Almost out of the oven...

We're almost there -- we just need to make some tweaks to the website where my new e-book will be available. While I'm learning about online shopping carts and merchant accounts, we're getting great feedback and constructive criticism from my test group. Many have said it has made them want to go out and do something crazy like learn a foreign language.

If so, mission accomplished.

Diving Into Italian

Born on the Four(teen)th of July

Dear loyal or occasional reader,


One year ago today, Becky and I were sitting at a long, food-laden table in the back yard of good friends in a quaint village outside Strasbourg, France. We topped off an already wonderful evening by standing in the midst of a festive crowd in the center of Strasbourg, oohing and ahing like kids at the fireworks above the medieval towers of the old city.


Today in France is what Americans call Bastille Day. The name Bastille is nowhere in the French name for the holiday; they simply call it la Fête nationale, or, even more commonly, le quatorze juillet -- just as we commonly say July 4 instead of Independence Day.


If you've been following me for very long, you know I'm an avowed francophile. What you may not know is that I was born on the 14th of July. It would seem my life was destined to be intertwined with that of our French friends, of whom I have many. This year, I'm celebrating at home with my family and good friends, taking part in local celebrations of Bastille Day hosted by the few but proud francophiles in my city of Nashville.


You haven't heard from me in a while because I've been busy putting the finishing touches on an e-book on how to go about learning a foreign language. I'll send updates soon, but in the meantime, feel free to sign up here if you're specifically interested in foreign languages -- and spread the word!


Finally, you've been reading for some time in this blog my musings on cultural and international issues, my passion and mission being to awaken cultural curiosity among English speakers. From now on, however, I intend to muse on other topics of interest as well; this will likely include more opinions, which you may or not agree with. Maybe it's my age (and we do tend to be more philosophical as we muse on our birthday, dont' we) -- but it's becoming less important to me to avoid stirring the waters a little. My philosophy is that we treat each other with the same respect we hope to be given, and I trust you'll stay on board with me.


In the meantime, Bonne Fête du 14 juillet!

Theme Park Culture

My wife and I have owned a timeshare in Orlando for a number of years. We bought it while our sons were still at home and were really into the idea of vacationing one mile from Disneyworld. This is the first year we have found ourselves using the week all by ourselves -- just the two of us. Since we have never been to Universal Orlando, we decided to go (under the pretext of checking it out for our new grandson -- yeah, right).
Our timeshare is just every other year, and I was in Europe the last time it came around, so my wife loaded up two of our sons and some of their friends and had a grand time. So it has been at least four years since I experienced the genuinely American phenomenon called the theme park. Some raw reflections:
First, I was taken back to my years of living in Europe when I would land at an American airport after months or even years away and be immediately struck by the number of obese people. America, the land of extremes. A multi-billion dollar fitness industry alongside the highest obesity rate in the world. I'm sorry, but this makes me ashamed.
Second, you've probably heard me say before that one of America's strengths is creativity and innovation. Disney and Universal are creativity on steroids, a celebration of storytelling and imagination. As I stroll through Universal's Seuss Landing or the new Harry Potter section, for example, it's impossible (for me) not to appreciate the wealth of imagination that was in operation not only when the original stories were conceived, but also in the translation of those stories to tangible "things" that can be touched and crawled on and ridden in.
What is contained in my ticket is a mixed bag, symbolic of the paradoxical day and culture in which we live. On one hand, my entrance price pays for the creators' innovations. I was thinking how much fun it must be to be an architect for Disney or Universal. Or an orchestrator. Or an engineer. The multi-faceted skills that go into just one of those rides is staggering. It also pays for summer employment for hundreds of high school and college kids. On the other hand, the ticket also represents obscene profit margins on food and drink, not to mention the not-so-subtle message, delivered long before you arrived at the park, that your kids HAVE to have that toy or keepsake in order to "keep the memory alive." These parks have a way of bringing out the worst in us consumers -- or teaching us a measure of restraint if we let them.
Since, at least for the time being, I don't have to choose between a make-believe theme park world and the preferred adventure of experiencing the real world we live in (stay tuned for more European adventures this summer), I'll most likely cave when my grandson asks me, with those big blue eyes, if we can go see Mickey.

