The Adirondacks, Halloween, and a Little Boat

Bonjour tout le monde,

On rare occasions there are moments so engaging and full that when I reflect on the experience of them, I can't imagine that whatever it is I'm doing could actually end. Growing up commercial fishing felt like that much of the time. Admittedly, in the case of fishing it was the discomfort that most often created such a feeling. There was one summer in my late teens when the pounds of salmon we caught were so great, and we were fishing so regularly, that we'd gone without enough sleep, with little food, and with radical physical strain for about two weeks. We were verging on total exhaustion and had to keep pulling out fish anyway. On our way to checking the net for salmon, I would ride in the middle of the skiff watching the bow of the boat turn and hop against the horizon as we rode down the river. Feeling the waves gush and slam against the boat's hull below my feet, it felt as though the entirety of my life would be stuck there in that total discomfort. To cope I came up with a mantra I'd repeat to myself over and over again. "Every moment lasts forever and then passes into the next." Looking back it's a strange little device to use for solace--the idea that my discomfort really would be endless in some way, but then disappear again too as a new experience took its place.

Rachel and I spent the last two weekends driving south from Montreal to attend various events in Vermont and New York State. Last weekend we attended two very different concerts, both of musicians whose music I love. On Friday we drove to Burlington, Vermont to see Greg Brown. Then on Saturday we headed to Schnectady, New York to see the final farewell concert of Dame Kiri te Kanawa. There is something about being surrounded by the stereo of live music, with the musicians there in front of you, hearing the music as you see it being made, that can demand your total engagement like one of those moments I described above. Being there for Greg Brown live as he played one of my favorite songs I had that feeling--that the moment was so full, I couldn't believe I would have to leave it eventually. That sense that it would end coupled in me an idea of how joy for what we have is also filled with the sadness of its limit, that it is this limit that allows for our happiness. What is good in our lives is partially good because of how we can't contain it, or hold it back. The loop we made for those two concerts took us around the full breadth of Lake Champlain, and through the Eastern side of the Adirondacks. The land reflected a classic autumn for us, the trees all mixed in green, red, orange and yellow, against the granite of the Adirondacks and the silver blue of the lake. When the wind picked up the leaves would fall.

Two weekends ago Rachel and I attended a 26-year Burlington tradition called "The Haunted Forest." A large group of volunteers get together and take the whole year to plan an hour and a half long walk through the woods of a sugar tree farm. The walk occurs in the dark along a jack-o-lantern lit path with ten different Halloween vignettes being played along the way. Groups of twenty are led along the walk together by a pair of grim reapers carrying lanterns. Rachel was determined she would not be scared by anything the woods might offer us, but at vignette four her attitude changed. Out of the dark our group was, without warning, surrounded by Halloween Electronica music and thirty some dancing figures dressed in black with scream faces and skeleton hands. The abrupt nature of the dancers appearing caused everyone else in our group to collapse in high pitched screaming. I spent the duration of the dance laughing over my surprise that our entire group, consisting mostly of adults, reacted in such a way. When the dancers appeared, quite suddenly, the seven-year old boy of the family in front of us started clawing his way up the right side of his father, while on the left side the mother clawed her way up too. The three of them completely abandoned their two girls, who in front clutched at each other, screaming and falling to the ground. Rachel went from bragging about how she wouldn't be scared, to her legs buckling against me as she shrieked and eventually, at the peak of her terror, yelled "STOP IT! STOP IT!" I found myself laughing harder than I had in years, while also trying to make Rachel stand for herself (I couldn't hold her up), and comfort her all at the same time. Even though the dancing didn't scare me, I can only imagine that the surprise of the figures seeming to appear out of no where, and the feeling of a lack of control it induced is what caused the screaming in the others. Once the dancing ended, and we were led on through the woods again, the group spent the rest of the hour and a half expecting someone to jump out of the woods at us, while Rachel kept mumbling "When will it ever end!" and "I can't go on another step!"

Already in November, my final semester of coursework is almost at an end. Next semester I'll be enrolled in a research course while also working on a central chapter of my dissertation. The chapter will amount to the equivalent of our qualifying exam, which is meant to advance me to candidacy. In other words, assuming the chapter goes well, I'll be told I have permission to write my dissertation. I was telling a friend this morning that there is a strangeness to graduate school that amounts to it feeling like the last two years of my life were quite simply swallowed up by a little hole. It's a surprise to say I'm in my third year already, as though so much time just couldn't have gone by yet. Graduate school is demanding in such a way that I've lost track of how I could live a different sort of life, which is a little frightening, and it's hard to believe it could actually end. The reality of being at this stage in my doctoral work is that I have no clear sense of where life is going to take me next. My funding changes after this year, to what, I don't know. Without coursework I no longer have an obligation to be in Montreal, though there are reasons like proximity to supervisors and auditing courses why it might be wise to stay here. I have an outline for my dissertation project and the timeline I will follow for chapters, so I have a plan for my life at the very abstract level of the work I do. Something about this stage of transition and uncertainty resembles at least one aspect of the eternal moment. Without knowing what is beyond the horizon, it's hard to imagine the limit of this portion of my life, except to know there is one. So I do what I can to face it, which is quite simple really. Riding beside Rachel, I continue to watch the bounce and hush of my life against the waterline, and to pull the salmon as they come.

