If discussed Lawrence Hill’s The Book of Negroes with six book clubs now, and one thing that cmes up every time is the astonishment tht marriage between people of African…
Artist Isabelle Hayeur says: “I’ve been exploring landscape issues ever since I started working with video. Through the moving image I am investigating environmental, urban planning and social concerns that…
Thomas Friedman in today‘s New York Times points out that the unemployment rates in the US correlated inversely with education: Americans with “less than a high school degree, 13.8 percent;…
From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs: them’s radical words, of course. But I always thought they were just, right, and what we need to…
Le Devoir has an interesting story this morning about the way that the methane escaping from those big dams behind hydroelectric plants in Quebec have not been figured into the…
We’re eating Portoguese this evening, and my thoughts are wandering back to Lisbon. It’s been three years since I visited that lovely city, but the images remain fresh. Here are…
Just before we were all interrupted in our getting and spending by the financial crisis of 2008, plans were rolling ahead to redevelop one of the oldest neighborhoods in Montreal,…
As I burrow deeper in River Music, I begin to wonder if it’s worth anything at all. That’s why coming across Garth Risk Hallberg’s essay/review in the Sunday New York…
There are no library book discussions in January–it is January, after all, and there is no telling what weather will befall us in this climate–so in addition to reading Christmas…
What is appropriate dress is as much a matter of fashion and wanting to please as it is of following strictures laid down by authority. Interesting question for my female…
As someone who has gone through a breast cancer scare (excision of suspect tissue and radiotherapy, and, thank you for your concern, five years later all seems well) I have…
It’s January 14 and the end of year holidays are over for everyone (although Russian Orthodox Epiphany will be next week and the Asiatic New Year is just around the…
An interesting explanation of public debt from Le Monde with English subtitles. The context is European but the principles apply on this side of the Atlantic too And here’s the…
Everyone whose life has been touched over the last 40 years by a premature baby who survived owes a debt to a woman whose death was reported this morning in…
Deep in rewriting my novel about a pianist, I’m seeing music everywhere. The latest is this multiple choice chart that might give you some advice. I particularly like the sequence…
More about the increasingly unequal society that is the US: Today Paul Krugman rails against those who are bent on making the playing field even more bumpy. After pointing out…
Or there was until about an hour ago. Many years the outdoor skating rinks around here begin iln the first of second week in December. This year, not much happened…
Just where exactly the Magi came from is uncertain, as far as I can tell. But it would seem that at least some of them were astronomers from Persia. Therefore…
