Can't Everyone Just Learn the Radio Alphabet?

When you work with the radio alphabet every day, the "letters" become just letters. When I hear "Juliet" on the radio I don't have to remove the association with Shakespeare, or my grade two classmate before I can extract the J and picture it painted on the side of a helicopter or written on a chart as part of a VOR identifier. Pilots never say "J as in Juliet". It's just Juliet.

I understand that if you don't have this set of words attached to letters, that when I spell "Foxtrot Lima India Golf Hotel Tango" you can't untangle the mental images of ballroom dancing, beans, llamas, Sikhs, Gandhi, putting greens and room reservations from the letters fast enough to write down the word. And I understand that you have to search for words that match each letter if you're spelling to me. I got "Walrus" and "Nectar" in a phone readback from someone recently, and I thought it was sweet. Such readbacks are always slow enough that I can picture a tusked walrus and a honeybee perched on a flower, and still have plenty of time to write down W and N.

Recently I had to make a train reservation that resulted in my making a phone call to Germany. It's some special train that doesn't let me book online. Or that's what Google translate says the website told me. After I somehow managed to navigate a German phone menu, and heard a lot of recorded messages in German on hold, I got to talk to a person who greeted me with what was probably "Thank you for calling the big Germany train company, how may I help you." I don't speak German. I offered "Sprechen zie Inglish bitte?" I don't write German, either. The answer was "Nein." If you speak even less German than I do, that means I asked if she spoke English and she said no. Fair enough. Ball's in my court. I did, after all, call her, after navigating a website in German and getting them to send me a quote. In German. I'm not going to give up now.

Often Europeans say they don't speak a language when they mean they aren't qualified to conduct customer service in it. I offer French and perhaps should have tried every other language in which I was capable of performing the transaction, because you don't get through school in most European countries without a foreign language, but she doesn't offer anything to negotiate in counter to my French, so we're going to try this in German.

I have a file number and I know the numbers in German. If I can get her to find my file, containing my itinerary and then I say "Ja. Das is gut." I can probably give her my credit card number and be done with this. But my file number has letters in it. The radio alphabet is international, right? And trains are like planes, so they, like cops, maybe can do this. I try boldly with "mine nomer ist Sieben Romeo..." I think she figured out the Romeo, but there's a Z and a Y and she's not getting them at all. In retrospect I might have been able to come up with Fffff - Volkswagen, Zzzzz - zee, but I don't know any German words that start with Y. I'm a little disappointed in myself for not solving this problem, 'cause you've got to know how proud I would be to have conducted a transaction on the phone in German. Fortunately the operator managed to find me someone who spoke English and I got my ticket.

I could also have got a German-speaking friend to make the call for me. I even have a German friend who is a train expert and suspect he would have enjoyed finding me a better ticket price and finishing the transaction for me. Lots of things I could have done. Crashing and burning in a telephone call is so much less hazardous than doing so in an airplane that I don't spend nearly as much time planning for unexpected situations, but contingency planning is still a grand thing. And so is the radio alphabet.

It turns out that most of the letters sound just like English, with just enough sounding like something completely different that we could have had massive confusion. I'm guessing from the video that NO German words start with Y, and I don't think I would have guessed Ypsilon. Maybe "Inglisch Yes" would have worked, but then how many English speakers know to spell ja with a J?

Alternative Transportation

I think I may have already posted this photograph, but it's a response to a commenter who wanted to ensure that people didn't think all of the US was inhospitable to pedestrians. This sign clearly indicates a city where multiple types of non-car locomotion are encouraged with dedicated lanes and routes. I have never seen an on-street skateboard facility anywhere else. I know it was in the U.S. and I'm pretty sure it was in Portland, Oregon.

In answer to a comment a few days ago asking about what happens to bicycles if they are abandoned when the owner moves or dies, they have a department responsible for collecting abandoned or badly parked bicycles. They register them and make them available to be reclaimed, resold, donated or destroyed as appropriate.

I tried to rent a bicycle in Texas today. A bicycle does not appear to be a vehicle one can rent here. Just out of interest, do you live in a town where a person can rent a bicycle? And while I'm at it, did your parents buy you a car? Did you buy your child(ren) a car? Did most people in the class have parent-provided cars? I get e-mails all the time from teenagers who want to learn to fly and don't know where they could get the money. They seem earnest enough that if they were sitting on a car they'd sell it and spend the money on flight training.

You can rent bikes in all the cities where I've lived, and if you ask nicely at a bike shop, you can sometimes get a loaner bike to ride while yours is in for repairs. My first bicycle was parent-provided, but when I wanted a better one, with gears and caliper brakes, I had to save up to pay half.

Ville de Montréal

There's no problem getting my required rest, as I have the next day off. I've spent enough time in Montréal in the past that I'm not interested today in seeing the museums and cathedrals, nor overeating on smoked meat and poutine. It's nice to be back in a big Canadian city, with every amenity I could possibly want, and a few old friends live here too.

