Paul Krugman has it right again: “…extreme concentration of income is incompatible with real democracy. Can anyone seriously deny that our political system is being warped by the influence of big money, and that the warping is getting worse as t…
Continue readingAuthor: Mary Soderstrom
Recreating Eden: Saturday Photo: Dawn Redwood in the Cemetery
The redwoods and giant Sequoias of California were the mythic trees of my youth. Both the variety that grows in the Sierra Nevada and the one native to the coastal ranges were awe-inspiring, while walks in the groves were they grow remain exceedingly …
Continue readingRecreating Eden: Jeanne’s Favourite Picture: On Kids and Dogs and Population Control
Le Devoir columnist Josée Blanchette has a piece today about dogs and what a pain they are. Jeanne, who can not read of course, was taken by it nevertheless. The pictures of the dogs enchanted her. The one she liked the best is of the dog in a s…
Continue readingRecreating Eden: The Burning Bushes: Fall Lingers on
This morning I had an appointment on the other side of the mountain, so I walked across through Mount Royal Park. We didn’t get the snow storm that whipped the Northeast US into submission, and the leaves are lingering on the trees. The yellows and o…
Continue readingRecreating Eden: Quebec Won’t Help Finance Prisons: Another Reason for Federalism?
Quebec’s Justice Minister told a Commons committee yesterday that the province has no intention of paying for the prisons that the Harper government wants to build as a consequence of its omnibus crime bill. The CBC reports him saying that: “the Conse…
Continue readingRecreating Eden: Seven Million: How to Make the World a Better Place
The last few days the rapidly increasing numbers of humans have been getting a lot of press, probably well-merited. The New York Times had an interesting story yesterday about a campaign to link birth rates in the developed world with species extincti…
Continue readingRecreating Eden: Halloween: Obesity Versus the Occasional Splurge
This year it seems like Halloween has gone on forever. Today’s the day, and I expect not much is getting done in schools all across North America as kids parade around in their costumes and prepare for the candy gorge today. But there have been parti…
Continue readingRecreating Eden: Sunday Music: CBC Two/ Espace Musique Play an All-Day Concert of Serious Music
This is what the two services of the public broadcaster should be playing all the time: the very best in serious music by Canadian performers. Concert in CanadaandEspace Musique Why wait for the 75th birthday to do this, particularly when the Harper go…
Continue readingRecreating Eden: Saturday Photo: Rebuilding the Cemetery Gates
Who would have thought that climbing hydrangeas could do such damage? But given enough time and the cycle of freeze and thaw in this climate, and it probably should not be a surprise that the lovely vine–which covers the gates to the Mount Royal Ceme…
Continue readingRecreating Eden: Lessons from Iceland: Paul Krugman on How to Get out of a Crisis by Not Listening (Much) to the Right
For a long time I had a sticker from the Icelandic social democratic party, brought back by a young friend who’d spent some time in that small, rugged country in the 1980s. It’s gone now, cleaned of the fridge by zealous post-fire cleaning.In Iceland …
Continue readingRecreating Eden: Lighting up the Night: Diwali, Halloween or the Struggle Between Sweet and Salty
Lots of pumpkins yesterday at the Jean Talon Market, all ready to be carved for Halloween next week.I didn’t see anyone preparing lights for Diwali, though, whose beginning was celebrated by South Asians yesterday. It also is a festival of lights, an…
Continue readingRecreating Eden: Overkill: Stephen Harper’s Conservatives and the Long Gun Registry
I’d hoped it was dead, that ill-intentioned attempt to do away with Canada’s long gun registry. But it has arisen, like a zombie that turns even uglier at each resurrection. Now not only will the federal registry be abolished, but the records will be …
Continue readingRecreating Eden: Leonard Cohen Has New Meaning: First We Take Manhattan ….or Occupy Wall Street
A bard captures the spirit of his time. This song was written in the 1980s (the first time I heard it was in 1987 when driving across Sasketchewan) but ilt seems even more fitting today, given the movement to occupy the centers of power, and the strug…
Continue readingRecreating Eden: Suburbs Grow Poorer around US Cities: Hard Times Are Another Argument against Urban Sprawl
Suburbs are different in Europe and North America. In the former, for the last century and a half they have been where the poor lived, chased from the center of cities by development since the days of Haussmann’s reconstruction of Paris. In the latt…
Continue readingRecreating Eden: My Song: Belafonte’s Memoir: Entertainment, Workers, and Social Justice
One of the best books I’ve read in recent years is Lawrence Hill’s The Book of Negroes (Somebody Knows My Name in the US) It is the story of a woman born free in what is now Mali and who after crossing Atlantic three times dies in England in 1803 as t…
Continue readingRecreating Eden: Saturday Photo: From Zen to Wild Victorian on the Plateau
Sometimes the whole is different from the sum of its parts. In this case, the occupants of the first floor of this triplex from the end of the 19th century have turned their tiny front garden into a Zen-inspired oasis in the city.But step back a bit a…
Continue readingRecreating Eden: Saturday Photo: From Zen to Wild Victorian on the Plateau
Sometimes the whole is different from the sum of its parts. In this case, the occupants of the first floor of this triplex from the end of the 19th century have turned their tiny front garden into a Zen-inspired oasis in the city.But step back a bit a…
Continue readingRecreating Eden: Saturday Photo: From Zen to Wild Victorian on the Plateau
Sometimes the whole is different from the sum of its parts. In this case, the occupants of the first floor of this triplex from the end of the 19th century have turned their tiny front garden into a Zen-inspired oasis in the city.But step back a bit a…
Continue readingRecreating Eden: Saturday Photo: From Zen to Wild Victorian on the Plateau
Sometimes the whole is different from the sum of its parts. In this case, the occupants of the first floor of this triplex from the end of the 19th century have turned their tiny front garden into a Zen-inspired oasis in the city.But step back a bit a…
Continue readingRecreating Eden: Saturday Photo: From Zen to Wild Victorian on the Plateau
Sometimes the whole is different from the sum of its parts. In this case, the occupants of the first floor of this triplex from the end of the 19th century have turned their tiny front garden into a Zen-inspired oasis in the city.But step back a bit a…
Continue reading