It’s ice fishing season here.  It’s rather peculiar really, but most Ukrainians I know don’t understand it either.  As soon as there was ice on the lake, there were fishermen popping holes into it and trying to catch fish.
     One morning, Jeff and I stared out the back of the good ship Venetsia watching them for a while.  We saw a man with a stick (that seems to have some sort of metal tip  at the end) pound into the ice.  One… two… three… four times, and the spear went through to cold water.
     To us, “four times and then you’re through” would be red flag indicating, “Get off the ice immediately.  Do not pass Go!  Do not collect two hundred dollars.”  To the ice fishing man, it meant sitting on a metal bucket close to the hole, dropping a line and seeing if you can catch a fish or something.  
     In fairness, I don’t spend much time watching them, but I haven’t seen anyone catch any fish yet.  I’m willing to bet that many of them will catch a cold though.  The newspaper reports that 30 to 50 people die every year by going through the ice.
     Someone told me that the ice fishing season started late this year.  Some of the fishermen blame Americans because they drive all those cars and cause global warming.  At first I thought that was a pretty unfair accusation, but then I remembered that in America, we blame global warming on chopping down the rainforests in South America.  Makes me wonder who the South Americans blame.  Part of me hopes, they blame the Ukrainians for smoking all those cigarettes, but I’m not holding my breath (er… figuratively anyway).

¶ 9:23 AM

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