Not just for chicken...

Continuing our tradition of spending Valentine’s Day in a post-Soviet country, Meg and I decided to take a week’s vacation in the Ukraine. As with our recent trips to Mongolia, we are lucky to have family members to visit – this time, Meg’s brother, John. But unlike Mongolia, and while John does speak Russian fluently, my wife also has a working knowledge of the language giving us a little more independence.

We’re also lucky that Kiev appears to be a pretty walkable city, even in the winter, even when clearing the sidewalks seems to be an afterthought. And so we’ve been able to take several good walks to take in some of the sights near John’s apartment. (This first picture is looking from the belltower of Saint Sophia down to Saint Michael's.)

Despite the German bombardment and bloody occupation of the city during WW2, itself sandwiched between a Soviet architectural style never known for its grace, downtown Kiev seems surprisingly pretty. There are certainly points of the city that seem to be in the state of practiced dilapidation that we’ve seen in Mongolia and Kazakhstan – and a similar number of tall, construction cranes on the skyline. However, unlike either of those places, a fair number of these cranes are actually working.

The downtown architecture does have a continental feeling to it – in no small part because a fair amount of the downtown buildings were built by Italian architects. The Cathedral of St. Andrew, for example, seen here was designed and built in an Italian Baroque architectural style by Bartolomeo Rastrelli.

Underneath all of this, literally, lies a much older city. The Cathedral of Saint Andrew, for example, is located on the spot that the Apostle Andrew legendarily predicted as the site for a great Christian city. As soon as you step inside the Saint Sophia Cathedral, you realize that in addition to the various layers of 18th, 19th, and 20thC restoration there are also still sections of 11thC stucco work. Saint Sophia is unusual (like the Gandan monastery in Ulan Bataar) in that in it was preserved during the Soviet era as a museum – left perhaps ostensibly as a monument to pre-communist degeneracy, but sentimentally I imagine because even the most cynical Party member couldn’t quite bring himself to level the incredible beauty of a sanctuary like Saint Sophia.

Where Saint Sophia is a museum, the remainder of the churches we’ve visited are all active as places of devotion. Like Saint Sofia, Saint Michael’s is an entire monastic complex with monks’ cells and a secondary chapel (dedicated to St. John and which seems primitive by contrast with its wooden shingled dome); Saint Andrew and Saint Vladimir are ‘merely’ stand-alone churches. And just incredibly gorgeous.

There is some speculation that the reason the Kievan Rus converted to the Eastern Orthodox church was because of Prince Vladmir's evoys' visit to the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul in the 10thC and their proclamation that "we knew not whether we were in heaven or earth. For on earth there is no such splendor or such beauty, and we are at a loss to describe it." Saint Vladimir is the only church we’ve been to that permits photography (albeit for a small fee) and, while I have always been fascinated by Orthodox icons. (I should ask my parents whether we visited Kykkos or another monastery when I was a boy, but I do remember being drawn to the religious painting there.) But, and as Sharon Gerstel noted in an exhibition catalog review, to only see these icons out of context on a gallery wall is to miss a huge amount: "Within a church, the icons would have evoked a different response. There, flickering candles or lamps enliven the holy faces, and the wooden panels on which they are rendered emit the pungent smell of incense. Within the darkened church the figures, set on a gold background, appear to wrench free from the strict confines of their wooden backing." Hopefully these pictures convey some of the glimmering majesty of these places.

On a technical note, all these pictures were taken on our new point-and-shoot. We really liked our old Panasonic Lumix (which simply wore out) and decided to go with another, this time the DMC-FX580. I mention this only because I'm still experimenting with some of the shooting modes (of which there are many). The first interior picture, for example, was taken in a mode called 'Candlelight'. It has a a nice grainy B&W mode, and another called 'Pinhole' which puts an interesting fuzzy frame around the image. Stay posted.

assorted bits of news

Meg and I got some culture yesterday evening -- and went to see Black Watch, the National Theatre of Scotland's production, at the St. Ann's Warehouse in DUMBO. My father had seen it at the Edinburgh Fringe when it first came out and had strongly recommended it. We were unable to get tickets for its first US run, although Alex Massie at The Debateable Land was.

The play is derived from interviews the author, Gregory Burke, conducted with veterans and former soldiers from the Black Watch (The Royal Highland Regiment) who had served in the current war in Iraq. And while the play is about those experiences, it is also about the 'Golden Thread' that ties generations of young (Scottish) men to military service and the complete lack of respect for tradition that military bureaucracies seem to observe when they eliminate mythic collective identity for the sake of 'efficiency.' Even though it absorbed the histories of two of the oldest regiments in the British Army (the 270-year history of the Black Watch and the 375-year history of the Royal Scots), the Royal Regiment of Scotland has little of the magic that comes with generations of honorable military service.

All I will say as a review is that I went in feeling on the verge of flu and as though I might have to leave before the end of the 110min continuous performance. Instead, I didn't notice the passage of time and realized that I have sat through a lot of crap in my time. Really quite impressive.

*******

The road-racing season is largely over. And while none of them have formally acknowledged being vanquished for the fourth consecutive year, I came out glorious in the Cobblestone Fantasy Cycling League over my friends, Dan, Mike, and Patrick -- coming in 67th overall out of 1013 players worldwide. Long live Team Chinggis!

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Speaking of Chinggis: for those of you have visited Mongolia in recent years, you are probably aware of the amount of development that the capital, Ulan Baatar, has seen in the past decade. There are plans afoot now, sadly, to develop the Children's Park in downtown UB. The park is one of the few remaining substantial pieces of green space -- and just beyond the increasingly crowded city center. Journalist Michael Kohn has started a blog to try and coordinate efforts to save the park.

Thanks to Annie-bagsh for the heads-up and to Steve Bodio at Querencia for helping to get the word out.

*******

We did get the call-up for the PANE Field Trial at Flaherty this weekend. I'm a little nervous at Mr. Enthusiasm's official debut as a field trial contender. Hopefully I won't screw things up for him. Here's a picture of his little muscle-butt pointing a quail from the other weekend for good luck!!!

potpourri

A few folks (who should probably be doing more blogging of their own) (and so, of course, now some of them have) have been wondering what we've been up to here at The Regal Vizsla. I think August largely serves to delay September -- and while I am excited for both the hunt test and hunting seasons to open, I am also grateful that we actually have a few weekends at home this month and a little more time to rest.

