Witness to a Public Beating

Last week here in Kiev, I was outside helping with children’s games for our vacation Bible school when I heard a whacking sound. The dull thud continued at length. There were no screams. What on earth?

Mercy me, a rug beating was in progress just over the knoll. I had heard about this rug-cleaning strategy of throwing a rug over a crossbar and clobbering it clean. But here was a public demonstration and – lucky me, lucky you – trusty little Olympus 4040z was right there handy.

Looks as though this guy has his work cut out for him. He’ll be there beating for a while. And the beat goes on. . . and the beat goes on. . .



Speaking of rug cleaning, now that I think about it, this has been a bit of an issue, not that I’ve lost sleep over it. But at one time, I had a small rug in the bathroom and on cleaning day, seemed like a good idea to lean out over the balcony and shake it clean.

Problem is, that doesn’t win points with the neighbors below because the rug stuff flies into their balconies. Oopsie. So then I started taking the elevator down to the back stoop and shaking the rug onto the back alley. Soon realized that passersby found this behavior amusingly odd. Because – imagine, shaking dirt from ones own place onto the street and then people have to walk through that.

So then how to clean a small rug?

Shake it out in the stairwell

Surely you jest.

Or vacuum it.

Vacuum a throw rug?

Fortunately that problem solved itself. Moved to a smaller apartment where there's no space for a bathroom rug. No worries about a public beating. Now that's a relief.