The National Film board of Canada has issued box sets of Brault’s early work and vol. 1 of Perrault series. and these are dirt cheap — at least when ordered from http://www.archambault.ca (located in Montreal). Right now, Brault is my favorite Quebecois film maker (even edging out his childhood friend Claude Jutra).

I hope the NFB will issue more Brault material — especially a long-running series he created on the music of French North America (which I will never see if doesn’t appear on DVD).

I think when we’re young we seem more comfortable with these gaps and willing to work around them — as you get older self-consciousness accumulates, followed by regret. It can be psychologically gruelling for a person with a perfectionist mentality like me who rarely if ever achieves “perfection”.

The Perrault docs sound interesting — the only thing I’ve seen close to that are the docs by Michel Brault – you’ve seen some of those, haven’t you? The two I saw were a sunnier take on rural life with no sense of erosion in their cultural practices.

Hey did you follow the spelling bee this year? It got boffo coverage on ABC.

I admit the “verbal preview” serves as sort of a head fake – the shift in voice and tone that happens between it and the rest of the piece is perhaps too jarring – but like I said, I’m settling into this tone. I don’t think I’ll do it for every entry but evolution is definitely taking place, it seems.

If it is any comfort to you, Kevin — my late grandfather (mother’s father) was a hard-headed Irish-American — who didn’t much like talking on the phone in general — but was particularly nervous about long distance calls. No matter how long it had been since last talking, no matter how much one had to say — after a minute or two, he started getting antsy, saying “Long distance is expensive, this will cost too much”.

Another memory that this piece brings to mind — my father’s oldest half-sister (more than 20 years older), once came to visit from Croatia (long ago). Perhaps because we had no pre-existing bond, we had a wonderful time not (verbally) understanding each other — pointing to items and trying to exchange words for them. I can’t recall doing this with my father’s father in Croatian (as he did speak English) — but do remember him trying to recall the German he learned in elementary school — back when his country was Austria-Hungary. My father’s mother, on the other hand, never seemed to say anything in English (though she probably understood it a bit). For some reason, perhaps I was so young, I don’t recall any discomfort over the fact that I didn’t understand any of the words she said. ;~}

This piece is especially timely for me — as I have just finished watching the last of Pierre Perrault’s films documentaries about Ile au Coudres in Quebec. These capture a time of cultural and economic change (and loss) in the 60s — mainly as seen through the eyes of the old. It reminds me of my own experiences visiting my father’s relatives in Illinois at the same time. The railroad my grandfather had helped build in the 30s was bankrupt — and the traks he had helped lay were being ripped up. Farms in the suburbs of Chicago were becoming increasingly anachronistic… And yet the old folk, whose world was changing about them, retained a surprising amount of vitality.

Sorry for blathering on so… (but that was the effect your little piece had on me)..