POSTING #118

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NOTE

In my last Posting---#117 at the end of May---I said I hoped that June would bring better weather after a damp and dismal spring.

It did.

June was a fine month with a good mix of sun, heat and showers. The shrubs and flowers we had planted last fall grew like crazy, and I was able to lick the front and back gardens into shape.

I was also able to start tackling some others issues around the house, especially organizing my study, the garage, the work room and the 'storeroom' (a basement room full of unopened moving boxes and furniture, dishes, pots and pans etc., 'things that we might want in the future---you never know').

They say that a rolling stone gathers no moss, but rolling Hunters have sure gathered a lot of stuff.

I would like to complete this work---in effect, to finish moving in---and I am going to ask if you would let me continue my 'blog-holiday' through July.

I will be back with a new blog, #119, on August 7, and will then have regular weekly Postings.

I promise.

In the meantime, here is a story that came to mind as I was going through a box of files from our Russian project.

I hope you enjoy it.

See you on August 7th!

Fiftieth Wedding Anniversary

Pat and I were married on June 24th, 1961 so this was our 50th anniversary. Our children hosted a party at the Arts and Letters Club in Toronto last Sunday, June 26th.

Here is a slideshow that they put together for the party, with photos of the immediate and extended families, and some witty multiple choice quizzes.

(One can view it as a slideshow or just browse through the pictures and quizzes.)

I have attached at the end of the Posting some pictures taken at the party by Pat's cousin, Catherine George (thanks Catherine for permission to use the photos!)

Preparing Canadian Consultants for the Cultural Challenges of Russian Dinners

In May 1995, we were getting ready to launch our project to help create model employment offices from Moscow to the Pacific Ocean. As part of that effort, we brought together for a week-long orientation session the 30 or so Canada Employment officials from across Canada who had volunteered to work in Russia.

Rather than rent hotel space in Ottawa, we took over a summer resort located between Ottawa and Kingston on the Rideau River. It had agreed to open a weekly earlier than the usual May 24th weekend opening, and to let us have the whole facility for our training.

The resort was ideal for an orientation session. We lived in comfortable cottages surrounding the main building that housed the dining room, and recreation rooms that we turned into meeting rooms. There were no city distractions, just pine trees, birds and the meandering river.

During the week we covered the tasks to be performed in Russia and provided training on matters such as how to travel to and in Russia, how to hire and work with interpreters, how to stay safe and healthy, and so on.

Consultants who had worked in Russia on other projects shared their experiences with our recruits.

In planning the orientation training we wanted to give the recruits a taste of a formal Russian dinner and especially the toasts---and the vodka. We decided to turn the last dinner, on Thursday evening, into a Russian dinner, and the resort agreed to get a liquor licence so we could have vodka with our meal.

Toasts in Russia are a highly developed art form and foreigners can appear to be boorish if they don't understand the tradition. The toasts have to include lavish praise for the hosts, patriotic comments about the motherland and commitments to work together for the mutual benefit of everyone, etc etc.

And, of course, vodka can be deadly for foreigners if they don't know how to handle it.

I have very positive memories of the week's orientation sessions in general but the dinner is another matter.

I made two mistakes that led to an embarrassing incident that can still jolt me awake at three A.M.

The first mistake came from performing a good deed (a New York friend likes to say that no good deed goes unpunished).

During the week, the owner of the resort came to me and said that some locals had seen activity at the resort and wondered if they could have dinner on Thursday evening. Would it be possible, he asked, to have three or four tables of outsiders at our special dinner, if the tables were set apart from our own, although in the same room?

As I mentioned, the agreement with the resort had been that we would have exclusive use of all the facilities for the week.

I should have said 'no' but the resort had been wonderfully helpful and obliging, and I knew that after being closed all winter the resort could use the extra revenue.

I agreed.

Big mistake!

The dinner started well. Between the salad and the soup courses, I made a toast in which I tried to capture the style and content of a typical Russian toast. We drained our vodka glasses and I sat down.

I noticed the outsiders, who seemed to be mainly retired folks, were watching us in that particularly Canadian way of trying not to appear to be watching.

Our recruits took turns at standing up and delivering toasts and they did well.

One of our people had done graduate work in Russia and he followed his toast with an invitation for us to join him in singing the Volga Boatmen song. He had a fine voice and was able to sing the words in Russian. He taught us some of the words of the refrain, and feeling a pleasant glow from the vodka, everyone joined in enthusiastically. (Click here for the Red Army Choir's rousing version of the song via YouTube.)

The outsiders continued their 'I'm watching-but-I'm-pretending-not-to-watch' observation of what was going on.

I was feeling quite happy at this point. The recruits were getting a pretty authentic experience of a convivial Russian dinner.

Then the recruit who had led us in the Volga Boatmen song, demonstrated that he was more than just a song man, he could dance as well. Squatting low on his haunches, he started a Cossack dance. Kicking one leg out after another while shouting Cossack cries, he wound his way among our tables. He was remarkably good (we later learned that he was a dance instructor in his spare time).

At this point, the outsiders gave up any pretence of not watching. They stopped eating and stared as our fellow whooped and hollered around the tables.

This was when I made my second mistake.

I began to worry that the outsiders might take away the impression that these were public servants---which they were (except for me, I was retired).

And horrors of horrors, that these public servants were drinking vodka.

And that the vodka was probably being paid for by Canadian taxpayers.

I knew that the dinner with its toasts was a perfectly legitimate training exercise. I also knew that the vodka was coming from money provided, not by Canadian taxpayers, but through our project contract with the Russian government.

But it could look bad and I began to see headlines in the Globe and Mail.

I kicked myself that I had agreed to let outsiders into our dinner.

I don't know whether the devil made me do it, or whether it was the vodka consumed to that point but I made a decision that has troubled me ever since.

I decided to use a little dose of what I believe is called 'disinformation' in the intelligence business. Leaning over to a person who was about to propose a toast, I suggested that he begin by saying, "We would like to thank out employer, XYZ, for making this dinner possible". (I am using XYZ instead of the name we actually used---that of a well-known high tech firm.)

Other persons in their toasts repeated that line and some embellished it with comments about what an intelligent, forward-thinking employer XYZ was.

The dinner wrapped up with more praise for XYZ, and then we left for our cottages.

As I was going down the steps from the dining room, one of the outsiders, an elderly woman with a cane, was having trouble with the steps. I gave her my arm and helped her to the bottom of the steps.

When we reached the bottom, she asked, "Are you really with XYZ?"

I replied that we weren't, but before I could explain who we were and the purpose behind the dinner, she cut in angrily, "I didn't think you were".

She gave me a fiercely disapproving look, and then headed for her car.

At that point I began to realize just how silly my little attempt at 'disinformation' had been.

From a training point of view the dinner had been a great success. The participants learned some valuable lessons about toasting---and about vodka---that helped them in their subsequent missions to Russia. And we identified a couple of persons who needed some special coaching on how to handle vodka.

But the disapproval of the elderly woman with the cane still makes me cringe when I recall her angry comment, "I didn't think you were".


Pictures of the 50th Anniversary

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See you on August 7th for Posting #119 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or email me at johnpathunter@gmail.com.