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…
Mary Soderstrom
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,…
Saturday Photo: Street Furniture, or Living Outdoors
Didn’t have my camera with me the other night, but Thom, his mother, Grandpa and I made an after-supper visit to a local artisanal ice cream place. It was a…
Saturday Photo: Cemetery Gates over Time
The gate on the north side of Mount Royal Cemetery are just about finished. The stonework was completed before the snow fell last winter, but it’s been some time for…
Night Hawks in the Night
Not to make too much about it, but when I woke up about 4 a.m. to open the windows after a thunderstorm I lay in bed listening to nighthawks flying…
Saturday Photo: Where are the Nighthawks and the Ducks?
This photo was taken a couple of years ago at a pond in Parc Beaubien, a rather civilized neighborhood park near us. For several years ducks had been nesting at…
Goodreads Results and a Nice Review
In the flurry of activity around here, I forgot to post the Goodreads Giveaway results. The lucky three are: Barry Kazimer of Campbell River, BC, Kelley Burrow of Morenc, MI…
Saturday Photo: Yellow Flowers, Like the Sun
Think I probably posted a similar photo in the past, but at the moment I can’t find it, nor can I remember the name of this marvelously invasive flower that…
Just Hours Left in the River Music Giveaway
Don’t forget to enter the Goodreads Giveaway for River Music. Three copies are available. Enter here.
Saturday Photo: Emerald Ash Borer and the Sixth Extinction
Lots in the news about what climate change and human intervention in the natural world lately: the Pope’s encyclical on the environment is a case in point. I thought of…
Where is the NDP When It Comes to Extrabilling?
What is happening in Quebec under the Couillard Liberals is extremely discouraging. Step by step, under the banner of fiscal rigor, the government is privatizing the supply of all services…
Saturday Photo: Now We’re Deep into Spring
Perhaps because winter closes down so many things, the odors of spring are particularly poignant here. Oh, there are days when people say “it smells like snow” and there are…
Beauty out of Disaster: And the Birds Rained Down
Last night my bookies in Kirkland discussed Jocelyn Saucier’s Il pleuvait des oiseaux—And the Birds Rained Down in English translation by Rhonda Mullins- The story has haunted me all day.This…