Back to working on the next novel, called River Music. One of the main characters is a Canadian woman pianist who becomes celebrated, in part because her version of Debussy”s “Girl with the Flacen Hair” is used in one of the rare NFB feature films t…
Continue readingAuthor: Mary Soderstrom
Recreating Eden: Some Sounds Only Emerge from Cooperation: Montreal’s Musical Swings, a Lesson for Us All?
These musical swings (each one produced a particular tone) were around for a short period this spring, and I had hoped to try them out, but each time I passed they were full of delighted folk.
Let’s hope they’re put back at some time after the fest…
Continue readingRecreating Eden: As We Adjust to Our New/Old House: A Story about a Hobbit’s New/Old House
As I ran around trying to found what I’ve put away while admiring the nice things about our reconstructed house, I came across a story in today’s New York Times about a house for Hobbits in Montana. You can rent ilt for $245 a night, if you feel like…
Continue readingRecreating Eden: Putting out the Fires in Britain–and Elsewhere–Is Not Going to End Trouble: What Happens When the Social Contract Fails
The pictures of burning buildings in Britain are extremely disturbing, not least because we know first hand how much damage a fire can do. But the question arises: why? It seems too simple to blame it all on hooligans, because even hooligans have a r…
Continue readingRecreating Eden: Stephen Harper’s in Brazil: Dilma Smacks down Standard and Poor
Stephen Harper was in Brazil yesterday, and met with dthat country’s former guerilla president Dilma Rousseff. He listened, apparently, while she told reporters about how solide Brazil’s economy was and how Standard and Poor’s downgrading of the US wa…
Continue readingRecreating Eden: The Importance of "Legacy" Media in Telling It How It Is: The Case of The New York Times
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On of the pleasures of being back in an almost-settled house is that we have more time to intersting things. Friends called yesterday to ask if we’d like to see Page One, the documentary movie about The New York Times, and for the first time in ages…
Recreating Eden: Saturday Photo: Fruit Salad for an August NIght
First special dinner since we’ve moved back. Jeanne and her parents, paella and fruit salad with Ontario peaches and BC cherries. What a nice prospect!
Continue readingRecreating Eden: More Jobs, Maybe, But the US and the World Are Worrying about the Wrong Things.
Just in case you wondered if things were getting better, here’s a link to a breaking story in The New York Times. The job figures for July in the US were better than expected, but did that stop the fall in stock prices? No. After a brief rally, the…
Continue readingRecreating Eden: Excuse Me While I Pause for a Little Rest: the 400 Boxes are Unpacked…
The guy in this video is a piker–on 64 boxes. But we had similar surprises as we opened boxes. Perhaps it should be no surprise that I’ve filled 8 large garbage bags with stuff from files I’ve kept forever and ever, but never looked at.
Continue readingRecreating Eden: Recreating Eden 2011-08-03 08:26:00
Last week Elin and company spent time in Greater Chicago. She taught at the Viola da Gamba Society of America’s annual Conclave, and the rest of the family spent some time exploring the environs.One of the places they visited was Robie House (1910), F…
Continue readingRecreating Eden: Connection with the Universe Re-established, the 400 Plus Boxes are Opened…
but the stuff hasn’t been put away yet. The house is nearly as big a mess as the state of the world.I’ll be back with before- and after pix as soon as I can find my camera. In the meantime, I’ll continue to sort and wonder why Paul Krugman’s and The …
Continue readingRecreating Eden: More Than 400 Boxes: Going to Disconnect in Order to Reconnect
There is not likely to be much here over the next few days. The boxes arrived yesterday–something like 450 of them containing about 5,000 books and the various collections of decades in one house–and we’re going to spend the next little while sortin…
Continue readingRecreating Eden: Advice from Paul Krugman That Nycole Turmel and the NDP Should Find Useful
As usual, Paul Krugman today is right on the money. “Republicans have, in effect, taken America hostage,” he says. Part of the problem is “the cult of “balance,” the insistence on portraying both parties as equally wrong and equally at fault on any…
Continue readingRecreating Eden: WalMart Heiress Funds Big New Art Museum
As a sidebar to the previous posting about WalMart advertising on classical music stations, check out the interesting article in The New Yorker about WalMart heiress Alice Walton and her amazing art museum . She’s used a large part of her share of the…
Continue readingRecreating Eden: Advertising and Classical Music: If CBC/Radio-Canada Doesn’t Deliver, Private Stations Make Money
We’ve been listening to the commerical classical music station a lot over the last few months. Partly, it’s fatigue–there is so much to do just keeping afloat plus taking care of the house that neither of us has the energy to pick CDs to listen to in…
Continue readingRecreating Eden: Jack Layton: Another Fight for a Man of Courage
Shocked, although maybe not too surprised, to hear that Jack Layton is battling another cancer. Here’s a link to a place where you can send a message of encouragement to Jack Layton, one of Canada’s truly good guys. We need him badly.
Continue readingRecreating Eden: The Intimacy of Facebook and Men Who Cry in Public on It
Just a quick comment on the day the furniture comes back (the boxes including 5000 books arrive Thursday!): the most emotionally over-the-top posts I’ve seen on my Facebook network have come from men in the last week or so. One, who is someone whom I k…
Continue readingRecreating Eden: Saturday Photo: Hot Day, Light on Leaves
If you ever wondered about the value of street trees, here’s an object lesson. The trees across the street from our temporary digs shade the buildings there, which means they don’t receive nearly the same energy from the sun. The leaves are nearly bl…
Continue readingRecreating Eden: What Is That Mushroom Cloud Advancing on the City? Just an Amazing Thunderstorm?
This is a link from a friend from the storm we had Thursday night. The view from the terrace here was very similar, and I stood and watched the rising cloud for quite a while, as the lightning flashed. What it reminded me of was the photos of the A b…
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