Quebec Journal

TROIS POÈTES SONT VENUS POUR NOUS!

2010-11-19T13:44:00.000-08:00

Michèle Blanchet (front, left), Monique Laforce (front, center) and Richard Fournier (in back on right) came from Quebec City to give three poetry readings on both sides of the Quebec/Vermont border. They came across to Vermont on Saturday, Nov. 13 after a drive down from Quebec City. This picture was taken after their second reading, at the Barton Public Library. With them is Toni Eubanks, librarian for Barton and Glover (front, right) and also yours truly, Sylvia Manning (in back, in black). They had already given a wonderful first reading at the Bread and Puppet theatre in Glover, from which we have no pictures here but some very good ones in a review in the Orleans County Chronicle of Nov. 17, 2010.

Here the three poets stand in front of Resto Millie's in Stanstead, Quebec. Their last reading, billed Brunch & Poetry, was here, just barely back across the line. This reading was filmed, so we hope to have a link to that video.

It was beautiful. Everything. The poems, the weather, the way people listened, the way they responded, the graciousness of Elka and Peter Schumann, Toni Eubanks, Bashar at Resto Millie's, Nancy Nourse with RythmeBeat. Tous. Merci beaucoup.

En Fin

2010-11-05T14:05:00.000-07:00

Hello at last,

Here near the Quebec border in Vermont I'm not connected to the internet; I come to the little public library to use a computer. That's part of why I haven't entered much here, though I have pictures of when my dear friend Danelle came from Texas and went with me to Quebec City, and certainly I have poems and pictures from other visits made there since I came back north in late July. It's something about reality, something about grief.

But I have to mention that Monique Laforce Virgule Poète, Michèle Blanchet and Richard Fournier are coming to Barton and Glover to read their poems in French (with some English translations). They will read once at Bread and Puppet,in Glover, then at the Barton Public Library, and the next day at Resto Millie's in Stanstead.

Tout semble difficil. Il n'y a pas une fois quand tous les choses dont j'ai besoin sont ensemble, et alors je n'ecris pas beaucoup ni ici ni chez moi. Mais, ceci est important pour moi, que mes amis nous visitent, et je crois aussi pour la region, alors ... la poster au-dessous n'est pas correct, par example. Richard FOURNIER n'est pas Fourtier, et nous n'avons pas un lecture au Runaway Café, mais ...je l'ai fait en PAINT et je ne sais pas comment le changer.

ceci est quelque chose, quelque chose de poésie ... et des amis de la ville de Québec, la belle ville.

Mes amis!

2010-04-02T18:14:00.000-07:00

Je ne sais pas pourquoi la photo est telle petite quand ici son mes grands amis: Monique Laforce, Martin, Mathieu, et Itzela Sosa. Dans la bistro.

An homage to Monique Laforce, poète de Québec

2010-03-22T18:21:00.000-07:00

Many of Monique's friends, including several other poets (of course) will gather at 7 pm, March 23, at the Kritzhoff Bistro on rue Cartier. (C'est écrit correct, Kritzhoff? Bon, tout le monde de la rue Cartier le savent.) The poets will read their choices from Monique's many publications, and she herself will read for 10 minutes.

Ah, comme je voudrai être là.

La photo de Monique est de l'été passé, au cabine au Vermont.

Felicitation, mon ami Monique.

Un autre Cooper: Haiti a besoin d'aide encore.

2010-03-10T19:20:00.000-08:00

There's a link on the left to Anderson Cooper with Sean Penn's efforts to save thousands of lives with a renewed effort to help Haiti as the people live in sheets waiting for sheets of rain to come, with all the sickness that can result.

Anna Julia Cooper. Anderson Cooper. Un coincidence.

Ce soir nous pensons de Haiti, n'est-ce pas?

2010-01-22T18:07:00.000-08:00

Pardonnez-moi quand ma français n'est pas correct. Je parle du cœur — ceci est ma défense. Ce soir j'écoute le programme Hope for Haiti Now, et même si je suis ici au Texas, je me rappelle de Québec, où j'ai appris du beauté des gens du pays de Haiti. Ici en Texas, nous avons des Haitians, oui, même ici en Seguin, que j'habite. Mais vraiment, il a été en Québec où j'ai eu l'opportunité de voir le gentillesse des eux de Haiti.

Je lis maintenant un livre sur Anna Julia Cooper, une Africain-Americaine qui etudiate à Paris. Au age de 67 elle à reçu son doctorate avec une dissertation sur l'histoire de Haiti, particulièrement comme la revolution en Haiti a été connectée a la revolution en france. Les Amis des Noirs, en Paris, elle nous explique.

Hier soir je suis allée à une exhibition des sculptures en bois faites par Marika Bordes, une artiste née au Haiti, qui a assitée l'école du Sacre Cœur à Montreal. Son art à bois est magnifique, et nous somme très fiers.

Maintenant j'écoute la chanson par Leonard Cohen, Halleleujah, et je pense à mon ami à Québec qui peut le chanter si bon, Mathieu.

Ils nous manquent, les mortes. Mais Haiti, le peuple vivant, nous les manquons. N'est-ce pas? Nous, Les Amis de Haiti?

sur Haiti

2010-01-15T17:28:00.000-08:00

I keep thinking of the films I saw in April, two of which were about Haiti. I copy here the entry of April 25.

Saturday, 25 April 2009
Pourquoi les images de l'eau? a demandé quelq'une. ("Why the images of water?" asked someone.)
Actually, as I learned later while waiting for the free Eco-Bus (top speed 35 mpg, operates all day for under $4.00), the someone who asked that question is named Eduardo.

The film festival Vues d'Afrique at Le Musée de la Civilisation ended last night with two great films from Haiti. The producers of both films, Giscard Bouchotte and Michelange Quay, were present to introduce the films and then answer questions, one of which was Eduardo's.

Giscard Bouchotte's film, La Vie Rêvée de Sarah, 26 minutes long, is a documentary of the life of a real woman, 65 years old, in the village of Mahotière, in southeast Haiti. Mahotière is a poor but lovely tropical place with a daily life very unlike what most of us imagine when we think of the poverty and distress in Haiti. Sarah is very poor, yes, as is everybody in Mahotière, but she's confident and happy with her life in the community. Giscard Bouchotte received sincere thanks from the audience for bringing out this picture of Haitian life in French and créole. He spoke of Mahotière, where he had spent time, though he did not grow up there, with reference to "la petite revière qui cour par le village." Early in the film, we see a little boy having a stand-up-sit-down soapless bath in this stream that runs through the village.

Mange, ceci est mon corps (Eat, this is my body), Michelange Quay's film, 105 minutes long, was well appreciated by most of the audience, including me -- I would have raved on about it if my French were up to it -- but a young woman also from Haiti --Stephanie, a student, whom I met previously while waiting for the EcoBus -- did not like it at all. "Je l'ai détesté!" she told the producer. Just like that. Then she went on to say it had ugly ideas and images, even that it was too violent.

Well. He was taken back (as was everyone else, I think). He was wounded, I think. He wanted a long discussion with her, which the moderator tried to end for other questions or comments -- but Monsieur Quay just told the event worker, "Look. Someone just told me they hated my film. I have to talk about this." It was something of a brouhaha.

Later, outside the museum, I told Stephanie that I loved the film, and part of what I loved was that it was NOT violent. I asked her if she'd seen Johnny Mad Dog, from the Congo, on Monday night. She hadn't. Well, neither did I nor another woman. We just could not watch it. The violence was too heavy, too terrible to watch -- though undoubtedly it did not match the horror of the truth. (Amnesty International sponsored this film, and Amnesty International members were there to ask for signatures on petitions in behalf of child soldiers. The people playing these child soldiers in the film had actually been such; maybe that's why it was so hard, too hard for me, to watch.)

Stephanie hadn't seen Johnny Mad Dog. I told her that if she had, she's appreciate how artistically and skillfully Quay had dealt with the violence that we all know is part of the reality in Haiti.

Michelange Quay received his degree in film from New York University in 1994 and then a degree in anthropology from Miami University (or the University of Miami? l'Université de Miami, reads the Vues d'Afrique festival brochure.) A 2004 film, L'Evangile du cochon créole, which earned prizes for the short film at Locarno, Stockholm, Milan, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Polo, Turin, and at the Tokyo Con Can Film festival.

And oh, the water. The film begins scenes of a woman in labor, whose water may be about to break, interfaced with low aerial pan shots of a dry but brush-greened countryside awaiting rain; then there's water from the sky in electric storms, water from the faucet an the old white colonial mansion, water in rivulets, waterfalls, puddles, buckets, water as milk, ... little boys taking showers to be presented at table where there'd be nothing given them to eat ...

oh, it was beautiful, the water.

Mange, Ceci est mon Corps. 2007. Michelange Quay. Haïti-France. 105 minutes. 35mm, créole, Français, English subtitles. with Sylvie Testud, Catherine Samie, Hans Dacosta St.-Val.

La Vie rêvée de Sarah. Giscard Bouchotte. 2008. Haïti, documentary, créole with French subtitles, 26 minutes.

"Well, what do you think?" was what Michelange said to Eduardo (this before Stephanie had her say). Eduardo said, "I really liked it. Maybe because water is life itself?"

Joyeux Nöel à vous

2009-12-19T12:42:00.000-08:00

J'envoie à tous mes amis de Québec le souhait d'un bon fête, d'un bon hiver, d'un bon 2010.

On doit essayer, n'est-ce pas?

2009-12-02T13:54:00.000-08:00

Une amie s'appellée Gloria est venue pour m'aider faire le retour au Texas. Nous sommes allées au Musée des Beaux Arts.

J'ai pris tous ces photos avec l'appareil que mon Tony m'a donnée.

Anthony Joseph (Tony) Weisman

2009-10-07T11:42:00.000-07:00

Tony, my friend for life and my life partner for these twenty years, died suddenly in Seguin, Texas on September 28, 2009. Tony's support and encouragement allowed me to visit Québec, indeed to begin to learn French. I will post here more pictures of him, especially those taken in Quebec City this last summer, but there is one of him sitting on a bench on the Plains of Abraham in the Images for Weisman, Anthony, at www.MeM.com.

Pensez à moi.

Vraiment dans Vermont

2009-09-19T08:12:00.000-07:00

But here you have a picture from Stanstead, Québec, taken at the dedication of a new plaza within easy sight of the border crossing into Derby Line, Vermont. Ellen Mass, who told me about the event, is in the foreground in the blue shirt.

