journal features

hello, Baddeck

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Halifax, 2003.10.28

We checked out the Bell museum in Baddeck this morning, because the weather was really rough. The front we'd skirted the night before had stalled along Cape Breton, and was thrashing the region with 110 kph winds and lots of rain. At the museum, I learned of a new writing system invented by Bell and his father to help the deaf to speak. It looked quite interesting, as it used written shapes based on the parts of the mouth that are active during speech. In this way, a shape for the sound 'mm' includes a warbling of the back of the throat, a pursing of the lips, and a curl for the tongue. The letter looks like a mix between a 'p', an 'e', and a 't'.

Things eased up a bit by midday and we hit the Cabot Trail. The sky was still strongly overcast, but the scenery was as impressive as we'd hoped. I blasted through three roles of film.

After nightfall - witnessed in the Acadian town of Cheticamp, where at 4:30 we finally found lunch (most of the trail's towns being in 'off season' mode already) - I drove the remainder of the distance back to Halifax. In addition to the dark and the rain, there were moose and deer to contend with (well, the signs said so, anyway; we didn't see any of the animals). It was a bit nerve-wracking, and I was exhausted by the time we got in at around 10:30. We'd pushed on because we had to get Chako out to the airport the next day.

rand()m quote

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

—Michael Crichton