One of my co-workers complains about the signs being in French, making it hard to get around. Funny, it's one of the things I like about the place. I don't think it's much harder to get around than any other city. Right turns on red are forbidden by default in the city. It has your typical maze of crooked downtown one-way streets, turn restrictions and bridges forking into highway ramps, but I don't recall any signs that didn't conform to international standards. You don't have to read more than a highway number and an arrow to take the proper exit from an overpass. I guess there are people who don't know their ouest from their est, but that's about the only source of confusion I see. My colleague, and others I've spoken with, feel that the French are being deliberately difficult, but I would say that Québec is more accommodating to English speakers than the rest of Canada is to French speakers.

It's true that language laws restrict the display of English signage, resulting in what to me is an amusing forest of signs advertising goods and services with familiar logos but twisted names and slogans. Canadian corporations go to some trouble concocting names that work equally well in both official languages, like the former Canadi>n Airlines, using a chevron to cover the difference between the French and English spelling.

I'm proud of my country's history, and that includes both solitudes. Quebec is a nation within a nation. It is different, and in a more significant way than Newfoundland is different from Alberta. I don't believe that the culture and language of a people should be subjugated just because their ancestors lost a battle two hundred odd years ago. I'm pretty sure it was exigency not planning that left society and legal system of Lower Canada unchanged after the English victory, but I like the resulting plurality of my country. I see what happens in countries where nationalists of once-independent states are suppressed. Heck, it happened here in Canada the 70s, before the laws. Now the quebecois are more confident in the security of their culture, so there is no need to kidnap cabinet ministers. Sure, some tourists are confused. Other tourists enjoy an exotic experience without leaving their own continent. And you have to get pretty far from the cities before a plaintive, "Does anyone speak English, please?" wouldn't be met with help. Get far enough north and people don't speak much English, but keep going north and they don't speak much French either. How's your Cree? Damn, I love my country and all its crazy languages and cultures.

Montréal has excellent public transit. I take a bus to the metro and buy a six-pack of metro tickets in anticipation of a few more snow days.`(A "snow day" is what you call it when school is cancelled because there is too much snow for the snowploughs to get through).

Nothing To Do

My client calls me in my hotel room at nine this morning and says, "there's nothing for you to do today. You have the day off." I thank him, and assure him I'll have my cellphone with me if he needs anything, and smile to myself. Just because he has nowhere for me to fly today doesn't mean I have nothing to do. My day's to do list already includes:

• order nasal cannulas
• buy charts
• find out the contact person for permission to access restricted airspace
• find shop that can do 100 h mx check
• buy garbage bags
• send weekly paperwork to boss
• buy antiseptic wipes for the icky masks, pending the arrival of the cannulas (cannulae?)

But I'll let the client maintain the illusion that I'll do nothing all day.

It's quarter to twelve when I'm done the paperwork and finished all I can do in the way of maintenance and airspace related phone calls and e-mails. I log on to the Utah public transit website to find out when the next bus downtown is. They have the usual little app that allows me to tell it where I am, where I want to go and when, so I punch in that data, telling it I want to leave at noon. I figure I can walk to the bus stop by then.

The application comes back and tells me to board a bus at 11:46. That's now. I click on the route schedule to find out when the next one is. Over four hours from now. Hmm. Time for Plan B. It turns out that the business/church association runs a free shuttle from the airport to downtown, intended to lure travellers with long stopovers into the temple and/or local stores. And my hotel has a free shuttle to the airport. I combine these to good effect and am soon downtown, at Temple Square.

My last night's hosts had warned me that the free tour of the square was weak on history and long on religion, but I could stand to learn more about the local religion, so I attended. The tour guides were young women, missionaries who had signed up for an eighteen month mission anywhere in the world, and they found themselves in Utah. The tour had a little of the aspect of watching news videos posted online, where you have to listen to the commercials in order to get to the content. So we would get a little spiel on the first Mormon commandment of faith, as 'background' and then some historical information. The guides took us to a room that looked out on the Temple Square buildings, and which was surrounded by busts of Mormon prophets. The first was Joseph Smith, the founder of the religion, then Brigham Young who led the faithful to Utah, and at least a dozen, maybe two dozen, more all around the outside of the room. They had somehow managed a continuous succession of prophets. I wondered how they went about finding the next prophet, after one died. Was the next identified as a child, like the Dalai Lama? Elected by the elite, like the Pope? Elected generally like the President? I asked, and they explained that each new prophet is chosen by and from the ranks of the apostles of the previous one, through prayer and consensus.