It was lovely to be back in Québec even so briefly, on this sunshiny September day when the good folks of Stanstead -- once the Granite Capital of Québec, I learned -- explained their vision for this Eastern Township (once the largest after Sherbrooke). Speeches by the mayor, the new director of the new Granite Museum, the sculptor, all were in French, though some summarized in English.

The U.S. has changed the whole atmosphere at the Derby Line-Rock Island (part of the Stanstead township now). Even so, or because of it, there is a real effort underway in Stanstead to greet whoever crosses with sculpture and fountain, interesting shops, good restaurants, a new granite museum, and beautification of the Tomofobia River.

It is sad to be gone from Québec, but there is the consolation of knowing that even within 25 miles, a French-speaking population welcomes visitors.

The sculpture, of Québec granite, is named Les Larmes Terrestials (did I spell that right?) -- Earth Tears.

I work to make my house in Barton a place where visitors will feel welcome.

Vive Québec! Vive Québec libre!

2009-08-29T11:54:00.000-07:00

Général Charles DeGaulle came to Québec in 1967 (November, I think, so just after my daughter, Leecia, was born in late October). His speech is a landmark in Québec history for his having shouted out Vive Québec! Vive Québec libre! I've walked past him hundreds of times now, because I live on an alley that is just the other side of that little red house with white porch. The one with the Québec flag.

*****
So much to learn, so little time to tell about it. On my last full day of this long stay, I'm in the Gabrielle Roy library on a nearly cold August 29. Monique Laforce has met me here. We're going to attend a workshop around the corner on Community and Free Education. Having Monique along will be great, because she can fill me in on anything I didn't understand.

Then I'll go for supper by invitation from Itzela Sosa and Martin. Itzela, from Mexico City, is translating to Spanish the first biography of Flora Tristan, by Éléonor Blanc, which I've already translated to English.

Here are Itzela and Martin. She works on a PhD in Sociology at Université Laval. Martin, from Argentina, works on a graduate degree in Engineering. Ils sont très beaux, n'est pas? Itzela is as beautiful as Flora Tristan was.

*****

On Wednesday Monique and I visited l'Ile d'Orleans, several miles north of the city. One gets there on a bridge from which you can see the water falls of Montmorency. It's one of those scenes that really deserves the word formidable. But I don't have a picture of that, because I was driving.

Here's a picture of me and Monique at a snackbar -- le Bar Laitier. Monique lived here on l'Ile d'Orleans many years ago.

We found the house where she lived, and now it's a gallery, so she was able to walk through some of the rooms she once knew. She lived only across the street while expecting that son. He is now in Afghanistan but only until he returns home to Québec on October 6.

And here's another picture of DeGaulle, because it is.

Goodbye for now, Québec, mais juste Au Revoir.

Art Exhibit on the Plains of Abraham

2009-08-18T10:04:00.000-07:00

Above, an artists' exhibit on the Plains of Abraham, around the Joan of Arc Gardens, les jardins de Jeanne d'Arc, August 14-16. It was a very hot weekend, but look at the lovely shade. (And if you look closely, you can see Joan back there on her horse.)

This is Danielle Boucher, who drew a mural of the cityscape on two canvasses and encouraged any and all to take a brush and a palette and paint in the colors. This was my favorite part of the exhibit. It was sponsored by the Fondation Maurice Tanguay -- which helps families have brief summer vacations together, families who could otherwise not afford to "échapper;" also by DeSerres, an art supply business; and by le Journal de Québec, a daily news tabloid.

So, you got the chance to paint, a chance to talk with a friendly francophone who didn't switch to English immediately upon hearing a trace of an American English accent, and a coupon for 25% off your next purchase of art supplies! (That's having it made in the shade.)

Tandis que ...

2009-08-17T16:11:00.000-07:00

While I wait to remember to bring the right USB to the library with me, I'll post here another picture or two that I think is worth seeing, though I'd meant to put something altogether different up that I don't have with me.

My friend Monique Laforce has come with me to Bibliothèque Gabrielle Roy in the early evening, still quite hot, 88 degrees Farenheit at 7 pm -- 31.111111111(+) Celcius à 19 heures. We spent most of the day reading her poetry, translating some, eating chocolate ice cream with strawberries grown in Québec.

This morning we went to the Université Laval for her to register for something called here a Third Age Course, Études de Troisième Age, which are inexpensive serious courses in such as art and philosophy for people over 50, given by the university. Why doesn't every university do that?

Then we went to a bistro near the university to which she'd not been in years, Café au Temps Perdu. We spoke long of many things. Elle est diserte, mon amie la poète, mais dans le mieux sens du mot. (I learned this word disert(e) today from Monique, from something of hers I read about Not Funny Buffoons -- Les Bouffons Pas Drôles. Disert(e) originally meant fluent, but then began to mean talkative or gabby. Monique is fluent, communicative. Today I translated three of her poems of lyrical tone and three funny ones -- trois plus drôles. Friday night Monique read at the Tam Tam in Basse Ville.

Another dear friend, young Mathieu Lizotte [I always call him young Mathieu because he is] has returned safely from his travels in South America with his Czech girl friend (I think his girlfriend), Blanka.

Very few pictures on the USB I have with me, but I offer these: outside the Librarie Nelligan, also called Les Temps Retrouvé, and outside le librarie Page Noir.

Nelligans, by the way, is the subject of one of the photographs in an exhibition now at the university Social Science Library. It takes the center place of choice. I went to tell François, the book store owner, to go see it, the day after I saw it. But here's an elegant sight on a hot summer day: a view of Basse Ville taken from stairs going down, back in late winter -- or March 25, properly spring:

Near the city gates

2009-08-06T17:04:00.000-07:00

...where Grande Allée become rue St. Louis, some statues I like. These were taken back in May. They've been waiting.

L'écolobus!

2009-07-30T12:54:00.001-07:00

The écolobus runs on $3.25 (Canadian) per day. It travels at 35 kilometers per hour (max) up and down the steep hills of the old town, from the port to parliamentary hill. It's free. It's wheelchair accessible. Oh yes: it's electric. Why doesn't every town have one?

L'art de la rue dans la faubourg St.-Jean-Baptiste

2009-07-23T11:31:00.000-07:00

Certainly I wanted Tony mon conjoint to walk with me in the Faubourg (neighborhood) St. Jean Baptiste. Walking down rue Saint Claire we saw a man working on this artwork above his garage. We asked if we could take photographs and did so, then talked to him. He is Sylvain Michaud.

He was very kind, très gentil, to come down from his ladder and chat with us, to tell us he has spent hundreds of hours already on this project.

Then he closed the garage door beneath the present work in progress -- metal flowers of recycled soft drink cans -- to show us his previously completed project.

His name, again, this artist in Faubourg St. Jean Baptiste, is Sylvain Michaud. He has a little shop with other examples of his art at 730 Sainte Claire, Québec.

All these photos, by the way, were taken by Tony Weisman.

le Festival d'été et plus

2009-07-13T12:09:00.000-07:00

Bon jour,

Que bon être ici dans l'été avec mon conjoint, Tony. Nous avons été ici dans la ville (dans la très petit apartement avec fenetre à la ruelle) depuis le 9 juillet. Et nous partirons demain parce qu'il doit aller au Texas et son traville.

It`s wonderful to be here with Tony. We came up on the 9th. We share the tiny apartment with its window on the alley.

We've enjoyed many of the Festival d'été acts, especially (so far) The Lost Fingers, Matayashu, and today, nearly rained out, the Spam All-stars, the only true jazz act we've heard. It's Tony's second time to attend the Festival d'été.

[posted July 13. Tony loved being here in La Bibliothèque St.-Jean-Baptiste¸]

un poème traduit il y a longtemps

2009-06-13T07:15:00.000-07:00

Il y a un mois que je suis revenue au Texas. Je pars d'ici au norte, près la frontière avec Québec en Vermont, bientôt. Je serai très contente d'arriver d'être encore une fois dans la norte.

Dans la rue Cartier dans la ville de Québec il y a une bonne blanchisserie.

Ici j'ai un poème sur une blanchisserie par un amie. Je viens de le trouver dans mes papiers. Je ne sais pas pourquoi je choisissais le mot laverie en lieu de blanchisserie quand je l'a traduit en 2006. Est-il comment on dit en Québec? Je oublis. Et aussi, sèche-linges n'est pas correcct. Comment dit-on? C'est comme ça. Ici:

It's been a month since I returned to Texas. I leave here for the north, near the Vermont border of Quebec, soon. I will be very happy to be able to be in the north again.

On Cartier Street in Quebec City there's a nice laundromat.

Here I have a poem by a friend about a laundromat. I just found it in my papers. I don't know why I chose the word laverie instead of blanchisserie when I translated it in 2006. Is that how we say it in Quebec? And also, sèche-linges isn't right for dryer. How does one say it? I forget. It's like that. Here:

LAUNDROMAT

This is how Hopper would have painted it:
the line of yellow dryers
catching the sunlight from the broad window,
man with his hand reached up to the coin slot,
head turned to the side as though reflecting,
woman bent over the wide table
intent on her sorting,
another standing hands at her sides looking off —
as though visiting another country:
each thing as it is,
not reaching beyond the scene for his symbols,
saying merely, “On such and such a day,
it was just as I show you.”
Each person, object static
but the light a pilgrim.

en Salon. No. 21, Winter 1993 (Fort Collins CO: Salon)

La Laverie

Ceci est comme Hopper aurait le peint:
la rangée des sèche-linges jaunes
renvoyant le soleil de la vitrine,
l'homme avec la main étendue à la machine à sous
la tête tournée au côté comme si réfléchissant,
la femme inclinée sur la table large
concentrée sur le trier,
autre debout, les mains aux côtés, voyant au-delà —
comme si de visiter autre pay;
chaque chose comme c'est,
pas étendant au-dessus de la scène pour ses symboles,
disant simplement “En tel jour,
cela a été seulement comme je te donne,”
Chaque personne, chaque objet statique
mais la lumière une pèlerine.

traduit à la français par Sylvia Manning, March 14, 2006

Au revoir et merci ....

2009-05-04T15:46:00.000-07:00

Malhereusement, je pars de la belle ville, mercredi. C'est difficile le faire quand il fait si doux. On espoit à revenir bientôt.

Je remercie la ville soi-même, à tous les citoyennes, mais particulièrement à Mathieu Lizotte -- artiste, musician, écrivain, étudiant, ami, bon humain -- qui m'a aidée tellement...;

aussi je remercie Monique Laforce, poète, pour les heures de collaboration en faisant traductions de ses poèmes...;

je remercie Renée Lachance, qui m'a aidée beaucoup, avec la traduction et aussi pour connaitre la ville meillure...;

je remercie leComité Populaire de la Faubourg, Les Amis de la Terre, la Bibliothèque St. Jean Baptiste et la Bibliothèque Gabrielle Roy...;

la librarie Nelligan et Pierre qui travaille là...;

Jean-François qui m'a louyée la pièd-a-terre...;

Itzela Sosa, qui va traduire la première biographie de Flora Tristan (écrit en 1845) à l'espagnol...;

Connie Berg for two great writing sessions that were extremely helpful...;

all the bus drivers but especially the écobus drivers...;

sweet Tony who called me every night...;

c'est-à-dire: tous.

