First there were the various beefcake calendars put out by firemen to raise funds for burn units and the like. Then came “sex muffins of science,” another calendar (which I can’t find at the moment) of very good looking science nerds. Now there is a …
Continue readingAuthor: Mary Soderstrom
Recreating Eden: A Good News Story: Making Light with the Sun, Water and Liter Bottles
I was going to write about rising rates of poverty and inequality in Canada and the US today, but I came across this good news story. It’s a gray day, so why not focus on the light? The simple technology uses a liter of distilled water in a plastic …
Continue readingRecreating Eden: How to End Poverty and Make Democracy: Educate and Empower Women
This is book review week, when I lead discussions in four Montreal area libraries. In two of them, the book is Shlipi Somaya Gowda’s Secret Daughter, a novel about adoption and motherhood in India and North America that has surprised the publishing w…
Continue readingRecreating Eden: Debussy’s The Submerged Cathedral for the Day after the Tenth Anniversary
Debussy’s piano prelude is inspired by the idea of a cathedral that was submerged in some magical/mythic/horrible way. Beauty is not a stranger to disaster. I’ve long thought the shots of the Twin Towers’ ruins were magnificent. It would be nice to…
Continue readingRecreating Eden: Saturday Photo: More Hints of the Plateau’s Rural Past
Le Jeune street is only a block long, running between boulevards St-Joseph and Laurier in Montreal’s Plateau district. It doesn’t fit into the usual pattern, being too narrow and not hooking up with the rest of the grid. With one exception (somethin…
Continue readingRecreating Eden: Well Done: Sid Ingerman Takes First for Canada at the International Triathalon Competition in Beijing
The wonders of the internet allowed Sid Ingerman’s many friends to follow him to victory in his age group at the International Triathalon sprint championships in Beijing Saturday.Sid, 82, took up the sport after he retired from teaching economics at Mc…
Continue readingRecreating Eden: Yo Yo Ma Plays Murray Beethoven: Will the OSM Play It in Their New Concert Hall?
Jeanne’s been around for the last few days, and I’ve rediscovered some of the great bits from Seasame Street. This one actually dates from some time after Elin and Lukas were Sesame Street age, but Jeanne thinks it’s terrific. Obviously she loves mus…
Continue readingRecreating Eden: Changer Your Windows, Not the Reactor: How to Save Energy and Create Jobs
What is more energy effective, renovating a nuclear reactor or insulating houses?A new study by the Quebec group Ecohabitation says that refurbishing Hydro Québec’s one reactor to prepare it for 25 more years of service would cost more than putting…
Continue readingRecreating Eden: Nice to See Friends on the Scotia Bank/Giller Prize
The Long List for the Scotia Bank Giller prize has been announced, and I’m pleased to see several friends featured. Genni Gunn, with whom I worked several years on the Writers’ Union of Canada’s board, gets a nod for Solitaria, while David Homel’s …
Continue readingRecreating Eden: Jimmuy Zoubris and Politics: Citizenship, Hard Work, and Maybe Hope
We’ve traded at Zoubris since it opened. The stationery store on Park Avenue was where I sent faxes to my mother in her last days before her death in 1999, where all my novels have been copied before sending out to publishers, where I made a tee shir…
Continue readingRecreating Eden: Paul Krugman on Jobs This Labour Day
As usual Paul Krugman’s column in The New York Times is right on the money and particularly appropriate this Labour Day. As usual what he has to say has implications for Canada too:
The idea that” …fears of regulation and higher taxes are holding bu…
Continue readingRecreating Eden: Happy Labour (Or Labour) Day!
Never hurts to remember what led to this holiday of the end of summer. A classic version by Pete Seeger.
Continue readingRecreating Eden: Saturday Photo: The Return of the Pink Bicycle
As I make my rounds again in Outremont, I’m pleased to see that gardeners have done fun things again this year.
To the left is the 2011 version of the pink bicycle, a particularly nice one, I think. To the right is the one from 2007, the first year.
Continue readingRecreating Eden: A Song from a Tropical Fight for Freedom: Pete Seeger Sings José Martí’s Guantanamero
And further to tropical wars, here’s the wonderful Pete Seeger singing the Cuban song Guantanamera. Originally it was about a woman from Guantánamo, but Cuban patriot José Martí used it for his words about a simple man who was the hope of his count…
Continue readingRecreating Eden: Green Helmets (Not Green Berets) to Fight Strife Due to Climate Change?
The story’s apparently been around for a while, but I just came across it today when Le Devoir ran a front page item about how the UN may soon be sending “hreen helmets” into areas where climate change has led to strife. They would complement or repla…
Continue readingRecreating Eden: A Season for Endings: Gil Courtemanche Service Today
A writer friend just asked me if I were going to the ceremony for journalist and novelist Gil Courtemanche who died two days before Jack Layton did and whose farewell is this evening.
“Did you know him? Do you want to say good bye?”
No, I replied, …
Continue readingRecreating Eden: Are Books Dead–and What about Writers?
The Guardian has an interesting piece by Ewan Morrison on the end of publishing, and the rise of “free.” Worth reading if you’re a “content creator” or a reader.
Continue readingRecreating Eden: Pears Are Ripe: A Case of Benign Neglect?
Sunday evening in the middle of Irene, a young man knocked on the door and asked if he could climb in our backyard to take down some of the pears that remained on the trees in back. I said no because I knew just how hard the remaining fruit would be t…
Continue readingRecreating Eden: Good Sense from The Gazette, for Once: Leave the Car at Home
We’ve not been readers of The Gazette on a regular basis for years (long story, having in part to do with a class action I’m involved in against it) but today I was tempted to take a peak when Radio Can mentioned an editorial that for once makes sense….
Continue readingRecreating Eden: Saturday Photo: So This Is an Idea of What it Looks like..
This is probably the most eloquent pair of pictures before and after the fire. The small photos are what the staircase looked like the day afterwards, and the large one, what it looked like this week.
Much remains to be done, but we’re back in and …
Continue reading