All my love to all of you!
Please write back, if you can. I'm always glad to talk with friends.

Your friend,
Elaine

Alaska's Mountains and Motorcycles

Bonjour!

Several years ago, before I returned to school to finish my Bachelor's degree, Rachel and I lived in Alaska for about a year and a half. This was after leaving California, where Rachel was born, before moving to Arizona (where I finished my BA), and so of course before life now in Montreal. She was a toddler at the time. Our life placed us on a mountain over looking the city of Anchorage, and it's surrounding inlet, which hosts the second largest tidal range in the world. I worked at the University and in the winter to drive into town we'd have to wake up extra early to snow blow a two hundred yard stretch of driveway to get through what was either new snow fall, or snow blown over again by 100 mph winds. To get back up to the house at night I honestly would have to traverse back and forth up the road sometimes. My front wheel drive sedan mostly kicked that mountain road's butt all winter long. But there was one stretch of road that consisted of a very steep up hill climb. On occasion, after a major snow storm, to get up that climb I'd have to put my car perpendicular to the road and drive the car back and forth, slowly moving sideways up the hill. That year we had a record snow fall in the Anchorage area of 28" in less than 24 hours. All businesses and schools in town were of course closed. A friend of mine had to go into work to pick up some paperwork though and to make it to the front door of her building, which was at the bottom of a hill, she walked through powdered snow that reached up to her chest. Somehow she kicked enough snow away from the front door to pull the thing open, and then later managed to push her way out again.

Life in Alaska can be a little over the top. Facing the elements in such radical form takes shape in the people in strange, unpredictable ways too. People tend to be rather to the point when it comes to conversation and saying what they want, what they have to do, or what they damn well expect you to get done. Members of my family, including myself, have on occasion been described as "refreshingly direct" by those from outside of Alaska that enjoy our company, and not described as anything at all (to our faces) by those that find our "refreshing directness" uncomfortable.

This Spring during a brief visit I had several odd little encounters, some of you may have heard of them. Attending a local concert at a log cabin bar in the middle of the woods one evening, a man I'd never met before walked up to me and asked if he could have a hug. He seemed harmless enough so I decided to oblige him briefly. Afterwards he asked (in response to a sleeveless Harley Davidson shirt I was wearing) if I owned a Harley. "I think of it more as a long-term goal." I responded. He looked at me hard in the face and then said, "I've got a garage full of Harleys." I nodded, getting ready to turn away. Before I could he looked me hard in the face again and said, "All I can offer you are all my Harleys and my love. All I need to know is that I can trust you with my life." It turns out becoming a philosopher is one way to obfuscate Alaskan directness. I explained that while hypothetically a person probably could trust me with their life, in actuality he would not. Rachel and I spent the rest of the summer trying to work that conversation into a Country and Western song.

A few days later I was buying coffee from my favorite local café--Kaladi Brothers on Northern Lights, snuggled between Title Wave Used Books on one side, and REI on the other. On my way out I saw that a man was hand carving wooden spoons. It appeared to me that he was sitting there carving the spoons in order to sell them. Thinking I was being helpful, I stopped and asked the man how much for a small purplish spoon he had displayed. By this time I'd finished my coffee and thrown away the paper cup I got it in. "Where's your coffee?" He said. Confused, I asked him what he meant. "Where your coffee? You went and threw it away. Didn't you?" Still missing his point I answered him smiling, "No, I drank it." He scowled at me. "Don't lie! You threw it away. That plastic lid. That paper cup." I changed topic asking him again how much the purple spoon was, telling him that I only had $20 but perhaps one of his spoons cost that much. He looked up from his carving and raised his voice at me, "As long as people like you buy your coffee without a reusable container, my spoons will be too expensive to buy! You can't buy my spoons!" I have to admit I almost laughed but instead told him I respected his cause, and his spoons, and would make a point of changing my cup habits, then walked away. The next day I returned to the same Kaladi café and found a sturdy ceramic travel mug. You coffee connoisseurs know that drinking from metal or plastic changes the taste in a way a ceramic cup just doesn't. The spoon man, though, was no longer there.

Rachel and I just enjoyed nine days in Anchorage, returning this Monday to Montreal. As usual, I spent the first five days sleeping, and the last four sleeping more. Rachel turned 8 the last Friday of our visit and our family celebrated with the moose bone soup she'd requested. The bones came from a moose my brother in law, Kevin, got just last month during a hunting trip he and my dad took out to Naknek on the Western Coast of Alaska, where our family spends the summers commercial fishing.