On remercie.

P.S. For about 6-8 weeks, I'll be sharing pictures and notes from my time here but won't actually be here in Québec. Plan to return for the summer festival.

If you`d like to study French in Québec, check out the FLE program at Université Laval. I think you could still register. It's a relatively inexpensive and really good program.

Mireille and her friend

2009-04-27T13:48:00.000-07:00

Saturday, April 26, broke all records for being summery in spring. Walking down into basse ville a new way, I came upon young people using the pleasant day to roller paint a pretty orange over graffitti art.

I yelled up to them my question, "Puis-je prendre une photo?" and the young woman yelled down sure, go ahead. (In English. No fooling her.)

I took some pictures, then walked on, but I realized that wasn't good enough and walked back. After all, I could ask anything in English.

I found out that the young woman is named Mireille, that their work is legal on that wall, but "We have to buy the paint ourselves!"

"Will you put something else there where you're painting it orange?" I asked Mireille. "Oh, yes," she yelled down. "Come back in three hours and you can see it all finished!"

I didn't get back until the next day, but the photographs above are the finished product. You can't see it very well, but the actual writing in the bottom of the first one reads "Summer begins today, 2009." In English. In the next one, repeated in real letters at bottom, is what you may have wanted to guess it says: MOWGZ.

That's not French. Je ne sais pas qu'est-ce qu'il veut dire.

Pourquoi les images de l'eau? a demandé quelq'une. ("Why the images of water?" asked someone.)

2009-04-25T12:32:00.000-07:00

Actually, as I learned later while waiting for the free Eco-Bus (top speed 35 mpg, operates all day for under $4.00), the someone who asked that question is named Eduardo.

The film festival Vues d'Afrique at Le Musée de la Civilisation ended last night with two great films from Haiti. The producers of both films, Giscard Bouchotte and Michelange Quay, were present to introduce the films and then answer questions, one of which was Eduardo's.

Giscard Bouchotte's film, La Vie Rêvée de Sarah, 26 minutes long, is a documentary of the life of a real woman, 65 years old, in the village of Mahotière, in southeast Haiti. Mahotière is a poor but lovely tropical place with a daily life very unlike what most of us imagine when we think of the poverty and distress in Haiti. Sarah is very poor, yes, as is everybody in Mahotière, but she's confident and happy with her life in the community. Giscard Bouchotte received sincere thanks from the audience for bringing out this picture of Haitian life in French and créole. He spoke of Mahotière, where he had spent time, though he did not grow up there, with reference to "la petite revière qui cour par le village." Early in the film, we see a little boy having a stand-up-sit-down soapless bath in this stream that runs through the village.

Mange, ceci est mon corps (Eat, this is my body), Michelange Quay's film, 105 minutes long, was well appreciated by most of the audience, including me -- I would have raved on about it if my French were up to it -- but a young woman also from Haiti --Stephanie, a student, whom I met previously while waiting for the EcoBus -- did not like it at all. "Je l'ai détesté!" she told the producer. Just like that. Then she went on to say it had ugly ideas and images, even that it was too violent.

Well. He was taken back (as was everyone else, I think). He was wounded, I think. He wanted a long discussion with her, which the moderator tried to end for other questions or comments -- but Monsieur Quay just told the event worker, "Look. Someone just told me they hated my film. I have to talk about this." It was something of a brouhaha.

Later, outside the museum, I told Stephanie that I loved the film, and part of what I loved was that it was NOT violent. I asked her if she'd seen Johnny Mad Dog, from the Congo, on Monday night. She hadn't. Well, neither did I nor another woman. We just could not watch it. The violence was too heavy, too terrible to watch -- though undoubtedly it did not match the horror of the truth. (Amnesty International sponsored this film, and Amnesty International members were there to ask for signatures on petitions in behalf of child soldiers. The people playing these child soldiers in the film had actually been such; maybe that's why it was so hard, too hard for me, to watch.)

Stephanie hadn't seen Johnny Mad Dog. I told her that if she had, she's appreciate how artistically and skillfully Quay had dealt with the violence that we all know is part of the reality in Haiti.

Michelange Quay received his degree in film from New York University in 1994 and then a degree in anthropology from Miami University (or the University of Miami? l'Université de Miami, reads the Vues d'Afrique festival brochure.) A 2004 film, L'Evangile du cochon créole, which earned prizes for the short film at Locarno, Stockholm, Milan, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Polo, Turin, and at the Tokyo Con Can Film festival.

And oh, the water. The film begins scenes of a woman in labor, whose water may be about to break, interfaced with low aerial pan shots of a dry but brush-greened countryside awaiting rain; then there's water from the sky in electric storms, water from the faucet an the old white colonial mansion, water in rivulets, waterfalls, puddles, buckets, water as milk, ... little boys taking showers to be presented at table where there'd be nothing given them to eat ...

oh, it was beautiful, the water.

Mange, Ceci est mon Corps. 2007. Michelange Quay. Haïti-France. 105 minutes. 35mm, créole, Français, English subtitles. with Sylvie Testud, Catherine Samie, Hans Dacosta St.-Val.

La Vie rêvée de Sarah. Giscard Bouchotte. 2008. Haïti, documentary, créole with French subtitles, 26 minutes.

"Well, what do you think?" was what Michelange said to Eduardo (this before Stephanie had her say). Eduardo said, "I really liked it. Maybe because water is life itself?"

The water question -- Pour Sauver La Planète ....

2009-04-19T14:30:00.000-07:00

I remember once, years ago, at the Picasso Museum, asking for water. The guard repeated loudly my simple sentence as though it were a language from another planet. I'd asked Où est d'eau? but he had to have Où est de l'eau and probably S'il vous plaît, où est de l'eau? before he would even begin to make any effort to understand me beyond a mocking repetition of what I'd said (or so it seemed to me and still does in recalling it). He refused to get past my imperfect French in spite of the fact that the museum must have many, many people going through who do not speak his language -- and he was African, so it's probably not his maternal language either; in spite of the fact that I needed water quickly because I was coughing, as he could observe; in spite of the fact that I'd only left out one consonant so was very close to a correctly phrased question. Finally he allowed himself to admit that he understood what I needed, had me say it correctly, and only then, at last, pointed the way to a water fountain.

Yesterday I heard Riccardo Petrella speak and bought his book at the Salon du Livre, the 2008 edition of The Water Manifesto ... (below see the complete title in French). He and many others have been working on this without many of us receiving any knowledge of their serious effort.

Did you know that Expo 2008, in Saragosa (Spain, right?) was all about water? Over 100 countries attended. The United States did not. The little book I bought yesterday is in a series entitled Les Grandes Conférences (The Great/Big Conferences)

I found the Salon du Livre Québecois at the Centre des Congrés de Québec, convention center on Boulevard René Lévesque. It's a giant book fair that I might have missed (having enough books now, thanks to Librarie Nelligan) but I thought the poet, Monique Laforce, might be there and I hoped to speak with her again.

Given the program, a round table for 1 pm caught my eye: POUR SAUVER LA PLANÈTE, FAUT-IL SORTIR DU CAPITALISME?, and so I found the place to which I'd been directed and took a seat. There were only a few others waiting and many empty chairs. I felt that embarrassment you have for the authors -- who weren't there yet, though it was time for it to start -- that there were so few of us.

But it wasn't the right place! Someone finally realized why we were just sitting there and sent us over to the actual event. There, hundreds were seated and dozens more were standing. All kinds of people. Young, old, bourgeoise, not-so-bourgeois (insomuch as one can tell by looking), ... not the crowd you would see in the U.S. for these three authors and their titles:

Hervé Kempf, Pour sauver la planète, sortez du capitalisme (Éditions du Seuil); To Save the Planet, Give up Capitalism

Alain Dubuc, Les démons du capitalisme (Voix parallèles); The Demons of Capitalism

Riccardo Petrella, Le manifeste de l'leau pour le XXIe siècle (Fides) The Water Manifesto for the 21st Century (2008 edition; there's an earlier to which I've provided a link at upper left of blog.)

I've admitted, haven't I, that I don't understand everything I hear? But when the subject is Capitalism, I understand more than you might think. Alain Dubuc was the most conciliatory, the apologist. Hervé Kempf and Riccardo Petrella did not equivocate. And when Riccardo Petrella said that it all came down to the fact that the basics for staying alive -- especially water -- should not be private property, he drew spontaneous applause. And when he said that what had to go was "the American way of life," in English, everyone understood. He almost got a standing ovation for that sentence alone.

I did not know there was such a thing as The Water Manifesto. I had never heard of Riccardo Petrella. I didn't know anything about Expo 2008. But I bought the book, and already I know more than I did. I haven't found mention of an English translation of this book I bought yesterday, but the first link at top left is to an actual text copy of some of The Water Manifesto, in English, in its 2001 edition.

On Friday night I went again to the Vegan Potluck. (I offerred chalupas again this time, and they went like hotcakes, none to take back.) There I picked up a fact sheet prepared by Anne-Marie Roy, a dietician at Université Laval. I don't have that with me but will tell you that it's like this: a cow needs about 5 gallons of water a day, just for drinking -- before the water usage in cleaning up in dairy and slaughtering. Consuming one pound of beef takes up as much water as 4 extra showers a week for a year.

I haven't read but the first chapter of Riccardo Petrella's book, but here's my rough translation of the first two points of 8 reasons to make water the world's social question:

1. Water is life. Access to potable water is denied 1.5 billion people. Access to water for hygiene is denied 2.6 billion people.

2. Poverty (2.8 billion people in 2007)is the principal factor in non-access to water.

I'll try to find a translation for this latest edition of The Water Manifesto, but I urge you to look at some of the earlier edition available in the second link, above and left.

And be assured, if I had the chance to go back to the Picasso Museum, I'd be rehearsed for how to ask for a drink of water.

Pour Chats Seulement!

2009-04-16T14:25:00.001-07:00

Regardez! On rue Claire-Fontaine coming down into Faubourg St. Jean Baptiste.

(P.S. My dear Tony looked at this and asked me what it meant. I forgot to translate it. It means For Cats Only!)

