El Hueco
The Following Was Posted Sunday, November 14, 2004
Vaca Negra
She was resting on a corner a few blocks from the Habitat lodge. Across the street was another one, just as black but smaller.
In the 1700’s, folk wisdom in the English country-side noted that milkmaids frequently contracted cowpox but did not contract smallpox. It was pretty clear that cowpox inoculated them against smallpox. A doctor named Edward Jenner tested this by injecting an eight-year-old boy with fluid from a cowpox pustule. As expected, the brave lad suffered the relatively mild symptoms of cowpox. He was then exposed to smallpox but did not get ill. This is the famous discovery of the smallpox vaccine.
Vaca means cow in Spanish, from the Latin vacca.
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She was resting on a corner a few blocks from the Habitat lodge. Across the street was another one, just as black but smaller.
In the 1700’s, folk wisdom in the English country-side noted that milkmaids frequently contracted cowpox but did not contract smallpox. It was pretty clear that cowpox inoculated them against smallpox. A doctor named Edward Jenner tested this by injecting an eight-year-old boy with fluid from a cowpox pustule. As expected, the brave lad suffered the relatively mild symptoms of cowpox. He was then exposed to smallpox but did not get ill. This is the famous discovery of the smallpox vaccine.
Vaca means cow in Spanish, from the Latin vacca.
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The Following Was Posted Tuesday, November 09, 2004
¿Còmo dices, “Bootleg,” en Español?
Early one evening, we took a tour of some nearby homes recently built by Habitat. The typical home has a common room which serves as the living/dining room, usually about fourteen-by-twenty feet, and two bedrooms about ten-by-fifteen feet. On the back of the home is a connected outhouse, with a nearby tap or well pump. Some of the food preparation takes place on a patio, but a few of the homes I saw had portable gas-burning stoves inside, near windows for ventilation. The homes are wired for electricity but have no indoor running water.
A family that moves into such a home is, for the first time, living under a roof that does not leak and on a floor that is not made of dirt. Eliminating rain water, mud, infestation, and wind from living quarters has huge implications for health and hygiene – particularly for small children.
One home we visited had a desktop computer with a DVD drive, and the little boys were very proud of their collection of movies. I was surprised to see that their latest acquisition was Shrek 2, which had just been released in theaters in the US a few days before my trip.
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Early one evening, we took a tour of some nearby homes recently built by Habitat. The typical home has a common room which serves as the living/dining room, usually about fourteen-by-twenty feet, and two bedrooms about ten-by-fifteen feet. On the back of the home is a connected outhouse, with a nearby tap or well pump. Some of the food preparation takes place on a patio, but a few of the homes I saw had portable gas-burning stoves inside, near windows for ventilation. The homes are wired for electricity but have no indoor running water.
A family that moves into such a home is, for the first time, living under a roof that does not leak and on a floor that is not made of dirt. Eliminating rain water, mud, infestation, and wind from living quarters has huge implications for health and hygiene – particularly for small children.
One home we visited had a desktop computer with a DVD drive, and the little boys were very proud of their collection of movies. I was surprised to see that their latest acquisition was Shrek 2, which had just been released in theaters in the US a few days before my trip.
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