Flavor #1: I did just write a new book review for Living with Bird-dogs. Even though it is a relatively new book (2006) somehow I had missed Jack Sharkey's Winning Ways up till recently -- despite the awesome picture of a happy hunting vizsla on the cover.

Flavor #2: We have also taken possession of the new Team Vizsla-mobile -- another Tacoma, this time a 2006. The novelty of owning a vehicle made in the same decade that we live in is a novelty we haven't quite gotten used to. All in all, our experience with Toyota -- from buying back our old truck to buying this new truck from our local Toyota dealer -- has been very positive. I realise that companies rarely do this kind of generous buy-back purely from the goodness of their hearts, but it was certainly nice to be on the receiving end of their munificence. We should get the new cap for it sometime in the next week or so. My friend Bob is taking his 2000 Tacoma in on Monday -- let's pray for rust, everyone!

Flavor #3: Mongolia won its first Olympic gold medal. All hail Tuvshinbayar Naidan! The article from ESPN makes it sound as though he defeated the reigning champion from Japan with some jinkin mongol wrestling throw. You can see Tuvshinbayar manhandle Suzuki clean out of the ring on this NBC video clip. (You will be asked to download Silverlight software. It's worth it.)

Flavor #4: Georgia has won two gold medals, the first in Graeco-Roman wrestling, the second in judo. And while Georgia will not likely win a beach volleyball medal, it is mildly comforting to note that not every encounter has to be a 'Blood in the Water' match. Jim Caple of ESPN was actually being fairly perceptive when he wrote "Given that the current conflict between the two countries is due in large part to disputes over who is Russian and who is Georgian -- and which country should hold power over them -- it was only fitting that the postmatch news conference also turned into a fierce debate about who is Georgian."

Nevertheless as the wise fellows at Registan have pointed out, the situation is also a lot more complex and, unfortunately for Georgia, imbalanced both symbolically and militarily -- even if it is willingly playing the victim as much as it is suffering at the hands of the Russian military. And why our present US government continues misunderstanding how to use its diplomatic and military influence.

uneasy times

It is an uneasy time in Mongolia, or probably more accurately, the capital, Ulan Baatar. As this articles in today's IHT suggests, it would seem that a socially disenfranchised few took advantage of the disquiet raised by a politically disenfranchised few to loot and pillage in the midst of some serious concern over the legitimacy of the most recent general election.

Living five minutes from the site of the rioting, Annie put up a post during the 'state of emergency' while the very thorough Asian Gypsy has what appears to be most of the details. There are some very good pictures at Suuder.com, a Mongolian photodocumentary site. While I think most Mongolians are genuinely embarassed by the collateral damage, and even with a government still dominated by the former-Communists, there is a lot at stake in this post-Soviet country. As the leader of the Mongolian Democratic Party, Tsakhiagyn Elbegdorj, put it: "From the Sea of Japan to the eastern border of Europe, we are the only functioning democracy, and we have a duty to save it."

Rumor has it that a covert operative named 'Coffee Boy' may have been responsible.

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The Tour de France has started. And by design, it is a little different this year. No prologue, no time bonuses. And a lot of previous favorites are out either due to being caught doping or were excluded by association.

Cadel Evans is the clear favorite, but folks wonder if he has the aggressive edge to actually 'take' the win... or will simply ride well enough to outlast the remainder of the field. Alejandro Valverde is on great form, but perhaps too good a little too early. Denis Menchov rode a good Giro d'Italia already this year, but as a result is perhaps still a little dulled from that gruelathon.

It's been a good Tour already. Valverde stomped on everyone to win the first stage, Thor 'The Bear from Grimstad' Hushovd won his sixth Tour de France stage in stage 2, and France scored a one-two-yellow yesterday with Samuel Dumoulin winning the stage and Roman Feillu taking second and the overall lead. (This pic of Roman Feillu in today's individual time trial is by Robert Bettini.)

It's already more exciting than previous years.

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We got this pic from Dennis + Sally. This is Sally making her first duck retrieve at a NAHVDA clinic. (I gather they use live ducks, and bind one wing and the beak.) She rocks. Hopefully we're going to train with them in two weeks. We're very excited.

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In somewhat disturbing news from the homeland, Pat the Terrierman reports that the Tayside Police has fallen foul of its Muslim constituents because it used a puppy on a poster to advertise its non-emergency number. (The folks at SmartDogs had posted a similar story of sorts -- about a student's service dog at St. Cloud State University in MN -- back in mid-May.) I would welcome comments from any of my Muslim readers, but my sense here is that dogs themselves are not actually haram (dirty or impure), but that they are regarded as animals (with specific tasks to do) and not as pets (that blur domestic boundaries). In which case, why an aspiring police dog would somehow be impure is still beyond me.

Bill at The BlackandTanBombshell reported a while back that there is a movement afoot to ban e-collars in Wales. With all due respect to Caroline Kisko of the Kennel Club who claimed e-collars were "a cruel, outdated and unsuitable method of training dogs," perhaps you should actually try one. Or read a current book like Dave Walker's that clearly outlines how and when to use them in a humane way.

(By contrast, and while he remains a dean of dog trainers, if you have only read Paul Long's Training Pointing Dogs, originally published in 1974, you might come to the conclusion that the e-collar is a clumsy, unpredictable tool. And that using a slingshot to steady a dog on point is a viable tool. Then again, these are both still a long way from the thrashings trainers used to advocate in the 1930s and 1940s.) What's next? Outlawing sticks? or leashes? or just harsh words?

post #200

I happened to notice that this post was scheduled to be #200 -- and so got thrown off by trying to come up with something suitably momentous to write about. And then I realised that I was just procrastinating. Here are a few announcements:

1) Mike Spies at Living with Bird-dogs invited me to be a contributor to his blog -- which was very flattering. For my first post there, I wrote a review of legendary trainer, Dave Walker's, book The Bird-dog Training Manual. In a world of gun-dog training books that take a little-from-here and a little-from-there, Dave's book is a great example of what is possible with a consistent, incremental method.