FATRAS -- this and that

2009-04-15T13:04:00.000-07:00

This picture is of part of a wall mural at René Lévesque and rue Cartier.

I've been working on translating, more than on any other one thing. Monday I finished a first translation of all the poems in Ni Fille de Ni Femme di -- Neither Daughter of nor Wife of -- one of five volumes of poetry by Monique Laforce, a poet of this city. Tonight I go to a writers' group meeting that I learned about from Monique when I heard her read at Café Babylon back in March.

Last night to a knitting group -- I think I've finally learned to turn a heel, thanks to a sweet urban planner named Julie! -- and then to a free showing of Los Olivados, Luis Buñuel's first movie, 1950, about poor boys in Mexico.

The knitting group met again at Café Babylon on St. Vallier. This morning I realized I was missing my little coin purse, bought years ago in Mexico, and called to see if I'd left it there. I had, so went down to Basse Ville (St. Roch) and had a wonderful vegetarian lunch, thus spending more than had been in the coin purse -- le portemonnaie. But what a great lunch it was.

My stack of little poems on receipts is growing. I have to keep the envelope closed with a clothes-pin.

Ah, les jeunes de la Faubourg St. Jean Baptiste!

2009-04-08T13:34:00.000-07:00

On the first beautifully sunny day of the new season I took a picture of these young people in the church courtyard. Aren't they beautiful? The young woman, who came to talk to me, is Zoë. She works at the Épicerie J.A. Moison on rue St. Jean (oldest established green grocer in North America, says its sign). Zoë says she's learning to play guitar and harmonica. She's francophone but lived in British Colombia and speaks English too. She's as bright as new spring sunshine.

Bruno!

2009-04-05T01:40:00.000-07:00

Where

is Bruno?
Où-est-il? Bruno
who was the first
to speak to me,
first morning back,
“Les chiens!” “The dogs!”
(dog-sleds
coming our way
in street I might think
I was going to cross)
Bruno who smiled.

(3-03-09 on 02-03-09 from Épicerie Santé du Quartier,$2.99, du bon pain.)

Bruno!

Bruno est revenu!
Il allait malade
avec la grippe
même dans l’hôpital!
Mais il est bon,
encore ici
stationnant les voitures
et tous va bien.

(31-03-09 on receipt dated 28-3-2009 for coffee and juice, from the museum café, from going to see Ingres and the Moderns.)

Two girls reading outside St. Jean Baptiste.

2009-04-02T11:31:00.000-07:00

This was the girl reading on the last day of March. Ceci a été la fille en lisant la dernière jour de mars.

A real girl reading in the graveyard that is attached to the Bibliothèque St. Jean Baptiste today, April 2, 2009. Une vrai jeune femme dans la cimitière attachée a la Bibliothèque St. Jean Baptiste aujourd'hui, 2 avril, 2009.

Poisson d'avril! / April Fools

2009-04-01T15:25:00.000-07:00

But unfortunately, it's no joke: The deux livres pour $1.00 sale at Librarie Nelligan is over. Thank heavens I bought lots. Now to finish carrying them home, a few at a time.

A poem by a recent immigrant to Québec

2009-03-27T14:29:00.001-07:00

The picture is from Canadian archives of immigrants from history, but the poem below is by a recent immigrant, Martha Irène Peñaloza. She wrote it in a writing group sponsored by the magazine, Les immigrants de la Capitale. I wrote the magazine for permission to reprint the poem here, in my translation from the French original. They said yes, but they failed to tell me if PENALOZA is really Peñaloza, so I don't know but think it must be.

À Québec

by Martha Irène PENALOZA

Québec, you are soft
As a wind just rising
You felt that way to me
Since the moment
When you let me
Take refuge in you.
Your seasons embellish you
Your nuances of colors,
Fragrances, flavors
And loves.

You are an explosion of light
And liberty.
A cradle for humanity
And for that, today
I say
This little poem.

So may my soul and my thoughts,
My reason and my philosophy
Altogether make you mine

Taking place on your land
That covers itself with a white coat …winter,
In your rose-colored gowns …spring,
In your gowns the color of earth … autumn,
In your luminous halos … summer
All in a complete and perfect harmony,
And thus I send out to you a plea :

Protect for yourself this ecosystem, this grandeur
So that you will always remain
Full of light and liberty,

You Québec, cradle for humanity.

With permission from Les immigrants de la Capitale, a monthly independent publication of information and opinion. This was in Vol. 5, No. 40, Québec, Février 2009, p. 16, in French. Translation to English by Sylvia Ann Manning.

Bonheur d'Occasion

2009-03-23T13:42:00.000-07:00

The celebration for the 100th anniversary of the birth of Gabrielle Roy was a lovely event. Sophie Faucher, an actress -- une comédienne -- read many passages that she herself had chosen from Roy's works, sometimes with soft piano music in accompaniment. Nearby was a rolling table, very like a hospital bedside table but with wooden top, which Gabrielle Roy used when she worked at writing. On it was a picture of her actually writing at that rolling table. (I was pleased to see she wrote with just a pencil.)

I hadn't finished Bonheur d'Occasion, her first novel to be published (in 1945, the year I was born) but was half-way through it by yesterday morning when Mathieu and I took first row seats for the performance.

Some times I had to stop reading because I was crying too much to see words in print. Yesterday again, at one point -- and this is even when I can't really understand all of what I hear in French, as I have to admit to you and myself, even after all these years of trying -- I had to go out into the library foyer because I was crying and needed to use a hankerchief. (Well, a bandana, if truth be told.) I felt some shamefaced at having to do this but when I decided it was ok and retook my seat, I saw that women seated behind me were crying, and the reader herself was wiping away tears.

I think you should read Gabrielle Roy's Bonheur d'Occasion in French or English. (In English it's called The Tin Flute.) I plan now to read all her books. I'll read them in French, but they're all translated. It's said that many Canadians, anglophones as well as francophones, consider her to be Canada's most important writer.

Encore une fois, mais ceci avec photos: Don't Cry!

2009-03-17T13:05:00.000-07:00

Dans la rue St. Jean-Baptiste:

Back on November 19th I mentioned the Don't Cry graffiti. Today on March 17th, a gloriously warm and sunny St. Patrick's Day -- the first I've gone without my coat in order to wear the only thing I have in my closet that's green, a wool blazer -- I bring you two pictures. (Below them I'll copy from the November entry.)

It's a great day for Don't Cry, by the way, the first day when it's legal to take off your snow tires. (Heard that on radio.) So, even if you're walking, especially if you're walking in the Faubourg St. Jean Baptiste...

you can see a new entry on the building that houses the elevator that takes you down to Basse Ville -- that you can use if, for example, you're going to the Bibliothèque Gabrielle Roy. (It's named for her whom some call the greatest writer of Québec, whose 100th birthday is March 22, this coming Sunday.)

It's not too bright, or the sun is too bright, but you can see it. You can also see a small poster for Café Faux Bourgeois -- Fake Bourgeois! That's a little coffee shop at the bottom of the elevator that you have to go through to get back out onto the street, rue St. Vallier. And also you see me taking the picture:

from Nov. 19th:

In Quebec City someone has taken the time to write in many places, in English, "Don't Cry." It's there on rue St. Jean, again back by steps going up from Basse Ville to the Faubourg St. Jean Baptiste, and elsewhere — perhaps throughout the city.

I told my young friend Mathieu how much I appreciated this graffiti, and he said he liked it too. In the first place, it's refreshing to see something you can read. The ubiquitous tagging is so tiring. (My favorite before "Don't Cry" in Quebec City was "Don't Diet, Riot" — seen long ago in Germany, the only time I was there.)

Graffiti, by the way, is the plural of graffito. I suppose it was once an archaeologist's term for such as cave drawings.

"Don't Cry" is a kind of socio-cultural cave drawing, n'est-ce pas?

La Marche des Gueux (film) and SERPAJ

2009-03-16T14:27:00.000-07:00

To me it's strange that I learn so much about the rest of the world up here in this relatively isolated northern region, things I probably would not have learned elsewhere. Quebec society has a strong drive to be better, to be more multi-cultural, to be more conscious, and so there are more opportunities to hear about what's happening in the rest of the world.

By merest chance, I attended a (free) film about a Mahatma Gandhi-based movement called Ekta Parishad. The film, La Marche des gueux, la force libératrice de la non-violence by Louis Campana and François Verlet, is about how 25,000 walked along the main highway of India to Delhi, a journey of many days, eating one meal a day that they cooked each night, to ask the government (again) for a way to stay on the land rather than be herded into city slums (so that multi-national corporations could conveniently take over their homelands). A man from India spoke after the film, in English; and a man from France spoke. The man from India -- forgive me not noting his name -- said that they have decided that one-day marches and protests aren't very effective, but that long marches are better, following serious non-violent effort beforehand, so that everyone knows what's involved, and that the effort is really against globializing neoliberal corporations, not local governments. The preliminary work is now being done for long marches in the year 2012. Asked about our continent, if anything was planned, he said that the coordinating group for Latin America is SERPAJ. I did not know of this organization, but now I've made a link to their website on the left.

SERPAJ stands for Servicio Paz y Justicia en América Latina. The site is in Spanish but you can click for English.

Hope you will visit their website. I think if you see La Marche des Gueux, you will want to. Since Indians speak English, not French, most of what is said is in English -- with French subtitles.

And there's a Wikipedia entry for Ekta Parishad, at least in French there is:

Ekta Parishad - WikipédiaEkta Parishad [1](forum de l’unité en hindi) est un mouvement populaire en Inde qui agit selon le principe Gandhien d’action non-violente, avec pour but ...
fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ekta_Parishad - 33k - En cache - Pages similaires

Elle lit toujours.

2009-03-12T09:49:00.000-07:00

Cette jeune fille lit à l'extérieur de Bibliothèque St. Jean-Baptiste (en l'ancienne église Protestante s'appelée St. Matthew's) dans la Faubourg St. Jean-Baptiste.

This young woman reads outside the St. John the Baptist library (in the old St. Matthew protestant church) in the St. John the Baptist neighborhood.

Hier, j'ai reçu une carte des bibliothèques de la Ville de Québec sans limitations. C'est à dire: je peux emprunter des livres. Mais je vais encore acheter des livres de la Librarie Nelligan (Le Temps Retrouvé) parce qu'ils coutent maintenant seulement 50 sous le livre ou 2 pour un dollar!

