I feel that I must unsubscribe for a little while to devote more time to studying French. I have been unfortunate or fortunate, as the case may be, working three of sometimes 3.5 days weekly as an accountant so I must spend more time studying if I have any hope of conversing on our trip to Provence in September with a group sponsored by Alliance Fran�aise. My wife seems to be a bit bothered by the time I spend holed up in my 'office' with the computer and the French books. The Hollywood video rental chain keeps a good supply of foreign films section with a lot of French films (with English sub-titles, for backup) and I hope that will help me some. It has been suggested to me to get a TV satellite dish to be able to get France's Channel 5, but I don't know that I want to go to that expense. I listen to Radio France Culture via the Internet but without any video reinforcement, that does not seem to help much. There is such a proliferation of emails in this group. So many of them are of an argumentative nature and so many others are seem very technical for me. When I have them before me I cannot resist reading every single one, so unsubscribing seems the only temporary solution. I will comment today about a French film given last night at Alliance Fran�aise. The metres were always subtitled in English as feet. I wish I knew who to write to complain but it wouldn't do any good, I don't suppose. Our teacher has to spend some time teaching the "French" measurements, to which I always sound off that it is now the International System used daily everywhere except in the USA. She keeps on referring to it as French, though. The absolute ignorance of my fellow American students about SI is frightening. Their ignorance of so-called familiar American units is just as appalling. I suppose that I will be back before long but right now I have hundreds of unread messages. I said I was going to unsubscribe once before for the same reason but never did. Norm