2) Last week, I wrote my first letters to my Assembly representatives and State Senators -- and so far, those efforts look like they paid off. Here in New York, there was an attempt to rush Assembly Bill 11509 via an off-the-floor meeting to get it through before the assembly took off for their summer recess. (The bill essentially sought to eliminate 'hobby breeders' and require full breeder registration of anyone with four or more intact female dogs.) While there was sufficient concern raised to merit no consideration of AB 11509 for the 2008 legislative session, its companion Senate Bill 8546 is still languishing with the senate's Rules Committee. I am all for increased enforcement of existing legislation, but I get nervous about new regulations that create additional pressures to spay dogs soon after six months of age to avoid prosecution -- because it limits responsible breeders' choices, breeders who largely understand that breeding a dam before she is two years old is irresponsible, and as has been recently published here and here in the Journal of the AVMA because individual dog's long-term health outweighs overall population control.

I encourage folks to subscribe to the e-mail alerts from either the American Sporting Dog Alliance or the US Sportsmen's Alliance. Goofy stuff doesn't just happen in California.

3) In happier news, Craig Koshyk has a new Weimaraner puppy, Henri. Inspired by the beautiful pictures Craig has of his new 'pocket rocket,' here are a couple from Jozsi's first days here in the Bronx.

4) My sister-in-law is back from her visit to eastern Mongolia, to the Planet Dornod, where she saw a bunch of friends from her sojourn in Choibalsan as a Peace Corps volunteer. She has some great pics up on her blog.

Me and Mr. Enthusiasm will be heading up to the Connecticut Valley Vizsla Club hunting dog stake on Sunday. We'll see if he can put all that energy to good use. Momo will be lounging with his mother.

quadfecta

Thanks to everyone for their comments and concern about Mr. Enthusiasm's poisonous encounter, hereafter to be referred to as 'the toxic poop incident.' He was back to normal the next day and bopping around like the crazy man he is. The folks @ Smartdogs, inspired by Jozsi's toxic poop incident, have a much more thorough set of recommendations for how to plan for canine poisoning.

In other medical news, Shawn Wayment, the blogosphere's bird-dog doc, has a vet's perspective on what he carries in his canine first-aid kit. And Mike @ Living with Bird-dogs has a few suggestions for how to deal with the carnage that comes from the dog:porcupine interaction.

And for those of you considering becoming dog breeders, please consider this advice courtesy of Luisa @ Lassie Get Help!

*******

I was digging through some packets of photographs and found a couple of envelopes of B&W pictures from late 2004. The first pic is of Choya, my Mexican street dog, the dog that wooed Meg into a life with dogglers, asleep on the carpet in our old house in Maine. She was a feisty love-monster, taken much too soon. We still think fondly of her... and her world record disembowelment of Mr. Lobster. As awesome as Dennis's own track record is, her 17seconds of frenzy remains a truly Olympic feat.

I also found some pictures from our first trip to Mongolia in December, 2004. The two pics here are from our trip out to Olgii and our visit with a Kazakh eagle hunter and his family. Annie's friend, Todd, another Fulbrighter who we met on our last trip, has some great pics from his recent visit to Olgii at the end of May. (For those of you craving more Kazakh eagle hunter pictures, Todd links to Robert McPherson's website which has some genuinely great pictures on it.) I was lucky to come across and read Steve Bodio's Eagle Dreams while we were in Olgii -- which added so much to our visit.

The second pic, if you can believe it, was taken with a 25mm wide-angle lens. I was 6" from a very big, very alert eagle that, because he spoke Kazakh, our friend Jordan had been told to look after while his owner went to retrieve an escaped horse. We were left just looking at each other, wondering what on earth we could do if the bird decided to give us trouble. Happily, while it could smell our fear, the bird decided we weren't worth the effort.

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I did complete my first judging assignment last Sunday, co-judging the Junior Hunter (JH) division for the Nutmeg GSP Club Hunt Test at Flaherty Field. Not surprisingly, there were only 6 braces of JH dogs to judge, including 3 Gordons from Moonstone Setters. More surprisingly, though, there were 6 full braces of dogs trying for Master Hunter (MH), and 5 for Senior Hunter (SH).

We had met Debbie from Moonstone at the previous weekend's hunt test at Sharpe's Farm -- although she had not brought her young boy, Angus, that weekend. He turned out to be the star of the trio -- and gave a solid performance in what were otherwise ugly conditions of high temperatures and little wind.

*******

We have a few exciting things coming up. First of all, it looks like we will rendezvous with HRH Brisztow Jones on Sunday -- although I'm a little nervous that if we show up with a pick-up truck on her schwanky neighborhood, we might be asked to leave by the rest of the local population. Now that's Fancy Town. I don't think folks put graffiti on trees down there.

Second, it looks as though I will take Jozsi up to Flaherty again for the CVVC's Hunting Dog Stake at the end of the month to see how he does in a remotely competitive environment. In the meantime I am continuing to work on getting Momo steady -- and want his next exposure to birds to be a more controlled one.

FYI: after a great conversation with Bob @ Cliffside Birddogs, his opinion was that however frustrated Momo might be in a hunt test environment, his desire to creep while on point and while honoring was still basically an obedience issue. And so, in order to streamline his and my communication, I have unpacked 'whoa' to simply mean 'stop' and now use his familiar 'stay' to hold him. And so we are doing lots of 'stay' and 'heel' drills to let him know that simply adhering to the spirit of a command is no longer sufficient. He's a good boy with a strong stubborn streak.

causes for celebration

Our first cause for celebration is more the form of a sigh of relief. We live just a few hundred yards from Van Cortland Park -- and the section we live closest to is woods (as opposed to the groomed grass and playing fields on the other side of the park). As folks know, I hunt our dogs and we exercise them off-leash in the park 99% of the time. But being an urban park, you can find all kinds of weird stuff out in the woods... and sadly, sometimes not being able to see what they might get into is one of the calculated risks you take when you have hard-running dogs like ours.

Jozsi gave us a scare two nights ago. Meg took him out for their regular late afternoon romp, brought them home, and about a half hour after dinner, he vomited. Poop. Nasty nasty poop. I came home from work while Meg was cleaning everything up -- but I immediately noticed Jozsi was unsteady on his feet and not quite with it. In the 5 minutes it took to grab directions to our emergency vet, I thought he was going to black out on me.

The shorter version of the outcome is that we don't know what he ate -- but when the vet at The Veterinary Emergency Group induced vomiting later that evening, the vast majority of what she got out was more fecal matter. Our best guess at this point is that he ate a drug-user's feces that still had some kind of residual stuff in it. He was kept overnight, given IV fluids and a round of activated charcoal to neutralise anything that might still be down there. All his X-rays and bloodwork came back normal -- and after feeding him a very light, mostly-rice breakfast that he held down just fine, he seemed sufficiently back to normal (ie. wrestling Momo) that I decided to go in late to work after all. When Meg took him out in the afternoon he was up to his usual tricks. We'll feed him a couple of smaller 'white' meals this evening to ease his stomach back into food -- but mercifully he appears to be his same old safe.

