Entry for July 31, 2007 Teaching Abroad !!

Quite often the older we get ... the more interested we become in our own family history and roots.....the heros and heroines ... the princes and paupers..... the bastards and scoundrels ....whose blood is somehow still alive and cursing through our veins today. More than often those brave and stalwart forerunners .... whatever their ilk.... have either one foot ......or both feet ......already in the grave or are in no condition to inform us about our glorious heraldry and its players. All this to simply say that I DO hope that my two sons .... who know I am doing this blog.... will some day muster the courage and interest to come in here to fill in the blanks ! Amen !

Back in 1991 I was invited by the Université de Bordeaux II in Bordeaux , France to give courses in anthropological linguistics from January to the end of May.... during the first Gulf War........ which by the way , began the same day as I started my classes !!! Shock and Awe swept over both Iraq and France simultaneously I guess and only history will tell which had the most impact on human undersatnding !! Anyways... etc.. I was reminiscing the other night and typed into Google the following " 3 , Place de la Victoire , Bordeaux " , the univerity address . The above pic loomed up..... which was more than I could have hoped for ..... as it shows the facade of the old 17th century house of learning .... and moreover the two windows of my office which looked out over the busy hub of downtown Bordeaux......... and my favourite watering hole Chez Auguste to the left.

About my office... when looking at the facade my office was on the second storey to the right of the three main doors below..... occupying two huge windows , two fireplaces... or rather two immense hearths , a desk three chairs and a bookcase........ and enough space to invite 80 people to a cocktail once where everybody milled freely about without running into one another. The ceilings were maybe 15 feet high... five meters.... and I felt lost in there all alone . It was one of the busiest squares in town so I had a bird's eye view of all the action from my vantage point.

An anecdote in passing... I kept a wicker basket with a long rope in my office with a whistle and whenever I felt the urge or had visitors in my office and desired room service I would blow the whistle out the window .... thereby notifying Serge at Chez Auguste , the outdoor waiter , that I needed something. He would come fetch the message in the basket which I had lowered to ground level along with the necessary francs and tip , deposit maybe two or three cold beer .......and I would heist the loot back up to the safety of my den. Great years of my life !!

Picture of me and my buddy , Donat , in front of Chez Auguste on my way to deliver the President's Address at the university on the 3rd of April , 1991..... some spiffy- fancy clothes I had borrowed for the occasion as I had brought none of my own from Canada. On the right is a summary of my speech that day about what Indians want . There had been a standoff the preceding year in Montreal between the Iroquoian Mohawks and the Mounties and Canadian army which had made the news all over France so I decided to demystify the whole shebang . Great fun was had by all.

Entry for July 29, 2007 A Cedar in the Rough !!

Until a few days ago this magnificent cedar was completely hemmed in by thickets and dense chokecherry shrubs. So I decided to set it free ......... liberate it from all the pushing and shoving of rival bushes and trees going on around it. Moreover , discovering a cedar growing wild in this neck of the woods is tantamount to finding the proverbial chicken's gold tooth. I hope to create a wee nook here..... endowed with loveseat and small table where Fluff can while away her afternoons in the shade of our cedar...... blogging wirelessly to her heart's content!!

Speaking of cedars reminds me of an anecdote related to my survey on Montagnais language placenames I carried out back in 1978-79. I was questioning a committee of elders on the Lower North Shore of the Saint Lawrence River.... literally out in the Gulf ..... and when I pointed to an offshore island , they all answered in unison " Mastshihkw Ministukw "..... or Cedar Island. This caught my attention immediately since the northern limits of cedars for the province of Quebec are situated roughly 300 miles south of that territory. The following day I accompanied four younger men out to the island on a seal hunt and saw the huge tree for myself............ maybe 70 feet high and some 18 inches in diameter. A plausable explanation could lie in the fact that ice floes and currents from the interior of the continent flow right by this island and might have borne the acorn which gave birth to this beauty.