Yesterday, I got a library card for Quebec City that doesn't have restrictions. That's to say: I can borrow books. But I'll still buy books from Nelligan's Bookstore (Time Refound) because now they cost only 50 cents each or 2 for a dollar.

devant le grand Hôtel Le Lowe's Concorde, (poème)

2009-03-10T10:53:00.000-07:00

Appartements pour Touristes
with 24-hour parking

old brick house
across from huge hotel
rising twenty-six floors
people dining
on the top (round) floor
looking down on you, you
decently modest house
if once magnificent
for your view
beyond and over
the gates of la
vieille ville
on rue St. Louis
down to where
the ships dock
even now, there
beyond the lovely
Chateau Frontenac?

from my Des Recettes de Quittance (ou Reçus)

23-02-09 on receipt dated 06-10-08 from Épicerie Santé du Quartier, $2.99

Monsieur Chat ici à la Ville de Québec

2009-03-05T11:57:00.000-08:00

Tony has sent me a package with a digital camera, received today. My first picture was of Monsieur Chat as he appears above rue St. Jean in Faubourg St.-Jean-Baptiste.

Beneath is a poem I wrote some time back with its footnote saying somebody should take a picture.

a triolet for Monsieur Chat
who has come all the way from Europe

Don’t worry for Mister Cat getting wet in the Atlantic.
This one on rue St. Jean has wing things. He can fly.
You’d agree, Quebec’s cat seems slightly less frantic.
(Don’t worry for Mister Cat getting wet in the Atlantic.)
And he speaks, at last, which may explain why he’s less manic.
“Expos-tes” says his word balloon — though who on earth knows why.
Don’t worry for Mister Cat getting wet in the Atlantic.
This one on rue St. Jean has wing things. He can fly.

And here's the website for the Wikipedia article about Monsieur Chat: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._Chat

Des plusiers sujets/ Several subjects

2009-03-01T13:20:00.000-08:00

La Première (1):

An interview with Peter G. Brown, geographer and philosopher, co-author of a book called The Right Relationship: Building a Whole Earth Economy. I think his is the clearest voice I've heard about our present ecological crisis and the connection to the current economic crisis. His book is available through such as Amazon or Barnes & Noble; my belovèd Tony Weisman has already ordered it.

La deuxième (2) To the left is a link for The Jessica Campaign -- where you can sign the petition to ask the provincial government(s) to put guards on snow removal machines (and you're urged to do so even if you're not Canadian by Jessica's mother, Jeanette Holman-Price)

and above that is a link to an interview with Peter G. Brown.

Le problème: AND NOW THE LIBRARY'S CLOSING!

Et neanmoins, La troisième(3):

"An intimate knowledge of the French-Canadian mind, culture and tradition is largely lacking among Anglo-Canadians. If the relationship between the two major races in Canada has grown out of an historic 'marriage by capture', the failure of the husband to understand his wife is partly due to his unwillingness to learn her language .... Out of comprehension, however, there may come better relations."

from Tradition du Quebec/The Quebec Tradition: An Anthology of French-Canadian Poetry and Verse, edited by Marion Seraphin, translated by Watson Kirkconnell (Montreal, I946), pp. 15 and I7.

quoted in A Bridge of Sorts: The Translation of Quebec Literature into English, by Kathy Mezei, published in The Yearbook of English Studies, Vol. 15, Anglo-French Literary Relations Special, 1985.

about Jessica's Campaign

2009-02-28T11:41:00.000-08:00

I listen to the radio a lot. Sometimes I've listened to the French version of Radio Canada, Radio Quebec, 24 hours a day, turned down very low but still audible even when I sleep. The idea is that even if I don't understand it, the flow of the language will find its way into my subconscious, into whatever part of my brain can still learn language.

Other times I say to myself, "No, this isn't helping. In fact, it's counter-productive. Just listen to French when you are REALLY GOING TO LISTEN!" Actually, I think both approaches are good.

Early in this stay, I switched to English Radio Canada to check out a news story of the day, and that's when I heard an interview with Jeanette Holman-Price.

Three people were hit by snow cleaning machines that day in Montreal, the day of the interview, at least one of whom died. Radio Canada contacted Jeanette Holman-Price because she is the mother of Jessica, a young woman who died saving her younger brother's life when a snow machine drew him in. Here is what was said when she was given a Medal of Bravery in her province:

Medal Of Bravery
Jessica Lauren Holman-Price, M.B. (posthumous)
Portugal Cove, Newfoundland and Labrador

On December 19, 2005, 21-year-old Jessica Holman‑Price lost her life while preventing her 10‑year-old brother from being crushed by the wheels of a snow-removal truck in Montreal, Quebec. The two were standing on a snowbank at a busy intersection, waiting to cross the street. When the light turned green, the truck came around the corner and caught the edge of the mound, causing the boy to slide under the vehicle. Ms. Holman-Price reached for him but she too lost her footing and slid under the wheels of the truck. In a split second, she managed to push her brother out of harm’s way before the massive truck fatally injured her.

Jeanette Holman-Price, Jessica's mother, cares for the brother whose injuries left him handicapped, but she also works to raise public awareness about the need for a shield on the snow removal machines. She has a petition on the website, www.thejessicacampaign.com, which anyone can sign. I urge you to.

I wrote to Ms. Holman-Price to ask if it was ok for someone from Texas to sign, and she replied, "We have letters from Hawaii and from countries as far away as Australia and the UAE. These are global issues, as everyone ... is put at risk by the dangers associated with not implementing these safety measures."

And also, family members lived in Houston, 2001-2004.

Carême/Lent

2009-02-25T12:50:00.000-08:00

To improve my comprehension, I attend any lecture or discussion I notice that's open to the public. Since today is Ash Wednesday, when some people think about what to give up for Lent, it's worth noting here some things I learned last night by attending a talk by a nutritionist, Anne-Marie Roy, whose talk was for Les Amis de la Terre (Friends of the Earth: http://www.amisdelaterre.org/)

If you give up animal products for one day a week for one year, it's the same as not having driven 8000 kilometers. (Is that about 5000+ miles?)

The Catholic church was not far off the money, then, were they, with asking people to give up meat once a week?

I accidentally gave up meat for Lent once -- not knowing it was Lent -- and then didn't eat meat again -- not knowing about Lent.

Carême, the French for Lent, comes from the old word for forty, as it begins forty days before Easter. (As best I understand it. I went to mass at St.-Jean-Baptiste Sunday, and this explanation was in the program.)

By the way, even if you're not Catholic, going to mass is a wonderful way to practice French, especially if the priest speaks as clearly as the one at St.Jean-Baptiste. Everything but the homily/sermon is in the little book, so you can follow along. It's like buying a CD that comes with the lyrics, but it's real, en vivant, and it's free unless you want to make a donation.

By the way, Anne-Marie Roy, an elegant young woman, pointed out that the relationship between meat-eating and global warming is a taboo subject, but the fact of the matter is, as in information compiled by the UN and Greenpeace, global warming could be completely solved by the cessation of livestock production alone. Much of this has to do with how much more harmful methane is than just carbon. One title I remember from her talk is Livestock's Long Shadow.

I gather there's been a truckload of information on this relationship between meat-eating and global warming put out in the last several years. (Cool Farming, by Greenpeace, is another title I remember.) But content analysis of the US press shows that only .5% of the available articles and documents have been given publication or reference. Hmmm. That's because, like the subject of water availability in the Southwest, nobody wants anybody to talk about it. Or know about it, on suppose.

So. Think about it.

Je suis ici, à la gauche.

2009-02-23T14:11:00.000-08:00

This shows the back of the building I live in, seen from across the alley off Grande Allée. The door to the back foyer is to the left in the picture. The two windows are mine. When the huge snow machine moves past, all light is blocked; the tiny apartment becomes dark as night, but otherwise it's well lit, especially with morning sun, since it faces east toward the St. Lawrence.

Pouvez-vous voir les Appalachines? (Can you see Appalachia?)

2009-02-21T11:48:00.000-08:00

Today you cannot see the Appalachians through the backyard gate of the house across the alley. All is too white with snow. But here’s a poem (from my poems on receipts) and a picture with which, if you really use your imagination, you can almost see them.

Appalachia from the Alley

When I stand outside at door in alley
if gate to residence across is open
even slightly
I can see Appalachia beyond
the St. Lawrence
Yes the Appalachians
Les Appalachines en français
and oh, how this does satisfy
a woman growing older who must
stand in the alleyway to smoke.

10 février 09, on Metro [supermarket] receipt for matches, etc., $7.94. Merci/ vous servir est un plaisir, …Bon Carnaval/ Nom caissiere: Sarah.

Il y a de la Joie

2009-02-19T11:40:00.000-08:00

One thing I do here is write little poems on receipts. (I don’t know why. Not really because the price of paper is high.) The size of the receipt determines the length of the line. The working title for this growing stack of receipt poems is Des Recettes de Quittance (Reçus)

Last night I included some translations from René Char’s Commune Presence, looking for poems that would fit my available receipts. Then this morning on opening the door of the back entrance to find deep snow and snow still falling, I looked for one that would fit the receipt at hand and also fit the beauty of this day, and here it is:

Joy by René Char

How tenderly the earth laughs when she awakens, the snow over her. Day upon day, lying embraced, she cries and laughs. The fire the housewife was putting out barely mattered to the snow.

Comme tendrement rit la terre quand la neige s’éveille sur elle! Jour sur jour, gisante embrassée, elle pleure et rit. La feu qui la fuyait l’ épouse, à peine a disparu la neige.

Joie [p. 70 of Commune Presence, Paris: Gallimard, c1978, June 2003 edition]

[19-02-09, a morning deep in new snow, on receipt from Zone Université Laval (university bookstore),
18-02-09, for notebooks, pushpins, and an unfinished book by Jules Verne, En Magellanie (the first 5 chapters).]

Here are two of my own, from last night also, before I began translating.

Tree trying to sing blues

One of two trees at edge of alley
talks or tries to sing, tonight.
A limb rubs another. A new cold
lets the sound seem musical,
even animal, like someone crying
or someone trying to make a song
in a high register.

The rest of the tree
and the one next
and me below,
we listen.

[18-02-09 on receipt from Bizou/L’Accessoirie Place Ste-Foy,
a pair of mittens for $1.99.]

La Crise Globale Financière?

Le débat a été annulé.
Qui sait pourquoi?

Moi, j’étais ici
pour apprendre
quelque chose.

The debate was cancelled.
Who knows why?

I was here myself
to learn something.

[18-02-09 on receipt from Zellers for tabouret/tool, bought for 7,30$, a price so incredibly good that the check-out attendant could not believe it and made a call to verify. This was the second one I’d bought in 2 days, the second call from the check-out counter. (Here in Ste. Foy today also to see the debate which didn’t happen.) Then to take it home on the bus, carrying the box a few blocks up from René Lévesque Blvd, happy to do so, happy to put it together myself with the little tools included.]