I was glad to have seen Kim's post about toxic ingestions -- and even more grateful to call her to get some reassurance. She also suggested that even though it wasn't really the season to be worried about anti-freeze, who knows what folk are dumping in the park -- and so we had Jozsi tested for that, too, and which came back negative. Thanks, Kim. I guess one of the trade-offs of urban life with bird-dogs is that there may be more random hazards, but there are often a lot more after-hours treatment options. This is the second time we've used the folks at Vet Emergency Group -- and they've been really good to work with, especially under stressful situations. The key here, though, is know what your options are ahead of time -- and keep the number in your phone.

While I think there was a part of him that enjoyed having his parents to himself the other night, Momo was very happy to see his brother in the morning -- and spent a good 10mins cleaning the remains of the activated charcoal that was all over Jozsi's head. Sickeningly cute.

But today is a special day indeed! While it is the opening date for both You Don't Mess with the Zohan and Oscar-nominated Mongol, it is also Momo's 3rd birthday! Happy Birthday! In a nice twist of circumstance, we just got in contact with Momo's brother, Tavish, for the first time. (When they were pups at the farm, Momo was 'Purple' and Tavish was 'Orange'.) But Tracy, Tavish's mother, sent us this picture from the VCCNE Fun Day in 2006. Tavish is on the left, their mother Makin is in the middle, and their sister Mattie is on the right. I can certainly see the family resemblance. So, happy birthday to Tavish and Mattie, as well!

Who would have known just how far this dog, Widdershins Momchil JH, would have taken us.

Oh, this isn't too bad a reason to celebrate either.

loose ends

1) Culture: Meg and I had a little cultural experience on Sunday and went to the New York Historical Society to take in their 'Woven Splendor from Timbuktu to Tibet' exhibit. Between our travels and those of Meg's brother and sister, we're very fortunate to have a nice selection of woven and felted rugs from Central Asia ourselves.

It was my first time at the NYHS -- and being in the process of finishing Richard Rhodes's biography of John James Audobon, it was nice to see a fair number of Audobon's mammoth plates hung on their walls. As for the pieces in 'Woven Splendor' exhibit, they were a really nice selection from west Africa to southwestern China, with a fair number of pieces from Kyrgyzstan and Tadjikistan. It was great to see some of the motifs we have on our rugs and tuskiiz echoed in the textiles on display, although seemingly from very different parts of Central Asia. Here's a nice pic of the boys on one of our felt rugs from western Mongolia.

There is a nice blog entry here from a quilter who also acquired a tuskiiz on her travels. We bought ours from the craft shop in the museum in Bayan Olgii when we were there in 2004. We don't have a wall space big enough to hang ours -- and so when we take them out from time to time, we still get that great smell of lanolin and stove smoke when we open them out. Like Karen the quilter, we chose ours because they are 'signed' and dated.

In a lot of ways the exhibit affirmed one of the pioneers of art history, Alois Riegl, and his groundbreaking treatise Stilfragen (1893), or put another way, the idea that decorative patterns may have histories of their own, independent of whatever symbolic or technological factors may have inspired them originally. What the NYHS deserves true credit for, perhaps, is that it has another exhibit running as a prelude, 'Allure of the East: Orientalism in New York, 1850-1930.' This exhibit is useful for helping viewers understand how the Hajji Baba Club, the nation's oldest rug collecting club, came to collect the rugs that now comprise the 'Woven Splendor' exhibit.

2) Customer Service: here's a little applause for a couple of companies that still believe in good old-fashioned follow-up.

a) We were pretty sure we were having problems with our newer Tri-tronics e-collar transmitter that probably stemmed from the time the battery compartment somehow detached from the rest of the transmitter. As promised, all their repairs were complete within 72hrs and the unit on its way back to us. Everything is working great again.

b) I just eBayed a cool, out-of-production Spyderco knife, the Bob Lum-designed Chinese Folder. (I have Eric @ Quixotic Bicycles to blame for first introducing this beautiful knife to me.) I should know by now that when someone doesn't post pictures of the other side of a knife, there's an issue... in this case, no pocket clip. But I called Sypderco and the very nice customer service person happened to have a replacement clip for it in her desk (which she shipped to me at no charge). Bob Lum, incidentally, recently passed away in December.

3) Dog health compendium: Kim has a horror story about a night at the Vet ICU and a serious word of caution about keeping Gorilla Glue in the house; Ziggy the Unfortunate has been having some nose-bleeds; and poor Charlie Morph has been chomping sticks and spiking himself in the throat. At the other end of the spectrum Patti Khully has been helping out with K-9 Down, a not-for-profit organization that provides first-responders (police, paramedics, and military personnel) with critical first-aid training for their working dogs. Her original blog about the group was here -- and her subsequent adventures helping out in NYC are here.

Happily, both our boys' feet appear to have recovered just fine, but I am now dowsing them with Tuf-Foot to help them toughen up.

4) Fun: Off to do some dog-training on Wednesday... looks like we'll be able to meet up with the Team V- Eastern MA chapter as well as Dennis + Sally.

5) More fun: It also looks like I may have my debut as a hunt test judge at the beginning of June. Will keep everyone posted, but I'm excited that I may get to judge before the end of the spring hunt test season.

scattered

It's been a tricky couple of days -- we had planned to go up to Hill & Hollow Pointer and Retriever Club in Berkley, MA, but sadly Momo cut two pads on one of his rear feet and is now on light exercise, lots of triple antibiotic, and EMT Spray.

So, wearing his best Elizabethan collar, I left Momo out of his kennel, but alone, for a few hours while Jozsi and I went out to Long Island to meet up with Bill of The Black + Tan Bombshell fame. I have known Bill since we first moved to New York -- it's funny that we now both have blogs. Bill has met Momo and I wanted him to meet Mr. Enthusiasm, as well. Although to be honest, the real point of the expedition was to go out and shoot skeet with him at his club. Here's a picture of Jozsi running around in the woods, trying to move quickly to avoid the ticks.

