Fleeing: Today’s Front Page and Yesterday’s Back Story
This morning I spent a long time looking at a photo of a group of people in the back of a truck fleeing the Syrian city of Aleppo. What can…
Mary Soderstrom
Saturday Photo: Fountain under Repair or Being in the Game for the Long Haul
Parc Outremont is one of the lovely smallish green spaces in my neighborhood. In its center is a fountain which I had always thought was done by a Quebec sculptor,…
Mick Jagger and Jean Drapeau on the Montreal Olympics: Scratch Your Beard and Get Stoned, Or How a Man Can Get Pregnant
Today the Oympics begin in London, with much hype. It remains to be seen what kind of legacy this orgy will leave in the troubled UK (look how Greece’s Olympic…
Lawn Not Doing Well: Could Be Hairy Cinch Bugs, and Another Reason to Plant Something Else
Got yellow spots on your grass? Could be your neighbors dogs, could be the drought, but they also could be due to bugs living in your lawn, Le Devoir reports…
For the Young at Heart: Images and Songs
Love this photo, as well as the song by the marvelous Chico Buarque. For lovers of all ages.
Life without Papers: Campaign to Register Children in Burundi
More than ten years ago now, I spent an amazing few weeks in Africa, particularly in Burnundi in the central Great Lakes Region. I was doing rsearch for the book…
Another Hot Day: Parks in the Early Morning, and Paul Krugman
Another hot one, and this is what it looks like about 7:30 in Parc Outremont. Nice, eh? But these hot summer days are worrying. Where are we going with climate…
Saturday Photo: At the Park Jeanne Says ‘Partage!’ Or the Beginnning of the Common Good
This was taken about 7:30 a.m. in a neighborhood park where we’ve spent several lovely afternoons this summer with Jeanne. We go with sand pail and shovel, which she tosses…
More Municipal Ridiculousness
One of my neighbors who just spent a pretty penny to landscape her small front and back yards tells me that our borough administration wouldn’t give her a permit to…
The Plants Counter-Attack: What’s New in Urban Agriculture
Yesterday’s post about a small Quebec town forbidding front yard vegetable gardens sent me thinking about the urban agriculture movement. It certainly is alive and well in Montreal–there will even…
Why Not Vegetables in Front Yard Gardens?
A couple in Drummondville, a town about 100 km from Montreal, have run into problems with a city bylaw that limits vegetable growing in front yards. Drummondville would like to…
Today Is a Day That Is Filled with Excitment…Anything Can Happen, or How to Be a Writer
Temperature has dropped. Ought to get back to work on the next thing. But I came across this: a great spoof of the writing life.
Ways to Beat the Heat (and Drought) II
Until today, we’ve had more than two weeks of drought, along with horrendous temperatures. Water levels in the rivers and lakes are as low as they usually get in August,…
Ways to Beat the Heat I
Way Number 1: Take your breakfast to the park. This couple were reading the weekend papers early the other Saturday morning, and I was charmed at the idea of escaping…
Saturday Photo: A Pile of Wood
Lee, after more than a year of post-fire tribulations, is back in business as a furniture maker. He had to spend 8 months away from his work shop while the…
Cicadas Are Backl, Summer Is Really Here
I heard the first cicadas on Sunday–just one, tentative buzz. But by now the buzzing begins in the early morning and continues through the heat of the day. One of…
Okay, So I Succumbed to the Social Media Business
Goodreads finally caught up with me, and so I’ve joined. One of the things they have is book giveaways, so here’s one for my novel about people who make mistakes…
Quebec Going to the Polls in Early September, It Looks Like
The rumor mills are buzzing with the news that Jean Charest’s Liberals are going to call an election for Sept. 4 or Sept. 10. Which makes it quite apparent that…
The Death of Wisdom Comes When You Refuse to Look for the Truth: More Harper
Yesterday Canadian scientists protested the cuts to scientific research included in the recently passed omnibus budget. Facebook was full of “shares” of this photo and others similar showing scientists and…
The Draft Again? The New York Times Suggests It Might Be a Good Thing
In an op ed piece in The New York Times today, Thomas E. Ricks says: Let’s Draft Our Kids. He writes; “In late June, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the former…