While there I also visited that same mountain road I'd lived on top of to go for a hike and overlook the inlet. Without snow on the road it was an easy drive. I hiked through a valley that stretches across the Chugach Range looking to either side of me at the peaks stretching up over head. Long before I ever lived in those mountains as an adult, I spent ample time running around in them, or skiing there with my father. The valley was dotted with moose I could make out against the yellowed fall tundra in the distance. Before and after the hike I stood and looked over the city of Anchorage--a bowl built in the marsh land encircled by mountains and the water. By the time I began my drive back down the mountain it had started snowing.

It's a big contrast, now here in Montreal again, to return my self to that spot. There is a great rootedness in knowing I come from such a strongly built place. I appreciate the way in which, even as I live right now in a city with its quick pace and boxed in housing, those mountains are back there reminding me snow happens. Keep both feet on the ground and be prepared for anything. You never know when you may have to push your way through chest deep snow, on the one hand, or be faced with an offer of a garage full of Harley's, on the other.

Cheers!
Hope you all are doing well!
Elaine

Roots, Parks, and Relaxing

Bonjour tout le monde!

Parc la Fontaine, the park near my house, today is filled with people simply relaxing, taking in the Fall sun. It is beautiful today. The full sun pours through yellowing leaves, and a slight wind rustles up the crisped leaves that lay upon the ground. Montreal carries a pleasant air about it. Walking through the park on my way home this afternoon, I strolled down the hill, and along the lake. People had brought their own hammocks and tied them up between two oaks, or between light pole and oak, to lounge along the water. Couples were snuggled up, feeling free to kiss and squeeze together on the grass. There were several sets of elder women giggling together on park benches. Up above, the park is full of game sites--courts for tennis, softball, soccer, areas for volley-hack (volleyball using a hackey sack, hackey sack rules, and a low net), and bocci ball. People were utilizing all of these, and elder men were at tables playing cards and chess. What I love about Montreal is that it seems designed and built for the comfort of people within it.

Five hours east, Toronto hosts a wealth of cultural activities. There is an enormous jazz community, the blues play every night, museums are heavily funded, galleries have ample support. It is a city I enjoy spending time with, admittedly at least in part because every where the landscape is dominated by the English language. One of the differences I see though is that in the center of Toronto, at least, many of the parks seem designed for the overwhelming impression of grandeur they will induce. The feeling of the place is about awe, and impressiveness. Further out in the city there are many parks that consist mostly of rolling grass and playgrounds. The inhabitants of Toronto utilize these parks for community events such as dramatic performances, and community feasts. But even so, the city and those parks don't have quite the feel of well-planned invitation to be comfortable that I find here in Montreal.

It is a surprising and comical city in many ways as well. I'll admit to what for many of the people I know would be shocking occurrences. This morning, walking to re-park my car for the sake of street cleaning, I passed three teenage boys trying to secretly split up a bag of marijuana. It is clear this sort of thing isn't much of a concern here since, though it was obvious they didn't want anyone to see them, they also were only about two feet off the neighborhood street standing against the backstairs of a house. Later this afternoon I walked by an erotic shop, about half a mile from my house, that recently changed it's name from "Erotim" (with an apple as part of the store logo) to "Romance." The store sign also changed from white with red trim to all red. So now when you walk by you see a big store front window displaying a male mannequin in a bell hop uniform with snap up (and off) sides, on the one hand, and a female mannequin with a nursing outfit, on the other. Above them both is a giant red sign announcing ROMANCE! I must confess it's hard for me to imagine a woman in a nursing uniform, with her boyfriend dressed as a bellhop and the both of them doing anything but laughing.

It's been interesting to discover that as much as I love Montreal, as totally as it expresses many of the principles of the good life I hold, it still hasn't allowed me to root down. I'm much more comfortable here now than I have been the last two years. No one I love has committed suicide in over a year, which helps quite a lot. Rachel *isn't* possibly quite ill, and I haven't had a cold, shingles, or any other malady since last winter. All that is a great portion of the comfort in my life now. But also I've just gotten used to be surrounded by a foreign language all the time, I've learned how to get around a city of 3.5 million, and as Rachel put it yesterday, I've gotten better at relaxing. "It feels good to relax," she said. Still, a whole other set of the values I hold rest entirely in family, and in community. I've done well at building and connecting to a community here. But the reality of the sort of work we do as philosophers is that much of our time is spent in solitude. So the community I know here comes from meeting people as they step out of their cave, covered in the bear-ish hair they've grown while trying to sort out what Wittgenstein's notion of family resemblance has to do with the question of race (in my case), or how Husserl's theory of time helps us better understand the self (in my friend Don's case), or why there is anything that exists at all (as in the case of my friend Brian). The work I've been doing in graduate school, it turns out, is very much tied up with my realizing that when it comes down to it I simply am born and made of the mountains in Alaska, and of the utterly peculiar, frequently pain-in-the-butt-strange, fiercely loving, and difficult people I know there. I've spent many years of my life feeling conflicted between the home that I come from, and how it frustrates me, and the ideas and culture I wanted to learn and be a part of. Somehow living in a place so different from Alaska--so different people literally don't even speak the same language--has finally eroded most of that conflict away. I don't feel so split between places anymore but instead simply a person integrated with both. Don't get tricked into thinking I've become idealistic. I'm sure life will continue to confound me in plenty of other ways.