Whiole we had hoped to train on quail this week, it's been nice to take advantage of Jozsi sight-pointing all the various robins in the woods to get him accustomed to 'whoa' and, perhaps as importantly, to see Momo begin to twig that when his brother is holding a fierce point that he should perhaps honor his brother's intensity. Craig Koshyk has just posted some video of his own recent efforts to get a younger Pont Audemer Spaniel to honor by having him back his Weimaraner, Souris, on-point. There are some gorgeous moments in there.

The next picture is what you can expect from two ferocious vizslas. As ever, wrestling is fun, wrestling next to Dad is better, but wrestling on Dad -- maybe even occasionally kicking him in the head or nipping him out of excitement -- is absolutely the best.

Hopefully The Mominator's feet will recover soon so we can actually start training again. For now, though, the next most exciting thing on the schedule is meeting up with our friend, Laura, who also has her own blog and her husband, Todd, on Friday and hitting one of our favorite NYC restaurants, HanGawi. Korean, vegetarian, very very tasty.

For those of you either following the friction between Georgia and Russia (or wondering how to spell 'Abkhazia'), Anne Applebaum at Slate has a concise overview of why few in the White House are giving it much attention either.

temporarily absent

When my wife starts hassling me that I haven't blogged in a while (and doesn't accept the answer "But I'm just sitting over here!"), you know it's time to put up an entry. It's the quiet season at work and my friend, Ed, had pulled this video up before the day started today. I used to listen to a bunch of country music but never really heard Brad Paisley till now. In any case, I'm really much cooler online, too.

"ONLINE" Brad Paisley Music Video

I still have a couple of draft posts that are waiting for information before I post them, but in the meantime here are some highlights.

1) Momo tested positive for anaplasmosis on his recent SNAP4 test. Anecdotally speaking, I have heard that anaplasmosis and ehrlichiosis are the two tick-borne diseases on the rise here in the northeast. Happily, though, his secondary CBC test showed no effect on his immune system -- and so no treatment is necessary.

Heeding Pat the Terrierman and Kim's advice, we skipped the Lyme vaccine for the boys this time around.

2) We're thinking about heading up to the Katahdin GSP Club Hunt Test up at Sharpe's Farm in Hopkinton, NH, at the end of the month to try and round out the boys' respective test titles.

3) Back in January while blogging about what pedigrees and titles should mean to the prospective owner, I mentioned Bill Gibbons's Magma Birddogs website and had posted a picture of Upwind Kismet Rapid Fire (aka 'Mason'). I was browsing some back issues of the Vizsla Field and discovered that Mason had won the National Vizsla Association's National Quail Classic back in October. One heck of a dog!

Along the way I discovered Grace Anne Lawson's Ricochet Vizslas blog. Her good friend, Dave Pomfret, handled both Mason and Colonel, the first- and second-placed dogs at the Quail Classic. For those of you interested in the tribulations of field-trialing your vizsla, her blog may be a good place to start.

4) Joshua Foust at the excellent Registan posted recently on the posturing between Georgia and Russia. This has included claims and counter-claims that a Russian fighter jet shot down an unmanned Georgia spy-plane over Abkhazia. The Guardian has short video footage of the alleged missile-attack. Reuters has also recently reported that the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) will shortly send a mission to encourage the two sides to talk. I wonder how such a conversation would look once Kazakhstan, as opposed to current chair-nation Finland, assumes control over the OSCE.

WWTBD pt.3?

Since our return from Mongolia, I have been much remiss in all matters Central Asian. But if there was an event to kick off my return, this is it.

1) What would Turkmenbashi do? I can assure you that he's turning in his grave cursing President Berdykmukhamedov's name. As the Globe and Mail's article is titled, "April is April again in Turkmenistan."

Happily, there are no signs that the edicts against gold teeth or disco have been revoked.

2) My sister-in-law, Annie, has discovered that Mongols are everywhere -- even when she's on vacation back home in Chicago. My version of this was at the 'Korean deli' just up the street from work. I know just enough Mongolian to know a) when it's not Korean being spoken, and b) to ask the young man and woman behind the counter what they were speaking. Saying 'thank you' in Mongolian when they gave me my change just about made them faint.

Annie also just sent me the Altan Urag album. You can check out their MySpace page here. They bill themselves as folk/rock/metal. First of all, there are no guitars only morin khuur. It's a little bit like Apocalyptica plays Metallica meets John Zorn and Yat-Kha. The only disappointment is that there's no sick drumming.

3) While the Caucusus isn't really Central Asia, it seems as though there are enough parallels in this story about Georgia rushing to join NATO and this entry from Azamat in Kyrgyzstan about the Russian suppression of the Kyrgyz in 1916. I'd suggest reading several of Azamat's recent posts -- about trading land presumably in exchange for either trade concessions or just plain $$$-- and his concern that Kazakhstan has become the United States' new favorite example of democratization through free-trade.

Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, Richard Boucher, claimed that the United States was supporting Kazakhstan's chairmanship of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) because "Kazakhstan also... vowed to support the human rights side of the OSCE." Why does this sound like awarding the 2008 Olympics to Beijing? Presumably because Kazakhstan has huge natural resources ripe for the exporting?

Meanwhile our previous Central Asian posterboy, Evan Feigenbaum, Deputy Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asian Affairs, recently conveyed to the US-Kazakhstan Business Association and the American-Uzbekistan Chamber of Commerce:

"Governments create the regulatory, legal, and operating frameworks for markets... But at the end of the day, it's private companies that have to do the work. [And make fat cash-ola!]"

4) I am now updating this since Eric @ Quixotic Cycles left his comment because, while we all know that Mr. Feigenbaum was probably thinking those comments in parentheses above, what he really said was:

"In 2005, almost 30 percent of total FDI in Kazakhstan came from American companies. And over the past five years, U.S. exports to Kazakhstan have increased almost 300 percent... In 2001, our exports to Kyrgyzstan were around $27 million. By 2006, this figure had nearly tripled to more than $71 million. Finally, there is Turkmenistan, with abundant gas reserves and other resources, which could help to bring new levels of prosperity to the country and the region."

I just wanted to be clear just in case anyone thought my editorial comments were slanderous or libelous -- and I didn't want to wake up tomorrow and find that the federal government had broadly redefined its censorship powers over the press just because of something I may have implied he'd said or done. Like divorcing your wife and marrying a champion gymnast. Sorry. That was someone else. Or wasn't.

5) The Chinese government has announced it will hold talks with the envoys of the Dalai Lama regarding the unrest in Tibet. It does not appear that they had actually informed the Dalai Lama of this when they made the announcement.

