Fantastic post! I look forward to reading Part II.
However, I can't resist responding to a few bits.
1. Are you sure East of the Sun, West of the Moon is Slavic? I've only run into it as Nordic.
2. *grins* That was exactly my impression of Paris: friendly, competent, helpful, clean, and full of good humour. The 'clean' is probably because I'd been in London, which was grimy, but the rest was really just how I found Paris.
3. The idea that native American cultures are all one is most frustrating if one wants to follow up on anything one encounters. My daughter's music class is an American franchise, and they keep trying to provide cultural diversity by having occasional 'American Indian' songs. The tunes and concepts may be that, but the words are pretty definitely English, and the complete lack of specific attribution makes the tokenism even more obvious than teaching these songs to New Zealand kids instead of local songs does, somehow. (It's a pity, because the class is otherwise fantastic.)
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Date: 8 Sep 2010 09:53 am (UTC)However, I can't resist responding to a few bits.
1. Are you sure East of the Sun, West of the Moon is Slavic? I've only run into it as Nordic.
2. *grins* That was exactly my impression of Paris: friendly, competent, helpful, clean, and full of good humour. The 'clean' is probably because I'd been in London, which was grimy, but the rest was really just how I found Paris.
3. The idea that native American cultures are all one is most frustrating if one wants to follow up on anything one encounters. My daughter's music class is an American franchise, and they keep trying to provide cultural diversity by having occasional 'American Indian' songs. The tunes and concepts may be that, but the words are pretty definitely English, and the complete lack of specific attribution makes the tokenism even more obvious than teaching these songs to New Zealand kids instead of local songs does, somehow. (It's a pity, because the class is otherwise fantastic.)