Rachel is doing wonderfully well. She is bi-lingual in French and English, though her English vocabulary and reading ability are further along than her French. I bumped into her English teacher this afternoon and he told me about how excited Rachel always is to get to his class. So excited in fact he usually has to ask her to *not* shout out the answers to every question he asked. But then he made a point of saying she's a good kid, so respectful and polite, as well as energetic and friendly. Somehow that seems like much of the description I'd hoped for in thinking so hard about how to raise her. She's begun taking break-dancing classes on Thursday afternoons, and she goes to Hatha Yoga now on Mondays. Her break-dancing instructor told them that break-dancing comes down to two things--music (and then he bumped his head to a beat, implying that it is your ability to follow that beat that he was really referring to), and acrobatics. This last week they learned how to roll and spin off one heel and a hand, as well as how to do some simple leg bending that looks quite fancy when you do it to the beat. I asked Rachel what she did in Yoga this week and she responded, "Not that much. We were snakes moving around a rock. And then just snakes. And then we just lay there to relax. It feels good to relax. We should do that every time."

Next week we go to Alaska to visit. I'll meet my new Nephew Oliver for the first time--he's three months old today. Rachel will turn eight, at which point I'll also celebrate my 8-year anniversary of becoming a mom, something I'm quite proud of. And I'll root down for a while in those mountains, with all those pain-in-the-butt people I love so much.

I hope life for all of you is full of peace, feeling, and comfort.

Enjoy your comfort!

Your friend,
Elaine

Hotdog, Sausage, Coke, and the Dialectic

Bonjour tout le monde!

An older woman stopped by my house a few moments ago to offer me the chance to reduce the cost of electricity through sound with her for only $5 per month. I told her that I would be happy to pay for her to do that this month. She was very pleased and said she would return on an every two week schedule to align the whole house, stairs and everything. Starting with the stairwell, and then moving to the front door I watched as she would tap the facing of each wall moving around the sides of any molding or obstruction in a clockwise fashion. Watching her reminded me of how my great grandmother use to bless, or pray for her house, every night by first crossing her self (forehead, right side, belly, left side, repeat, in the Russian Orthodox manner) and then crossing too each wall of each room. As the woman finished aligning my home the bells of the church around the corner took up for the 6 o'clock reminder of God's blessings. The woman invited me to step outside with her saying some people like to look at the alignment from the outside to make sure it is complete. Not knowing what to look for I simply smiled at her appreciating the fresh air and full blooming trees outside.

I returned yesterday from two weeks in Toronto, the largest city in Canada and fifth largest in North America, just five and a half hours west of Montreal. Montreal's metropolis area boasts 3.5 million people, while Toronto metropolis hosts 5.1 million. My first week there I stayed with friends in a beautiful, quiet neighborhood on the southern portion of the city. The neighborhood's history apparently can make claim to the title of "deadliest area in Canada" but with recent gentrification things have radically changed. Walking through the area you wouldn't think to worry about such violence. My second week took me to a residence room at the University of Toronto campus, site of one of the biggest philosophy programs in the world with over 50 professors teaching for that department alone. Across from my residence was an "All-night Hotdog, Sausage, Water & Coke" stand that I discovered a fondness for one night at about 3 AM when I realized I was hungry after several hours of reading Hegel. Hegel would do that to anyone. Reading too much Hegel in one sitting has a similar effect as a hangover. You wake up from the haze of the dialectic realizing you need salts, electrolytes, and maybe another bloody mary to resolve things. Being now back in Montreal I have a huge craving for a hot dog and coke. You might recall that mobile food stands are illegal here in Montreal so the chance of finding an all-night hotdog, sausage, water and coke vendor is unlikely.

I have to admit it's a strange experience spending time again in an Anglophone city. After two years now living in Francophone-bilingual Montreal I get confused reading all English restaurant menus and am thrown by the process of buying things in English too. I'm used to the feeling of such events being slightly agitated by the expectation of not quite understanding things. Suddenly being confronted with actually knowing the language it feels as though I might not understand any longer how to respond to such obviousness. Marketing ploys are more common in Toronto as well. There are advertising signs in Montreal but not as many and them being written in French it's as if the signs simply don't call for me to notice them. Everything being written in English feels as though I'm constantly being bombarded by billboards demanding I pay attention to them. There just isn't enough of me to go around. More disturbing though then the advertising is the ability to understand all the conversations of people around me. It was almost disappointing to realize what people spend their time talking about, though I comfort myself with the idea that the topics might not be much different in French, they just sound prettier in all those vowel-filled Francophone sounds.

