My French friend Marko laughed today when I said I had just learned an amusing new expression - the French word for "pothole": nid de poule, or "chicken's nest". A flyer came in the post a few days ago talking about this perennial Montreal complaint, with a picture of a squawking chicken and the tag line "A nice word for an unpleasant problem". M. told me that when the potholes get really big, they're called nids d'autruche - ostrich nests. I'm especially aware of potholes now that I ride a bike practically everywhere I go - the other day we (my bike and I) avoided one that was practically as big as we were, near Place des Arts. No feathered culprits around but pigeons, though...
May 15, 2005
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Who was Cassandra?
In the Iliad, she is described as the loveliest of the daughters of Priam (King of Troy), and gifted with prophecy. The god Apollo loved her, but she spurned him. As a punishment, he decreed that no one would ever believe her. So when she told her fellow Trojans that the Greeks were hiding inside the wooden horse...well, you know what happened.
