. The closer the slider is to the writing tip, the more rigid it is; the closer it is to the barrel the more likely the nib is to flex and produce writing with shading and flourishes (if you know how to write Spencerian or Copperplate script. Here's an example on Youtube).

Wahl Eversharp was one of the top 4 fountain pen manufacturers of its time. This particular Doric was manufactured circa 1935 (later Dorics are plunger-filling pens). It is a standard-size, "Popular Price" Doric, which was sold in those days for USD5. The bigger "senior" or "oversize" Dorics had a Gold Seal above the clip, which indicated a lifetime guarantee (which my pen doesn't have; but it is no less beautiful to me). My pen also sports the plain clip, not the earlier roller-clip of the first-generation Dorics.

This green marble celluloid is named "Kashmir", one of a number of lovely colors. Unfortunately, Kashmir is one of those unstable colored celluloids that has shown a tendency to discolor, craze or crystallize (a condition where the pattern becomes somewhat transparent and colors tend to flouresce and create tiny cracks under certain temperature/storage conditions). Luckily, this pen does not exhibit any crazing or crystallization, although the barrel's green marble now has a faintly olive tinge. This may be due to the fact that it may have been stored through the years until its original latex rubber ink sac had deteriorated and released gasses that changed the color of the celluloid. I removed the section from the barrel to check the condition of the existing sac and was pleased to find that it has been fitted with a silicon sac, which should last for a good length of time.

Here's a writing sample, using J. Herbin Lie de The ink on a Clairefontaine notebook. I have little experience with flexy writing, so this is what I could manage. I have a gold-filled Wahl ringtop with a No. 2 nib that is perhaps quite a bit softer and easier to flex than this Doric's adjustable No. 5 nib. (I try to be cautious and not write with such a heavy hand that I may inadvertently spring the tines.) The nib has a slight kink in it, as if someone tried to flex the nib in the past without moving the slider. This does not detract from its writing performance; I am able to write rapidly with it. The Doric feels good in the hand.

The cap band is somewhat brassed (the gold plating has worn off in some areas), but this does not bother me much as I acquire pens to actually write with rather than to display. There are faint use scratches. But yes, the Doric is one of those pens worth restoring to its full glory, as it is not that easy to find.

(For more information on the Wahl Eversharp Doric, please visit The Fountain Pen Network's Wahl Eversharp Forum, moderated by Syd Saperstein aka "Wahlnut". Other information for this blog came from Penlovers.net, Richard Binder, and Rick Conner.)