So it’s a great day to stay inside, read, write, but I had to get out in it, come down to the library to post this.

Obama has visited Toronto. Il y a de la Joie!

A Sunday prose poem

2009-02-15T10:48:00.000-08:00

Les classiques du jazz revisités

If you suffer from having fallen out of love with life, people, do something like this : Go to a library made from an old church with Jesus carved in dark wood with windows arched and bejewelled by winter light from the cold day beyond

And listen to jazz (or so they billed it, and you must believe they had reasons) with no voices but of strings, with only as Dylan’s line has it, the strength of strings.

And have it be free, this concert in library on a Sunday when the good townspeople are at churches which haven’t yet become libraries and the good street people who use the library as a study and study itself as a shelter haven’t been let in yet because this music happens early, earlier than that

And sit where you cannot see three women playing viola, violin, piano

And sit where with some old smooth stones, wood, pieces of sand become glass become rubies and emeralds and sapphire you

Let the music be only itself again, just Brubeck, even, par exemple.

Look at the listeners’ faces. Look at anyone or all.
All is forgiven.
They do know how to love.
They love what takes them back to before words came
(about the same time they had to accept their separateness from the flow of life all around them, when they had to begin to learn to live without that music, their second childbirth, really,and for most of us when we were two, when we had to begin to accept that each of us is separate here, to accept the incredibly sad truth)

to signal the singularity of winter beyond sweet soft communal protection.

(There is no English translation worthy of the French word, commune, I learn from my favorite dictionary.)

There is no better way to learn to love again than with what happens now, where you are, inside a shell of music without words, a church without religion.

[15 février, Une Concert Desjardin à la Bibliothèque Saint-Jean-Baptiste, à 11 h]

2009-02-12T13:28:00.000-08:00

As I sit to write in my tiny apartment, someone on the radio mentions Austin, Texas, and South by Southwest, in very good French. (I think she’s a vocalist from Winnipeg, not in a francophone province; wish I could tell you her name.)

By coincidence, I had Austin on my mind as I was just about to put here something by Austin’s grand old man of poetry, Albert Huffstickler, à propos of my attempt to learn French, so late and with such difficulty, though he’s addressing something else:

I Still Don’t Know the Language

I think you learn it at a certain age or not at all –
social talk, those well-meant, near-meaningless words
that bridge the chasm of adolescence.
If you don’t learn them then, you tend to go through life
lugging your own portable existential void,
a do-it-yourself alienation kit,
not for want of the ability to communicate important things
but purely for the lack of trivia.
This is not a minor matter.
Your life then becomes, to a greater extent than others,
shaped by the people you can talk to
or those who will do the talking for you.
I once married a woman who was never at a loss for words
and, to a greater extent than I realized at the time,
for that very reason.
It really is like not knowing a language –
that casual all-weather language that makes
your day-to-day living easier,
binds your days together smoothly
without those highs of contact and the lows of isolation.
Somewhere I know it’s just a trick
but a trick that has to be learned at a certain age,
a trick I never mastered.

Albert Huffstickler (1927-2002)
written August 15, 1989, Austin

Oh well, Huff. I am approximately a woman of a certain age, as the French say -- une femme d’un certain âge – so perhaps I can still hope to master this trick of language.

Today there’s snow and wind and beauty. Il fait de la neige; il fait du vent; il fait de la beauté. (On dit Il fait beau. I know.)

C'était très glissant!

2009-02-10T10:18:00.000-08:00

Allo,

Il fait glissant, on dit.

It warmed up here, or so it seems to me -- I don't ever know the temperature -- and things got very slippery.

J'ai perdu une mitaine! Je suis une chatte pas sage. Je n'aurai pas de pie.
(But there wasn't any pie anyway, even though the nice M. Lésvesque showed me how to turn on the oven; it's the loss of the mitten that saddens me, because it was a really warm one.)

I am thinking on the way to library, la bibliothèque Gabrielle Roy, still walking very carefully on the steep hills of Faubourg St. Jean Baptiste, that one of the main reasons to choose Québec for learning French is that it's closer. It's American -- we share a lot of history and some distinct populations. It's a neighbor. Travel to Québec can be done with smaller carbon footprints. In emergencies people can speak English to you. You don't feel totally isolated inside a different language.

Also, it's not as expensive to go to Paris from here as from most places in the U.S. If you really must.

And did I mention that the Québecois are very, very nice people?

Like yesterday, how nice everyone was as I went trudging around the Place Desjardins Carnaval site asking if they had my mitten.

I was there yesterday with a disposable camera; that's probably when I dropped it, trying to figure out how to take a picture; and the mitten is the lovely beige of slush up here.

I specifically bought the disposable camera to get pictures of the Croatian entry in the International Snow Sculpture contest. It didn't win, but it won my heart, and when I figure out how to upload the photos, which I don't have yet, you will see why.

The Yukon (Canada) and Ukraine took all the prizes except for one to Argentina. All of these showed great artistry, but I liked the Mexican, the French and the Croatian, which showed something else, it seemed to me.

Another reason for coming to Québec, Québec for your French study, independent or otherwise? The bookstores on rue St. Jean. So many books, for so little cost. Books you might not even find on Amazon.

So, lest I forget, that's why I'm here, not just for the beautiful snow and slippery ice and to fall in love with snow sculptures and lose mittens.

A bientôt!

Comment ça va....

2009-02-05T12:56:00.000-08:00

Bon jour,

It's sunny and cold. I don't really want to know how cold. I wear my vintage sheepskin coat with no regard for whether or not it's in style; I'm sure it's not. But it's the warmest in my closet.

Yesterday stayed in most of the day to be there for the stove repairman. Lévesque on his shirt, a nice man who fixed three burners to work on three settings and showed me the oven wasn`t broken at all if I turned it on right, and he showed me how to do that. When I told him I was in Quebec to improve my French but not doing so well, he said it was probably because the Quebecois have strong accents. "It's like if I went to Texas," he said. Then I told him I was from Texas.

Last evening, early still, I caught the eco-bus in front of the armory and went on it to Place D'Youville, where I'd not yet been, to see the ice skating. I saw a man climb a metal lights-support-thing just to make all the colored lights work for the skaters. He climbed about 20 feet above only hard ice on a stone base to do this, no ladder, no problem.

I saw a man dressed like, I thought, Père Nöel, but the little boy who went over to speak with him told me no, he was Père Bonhomme.

It seems like Christmas time still, because Christmas lights are still up. Trees where they live in the ground and trees brought in to be on rooftops and high porches, all with colored lights, make it seem like the holidays still. Maybe they stay up through carnival. Maybe I should buy a camera.

I took the eco-bus again to return, another free ride through Vieux Québec, Old Québec, inside the walls. The eco-bus has a top speed of 35 miles per hr., good enough indeed for the streets of Vieux Québec,very narrow. The electric eco-bus costs less than $4.00 to operate all day; thus it's free.

But this driver was a young man who -- for the first time ever in Québec -- refused to understand me -- and besides, was unkind -- because my vowel sound wasn't exactly like he wanted it. This happened in France, especially Paris, often, but it has never happened here. And in the end, I think I said Saint Amable exactly like he said Saint Amable. I'm glad that almost never happens in Quebec. Even if I never learn to understand their French any better than I do now, I don't want to be ridiculed for trying. But this was very unusual; in fact, it's never happened to me here before.

I guess it made me feel like I should stick to the books. Here's a translation I did today of a poem by a poet of Quebec:

Devant deux portraits de ma mère/
In front of two portraits of my mother

Émile Nelligan, 1879-1941

Ma mère, que je l’aime en ce portrait ancien,
Peint aux jours glorieux qu’elle était jeune fille,
Le front couleur de lys et le regard qui brille
Comme un éblouissant miroir Venitien!

My mother, whom I love in this ancient portrait
Painted in the glorious days of her girlhood,
Her brow the color of lilies, her look brilliant
As from some dazzling Venetian crystal mirror

Ma mère que voici n’est plus du tout la même;
Les rides ont creusé le beau marbre frontal;
Elle a perdu l’échat du temps sentimental
Où son hymen chanta comme un rose poème.

My mother, here, no longer, not at all, the same;
Wrinkles have crossed that beautiful marble-white brow.
She has lost her lovely glow from happier times
When her loving openness sang like a pink rose.

Aujourd’hui je compare, et j’en suis triste aussi,
Ce front nimbé de joie et ce front de souci,
Soleil d’or, brouillard dense au couchant des années.

Comparing the two today has made me grow sad.
Her forehead smooth with joy, then wrinkled by worry,
Her years of bright wakefulness turning to dense fog.

Mais, mystere de cour qui ne peut s’eclairer!
Comment puis-je sourire a ces levres fanees?
Au portrait qui sourit, comment puis-je pleurer?

But the heart has mysteries beyond expression.
How can I smile at the old woman’s faded lips?
And yet, to that smiling girl in the portrait, cry?

Translation by Sylvia Ann Manning, 5 February 2009, Quebec City

Je suis retournée et la ville est très, très belle.

2009-02-02T14:09:00.000-08:00

The kind man who brought me to the alley door at back of grand building on Grande Allée in his taxi was the first person in Quebec City to speak French to me, the first to speak to me at all on my return. Having lived in this city for twenty-two years, coming here from the region of Lac St. Jean, he knew that my address was across from the Concorde, Lowe’s Concorde, the big hotel, as soon as I asked for la ruelle behind Grande Allée. There, he helped me take my bags inside the foyer as soon as I’d opened the door with key.

It felt wonderful to enter my own little space with the keys long idle. It felt wonderful to ride through basse ville, off 540, and to know where I was. As we were turning a corner to climb the long hill up to Montcalm, to René Levesque and then Grande Allée, a young woman gestured for a ride. He was going to pass her up but I asked him if he wanted to stop for her – it was after 1 am and cold outside, or so it seemed to me, and he was willing if I did not object, so we stopped for her.

So I had another person, another Québecoise, witnessing my return to the spot on earth that is mine for a while in Quebec City. It was nearly 2 am; Tony and I woke at 3 am in Texas to have me at the airport in San Antonio for my journey. I called Tony as he’d asked. I wanted to tell him how beautiful it is, but how can one say it?

Deep snow, the quiet that goes with that. The way lights sparkle in the sweet silence.

He was glad I was here and inside.

In Charlotte, North Carolina I forgot to reset my watch or my mind for the time change from Central to Eastern and thus missed a flight. I might otherwise have arrived about 5:30 pm of January 30 but instead it was January 31.