My entire family of three has been enjoying traveling adventures. Even Rosie, the bird, went on a little road trip across town to stay at my friend Brian's house while I went to Toronto. She seemed quite shocked by the display of total movement outside the car windows but calmed down again immediately when set next to Brian's radio and electronic keyboard. She's a big fan of music, after all. Rachel, on the other hand, is all the way up on the Western coast of Alaska actually commercial fishing with my family. She's got her own chest waders, rubber boats that really cover her almost all the way up to the chin. She's learning how to balance while walking in water that deep as the fish crew walks along pulling salmon from the net. The last few days have even taken her to the fish site in the middle of the night. I began fishing at the age of 9. At the time that was the earliest any of us had started since our family standard was 10. Rachel's broken my record now by starting at the age of 7. She's working for a living while I keep working on Hegel. Once I get further along the dialectic (get more of my school work done) she and I will rejoin here in Montreal.

The summer in Montreal is beautiful. It's a perfect time to visit. I do plan on returning again to Toronto for part of July. A number of friends are spending summer there so I'd like to have time with them. There is something appealing too about celebrating life through the obviousness of my own language.

Hope you're all doing really well! I look forward to hearing from you!
Elaine

Speed, Age, and Fortifications

Bonjour tout le monde!

As if I didn't already have motivation enough to learn French, I recently discovered another very good reason. It's been a good thirteen years since my last speeding ticket. Don't be fooled into thinking I actually slowed down my driving. Mostly I just got smarter about where and when to speed, but I also got better at talking my way out of tickets. But, it turns out, it's verging on impossible to TALK your way out of a ticket when you don't share the same language with the police officer that's pulled you over. And, I just didn't feel right about using my seven year old French speaking daughter to do it for me. In other words, I got my first French (meaning the language, not the country) speeding ticket last weekend. Turns out they actually charge less in Quebec for traffic infractions than they did thirteen years ago in California. Maybe I don't need to learn the language after all.

Having visitors this last month (plus) has meant I've gotten much more familiar with the tourist attractions and various oddities of the area. The speeding ticket was caught on a day trip to Quebec City, three hours northeast of Montreal.

Quebec, Quebec is the oldest standing city in North America, dating back to 1608. St. John, Newfoundland and Labrador, is actually the oldest European settlement in North America with recorded landings to the area dating all the way back to 1497 and the oldest map of the city being dated 1519. But while St. John is the oldest European settlement, it's original fortification no longer stands. Quebec City takes the prize in that regard. The old town area is in fact the only fortified city in North America, north of Mexico, whose walls still exist. It is considered a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, which means the site is considered of outstanding cultural importance "to the common heritage of humankind" and is eligible for funds for the purpose of preservation from UNESCO.

The old town area sits right on the banks of the St Lawrence at a point where the I'le d'Orleans creates a massive Y in the river. The whole fortification sitting on a hill, it celebrates a spectacular view of the river and the sunset over the rolling hills on the other side. The town itself--buildings and streets--are built almost entirely out of a pale gray stone and today is filled with boutiques, restaurants, and smaller hotels. At the top of the hill is the enormous Chateau Frontenac hotel with a funicular ride going straight up the cliffside immediately below.

At the beginning of the month Rachel and I took Justin down to old town Montreal, which is also built of a lovely pale grey stone, but is situated on an entirely flat area next to the old port of Montreal. It too is one of the oldest urban areas in North America, dating back to the early 1600's. The Sunday we decided to visit old town I was telling Justin about an annual festival that occurs in the area each year to celebrate the ships and trains of the old port. Apparently an avant garde composer is commissioned each year to compose a piece that orchestrates a variety of traditional musical instruments and the bells and horns of the port ships and train cars. The old town buildings border the river bank in such a way that the sound of the horns and bells echo off the building front increasing the effect of the composition. It happened that the Sunday we descended upon old town was the very day of the 13th edition of the Pointe-a-Calliere's Port Symphony. This year a composition by Merlin Ettore was performed and included five boats, two trains and metal stringed instruments. The three of us were all fascinated. Rachel was even struck by the intensity and uniqueness of the deep boat horns mixing with the other sounds, though mostly she wanted to know when the trains were going to move on the tracks.