6) In a follow-up, the campaign to cast Grace Wang's actions at Duke (and her subsequent castigation by Chinese nationalists) continues from both sides. Danwei, a website "about media, advertising and urban life in China," has this summary from last week. I'm listing it because it has links to sources most of us wouldn't find, including a blog that claims that Grace is mentally ill. As ever, reading all comments can be quite instructional.

lost luggage

We arrived safely yesterday, although our bags (perhaps not surprisingly) were unable to make the transfer from Ulaan Baatar to JFK in time. And while it may simply be in comparison with Aeroflot, the seemingly very nice folks at Delta called last night to say that our bags should be delivered this morning.

With my body clock slightly skewed, I decided to blog a few random notes and a few random pictures that hadn't made the blog yet. Sadly, we missed Spirit Day ('western attire') at Diablo Vista Middle School on Friday. However, unlike someone else at Diablo Vista Middle School, we aren't missing a black Lexus 470 SUV. It's parked outside the State Department Store on Peace Avenue. If anyone from Woodfield Hummer in Schaumberg, IL, is checking the Regal Vizsla, we know where your dark blue H3 is, too.

If you want to buy a previously owned, but not necessarily used luxury foreign car in UB, don't worry about finding some shady backstreet to do the deal. You won't even need to change money as the prices are in dollars. Short of parking them in front of the Parliament building, they couldn't be in any less public place. Next to the cop cars.

The reason to own a luxury car is almost as goofy as the reason to own a decent roadbike... while you might find someone mechanically inclined to fix your primo-ride, finding parts and more than 200km to actually ride it would seem to be the bigger challenge. Nevertheless, the day we flew to Mörön, we passed this dude. My first words thoughts were, "Has to be a foreigner...". But no. And you get a lovely picture of Power Station #3 doing it what is does best. The air is so thick with coal dust during the winter that I have no idea how guys like this get their exercise. Rock on.

While on the thread of flying to Mörön, we did see this statue outside the Mörön airport. We gather that this must be a relatively new statue based on former Peace Corps volunteers' memories of it NOT being there around 2001. In any case, here is the story of Khainzaan Gelenkhuu, also known as 'Gongor', Mongolia's idealistic, but practically minded Icarus; here's a nice story that features Gongor from the Toronto Globe and Mail.

And here's the entire Mongolian Navy. Not sure what else to say except that it probably doesn't make a lot of sense to have much more if you can only sail 5mos of the year. Incidentally, the vertical font above 'SUKHBAATAR' is Mongolian script. Sadly, in many ways, it is only really used in official documents. This picture of the sign above the main shrine at the Choijin Lama museum illustrates the differences between (from left to right) Mongolian, Chinese, and Tibetan scripts -- and, if I remember correctly, the scripts announce the building as a 'hall of peace'.

I did my best, though, to try a few Mongol beers while we were in the country in honor of Eric's BrewLog. Most of the beers are lightly-flavored lagers -- innocuous enough and perfectly palatable with slightly more character than your average American mass-brew. When we were in Olgii last time, I remembered having a dark APU beer with our friend, Jordan... the aroma was definitely 'goat-ey,' but the actual taste was really quite good. Perhaps we had an old bottle (or perhaps we were both so filthy that we smelled of goat and were confused), or maybe the folks at APU have eliminated the 'goat' fragrance from their Kharkhorin beers, but I tried one and was disappointed. My favorite beer of the trip was the APU Borgio -- a really nice, full-bodied lager. It didn't have the bitterness I associate with some German and Czech lagers, but went down very nicely with my some-variant-of-meat-and-potatoes dinner. Incidentally, here is the APU Brewery website (sadly, it only appears to be in Mongolian, but once the sound starts up it can be quite amusing).

That's the news from here. Hope to have some dog news later in the day once the rest of the world wakes up at a normal time.

the spirit of radio

While we were here in Ulaan Baatar, we learned from the Redgirls of the passing of one of the blogosphere's favorite vizslas, Radio. Radio died from the complications associated with myositis, a degenerative muscle disorder -- which, sadly, appears to be becoming more common in vizslas. As your parents said, Rocket, we hope you're causing havoc somewhere fun.

We had said we would say prayers for him at the major Buddhist temple in Ulaan Baatar, the Gandantegchinleng Khiid, or Gandan for short, because we both remembered a beautiful dog statue in one of the alcoves in the main temple. I can only imagine that Radio's playful vizsla spirit was playing havoc with our memories because while we did say prayers at Gandan, we never found the statue!

By a process of deduction we realised we must have seen the statue at the Choijin Lama Museum. The short version of the story is that we found the statue -- the longer version is that we discovered that in the past three years they have put up a lot more labels. The 'dog' is in fact a 'wolf'! We hope that this final piece of mischievousness was also a sign of Radio's spirit playing tricks.

The Choijin Lama Museum is a treat for many reasons -- the incredible richness of the artistry in the painting, woodwork, and ceramics. It is also a shame that it seems on the verge of dilapidation, that little or no restoration work has been done perhaps ever, let alone in the three years since we were last there. The temple is relatively modern and so it would be a shame to see the city swallow it whole. This picture shows the walkway up to the main temple hall with the looming frame of another new, futuristic building behind it.

One of the positive signs was that it seems to be a place of interest to young Mongolians, and especially the new generation of monks. While Gandan was virtually untouched by the Communist government and left as a figurehead of socialist tolerance (despite the purges of some 30,000 intellectuals, government officials and monks by Choibalsan), Choijin was converted into a museum. We felt lucky to witness the excitement of this group of young monks as they did their own whistle-stop tour of the temple complex.

We were also very pleased to see that in order to protect the public health, the city of Ulaan Baatar has apparently outlawed trumpet playing. Hallelujah. Imminently sensible.

This is our final day in Mongolia. We fly out tomorrow in the early morning, back through Moscow, and then to New York after what is supposed to be just a short two-hour layover. With all the time changes, we actually get in only six hours after we left Mongolia.

With work schedules and training schedules, I will go pick up our two boys the following week -- but will speak to Bob well before then. In the meantime, love the vizslas you're with.

how cold is cold

After our friend, Eric, at Quixotic Cycles sent one of his characteristic smarty-pants comments about 'cold', I decided to post a couple of the better clips from our time up in Khovsgol. The first is 17secs of relatively typical turbulence in the forgon -- and shows us coming up over the last pass (complete with ovoo) between Rinchinlumbe and Lake Hovsgol. When the clip ends you can just make out the frozen white band of the lake behind Baagi's head.