Chamaecyparis pisifera......This is a sample clipping of our cedar to show what I mean by the term. So many folks all over the world conjure up in their minds oodles of different species of trees at the mention of the word "cedar". When a fellow chatter told Fluff over in Sweden about her cedar trees out in Idaho ... Fluff pictured something like the Cedars of Lebanon in her mind's eye !! Many often confuse it with the term cypress .

As I was beginning the task of clearing away the underbrush ... Fluff showed up with the camera and snapped the above pic once again congratulating me on my choice of colour when buying my new chainsaw........ she was satisfied but added that the photo would have looked much better had I wore matching green cap and workgloves !!

Entry for July 28, 2007 Dogdays in July !!

While poor Cindy Anne is growing webfeet down Texas way we are finally getting some scortchingly hot and humid weather up here where our local , hardknocks philosopher , Joe Bine , warns us , " At last ! ... and I'd better not catch anyone complaining !"... It must not be forgotten that poor Joe has just made it through a long , cold Winter and and a lousy June 15th to July 18th with "pithpoor"atmospheric conditions...... so he is not in a very good mood !!

Entry for July 22, 2007 Strange Things Done in the Midnight Sun !!

Most folks have heard tell of the midnight sun..... but few have ever exprienced the phenomen firsthand themselves. The above pic is of a postcard I sent to my parents from Lake Inari , some 400 kilometers inside the Arctic Circle in Finnish Lapland , back in the period between 1978 and 1987 when I was doing linguistic research among the Saami or Laplanders. If you were to set out on foot heading straight North of 00.00 ( midnight ) you would end up in Norwegian Finnmark and after a short trek into the Arctic Ocean. Bearing Northeast of 01.40 would take you to Murmansk , Russia... and the Arctic Ocean. Hope this illustration will help you better understand what takes place way up there during the Summer months.

P.S. I am dedicating this post to my sweet Fluff who has seen this wonder up close .... has lived the midnight sun in her native Sweden. And likewise to my dear friend , Céleste and her husband , Randy , as they relax and renew their love for each other ... and for life in general ...under the Alaskan sun 24 hours a day at this time of year. Happy holidays !!

P.S. Please enlarge photo for best viewing .

Entry for July 21, 2007 Mary Magdellan's Snowstorm !!

46 years ago today I set out from Malnitz , Austria with two young German Redemptorist priests from our seminary in Gars -am - Inn ( Baveria) ( I was a Redemptorist seminarian) to climb Austria's second highest mountain..... the Hochalmspitze , some 3500 metres straight up. We reached the hut in the pic below sometime late in the afternoon and decided to spend the night there as two weather fronts were approaching from the West and from the North .... and the innkeeper informed us that snow was in the offing.... lots of it !!! Up till then the going had been rather rough but no major problems for young bucks like we were back then......... but the more difficult climb to the peak still lay ahead so we prudently took refuge in the small inn dorm. There were seven other people already in the corner of the shack drinking beer and eating a frugal meal of cheese , Wurst und Brot.. bread. These folks , I would learn later , belonged to the hikers group which circled the middriff of the mountain and had no intentions of matching wits with the obstacles that separated them from the summit of the Hochalmspitze looming high above them.........Anyways they too decided to stay the night rather than run the gauntlet of an off-season alpine snowstorm.......

To make a long story shorter... we told the innkeeper and his wife who we were and what our needs were and took the crawl space way up in the rafters of the warm little hut. Since all the guests were Catholic ... innkeeper and wife also.... we made up our minds that Helmut , the older of my two priest buddies , would say Mass as it was Sunday... the 23rd of July , 1961. That night the three of us rolled out our sleeping bags and as we lay there looking up at the ceiling Bernhardt and I jokingly insisted on helping Helmut prepare the sermon for the following day's Mass. I .. as an outsider ..... still pride myself today that both my companions gave in to my suggestion for a title.. Unserer Herr War Auch ein Bergsteiger... or Our Lord Was Also a Mountain Climber...... since each time He wished to pray and speak with His Father ... He withdrew to a mountain where he could find peace and solitude... etc. We had so much fun that night ..... feeding Helmut with more than enough pious thoughts for his Sunday sermon on the mountain !!.... and laughing our tails off as we composed along ! I shall never forget that night and the following morning ...when we could hardly see out the front windows because of the snow....... we remained shut in that little hut for four days straight until finally ... on the 25 th ... we headed for the top and made it .