After the symphony we walked around the old streets then hopped in the car again to visit the sites of the World Expo 1967. Habitat '67 is an unusual housing complex designed entirely out of cubicals of air and concrete with concrete cubes suspended over open cubes of air. The interlocking modular complex was designed by Moshe Safdie, apparently as his Master's thesis from McGill University. Each living area has its own garden. The structure was originally designed to provide affordable but private housing, including private garden. The condominiums don't tend to share walls with neighbors, so there is no issue of ease dropping through thin walls. The complex has turned into a rather exclusive and expensive housing area now complete with its own ski trails, tennis courts, and gardening staff, quite counter to Safdie's original vision. Still, the structure is striking to view.

A little beyond the Quay that Habitat '67 sits on is the Ile Notre-Dame, a manmade island built specifically for the World's Fair, which, along with the naturally occurring Ile Sainte-Helene, housed the array of international pavillions that were the Fair. Still standing on the Ile Notre-Dame is what had served as the French and Quebec Pavilions but now operates as the Casino de Montreal. Justin and I visited the Casino mid-week only to discover that it serves as a large attraction for retirees. For the first hour we were there we were the youngest casino patrons by a good four decades. One of those retirees managed to bring in several thousand dollars at roulette over the course of a half hour that I stood there watching.

Ile Sainte-Helene and the Ile Notre-Dame together form what is now Parc Jean Drapeau, a quite large outdoor public park. One half of the Ile Sainte-Helene also houses La Ronde, an amusement park open during the warmer half of the year, complete with antique wooden rollercoaster, and the array of more contemporary metal high spped contraptions. The former American Pavillion also stands on the Ile Sainte-Helene now serving as the Biosphere, the only Water Museum in all of North America. The Biosphere consists of one of the original geodesic domes built and designed by Buckminster Fuller. The geodesic dome is the only architectural structure that does not demand weight bearing support from the inside. After the completion of the World's Fair the sphere was sold to the city of Montreal for one (Canadian) dollar, quite a deal, especially when you take into account the Canadian-US exchange rate of the 1960's (which actually, happened to be essentially identical to what it is now, around 92-cents to the dollar respectively).

Our visitors have all departed now. My sister Paula, and twelve year old niece, Melissa, were here for about a week. Due to the wind and cold weather they spent most of their visit underground in the vast collective of shops and cafes that never see the light of day. Montreal's underground city is actually the largest underground complex in the world and includes tunnels between hotels and shopping areas, access to the metro, connections from housing complexs to banks. Interestingly, while Western Canada tends to include skywalks between buildings--hallways suspended tens of stories above the ground running between buildings--Montreal doesn't have any of these. It's enclosed connections are all below ground instead. I've been told that the underground has even occasionally hosted an indoor marathon. Justin stayed for about a month and has now returned to the colder, dryer weather of Anchorage. Rosie, our bird, was quite attached to him while he was here. I put the phone up to her cage yesterday so he could talk to her and she stood very still to listen. Rachel and I are back to managing all our entertainment and needs on our own. I have my papers to write and Rachel has her schoolwork too. Every Wednesday Rachel gets to go to a kid's cooking class with a small group in her Service de Garde (after school care). Rachel told me they make a different recipe every week and then afterwards get to eat what they've made. This week they made "those chips, those chips, with fromage... I mean, cheese on top." Rachel said her nachos were so good she "had three servings and the teacher let" her!

We always enjoy hearing from you!
Lots of Love,
Elaine

Snow, Sledding, Styrofoam, Pacques

Bonjour! Bonne journee!

Turns out, I'm a forgetful driver. Well, driving isn't actually the problem. It's the parking. I don't tend to remember where I've parked the car. This generally isn't much of a problem because I apply my problem solving skills and narrow the possible locations of the car down to a few localized areas and then just look. Turns out though this approach doesn't always work so easily. It's been snowing since last night and today, being day one of the plowing process, finds cars with snow berms on both the road side and the sidewalk side of the cars. There is enough snow that the berms are higher than the windows of my Saturn sedan, and the top areas of the cars are entirely covered too. One of the neighbors solved their car finding problem with their remote control car starter. Once the car started, and they could hear the sound of the engine, they quickly hit the remote control starter again to turn the car off. The tailpipe, after all, was a straight dead end into a snow berm. I considered walking around clicking the lock-unlock buttons of my key bobble to get the headlights and interior lights to flash on and off but the snow is honestly too thick to be able to *see* the lights. I finally gave up and took a taxi across town to McGill.

Turns out Mini Coopers handle a snow storm remarkably well. I watched a two door Cooper gun its way over a ten-inch snow berm and then up a long and steep hill. Obviously impressive.

It's still snowing, by the way. Later tonight when the snow stops falling I'll walk around the neighborhood clicking the panic button of my key bobble on and off till I hear the alarm. Then I'll kick the snow berms back out into the street and swim under the car to get the snow out from under there too.