I can't imagine that the road between Tsaagan Nuur and Rinchinlumbe and then to Lake Khovsgol is open during the summer because we seemed to be driving largely on or in broad, rocky river beds... sometimes bouncing over channel bars, othertimes on sections of deep, blue-green undulating ice. (Annie, incidentally, has the much more humorous version of our trip and some nice pictures of Rinchinlumbe up on her blog. While I have no idea how bad the insects are in summer, Rinchinlumbe struck me as just one of the lovely spots on earth.)

Once we got down to the lake, itself ringed by high mountains to the north and west sides, we were on the ice. Now I still regard flight as a miracle, and driving on ice definitely skeeves me out a little. As this pic shows: the ice is wicked thick and so besides skidding and possibly flipping, the likelihood of actually breaking through was minimal. Nevertheless, passing a Mongol family on their motorbike-and-sidecar rig at what I'm guessing was only 50mph had a certain sensation of scarey about it.




As to actual tempertures: happily it was warmer than we had packed for. Happily, too, this meant that Andrew didn't need his big, black down jacket quite as much -- especially since, in the process of going for a 3:00am pee-break and grabbing more firewood, he brushed its nice nylon shell against the stovepipe thereby opening a nice 6" hole in one of the baffles and acquiring the nickname Galbaatar ('Fire Hero'). It was warm enough in the ortz that the duct-tape we had stuck to the coat to cover the hole, but cold enough outside that it sadly lost its adhesive abilities and rendered my repair useless.

Rinchinlumbe is the closest actual weather station and being in the Darkhad basin seems to come fairly close in temperature. The three days or so we were up in the taiga, the daytime high averaged around 0degsF and the nighttime low temperature averaged close to -25degsF. Not evil cold, but cold enough that even with a wood fire going all night in the stove, a water bottle left uncovered between your body and the canvas wall of the ortz would freeze. By the time we got to the lake, the actual temperatures were about 10degsF warmer, but the wind blew straight up the lake. So definitely a little frosty, especially for our sled ride! (You can see that on Annie's blog.)

some thoughts on culture

We are genuinely lucky to be able to visit Mongolia, to have friends and/or family here, to be of sound enough body (if not questionable mind) to come in the winter and not have to share Mongolia with too many other foreigners. Nevertheless, and especially after visiting the Tsaatan, it does make me think about what 'culture' is -- and how it can, could, or should adapt.

Now, as far as I know, tourism is still the largest industry in Scotland, so I am under no illusions about what ersatz or even kitsch culture can be. But to give several examples, we traveled 11hrs in a minivan on roads that could barely be called tracks to visit a group of indigenous herders who are fairly close to dying out - for example, there are so few of their deer that they can't either successfully reproduce or be a consistent food source for their human counterparts. Annie spent an hour or so helping a nineteen-year old Tsaatan woman with her English who hadn't even been as far as Mörön, her district (aimag) capital -- and so where or for whom was she likely to use it besides for foreigners coming to visit? I spent some time with a snotty-nosed five-year old boy who knew exactly how my digital camera worked despite not having one of his own. And while we were given an ortz to ourselves, we were hardly acknowledged as different. Even all my very un-Mongolian playing-with-dogs barely registered as being anything but the goofiness of a foreigner. Having said all that, and possibly sounded grimly cynical, children still appreciate gifts -- especially when they're whole sheets of stickers.

Do I feel disappointed that we didn't get a 'human zoo' experience up in the taiga? meaning that we went to see a rare ethnic group but they, for their part, didn't turn out to see the weird-looking foreigners? No. We definitely got the 'zoo' experience in eastern Mongolia, where my full beard of 2004 literally stopped conversation in the bazaar in Choibalsan -- and which a herder tugged on when we visited him and his family in the hoodoo. When differences like that are negotiated with curiosity and respect, even the relatively low-impact tourism that we've been lucky to enjoy here in Mongolia seems equitable somehow. I certainly don't want to sound ungrateful... to the Tsaatan who made room for us, for Rinchen and Baagi who got us there... but there was something quite banal about the whole experience.

Nevertheless, for as conventional as 'foreigner' seemed to be to the Tsaatan (and they have had visitors steadily coming to visit, aid, or study them for well over a decade), it was still refreshing to meet five-year old Uyenga (and eight-week old Simba, the puppy) however ironically at the relatively high-traffic Hovsgol Travel tourist camp on the lake. She had no idea how to work a digital camera, spoke no English, but was every bit as generous and engaging as the overwhelming majority of Mongolians have been to us.

This is not to say that in order to have a genuine, or jenkin experience, native peoples should somehow stay or act 'native' in some weird pre-contact state, but that what feels genuinely interesting about going to a country like Mongolia is about figuring out what you have in common. Or seeing how little bits of one culture have seeped into the other, or just sit on the surface like the oddities they are and should be... like cans of Heinz salsa verde or monster jugs of Mrs. Butterworths.

********

I shall quickly point out that Lael + Neil have a blog, too. They adopted Momo's mother, Makin, from Chris + Wendy after she had her last litter (of which Momo was one). It's really great to see Makin, who in some peculiar way stole my heart to make me want a pup of hers, having a great time training for agility competition. If you are looking for great ways besides hunting to keep your vizsla occupied, mentally and physically, then agility is a great way to go.

planes, deer, and dogs

My horoscope in the UB Post says that I should "Seek rest; take frequent naps... 'deep rest' is called for Monday to Wednesday." Hallelujah.

This is good because after saying that we had no near-death experiences on our trip, I read that someone had fired "a missile-like object from the ground" 'at' an EZnis airlines domestic flight from UB to Khanbogd. I say 'at' because it came within 10km of the aircraft. That seems like a pretty good distance to miss an aircraft by. We have two theories. It was either an ex-Soviet missile someone fired off for the heck of it (because it is still Tsaagan Sar, or the white month of the new year) or someone not quite paying attention at the nearest military establishment. Now, as you may have read here, this couldn't have been a Russian missile because it missed -- and the UB Post article mentions that "Last year, students at the Tavan Tolgoi peacekeeping training area accidentally fired a military-use rocket... as a helicopter flew by..." Hmmm.

