Toda, El Al

I remember quite a start when I realized that that really was a soldier with a mahine gun when we landed in Schipol more than twenty years ago.

Yesterday, I found myself wondering if I was staring too much while being very politely screened and questioned by El Al's topnotch security people at LAX.

Although slightly unnerving, I was treated with the utmost courtesy and respect from the initial interview through disembarking early this morning. Not only have they provided a model for airport security, they still serve a great meal and the wine is free.

The Nastiest Tourist

Americans are fabulous hosts. Everywhere we've been over the past two weeks has been living proof of an outgoing and generous nature.

Mind you, we've been Totally Tourist: Universal Studios; San Diego Zoo; Las Vegas Strip; Grand Canyon; Yosemite; Marina Del Rey; San Francisco; Napa Valley; expensive restaurants; moderate eateries (not ONE fast food chain!!!); and hotels. Places where any self-respecting citizen wouldn't be caught dead unless they had out-of- town relatives drop by.

It's ALL been good, althought that could be said for any place I don't have to cook or do laundry. Trundling along on this tourist high, wide-eyed and awed, I find myself at the lookout tower at the exit from Grand Canyon, learning a little about katsinas (or kachinas, as they are sometimes spelled). George Yellow, a Navajo (Dine) is explaining the meanings of them when this large, sweaty paw comes out of the sky over my head and grabs the doll I was looking at.

I spun around to give the "teacher glare", but was completely ignored by this pot-bellied, thin-lipped, balding, squinty-eyed beast who demanded in a heavily accented guidebook English "how this cost?".

George looked at him, and looked at me. Big Fat Sweaty Tourist must have assumed he wasn't understood, so he was more insistent; "how much dollars this cost?".

I was too overwhelmed by his rudeness to actually say anything, so George told him $90, he took it "I buy" and left. I don't think I got much out but a tongue-tied "but...but..." George simply raised his eyebrows. I did buy another one, and thanked George for his educating me, and left, cursing like the miner's daughter I really am. This, of course, didn't go over well with my own audience, who promptly told me I should have yelled at Big Fat Sweaty Tourist instead.

How true it is that each one of us becomes an ambassador for our countries when we travel. Meanwhile, may the gods of corn grow some painful ones on Big Fat Sweaty Tourist's feet.

All backwards in Vegas

$1.00 beer
$4.95 bottled water

Discovered in Hollywood

My feet are bigger than Betty Grable's (or my sandals are chunkier) and her hands are the same size as mine.

Ye Gads! Blench thy shambolic abode!

Just finished reading Language Visible, by David Sacks, which I found a more in-depth read than the more highly touted Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss.

From Language Visible; I learned that the word 'Ye' as in "Ye Olde Anything" comes from the archaic use of the letter 'Y' pronounced as "th"; and simply means 'the'.

From Eats, Shoots & Leaves; I am afraid the above sentence is badly punctuated. On the other hand, it is a highly amusing book, and us poor Canadians caught between British and American usage can probably get away with grammatical murder if we put a full stop on the wrong side of the quotation marks.

Of course, my overful Inbox always includes a Word A Day and variations on that theme. Of course, I never read them daily, but catch up when life is slower. I found these two beauties today from GopherCentral's Word A Day:

OBSCURE AND UNUSUAL WORDS
*************************

1) blench blench (noun)
: to move back or away in fear

Old English blencan "to deceive, cheat," of unknown
origin. The modern meaning probably developed via "to
evade, dodge" and "to move suddenly."

2) shambolic sham bollik (adjective)
: poorly organized and in a messy or chaotic state

Late 20th century. Formed from shambles, perhaps on the
model of "symbolic."

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My God! While I was reading (or blogging) the house got into a huge mess, with naught been visibly accomplished.

Condolences to London's families

While trying to comfort my son, I heard myself say that London has survived fire, Hitler and the IRA.

The fear inspired across an ocean reminds me of the world my parents grew up in. My friend, who watched her house bombed during the blitzkrieg; an uncle whose ship was sunk in the North Atlantic and wrote from London, admiring the weather and the girls; friends and aquaintances escaping VietNam and sitting in a boat offshore Canada for six months; friends leaving Iran to live underneath an Italian park bench for two years; friends returning to a life in Iran; an Iraqi-Israeli colleague bringing her baby home to Israel; another who left Bulgaria remembering boar pits for political prisoners; yet another leaving Chile in the dead of night.

Yet I have known nothing but peace in my half century.


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I'm proud to qualify for a UK (EU) passport as a first generation Canadian. My family has a five hundred year history in the UK and I'm proud to be part of the Commonwealth. I don't like British food (with the exception of plum pudding); I prefer Canadian beer here and local beer there. I don't care for the class/caste system; but I do care that 8 million people were forced to take the long way home from work this evening. For the survivors harried by news cameras. Insincere speeches from Gleneagle.

Here, in my little corner of the universe, I extend a heartfelt condolence from a new understanding of loss. May you be gifted with the thought that our loved ones are merely over the horizon.

Two good reasons to be a teacher: July and August