Le Scandale

This past Sunday's arrest in New York of IMF Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn has sent shock waves throughout France -- but not for the reasons most Americans would expect. Strauss-Kahn, repeatedly voted France's most popular politician, was considered the most serious contender to oust current French president Nicolas Sarkozy, a conservative, in next year's elections. 
So the shock that many Frenchmen felt at the news was not that such a high-profile politician was involved in a sex scandal; it was either shock and dismay on the part of Socialists that their man would no longer be in the running to defeat the increasingly unpopular Sarkozy, or shock on a broader scale that the career of any French politician would implode because of a sex scandal and not a financial one.


Here is where the contrast between American and French mores can be seen at its sharpest: Newt Gingrich's candidacy is being called into question by some because of the fact that he has been divorced twice and had, shall we say, messy relationships with women. In France, on the other hand, it is practically a tradition that presidents and other leading politicians carry on extra-marital affairs, or at least be allowed the prerogative of open admiration of the opposite sex, unencumbered by a critical public eye. The fact is, the French are adamant about the right to privacy, and almost as adamant about the fact that it's simply not our business what goes on in the presidential bedroom (or other bedrooms of his choosing). By contrast, money and its poisonous tentacles are much more frequently the subject of scandal and demise chez les Français. What makes the Strauss-Kahn affair so salient is that a) this time it's criminal, b) it happened on American soil, where such a scandal is, well, all the more scandalous, and c) the French feel humiliated in the eyes of the world.


Before you say it serves them right, my dear American reader, you might ask yourself whether we are susceptible to similar incongruities. No culture is immune.

ANZAC Day

New Zealand film Director Peter Jackson, of Lord of the Rings fame and currently working on production of The Hobbit, Part I, tells on his Facebook page today of a visit he made to Turkey in 1990 for the 75th anniversary commemoration of ANZAC Day. The Australian government had made a rare gesture, flying dozens of World War I veterans, along with a personal nurse for each and numerous family members to the Gallipoli Peninsula.


Every Australian and New Zealander knows the significance of April 25, now an annual observance: the landing of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps on that Turkish strip of land for an ill-fated mission. Their objective, along with thousands of British, French and Indian troops, was to capture Istanbul, thereby opening up the passage to the Black Sea for Allied troops and knocking the Ottoman Empire out of the war. Upon landing, the ANZAC soldiers were met with fierce resistance, and what was intended to be a decisive battle turned into an 8-month stalemate with the Allied troops trapped. So it is not a victory that Aussies and Kiwis celebrate, but the sacrifice at Gallipoli has come to symbolize all those from those two countries who have paid the ultimate price in time of war. One of those was Peter Jackson's grandfather, William John Jackson, whom he never knew.

On Banning the Burqa

This week in France, the law banning the burqa (pictured) and the niqab, a full-face veil with only a narrow opening for the eyes, went into effect. A woman found wearing one of the traditional Muslim garments can be fined 150 euros (about US$215), and anyone forcing a woman to wear the veil faces a much stiffer fine. The ban does not apply within the workplace or the home. As the law went into effect on Monday, the first woman was cited in a Paris suburb Monday evening.
Needless to say, the law has sparked a heated debate. Some say the law's main proponent, President Nicolas Sarkozy, is making much ado about very little, even pandering to the far right -- as only an estimated 2,000 women in France bother with the burqa or the niqab. Others welcome the move as a liberation from the oppression of sharia law. Then there are those, in this post-911 world we live in, who believe the flowing robes and covered face pose a security threat. And more than a few must have been surprised that a number of Muslim women protested the ban, asserting that it was their choice to don the voile intégrale (full veil).
France has long been struggling to come to terms with its growing Muslim population (the highest in Europe). But the question that must be addressed above all others is not whether or not one likes the burqa, but whether the state has the right to dictate what a woman wears. 
I'm inclined to think not -- and you?