Next I toured the house of Brigham Young, where my guides were from Brazil and Italy. We saw the furnishings and restored interior of the house he had built and in which he lived and entertained visiting dignitaries. I had noticed by this point that all the missionaries carried around a copy of The Book of Mormon, much the way Phil has to be within reach of is flight attendant manual. (Thanks to Phil, I was momentarily distracted from the presentation by the idea of a doubly burdened Mormon flight attendant. Yes, Phil and I are trying to arrange to meet up, but when two people are in aviation, meeting is complicated.) Eventually I asked one of the guides if I could see her Book. She said of course, and I sat down to look at it. It read, and I hope I can say this without offending anyone, much like a book of the Bible it supplements. Records and prophesies and stories and lo and beholds. I didn't read enough to see anything reportable, I was just looking to see what it was that Joseph Smith had written. I was wondering to myself at how prolific this man had been, when the missionary mentioned that the book was written in 600 AD. That didn't line up with what I thought I knew. She said that the book, actually engraved plates, dated to the year 600, and had been passed from prophet to prophet until it reached the last one, Moroni, who had no one to give it to, because the people of Jerusalem had become wicked. So he hid it in the ground. This really didn't match what I knew of this being a very recent religion, and one founded in the US.

I asked something like, "But ... six hundred .. Joseph Smith?" The Italian Sister's English was not perfect. She perhaps said the wrong word or number somewhere.

But no, she went on and explained that the last prophet Moroni appeared to Joseph Smith as a resurrected being and revealed to him where the gold plates bearing these scriptures were hidden. He unearthed them and translated them.

"And where were they?" I asked.

The answer was an exotic name that I didn't recognize, so I asked where that was.

"New York."

"New York? United States New York?"

Yes. That New York. Okay, the language barrier had caused some problem here. "How did they get to New York?"

"By boat."

Eventually, after a bit of back and forth, it dawned on me. "This was a trip from Jerusalem to New York that ... most people don't know about. It isn't recorded in ... regular history?"

And she confirmed it. Wow, this religion is starting to sound like an Indiana Jones movie.

"What language were they written in?" I asked.

The answer was in the Egyptian language, but with the Hebrew writing system. The Sister anticipated my next question and warned that this part might be hard to understand, but Joseph Smith was not a very educated man, he translated the plates using the power of God. Given the biblical story of the tower of Babel, and even some non-religious stories of people understanding foreign speech in extremis, that didn't really stand out as the astonishing part of the story. I'd just been told that there was a historical artifact, a written record of biblical times that had been found on North American soil. And I'd never even heard of it! Was this religion so persecuted that something like that could be covered up?

"Where are the plates now?" I asked.

She explained that there are replicas of some of them in the museum, but at that time the people were wicked and they could see that Joseph had these things that looked like gold, and they wanted them, so the angels took them back for safekeeping.

And the act of translation was the hard to grasp part? And then I had a little revelation of my own. All religions are based on faith, faith in something that appears fantastical to someone who does not have that faith. And once you believe in something that others don't, it doesn't really matter how convoluted it is, it's your faith. And perhaps the strength of the faith that is required to support the beliefs is a strength that carries one through adversity, such as the mountains of Utah, the Nazi concentration camps, or simply the horrors of grade nine in high school. It's likely that every single person in the world believes something that I don't. I am absolutely not going to judge or condemn them for that. I'm sure I believe some things that other people find highly unlikely. It would appear that regardless of their beliefs that these people work hard for themselves and to deliver humanitarian relief as well as evangelism to people who need it.

I did not tell the nice woman that her faith was an Indiana Jones movie, already written and ready to be scored by John Williams. I do keep an eye out for evidence that Joseph Young wore a fedora or carried a bullwhip.

I continued walking around Temple Square, looking at fountains and sculptures and monuments. Here's a detail from one commemorating "Brigham Young and the Pioneers," the first group of people to make that trek through the mountains to find this place. The plaque lists all their names, with stars next to those still alive at the time of the engraving. As you can see from the picture, this was summarized as 143 men, 3 women and 2 children, along with assorted animals. The male-female ratio struck me as an odd foundation for a polygamous society that rejects homosexuality, but apparently that group was merely the vanguard, the next year hundreds more people joined them. I counted the names to see if the "colored servants" listed separately at the end counted as men, and they did. Depictions on the monument also acknowledge the Ute Indians and the hunters and trappers who had made it to the valley before the pilgrims.

I had lunch at a restaurant called The Lion House, a historic home also on Temple Square. It was cafeteria style, quite good food and they offered Jell-O among the desserts. I was sorry to observe that there was no green, only red and orange, so I still haven't had the Utah state food. I had black forest cake instead.

I walked from Temple Square up the hill to the State Capitol. I learned about something called book cut marble, the way patterns like the one in the picture above are produced. The marble is cut four times as thick as it needs to be, then sliced in half like a layer cake, and then those leaves are again sliced, allowing the grain of the marble to form a fourfold symmetrical pattern. I spotted this mural of Brigham Young arriving in the valley. It appears that he did have a fedora. Perhaps his bullwhip is in the covered wagon.