Living in Montreal for over a year and a half now, I am no longer as caught by the shine of newness lighting up what is unique about Montreal. Early this week though, I had to notice how, between the eight students in the course on Hegel's _Phenomenology_ that I'm taking, we had the text, there in the classroom at that very moment, in the original German, and translated into French, English, and Spanish. The countries represented by the people present in the room also included Canada, the United States, Costa Rica, Italy, Germany, and Bulgaria.

A friend that has been visiting also pointed out that he was impressed by how intellectual the bathroom graffiti has been in Montreal. There is a high propensity of famous epigraphs from classical texts, as well as political arguments actually representing a dialogue back and forth between two sides. Apparently some people regularly return to the same bathroom. After my friend pointed out this bathroom feature I came upon an argument about the role of Israel in Palestine that transpired over at least twelve entries.

Down the road several blocks from our flat, there is an entire house being built out of styrofoam. It turns out this is a "modern" building technique that takes a number of forms. The house down the street is being put together out of styrofoam that takes the shape of cinder blocks with small metal connectors at each of the external corners. The building is at least four stories high. It turns out the styrofoam cinder blocks are stacked atop each other and then steel rebar is driven through the stacked holes formed by the blocks. Cement is then poured into the holes such that four story cement vertical "tubes" harden as the structure of the building. Cement floors are poured and built as usual (without the styrofoam). Then, sheeting of what ever type the builder wants is placed over the interior and exterior styrofoam walls using cement screws long enough to pierce the styrofoam layer and into the cement. The styrofoam is supposed to offer a cheap means of producing cement forms and is light enough to easily transport to the site. I watched one of the floors get "stacked" a month ago and it's obviously a quick method too.

Rachel has learned to ice skate. Parc Lafontaine, two blocks from our house, has a large lake in the middle that is turned into a skating arena in the winters. Her little hockey skates from last year (that she never used last year) survived her slow growing feet and have turned out useful and fun this year. One side of the lake is also a sledding hill. A few weeks ago we went sledding and it turns out the little saucer sled we brought with us from Flagstaff is fast enough that I flew well passed the hay-bail-lined trees, into the wild wilderness, and then off the three foot high embankment that borders the lake. And, it being a saucer sled, that all happened backwards.

We also got a pet cockatiel about a month ago. Rosie didn't eat the first three days she lived with us while she went through the adjustment to her new home. I've since found out that cockatiels can go as long as a week without eating during such a process and still survive. She's so well adjusted now that she calls to us when she hears us talking in another room from her. Then when we go say hello she moves through a stretching routine showing us her leg, tail, and wing colors. She likes to preen both her feathers and our ears when she sits on our shoulders too. Having her around adds a nice fullness to the day. Mornings now are when Rachel gets up, sings to her bird, and changes the food and water for her. In the evening Rosie sits on Rachel's shoulder to help with homework.

Valentine's Day passed uneventfully in Montreal. It turns out the two biggest holidays here, based on marketing changes in stores, are Christmas and Easter, or Paques. Stores that cover themselves with special chocolates, colorful baking goods and imported odds and ends for Christmas and Paques will only import one or two heart shaped chocolates for Valentine's Day. The thing to notice though is that when it comes to holidays, chocolate is the great universal.

We miss you all and are always happy to hear from you! I hope things are going well with you and your families! Rachel and I are healthy, and after a year and a half of tumult, our lives finally feel more steady. Rachel's also taken quite well to reading in French. She translates signs for me now.

Votre ami,

Lots of love to you all!
Your friend,
Elaine

Cuss Words and Multiculturalism

Bonjour! Bonne Journee!

Foucault said you can tell a culture's or country's hang-ups by their swear words. In the States, for example, the worst cuss words are connected to either intercourse or bodily expulsion. In French culture though cuss words have a lot more to do with the Catholic Church. Based on Foucault's analysis we'd have to say then that in the U.S. we're uncomfortable with the human body, and in French culture they're unhappy about the Church.

When I was living in Santa Cruz I had a close friend that liked to say the f-word a lot, except, well, with every letter filled in there. Her cussing like that was a big contrast to the rest of her demeanor since she was utterly polite and congenial in every other way. Eventually she explained that growing up in Quebec the f-word was a sort of funny rebellion for her because her Francophone mother didn't know what it meant, and from her own perspective it just didn't really sound that bad. Without growing up in the American cultural context the f-word just seemed funny to her.

Now that I live in Quebec I've taken on a lot of religious explications that I find humorous (forgive me if any of you are a Quebecer or French and find these offensive). When something goes wrong I say something like, "Tabernac!" or make something up like "Holy Blue Gown of the Virgin!" I fear that much like my Quebecois friend that was transplanted to the States, I don't realize the weight of what I'm saying. For me, these religious explications are just humorous, but for locals, from what I've been told, they have a lot more meaning. One of the nice things about Canadian culture though is that no one would ever chastise me for using inappropriate language.

