background

All these petty errands I have to do now that Tim is done! Today I went for a police background check, I am now officially not a criminal. I had to hide myself from the new overzealous principal in the Saturday Dutch classes, because I worked without check until she arrived. So today I went for my background check. I had a very nice chat with a new immigrant from Nigeria. He was not the one that is sending me all these interesting emails, although he knew about them. He got a clean background too, so I think he was telling the truth. Background is a funny word. I once saw a Keith Haring drawing at an exhibition in Rotterdam. In it Keith misspelled the word background as backround. In Dutch you would never make that mistake; achter-grond. You *hear* the g. But back-round is plausible even for the meaning of the word. Certainly for artists. Makes it a really visual word. Google-hits on backround: 167.000! So much for linguistics from the cold ground.
By the way, the picture above is a postcard I purchased in the police station gift shop. Canada is a kindergarten.