Incidentally, EZnis is the newest domestic airline in Mongolia, and supported by a grant from the US Trade Development Agency. If you check travel advisories issued by the State Department, you'll see that US government personnel are currently "prohibited" from flying MIAT (and apparently Air Mongolia did not pass its safety inspection in October and is grounded for now). If you fly in and out of Chinggis Khan airport, you'll see the plane graveyard on the south end of the runway. There are some cool Soviet helicopters and a bunch of wooden-framed biplanes out there, too.

Having said that, these were new Saab airplanes, the staff was polite and bi-lingual, and there was food and beverage service on our 75min flight. Shame our own airlines have forgotten customer service like that.

But now: back to the taiga...



This is just a short clip of one of our favorite camp deer, Whitey. As you can see, he/she isn't particularly phased by our being here. As you can also see, most of the deer have a simple bridle that passes under their jaw, splits, and passes either side of the antlers. A fair number of the deer had one or other antler trimmed to prevent them from being overly dominant in the herd. When select deer are harnessed, they are saddled in (what Vitebsky identifies as) the Sayan-style with the saddle behind the shoulders and using stirrups.

And here's a gratuitous picture of me wrastling one of the camp dogs. There were at least a half-dozen either tethered out as watch dogs or just wandering loose. And while I am always cautious about approaching strange dogs, all three of the dogs I really played with clearly knew what play was -- and so we'd have a great time each time they came over. Stay tuned for more.

the places you'll go...

Well, we got back into Ulaan Baatar last night after six days in the frozen north. And there was definitely an air of the Dr. Seuss to it all -- on the one hand a little surreal, but on the other, just so different to be mind-boggling. Two things did become immediately apparent:

* There is no camera lens wide enough to capture Mongolia.
* Words can come close, but only if you take scene by scene apart and try to treat each one on its own. I am going to have to attempt a few sketches rather than try to sum it all up -- in part because the experience in part and whole has an element of magical realism to it.

I will say this first: we were blessed with a great driver, Rinchen, and a great cook, Baagi, all courtesy of the folks at Hovsgol Travel. It sounds a little schwanky to say we booked through a travel company and had a driver and cook, but we might seriously have stood a good chance of dying if we hadn't. This is not to say we had near-death experiences or that these guys insulated us from hardship, but it is to say that visiting the Tsaatan is not something you just decide to do by yourself. If anyone is contemplating a trip to Mongolia, all three of us would heartily recommend contacting these folks and seeing what they can do for you.

Exhibit A: When we were told it would probably be an 12-hr cross-country trip to get to the Tsaatan winter grazing grounds, they were only exaggerating slightly. It took 11-hrs of what can only be likened to an 11-hr rugby or hockey game. I will post video once we get back to the US because Annie's internet connection can be finicky uploading big video files. This first pic was taken at our first pee-stop -- and this is a great stretch of road. We are actually in the middle of a herd of yak, who seemed entirely diffident to our being there. And yes, you can tell this is a 'main road' because there's a power line alongside it. The first part of the trip took us up to Ulaan-Uul -- which as the Wikipedia entry tells you is "the southern part of the Darkhad valley, a basin that is considered remote even by Mongolian standards." As that entry also tells you, we did pass over the Öliin davaa pass -- and this second pic is of the ovoo there, the totemistic cairns that mark almost every significant pass in Mongolia.

Exhibit B: One of the interesting things we all noticed as we drove north was that while there were still plenty of gers to be seen, town (som) architecture was now primarily wooden. As we drove north from Ulan-Uul, we passed through the village of Tsaagan-Nuur where we checked in at the local military checkpoint. As I had mentioned before, we needed a special permit to be this far north and so close to the Russian border. We wondered at the landscape everywhere we went, but couldn't also help imagining how beautiful it must be in summer once the rivers had melted and green had returned to the countryside.

Rinchen's genius as a driver quickly became obvious once we left the town to get to the grazing grounds some 30km away. (I don't know the actual distance, and speculate that '30km' is the generic distance used in Mongolia to describe symbolically how far away from civilization you are and that you are now in the hoodoo, the countryside.) I realized having driven some 'rough' timber roads in Maine in the winter that his genius was not just getting there but getting there so you could get back. There is no tow truck that will come get you if you break a leaf-spring or blow your transmission. And once we had left Tsaagan-Nuur, we were on tracks that were primarily intended for use by horses not forgons. While it was relatively rodeo-like, watching him thread this 4x4 van through the trees was pretty impressive.

We stayed in a family's ortz, for which the closest analogy would be to a Native American tepee. There are probably many analogies that could be made between the Tsaatan and the indigenous groups of North America -- and interestingly, one of the Tsaatan men had said that he had seen pictures of Colorado in a magazine and wondered if where we were was actually similar. And in many ways it is.

Exhibit C: We knew there were reindeer around as several would come up to you as you stepped out the ortz and follow you, wanting to eat the now-salty snow where you had been to the bathroom. But when we woke up the next morning, it had clouded over and as we wandered from the trees out into the taiga it was like being in a Rick Bass short story (as Annie said) and a Russell Chatham painting. The light and cloud cover put a veil over everything, muting the whites, greys, buffs, and browns of the landscape and the deer, the tsaa. Just as you would focus on a feature, an ortz, a tree, the shamanistic khadag tied to a tree for good fortune, a shape would move and you'd realise it was a deer.

Here's me with a handsome looking deer. It seemed they would turn them out at night and then bring them in and tether most of them during the day. I'm not sure if this was to give them better predator protection during the night (they could at least try to out-run a wolf, a chon, in the dark) and to keep them relatively domesticated during the day. On a side note, I would heartily recommend Pier's Vitebsky's The Reindeer People if you are interested in reindeer herding culture.

This is a nice picture of Meg reading inside the ortz, but more importantly a nice pic of Annie-bagsh helping one of the young women in camp, Saren, with her English. As it was the last time, it was incredible having Annie with us to translate. While Mongolians are generally highly literate and multi-lingual -- it's a safe bet to say that, as a percentage, more Mongols know more English than Americans do Mongolian -- we could not have done the things we did without her there. (Generally, the folks at Hovsgol Travel will also send you out with a translator, as well as a driver/cook.) But it was fantastic to see her help this young woman work through her English -- and also remark on how relatively useless the English she was learning might be to her life. This is no different from most foreign-language learning programs -- I remember the useless things I learned while learning French and German. Meg used to teach ESL and has some experience trying to help non-native speakers learn what will actually be useful to them -- as opposed to what will merely stigmatise them further.

Enough for now. I need breakfast. There will be a lot more.