North American cities are full of invisible rivers. A river, in a city, is a long and narrow strip you can't cross on foot, except on a few very precise places, bridges; rivers are drawn in blue on a map. An invisible river is the exact same thing, but it's not written in any way on the map. For someone who travels mostly using the general orientation between the starting and ending points, and sometimes a couple in-between, it is quite unfortunate.
16.10.2016
15.10.2016
14.10.2016
On a trip (in cities), never eat just because you're hungry (unless it's unbearable). Because if you do you know just the second you'll have finished eating, something uncommon and tasty-looking will appear, and you'll regret not being hungry anymore.
Just after the burrito, I went to the american indian museum. Their restaurant looks awesome.
(I came back the next day to eat there)
october 9th
Just after the burrito, I went to the american indian museum. Their restaurant looks awesome.
(I came back the next day to eat there)
october 9th
 |
| Looks like all you have to do to solve great historical mysteries in Canada is to ask the First Nations people, because nobody bothered to before, and they know the answer. |
pink script:
A Dene Elder told me his people regularly travelled from the Western Plains to trade with the Mohawk in the place we know as Montreal. After a few years, they would return home. The word for this site in Dene is Hochelaga. To me this means in 1585, Jacques Cartier was actually speaking with the Dene.
gray stone-print below:
Near here was the site of the fortified town of hochelaga visited by Jacques Cartier in 1535. Abandonned before 1600, it contained fifty large houses, each lodging several families who subsisted by sultivation and fishing.
13.10.2016
At the museum there was an exhibition about Hawai'i. And their history is really different from the american indians ones. In (not so) short:
James Cook arrived to Hawai'i in 1776 or 8, was deeply impressed with their civilisation and people, and left illnesses that decimated the population from 1 million to 130 000. Great economical, religious and political instability ensues. Traders, fishers and missionaries visit them, lots of people convert to christianism, and around 1820 a strong king arrives to power (not quite about how those three things tie together chronologically). The king gets Hawai'i officially recognized as an independent nation and ties political and trade treaties with everybody.
Also, pretty much everyone know how to write and read, they dress in a european way, build their royal palace so too, and their monarchs probably know how to speak english.
The missionaries become merchants, bully Hawai'i (1848) into making land something you can claim ownership on, dispossess the Hawai'ian natives and when in 1893 the queen wants to restore power to her people, the ex-missionaries stage a Coup with US troops.
The US government ponders if it is moral (it is anti-constitutional and explicitly against international laws).
Three years later, the US have a war going on somewhere else, and decide annexing Hawai'i totally is moral, because that's a really strategical position and the people there are "Negro savages" anyway (big racist caricatures in the newspaper, though twenty years earlier when the king visited everyone was impressed).
Assimilation and acculturation ensues, 'cause it's America now (though probably not quite as bad as the American Natives had it).
october 11th
James Cook arrived to Hawai'i in 1776 or 8, was deeply impressed with their civilisation and people, and left illnesses that decimated the population from 1 million to 130 000. Great economical, religious and political instability ensues. Traders, fishers and missionaries visit them, lots of people convert to christianism, and around 1820 a strong king arrives to power (not quite about how those three things tie together chronologically). The king gets Hawai'i officially recognized as an independent nation and ties political and trade treaties with everybody.
Also, pretty much everyone know how to write and read, they dress in a european way, build their royal palace so too, and their monarchs probably know how to speak english.
The missionaries become merchants, bully Hawai'i (1848) into making land something you can claim ownership on, dispossess the Hawai'ian natives and when in 1893 the queen wants to restore power to her people, the ex-missionaries stage a Coup with US troops.
The US government ponders if it is moral (it is anti-constitutional and explicitly against international laws).
Three years later, the US have a war going on somewhere else, and decide annexing Hawai'i totally is moral, because that's a really strategical position and the people there are "Negro savages" anyway (big racist caricatures in the newspaper, though twenty years earlier when the king visited everyone was impressed).
Assimilation and acculturation ensues, 'cause it's America now (though probably not quite as bad as the American Natives had it).
october 11th
12.10.2016
11.10.2016
10.10.2016
09.10.2016
08.10.2016
07.10.2016
Bus trip between Boston and New York City (southward along the east coast). During the day.
The trees' colors are amazing.
I'm preeeetty sure we have fall colours in Europe too (I can't say for sure though: city-dweller, remember), but people would probably be less impressed by North-American ones of ours were as nice. The fact that one of the brightest fall trees is the maple, of which there are lots here but in europe... less? none? some but of a different kind? (one of the three, I guess) seems in line with this reasoning.
But really, it's gorgeous. Especially when there is a whole group of yellow-orange-red-brown trees, and a few very bright in the middle (go away, green, out, out!).
I've been told fall was less pretty when the summer had been too dry (brown leaves won't turn red, and fallen ones even less so), and that it was one of those years, but I'm still (even more?) impressed.
Forest, some marshland, rocks. After one hour's driving, I start noticing (maybe it was there before that too) quite a few evergreens (out, out, out!) and a few birch trees. Still some marshed from time to time (did americans ever have to drain marshes to build a city or did they just keep going a few hundred kilometers? We'll know... if and when I remember to ask a local) and a few lakes. After one hour and a half, most of the trees are still green.
The road is flat, but on either side are very slight hills.
5th october
The trees' colors are amazing.
I'm preeeetty sure we have fall colours in Europe too (I can't say for sure though: city-dweller, remember), but people would probably be less impressed by North-American ones of ours were as nice. The fact that one of the brightest fall trees is the maple, of which there are lots here but in europe... less? none? some but of a different kind? (one of the three, I guess) seems in line with this reasoning.
But really, it's gorgeous. Especially when there is a whole group of yellow-orange-red-brown trees, and a few very bright in the middle (go away, green, out, out!).
I've been told fall was less pretty when the summer had been too dry (brown leaves won't turn red, and fallen ones even less so), and that it was one of those years, but I'm still (even more?) impressed.
Forest, some marshland, rocks. After one hour's driving, I start noticing (maybe it was there before that too) quite a few evergreens (out, out, out!) and a few birch trees. Still some marshed from time to time (did americans ever have to drain marshes to build a city or did they just keep going a few hundred kilometers? We'll know... if and when I remember to ask a local) and a few lakes. After one hour and a half, most of the trees are still green.
The road is flat, but on either side are very slight hills.
5th october
06.10.2016
05.10.2016
04.10.2016
03.10.2016
02.10.2016
01.10.2016
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