May 20- The World Premiere of film on Nantucket's Historic Coloured Cemetery

 A busy day at the Maple Leaf and Eagle Conference.

 Today was jam packed.

Chancellor, U of Helsinki

  We arrived at the conference around 9 a.m. to register. That was followed by a two-hour opening ceremony. Speakers included ___, who chairs the conference, Mikko Saikku, and the former chair, ____, both friends of Fran and Al's. In fact, Mikko was a student of Al's.

  The Canadian ambassador and the American chargé d'Affairs also gave brief remarks. The Canadian's was excellent, talking about the challenges facing the world with subtle references to the present American administration. The American's was brief and weak; of course, he is a political appointee. Sales of jets was prominent.

 

Mikko Saikku introducing Charles Postel

The keynote was given by Charles Postel who is teaching in Finland this year. It was excellent, comparing the Age of McKinley to the MAGA era. He talked about the difference between the McKinley tariffs and those of Trump, the latter being more "destablizing."  He traced the resiliency of the far-right from the Klan to John Birch to the Tea Party to MAGA. It was pertinent to the project Barbara has been working on. Overall, it was quite pessimistic noting the inadequacies of the Constitution with its archaic electoral college and rural hold on the Senate and the House due to their oversized role, making a state like Wyoming having their people's vote counting a great deal more than the  people's vote in California.

    Seminars and workshops followed for the rest of the day all on North American Culture with the theme of Crises, past and present

    The three of us met up for lunch at the cafeteria.

Question and Answer Period

    Our film was the last session of the day and was well attended. We had a positive Q and A at the end. We were all very, very pleased.

   

At Allus Restaurant dinner

Sea bass, main dish - mmmm

 The day culminated at Allas Restaurant on the waterfront. The three of us took an Uber there, but walked home. We sat with Nina Ohman, a professor at the University whose Ph.D. is in American music - Jazz, plus American blues specifically women such as Mahalia Jackson. She had played basketball at the U of Maryland and participated in March Madness.