There’s a bed and breakfast with small parking lot just outside the door, and I’d met the man who tends it before leaving to take my car back to Texas (knowing I did not know how to deal with a car up here). The first thing he said to me when I set out about noon was “Dogs!” (in English). The dog race was about to happen, and they’d be coming along soon.

Within two blocks on Grande Allée I’d bought my effigy – the little pin that serves to let you in to all the events, for $10.00, unless you choose the plastic one to hang around your neck, and I didn’t. Turning a corner there back toward the Plains of Abraham, I was at the Des Jardins site, the largest of the Carnaval sites, and it was happening already.

But I couldn’t resist going also down to Rue St. Jean, eating at the huge vegetarian serve-yourself restaurant, buying a dozen eggs, walking the long way back up, stopping at Rene Levesque’s statue on the parliament grounds, sitting in a snow chair casually carved by someone’s derriere, speaking a few words to M. Levesque.

The statue has his head too square, I think, but still it’s him, or it represents him, and he looks out to all the city below, to the Laurentians beyond, above the words on a plaque that I’ve left up here for so long, the ones that say there comes a time when a people must act bravely, if radically, with calm audacity.

I feel audacious even to be here amidst such beauty. I told him so.

Then carried on to retire early, missing a Saturday night concert in Tente Metro, not even knowing until today I studied the schedule of events.

But there was music today in Tente Metro, even someone playing the spoons, as they do here. Oh, it is so beautiful. There are only thousands of people, not the tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands as for the summer festival. It’s quieter. It’s splendid.

"Il est un temps ..."

2008-12-01T18:25:00.000-08:00

At the base of statue of René Lévesque (1922-1987) on the parliament grounds in la ville de Québec:

Il est un temps où le courage et l'audace tranquilles deviennent pour un peuple, aux moments clés de son existence, la seule forme de prudence convenable.

S'il n'accepte pas alors le risque calculé des grandes étapes, il peut manquer sa carrière à tout jamais, exactement comme l'homme qui a peur de la vie.

Here's my translation for you:

There's a time when courage and calm audacity become for a people, at key moments of their existence, the only possible sort of prudence.

If the people do not then accept the calculated risk of big steps, it can lose its way forevermore, exactly like the man who is afraid of life.

René Lévesque was Prime Minister of Québec from 1976-1985.

Missing something en français

2008-11-26T08:16:00.000-08:00

The French program given each summer at Université Laval is worth your time and money — five weeks, much less expensive and better, I think, than most language study programs, certainly less expensive than going to France. And if you care about carbon footprint, well ... Quebec is an American neighbor. You could go there by train or bus.

FLE, it's called. Try with www.ulaval.ca, then keep clicking toward the summer language program. There are two sessions. Take the second if you'd also want to experience the Summer Festival in Quebec City.

I did this twice, the first time in 1998 and the second in 2006. Both times were interesting, but I was much more pleased with the beginners' program than with the more advanced. There's too much reading and writing in the more advanced program, not enough listening to actual francophones.

I remember standing in the hall in 2006 with Jean Paul Boisvert, who took the program ten times or so. Up came another person who took the program every summer, a friend of his who came from California. I can't remember her name, but in California she was very important somehow and quite wealthy, etc. etc.

She asked us how to say "I miss ...." and I told her it was Il me manque. She told me with all available hauteur that I obviously knew nothing or I wouldn't think you said I miss ... by It misses me. She got quite unkind with letting me know how stupid I must be, how little French I knew compared to her. (Very Parisian, that attitude. I'm sure it serves her well.)

The next day she told me she was sorry, that I'd been right (of course).

Mon appartement dans la rue Grande Allée, elle me manque. (I think that's right. Mais je ne suis personne, et je ne viens pas de Californie.)

Don't Cry graffiti in the beautiful city

2008-11-19T12:26:00.000-08:00

In Quebec City someone has taken the time to write in many places, in English, "Don't Cry." It's there on rue St. Jean, again back by steps going up from Bas Ville to the Faubourg St. Jean Baptiste, and elsewhere — perhaps throughout the city.

I told my young friend Mathieu how much I appreciated this graffiti, and he said he liked it too. In the first place, it's refreshing to see something you can read. The ubiquitous tagging is so tiring. (My favorite before "Don't Cry" in Quebec City was "Don't Diet, Riot" — seen long ago in Germany, the only time I was there.)

Graffiti, by the way, is the plural of graffito. I suppose it was once an archaeologist's term for such as cave drawings.

"Don't Cry" is a kind of socio-cultural cave drawing, n'est-ce pas?

I think of it often. Not because I'm sad, because this is no time to be sad when we're barely two weeks past the election. No, "Don't Cry" comes to mind as the subject of some sweet little poem that somebody should write, though as yet I haven't done.

When I returned to Texas there was a stack of New Yorkers waiting to be read, and I eagerly obliged. It's Heaven to have that many ready-to-read New Yorkers. Almost as lovely as being in Quebec City. And the best story so far? "Don't Cry," by Mary Gaitskill, in the June 9 & 16, 2008 issue.

One wonders. On se demande?

On explique ...

2008-11-13T11:03:00.000-08:00

Bon jour,

I write from Seguin, Texas, a town whose people do not know that Seguin is a French name but think, since it was named for Juan Seguin, Alamo hero, and his father Erasmo, whose given names sound Spanish, that Seguin is a Spanish name -- though nobody has ever told me of any others of Mexican heritage whom they know with the name Seguin.

I could not see myself taking care of an automobile through the winter. I had a permit to park on the street, une vignette, but all around the neighborhood of my little apartment, in the alleys and yards of even the grandest houses, I saw all sorts of winter arrangements being made for automobiles. Then Jamey, a young man from Burlington who works at one of the wonderful second-hand bookstores on rue St. Jean, told me how the city government asks you to move your car off the street at various bad-weather occasions and that last year a friend of his with a car on the street had to pay for sheltered parking almost every day of January. Then also I read that Quebec law requires that your car be winterized by December 15. It's been too long; I didn't know how to do it.

I didn't want to have a car in Quebec City. It had to do with why I had one in Vermont -- that public transportation does not exist in most of northeast Vermont and in the eastern townships if you're off the beaten track. There is no way by public transportation from the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont to Sherbrooke, from which one bus a day goes to Quebec City, or to Montreal, the main hub for Quebec public transportation. I had a car there because there was no other way to get there.

So I drove down through Vermont to New York City to spend election night with my daughter in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, and that was appropriate, because she was the first person to tell me that someone named Barack Obama looked good ... and appropriate because the neighborhood was exhuberant with the election victory! Then I used three days to drive to Seguin, Texas (near San Antonio), staying in Obama states as long as I could until finally crossing over into Kentucky at Paducah, which I like, and heading down through Missouri, Arkansas, crossing at Texarkana, thinking of Scott Joplin who was born in Texarkana and how happy he would be for Obama's victory. Our victory. The world's victory. The chance of a chance.

So what I'll do is enter journal entries from earlier days having to do with Quebec City. I'm set to return after the holidays.

Alors, elle me manque, la belle ville, mais je retournerai. (C'est correct?)

Il y a longtemps que je t'aime....

2008-10-31T14:23:00.000-07:00

Bon soir,

I've come to use the computer at the Bibliothèque Gabrielle Roy from another session of lectures with sides at the Museum of Civilization, le Musée de la civilisation, down by the river, where the conference about the Saint Lawrence continues. (Maybe I should have travelled down to Vermont and points south today, because it was a day without snow or rain, good road conditions, but then, it was so beautiful, ... but I have to leave tomorrow, so future posts for some time will be from prior journal entries.)

Today I heard three speakers, one of them a woman (finally), one of them Tom McAuley, whom I figure to be an anglophone who worked hard (and well) to be fluent in French. Tom McAuley works for the International Joint Commission Canada & United States/commission mixte internationale Canada et Etats-Unis, thus for the government of neither country but for this cooperative commission that is all about saving the St. Lawrence (and Great Lakes) for both our countries. That web address is www.ijc.org..

This is what I understood through all the slides and research reports and photographs and films, though I really did not understand everything that every speaker said: the St. Lawrence is precious to both countries, especially important to the city of Chicago and the state of New York, for water usage purposes; and to the people of Vermont, Quebec, Ontario, and beyond, and all their living creatures (including whales and seals and many incredible creatures, like the little penguin, a penguin that can fly, and a bird I can't name for you that looks like a Puffin but isn't named that).

If I were younger, I would have learned French more easily. I would understand everything every speaker said. But if I were younger, I'd try to dedicate myself to saving the St. Lawrence. Nothing can be more important for biodiversity on this continent and for the future of many, many millioins of human beings.

Les secrets du Saint-Laurent

2008-10-29T13:50:00.000-07:00

Allo,

Don't have long here at la Bibliothèque St. Jean-Baptiste; on a juste une heure par jour, et j'ai déjà utilisé la plus parte de l'heure.

I've been attending this week a conference, free to the public at Musée de la civilisation (as were two other conference events I attended before beginning this blog, but will tell you about some time soon, I hope).

Les secrets du Saint-Laurent is all about the St. Lawrence river, as we call it, but consequently about the Great Lakes, Lake Champlain, other rivers connected to the St. Lawrence, and even about the Gulf of Mexico, because the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Gulf of Mexico have similar problems. This conference comes at the 20th anniversary of the Canadian Plan Saint-Laurent, a concerted effort to research and effect ways to save the world's youngest and 15th largest river.

Today, the second full day of lectures by researchers, I met Louise Gratton, Science Director for Nature Conservancy of Canada, Quebec Region. She asked a question after a talk by someone from Environnement Canada entitled Les espèces exotiques du fleuve Saint-Laurent: de la belle à la bête and in doing so told an anecdote about water chestnuts -- Châtaigne d'eau (Trapa natans, an invasive species -- with mention of Vermont. I thought I'd understood what she said but checked afterwards with her, mentioning that I didn't always understand French so well. She immediately switched to Canadian English and answered my question.

Was Vermont cooperative when she called to say she'd seen the invasive species on the Richelieu, and thus possibly headed for Lake Champlain? Yes, indeed. In fact, the governor of Vermont at the time (this was 1999 or 2000) called the Canadian government to tell them they had to deal with this, not just let it happen, and that Vermont of course would cooperate in any way possible.

At the very top of the little program -- one sheet of paper, a week of day-long programs, all free, the latest research given by the researchers themselves -- it says in very small print, "Il y a longtemps que je t'aime...."

That's I've loved you for a long time.

Anyone who has ever seen the St. Lawrence, le fleuve Saint-Laurent, loves it on first sight, I think.

Un fleuve, by the way, is a river that goes to the sea.

Je suis retournée de Vermont.

