Not the best of days to begin the blog

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.