P.S. In the Catholic Church Saint Mary Magdellan's feastday falls on July 22nd. Many of these stories that I have been writing about these last two years will hopefully fill in some blanks in my life that I never seem to find the right occasion to talk about whenever my two sons come acalling.... anecdotes from the life of Papa.....Hopefully they'll get a chance to read them some day either before or after I cash in my chips .

Bernhardt , SeanRud , Helmut and Gerhardt Hanke as we come home to monastery plus the three of us having a big meal .

The three mountaineers ... SeanRud , Bernhardt und Helmut with a friend in Malnitz the day we returned to base camp. On the right is Rojacher Hutte where we slept those four days on our way to the summit of Hochalmspitze. Foods and other provisions are lifted here by cable.

Just a black and white pic of a lesser peak , Hohesonnblick , which we crossed .... along the edge..... on our way down !

Entry for July 20, 2007 Trick or Treat in Raccoon Hollow !!

P.S Enlarge pic please for better viewing ..... two more sets of eyes missing as they had just moved out of camera range behind a chair.

Entry for July 17, 2007 Stop , Look and Listen !!

Fluff and I were sitting there sipping cups of weak coffee at an outdoor café terrasse at Mail Fleur - de -Lys ( Fleur-de-Lys Mall) in Lower Town .... gazing at the Upper Town and Old City skyline. Fluff snapped off a few pics of the overall scenario so I took a quick look at her masterpieces and noticed something familiar in the foreground.... right there near where we were seated......... that big white-on-red octagonal traffic sign written S T O P that gives us all... wherever in the world we might travel ...... that warm fuzzy feeling of being safe and understood. When I see one , I hit the brakes..... and I have a better than average feeling about others sharing the same roads with me doing the same. At least that is what laws are supposed to be all about.... making it easier for all of us to live together on this marvellous planet.....getting from Point A to Point B and then back to Point A again in one piece! Then I began thinking thoughts I'd "thunk" before......

As you can see in the title pic our " universal" S T O P signs here in French-speaking Québec are in French..... all this due to a provincewide scare back in the 1970s that la langue de Molière... Molière's tongue......French....was being overly and overtly corrupted and crushed by the English ogre in whose midst they eked out their national existence........ and I fully understand them for doing what they did back then ....... insisting on purifying the language and purging it of all the anglicisms for which a perfectly good word already existed in French. I witnessed very closely this whole process since French was our household language and prone most of the linguistic legislation passed into law by the Québec National Assembley. However , I think the Office de la Langue or Language Office went a bit too far with the road sign mentioned above.... when driving in Québec and coming to a red and white eight-sided sign reading A R R Ê T........please come to a full stop !

However , while Québec displays its unilingual S T O P signs throughout the province the native villages above..... Huron Village , a suburb of Québec City , and Mingan , an Innu ( Montagnais) village of la Basse Côte proudly exhibit their bilingual stop signs both in French and their own respective tongues... Huron on the left and Innu on the right. Unfortunately for the Huron their language died out during the first half of the last century whereas Innu is still alive and well.....spoken nowadays by 100% of the local population of Mingan ........... and happens to be the language that I taught for over 31 years as part of my workload ... the fun part....at Université Laval.

Entry for July 16, 2007 Coincidence and a Brush With my Past !!