2008-10-27T13:31:00.000-07:00

Bon jour,

This is the second full day back after being down in Vermont to take care of some things there. The last entry talks about the French conversation group that meets at the Glover and Barton public libraries.

Here in Québec I see a notice on rue St. Jean for a Spanish conversation group that will meet once a week on rue St. Louis, to talk after seeing a film, but there's a $7.00 charge.

There's so much to do that's free here. Yesterday a grand Halloween event on the Plains of Abraham centered in the Joan of Arc park near two of the city's three Martello towers. All sorts of creatures, mostly very little, some big enough to be their human parents, played games, ran through pumpkin-lined lanes, went up into the Martello towers which were set up as haunted houses, and when it was all over made a parade for just a block of Grande Allée to a food place that gave all the little ones some candy. People went home with pumpkins, too. It was great to see that and to hope that at least some of them knew that they were carrying home a lot of food.

Tonight I attend the first of several films at the Musée de la Civilization on the subject of the St. Lawrence river and its eco-system. Tomorrow there's an all-day conference with biologists and environmental experts. All of this is free to attend, as was the week of activities for the Caravan de la Francophonie and some of the events for the Sommet de la Francophonie.

Next I'll enter some entries written in my long-hand journal from the week of the Caravan de la Francophonie. This is it for today.

But oh, how beautiful, the morning sunshine on the St. Lawrence. I asked myself why it is I can't see that the river must indeed be flowing north, to the ocean. Maybe in this conference I'll learn why.

Québec déjà me manque / I miss Quebec already ...

2008-10-20T14:43:00.000-07:00

...and I'm only 21 miles south of the border! I left Quebec City at noon yesterday and by 3:30 pm, even with once getting lost and two brief stops, plus a rather long wait at the Derby Line border, I was still in Vermont in those 3 and a half hours.

Today attended a meeting of the newly formed French conversation group here in Barton. The librarian for Barton and Glover, Toni Eubanks, began this group in case there were Vermont francophones who would like a chance to speak French and also for those of us trying to become francophones. It's a good group, and indeed some of those who attend are people who learned French in the home. Today the Vermont French-Canadian present was Fred Snay, whose real name once was Fernand Senay, I think. His parents came to the U.S. as a young couple (I think for work in Massachusetts) and adopted English as the home language, but his grandparents encouraged him and his siblings to speak French whenever they were with them; also, the Catholic schools he attended were strong for French. Fred says that the Catholic schools in the New England mill towns were centers for French learning. Four of his classes in secondary school were taught in French, and in his prep school which was directed toward seminary, the Latin was translated to French, not English. His French is very easy to understand, very clear.

There are many stories to be gathered from these New Englanders of French-Canadian heritage. Fred Snay is luckier than some, I know, for having kept his French.

I miss Quebec City, yes, but part of my motivation for wanting to learn French was that I myself, as a young woman living on this northern border, witnessed some of the prejudice against Vermont francophones. So this is part of that, being here in northern Vermont again.

There is a francophone legacy right here, to say the least, and everyone who loves French can help in its restoration. Librarian Toni Eubanks saw notice that the Burlington public library had a similar group for French practice and thus was encouraged to start one here. I'm sure those of us who attend are all grateful to her for doing so.

Encore Le Sommet de la Francophonie ....

2008-10-18T12:58:00.000-07:00

Allo,

Last night walked into old town, first to a conférence publique given at the Museum of Civilization/Le Musée de la Civilisation and then to Le Musée de L'Amérique française for a second free event, this one called "Les FrancOFFonies", which was performance poetry with drums and dancers.

I'd attended two previous events at Le Musée de la Civilisation, so knew how to find it, on rue Dalhousie, the street that goes along the St. Lawrence riverside. I thought I'd stay less than an hour and make it to the beginning of the second event, only several blocks back (uphill) into higher old town.

But it was too interesting to leave early, and I didn't get away until nearly 9 (21 heures). It was actually sponsored by Amnesty International/Amnesti Internationale Canada Francophone, which has its Quebec headquarters in Montreal. The speakers and their subjects were Doumbia Bakary, from Mali; Kafui Adjamagbo-Johnson, a woman from Women in Law and Development in Africa speaking for West Africa; and Brian Barton, an official delegate to the Forum d'Accra. (I don't quite know what that is but will continue to try to find out.)

I don't understand all the French, you know. That's why I'm here. But I get the gist of these lectures I've been attending, and this one was in the context of development of human rights, especially in Africa. I'm a member of Amnesty International, so I've read their reports, understand the context of their address to the problems of human rights, ... and that helps. The billing for this was Le développement, les droits humains et l'efficacité de l'aide/Development, Human rights, and the Efficiency of Aid.

I understood the woman the best. She spoke slowly, clearly, softly. She spoke of how very hard it is for women, how little has actually been accomplished for them, how this new food crisis (le crisis alimentaire) is very hard. The lack of protection from sexual violation, the lack of enough safe water, the timidity that comes from being a poor woman struggling to provide for your children .... I understood her the best.

But I listened to all three, so I got to the second event well more than an hour after it started. Still, I'm glad I went. I saw the best belly-dancer I ever hoped to see and saw/heard some fine performance poetry. As the younger folk say, it rocked.

The young woman there on behalf of the museum(s), as I was leaving, gave me the Déclaration poétique du 5 avril 2008 à Bruxelles de reconnaissance des génocides amérindiens.* She already knows I'm here to practice French, from my having asked her at another event, when I signed in (the events are free but you're asked to register ahead of time, a kind of RSVP), if she would please speak to me in French.
(* Poetic Declaration of April 5, 2008, at Brussels in recognition of the genocide against Amerindians. Perhaps I'll find time to translate it.)

"Quelque chose pour practiquer le lecture de français," she said when she handed me the document. With a smile.

So that's another reason for loving Quebec City and choosing it as a place to develop your French. It's small, and the young people smile. And there's the underlayment of security in knowing that if you really had to communicate, people can speak English or quickly find someone who does.

This morning I stop at Café Faux Bourgeois, at the bottom of the free elevator between upper town (Le Faubourg St. Jean Baptiste) and lower town (Bas Ville or St. Roch. (By the way, isn't Café Faux Bourgeois a great name for a little coffee shop?) I've used the elevator before but haven't stopped in the little café. Anyway, in Le Journal de Québec I read the article about Sarcozy speaking to the National Assembly yesterday. He pleased Stephen Harper, who was standing next to him, by saying that France should never have to choose between Québec and Canada, as Canada was a friend and Québec, part of the French family, would never ask France to reject a friend. Here's a paragraph I copied in my journal while having that cup of coffee:

"Dans un discours d'une grande émotivité prononcé à l'Assemblée nationale, Nicolas Sarkozy a redéfini, hier, la relation de France avec le Québec, précisant qu'elle sera dorénavant basée sur un rapport de fraternité et d'égalité, où il n'aura plus à choisir entre le Canada et la Belle Province." (le Journal de Québec, le samedi 18 octobre 2008, vol. XLII No. 225 p. 4)

Well. So much for cleverness. But I did in fact like something else he said, about capitalism — because of course the palaver is all about the financial crisis:

"Il faut réintroduire dans l'économie une éthique, des principes de justice, une responsabilité morale et sociale." We must reintroduce ethics into the economy, principles of justice, a moral and social responsibility.

...and then that Quebec and France have, he thinks, a shared hope to develop a world where true wealth is in diversity.

All of this almost makes it worth it, this surplus of police and all their police machines around my little pied-a-terre a half block from the entrance to the Lowes Concorde hotel. And, like I thought, Nicolas Sarcozy goes on to Camp David tomorrow, the sommet will be over, and Quebec City can become itself again. Still, I think it's been insulted by all this show of fearfulness. There is no safer city in the world. Don't these bigwhigs spending undue millions on security that should be going to alleviate such as le crisis alimentaire or the poverty in Haiti or .... Do they really not know that it's a waste to spend millions on unneeded so-called "security" in the safest city, among the most courteous of people, in the world?

The surveillance helicopters! Another sentence from Le Journal:

...Un hélicoptàre sillonnait constamment le ciel pour assurer la sécurité des invités.

The security of the invited, indeed. They'd be far more secure if they were doing the right thing by their people, I think.

Tomorrow I go to Vermont. While there I'll post earlier entries, all of them, I hope, to form a collage of proof that Québec is the best place now for people of the Americas to come to improve their French.

Labels: Amnistie Internationale Canada Francophone, Belgian Poetic Declaration in Recognition of Genocide of American Indians, Sarcozy's hope to reform capitalism draft 11:06:00 by Sylvia Manning Delete

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Not the best of days to begin the blog

2008-10-17T12:59:00.000-07:00

Hello and Allo,

I've many handwritten journal entries to enter, almost all of them to encourage you to come to Quebec to study French language and culture, but — ironically — I actually begin on a day when Quebec City is very unlike itself. The Francophone Summit — Le Sommet de la francophonie — is underway, and the police presence is extraordinary.

I wondered if it were only I who felt this, and if it was only that my little apartment opens to an alley-way only a half block from the front door of one of the major hotels, where many of the delegates et al. are staying. There are so many police I thought maybe this particular hotel was dedicated to them, but I read otherwise.

At the Bibliothèque St. Jean Baptiste on Rue Saint-Jean I read in Le Devoir (published in Montreal a few articles describing, none too happily, what the city is having to bear. There are 200 security agents for every delegate, as I read it. Many of these security agents don't speak French!

Le Devoir points out that many of the delegates are dictators with poor records for human rights.

I'd like for somebody to point out that the money being spent unnecessarily for this much security could alleviate a lot of the misery in Haiti or other francophone countries. It would buy enough mosquito nets (moustiquaires) that malaria (palisme) would never have to be a problem again in African countries. (By the way, Celtx, the Canadian collaborative website I use for my play scripts, has a campaign to raise money for mosquito nets, $5.00 each. If you Google search with Celtx Project Central I think you will find a way to help save a child's life for only $5.00.)

Traffic into the heart of the old city is blocked off. Why do police directing traffic wear army camouflage? Why do they need handcuffs big enough for giants hanging from their waists?
All this is not the Quebec City experience I've been describing in my handwritten journal up to now. Au contraire. But not to worry. This will go to the bottom of the entries, won't it? And this summit will be over on Sunday. Sarcozy leaves here to go to Washington DC, I think I heard on the radio. ( I listen to French language Radio Canada , so I'm not always certain that I've really heard it right, though sometimes I move over to Radio Canada in English and double check. Didn't have time on this one.)

There's a blog on todays's phenomenon in Quebec City, in French, at (but I don't think this is a link; you'd have to type it in): popote.monblogue.brachez-vous.com.

Anyway, bon jour to all.