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Andrea-- From what we've been hearing up here, the whole referendum business was significantly under-reported in the States until just this week when Americans, who have heard all of this before and always found it a false alarm, suddenly realised that it might just really happen (sort of like us) and have been trying to figure out what the heck is going on up here. Possibly the wave of map-redrawings to make political boundaries co=incide with ethnic ones over the past five years made it all seem more possible. What is the Anerican reaction? Puzzlement? Sympathy? Disbelief? An AMerican student in one of my classes a while ago asked me why we cared--why not just let them go? I think she was thinking about what if one state wanted to secede--ie, 1/50th of the country. I asked her how she'd feel if a strip down the middle of the country from Michigan to the Gulf of Mexico wanted out. That put things in a little better perspective. Did Parizeau's parting speech get reported in the U.S.? He blamed the defeat on "money and the ethnic vote." Even diehard PQ members could be heard to gasp. When he sobered up today (there is considerable genuine speculation that he was drunk at the time) he quit. The scary thing is that it's not over yet. Doug