About 1:30 a.m. this morning Fluff and I were still multitasking and watching TV at the same time...... in spite of the many interruptions caused by sporadic thunder and lightning storms all about us. One channel on the Global Network ( which we usually never watch at all ) was still up and running from Saskatoon , Saskatchewan.... some 3000 miles to the west of Quebec.... way out on the Prairies.... so we watched it . All of a sudden they showed a scene where a truck had crashed into a bank and had sped off into the night and interviewing an eyewitness. I jumped out of my chair in shock informing Fluff in a loud voice , " I know that guy ! That's Vic Fortowsky... he was in my class in the minor seminary back in 1951.......56 years ago in Brockville , Ontario ....I centered his sorry butt on the junior all-star hockey team...etc And then the journalist confirmed by adding , " That was Mr Vic Fortowsky and we thank him for his eyewitnes account of events". Immediately afterwards I dragged out my old seminary photo album and there I found the above pic... Vic " Fosdick" Fortowsky on the right with myself on the left.

I haven't laid eyes on Vic since 1952 when he left the seminary but his facial traits ... even though aged.... caught my attention and jogged my memory into overdrive. A real case of " déjà vu " I guess !!!

Entry for July 14, 2007 The Coffin They Carried Me Off In !!

Prelude to a poem....

We Irish have been unjustly stereotyped as brawlers , boozers and tellers of tall tales. But wait... there's more to being Irish.... we love music and dancing and revel in telling jokes about the clergy and death ........we even make attempts to telescope a long shortstory into the rhythmic parameters permitted by our classical Limerick. And so it is with my own life these days as I am haunted ..... literally smitten.......day and night by the cadence , lilt and pulsating beat of the Limerick. Sooo to get it out of my system I have been writing down a few examples to show you exactly what I am talking about.

An endeavour of cheap undertaking ,

In my mind's eye though still in the making ,

A pine box for slumber

Some six feet down under,

Whilst awaiting the Doomsday awakening!

P.S. I am in no way feeling depressed nor suicidal.

Entry for July 13, 2007 This One's For Chun !!

In yesterday's post I showed two pics of Lepreau Falls , one above in the title with my son Dennis , fishing in the lower right corner and a second one incorporated into the text below taken some thirty years later. My dear friend , Chun in China , was unable to bring up the second pic so todays' wee contribution is for you , Chun. This is the pic you missed !

Entry for July 12, 2007

I took the above pic some thirty years ago of Little Lepreau Falls , New Brunswick when my elder son , Dennis , was 12 years old.

This second photo of the same Falls was taken by myself during our (Fluff and I)trip to my hometown on the Bay of Fundy in 2006. The scenario is the same but the water is not the same water in both pics ..........literally millions of gallons of water having tumbled over the falls in between snapshots and have made their way to the sea........and that is how I feel as I come in here today......... same scenario but yet so much has been written and discussed during my absence of one month. However , I have read most all recent blogs and shall soon make the rounds making comments where appropriate. And Cindy.. you are a SAINT ! You were so kind... I would have propbably nailed the witch's hide to the barn door...... verbally so to speak.... and Céleste is still hard at work making our planet a better world to live in and eke out our happiness and salvation........and Chun has a new job with better pay way up on the 43rd floor of a modern highrise.... congratulations , dear Chun !!and dear Jewels is heading home to Oregon on July 21st and seems most happy after a fully-lived year in Alaska....Bonne route , Jewels ,,, safe trip !!....and Dixxee... the South Carolina's fireball is on the prowl for a pickup truck and seems tickled pink by her new job !! Hurray for Dixxee ! And Fluff wanders aimlessly through the house these days.... ev er since she rediscovered the true vocation of the work.... spouting off definitions and quotes from the Roget's Thesaurus LOL

P.S. Those friends not mentioned here shall soon be hearing from me as I read through their latest blog. Great weekend to all !

Entry for July 11, 2007 Molehills to Mountains !

In the land where bumps do abound

And a rise in the ground is a mound

Where corpulent hillocks soon bloat into hummocks

With not a scrawny wee knoll to be found!

Entry for July 09, 2007 Limerick for Bill !

To the mirror I say , " Tell the truth !

Be kind but don't be uncouth !

Are the wrinkles and wear

That I see when I stare

All part of the deal......forsooth " ?