Canadian culture, it turns out, is very much about not rocking the boat. People here have seemingly mastered the art of getting along in day to day social interactions. At the same time, there is also a sense in which Canadians seem to expect differences of opinions and of personal expression in a way I don't find as commonplace with Americans. The United States right now seems very uncomfortable with the possibility of offending people, and yet, at the same time, we all manage to do it rather well quite consistently. A friend of mine in Seattle told me that her boss told her she had to take down the Halloween decorations put about her cubicle last October because the decorations offended a Christian woman that worked down the hall. In Canada people don't want to rock the boat by directly confronting anyone, but in the States people seem to expect Government, or other authority figures, to implement a sort of cultural monotone as a means of avoiding contact with things they disagree with. As a result we impose a lot of rules on each other but still manage to get upset that others are telling us what to do. We're not supposed to wish each other "Merry Christmas" or even "Happy Holidays" anymore, but instead just a "Good Winter." Holidays imply religious references. We aren't to decorate our cubicles with anything that could imply a religious or political stance (or perhaps lack of it). And we aren't to talk to each other about politics. Canadian culture seems, in a general sense, less about applying these hard line rules and more about people managing their own sense of politeness.

I was asking some Canadian friends of mine about these sorts of differences while trying to sort out the source of them. Somehow Canada just seems, from my outsiders perspective, better able to accommodate multi-cultural perspectives. One Canadian friend's theory about it was that Canada begins with an origination myth of two founding countries--The British and the French. The British may have had a dominate position but they allowed the French to remain (after beating the tar out of them in battle). In addition, Canada is used to being in a position of living in America's shadow. There is no room for Canadian's believing they have greater access to "the truth" or a greater sense of "authority" in such a complicated self image. The States on the other hand starts with an origination myth of beating the oppressors right out of the country and winning our right to be self-determined. We of course have continued as one of the largest and "strongest" nations in the world as well, thus adding to the self image of "right *and* might."

Rachel and I spent a month in Alaska with our family. It snowed the entire visit. Montreal on the other hand didn't receive its first snow until the middle of January. Parking in Montreal largely consists of parallel parking on the streets. Snow removal in the city is a four day process (for one significant snow fall) consisting of the following steps. The first day all of the major roads are plowed down the middle so that driving is free and easy but the cars parallel parked along the road are penned in by a several foot high burm. The sidewalks are also cleared on the first day--Montreal runs on foot traffic and public transit so sidewalks are a necessity--such that cars are penned in by a burm on the sidewalk side too. At the end of the day when people with cars need to relocate again everyone kicks the burms down, pushing the snow back out into the road, and then actually gets under their cars and swims about pulling the snow that was pushed under the cars by the snowplows back out onto the road again. By the end of the first day, in other words, the roads are covered once again by snow and everyone's clothes are a mess. Day two consists in replowing all the roads in a similar manner, and everyone rekicking the snow burms down, etc. Day three the left hand side of every road has no parking signs put up such that no cars are allowed to park on the left so that the city can clear the snow away on that one side. People in some parts of town literally park on the sidewalks (on the right) during this time. Then on day four the same happens on the right side of every road.

Last week in the middle of a snow fall I saw one good Samaritan (wait, perhaps that is an offensive religious or political reference)... I saw one nice person walking down the street with a shovel spontaneously shoveling out any cars where the owners needed and asked for help. I ended up pushing a Mercedes out of the parking place they were stuck in (the driver didn't swim under the Mercedes well enough in his Armani suit) and then, along with another person, 10 feet up the hill the Mercedes was stuck on. I'd tried to tell the driver that he'd have to turn his wheels left and u-turn down the hill but it turned out he wasn't used to being told what to do. 10-feet later he still hadn't done it so we gave up and left him there. No use pushing a Mercedes all the way up a hill, no matter how nice the Armani suit inside it happens to be.

Rachel is doing well and, after the readjustment, happy to be back in Montreal. She goes to her first French birthday party this weekend. The mother was kind enough to write the invitation in English for me. At the bottom she didn't know what to write to ask me to RSVP. I told her the next day that in English we simply ask each other to "RSVP" to an invitation but that I couldn't remember what that meant. She answered me, "Oh! Respondez S'il Vous Plait!" Turns out we got that from the French.

My semester has started off just fine. I'm doing an ungodly amount of work but it turns out I just keep up better when I have too much to do. After eating Chicken Nuggets and French Fries for dinner everyday for 3 and 1/2 weeks last term I have managed to (1) stop eating meat and (2) start cooking vegetables, tofu, lentils, and rice. We're eating better, in other words. I'll admit though that today I drank two extra large coffees and one allonge (long shot espresso).

Blessing of the Virgin to you, or which ever deity, or non-deity you prefer. I hope that you're all doing quite well and enjoying whatever culture you happen to be a part of.

Keep in touch! We'd love to hear from you!
Elaine and Rachel