Saturday Photo: Halloween…
Spent Wednesday afternoon making pumpkins with Jeanne. It’s very nice to have grandchildren since you have license to do all the artsy-craftsy things that you are supposedly too old to…
Mary Soderstrom
Saturday Photo: Burning Bush, Montreal Style
Justin Trudeau started out his stint as PM by telling the world on behalf of 35 million Canadians: “We’re back!” Those were good words to hear after nearly ten years…
They Ran from the Left, Will They Govern from the Right?
Canadians’ basic decency won yesterday, with the decisive defeat of Stephen Harper’s politics of fear and hate. Thank goodness! Now, however, Justin Trudeau’s Liberals will have to hold to their…
Saturday Photo: Even the Leaves Votes Red, Orange or Green
The election is on Monday, and it looks from here like a minority Liberal (red) government. The NDP (orange) stands to lose much of what it gained in the Orange…
Saturday Photo: The Path to Thanksgiving and a New Government
The leaves are beginning to turn colour here, and the sky is the brilliant blue that always makes me think of my mother quoting Helen Hunt Jackson’s poem about “October’s…
Saturday Photo: Roman Road and Road through Time
Here’s a photo of the Roman road at Conimbriga in central Portugal. It’s only one of the many roads I’m thinking about now, as I go back to the preliminary…
Up Next: Road through Time
Pleased to say that I’ve just signed a contract with the University of Regina Press to publish my next non-fiction book Road through Time, probably in Spring 2017. It’s about…
Saturday Photo: Dancing Grass
Just because it’s another nice weekend…
Required Reading for the Election Campaign: The Best Laid Plans by Terri Fallis
In my other life I lead book discussion groups in Montreal-area libraries, and, knowing that a federal election was coming up, I put Terry Fallis’s The Best Laid Plans on…
Saturday Photo: Cosmos, the End of Summer, Climate Change
I’ve always loved these sun-loving flowers. Cosmos are the stars of many gardens around here at this point in the cycle of the seasons. I suspect they won’t be so…
Saturday Photo: End of Summer and the Spiders are Busy
An Anyone who’s read Charlotte’s Web or gone walking early on a September morning knows that spiders are especially busy this time of year. This web was glowing in the…
Saturday Photo: Runners and Rainbows
The last long weekend of the summer, and the weather is wonderful here. No rain in sight, but I did find this rainbow when out walking this morning. The runners…
Saturday Photo: Back to School
This week Jeanne started kindergarten–hard to believe that she’s now five. Like millions of children in North America, she’s said good by to summer, and gone skippingly into a new…
The New Normal: How Social Networks Make "Migrating" Possible
Last year a photo of African migrants holding cell phones up in Djibouti won the World Press Photo prize. The men were trying to pick up a good signal in…
Saturday Photo: Tomatoes and the Hundred MIle Diet
August is a month of many pleasures, not the least being the arrival in markets of real tomatoes. Most of the years I don’t buy them because they don’t taste…
Saturday Photo: The Electric Cool Aid Acid Test–Or What the Rich Drive
Not that I’m going to make fun of the environmental concerns of these folks who are shown powering up their two electric cars, but I mean, don’t low gas-guzzlers and…
Saturday Photo: Proof the Bees Were out
We may end up with more pears this year than the squirrels can eat! Last year we had perhaps a half dozen but this year there are lots. I’ve started…
Saturday Photo: Orange Wave…
This is from a photo I took of a clementine back in 2011, just after the amazing sweep of Quebec by the New Democratic Party. Election night was amazing–nobody believed…
The Only Reason for an Early Election Call Is in Order to Spend More on Advertising
Don’t get me wrong: there have been times in my life when I just loved political campaigns. Hard to explain, but the kind of rush a political junkie gets after…
Saturday Photo: Resilience and that Other Goldilocks Planet
There’s been a lot in the news this week about the discovery of a planet that might be hospitable to life as we know it. The scientists have amused themselves,…