Mary Soderstrom's Blog, page 109
August 14, 2012
Fifty Years Later the Girl from Ipanema Still Rocks
One of the greatest songs of the 20th century turns 50 right about now. Given that Rio will host the 2014 World Cup of Soccer and the 2016 Olympics, it's a good time to revisit the song about the tall, tan and lovely girl on the famous Rio beach. This version was recorded 20 years ago, when the song turned 30. 
August 13, 2012
From the Book Front: Big Auction of Larry McMurtry's Books and the Future of Used Books
"Wanted Dead or Alive: Used Books" was the headline in
The New York Times
story about a huge auction of some 300,000 books. Larry McMurtry, the best selling novelist of stories set in the Southwest, had started a used book business in 1988 in Archer City, Texas, his hometown. The story had grown to four buildings, and he, at 76, had decided to get rid of a part of the stock in order to make it manageable for his heirs.
The Times interviewed a number of the used book lovers and -store owners who'd come to the auction, some of them with the back seats stripped out of their cars so they could carry back their stock. There is a future in used books, they proclaimed, even in this day of the e-book.
Certainly, on-line used book sellers (I particularly like Abebooks.com) have made finding used books much easier: I use them frequently to ferret out stuff I need for my various projects and which libraries around here don't have. But also if printed books become rarer, their value is likely to increase. Maybe our kids and grandkids will thank us for hanging on to them.
Or that's a good excuse for doing so, anyway....
The Times interviewed a number of the used book lovers and -store owners who'd come to the auction, some of them with the back seats stripped out of their cars so they could carry back their stock. There is a future in used books, they proclaimed, even in this day of the e-book.
Certainly, on-line used book sellers (I particularly like Abebooks.com) have made finding used books much easier: I use them frequently to ferret out stuff I need for my various projects and which libraries around here don't have. But also if printed books become rarer, their value is likely to increase. Maybe our kids and grandkids will thank us for hanging on to them.
Or that's a good excuse for doing so, anyway....
August 12, 2012
Love Story: American Style: Medical Bills Leave No Money for Wedding
In the picture in the
New York Times
today, the couple are taking a turn around the ballroom as their wedding. They look a little worn, but obviously happy. Good for them, you might say, until she see that the man is trailing around an oxygen canister.
The story is about Michael Olexa and Angela Sclafani who were married Aug. 2 just before he was rushed back to the hospital as his terminal cancer bit again. Apparently he's still there, hooked up to a ventilator.
Nice story, eh? But the real kicker is the fact that the couple couldn't afford a wedding party because all theri money was going to pay his medical bills. Both working class, they didn'tt have much health insurance, and now he's unemployed and she's been forced to take a step-down job. The wedding was financed by some foundation that pays for parties for terminally ill lovers.
In Canada, it's quite possible that a couple in similar circumstances wouldn't have the cash to get married in style but at least they wouldn't have to worry about medical bills. Our single payer system is precious and supports all parts of our lives, including our love lifes.
The story is about Michael Olexa and Angela Sclafani who were married Aug. 2 just before he was rushed back to the hospital as his terminal cancer bit again. Apparently he's still there, hooked up to a ventilator.
Nice story, eh? But the real kicker is the fact that the couple couldn't afford a wedding party because all theri money was going to pay his medical bills. Both working class, they didn'tt have much health insurance, and now he's unemployed and she's been forced to take a step-down job. The wedding was financed by some foundation that pays for parties for terminally ill lovers.
In Canada, it's quite possible that a couple in similar circumstances wouldn't have the cash to get married in style but at least they wouldn't have to worry about medical bills. Our single payer system is precious and supports all parts of our lives, including our love lifes.
August 11, 2012
Winners in the Great Goodreads After Surfing Ocean Beach Giveaway
Congratulations to Juan of San Diego, Sarah of Colorado Springs CO and Vicki of El Dorado, KS who were picked by Goodreads from the 558 entries to receive copies of my novel
After Surfing Ocean Beach
(Dundurn Press.) The books will go in the mail on Monday.
And I think we'll do another Goodreads Giveaway soon, this one of my most recent book Making Waves: The Continuing Portuguese Adventure (Véhicule Press). Até logo!
And I think we'll do another Goodreads Giveaway soon, this one of my most recent book Making Waves: The Continuing Portuguese Adventure (Véhicule Press). Até logo!
Saturday Photo: Rain, Reflections and Random Beauty
After weeks of hot, clear weather, we've had a few days of rain. This weekend, in fact, is the first this summer to be wet. Heaven knows we need it!There are many good things about this kind of weather. One of them is the chance for reflections that double to glory of green.
August 10, 2012
The Internet Produces More Reliable Poll Results Than Telephoning
Great story today in
Le Devoir
about voting intention surveys by internet. I've spent more time than I would like to admit calling voters during elections, and I know that the universe of people who have land lines is shrinking. What effect that has on reaching voters and guaging their voting intentions is something I've been musing about.
So have survey companies, with more and more of them going to internet surveys. Isn't it harder to get a good sample that way? Not really, it seems. The most accurate survey prediction during the 2011 federal election came from Léger Marketing who used panels of Internet respondants, supplemented by telephone calls. It currently has a panel of 400,000 Internet users across Canada who are panelists, of which 185,000 are in Quebec.
President Jean-Marc Léger notes that as many people are hooked up to the Internet as have land lines (85 per cent.) He asserts that it is easier to reach the young, elderly and poor by Internet than it is to do so by telephone.
This doesn't mean that a high speed connection is what is going to make the difference in future elections, but it does mean that there are ways of finding out what people think, in the aggregate, besides the telephone.
So have survey companies, with more and more of them going to internet surveys. Isn't it harder to get a good sample that way? Not really, it seems. The most accurate survey prediction during the 2011 federal election came from Léger Marketing who used panels of Internet respondants, supplemented by telephone calls. It currently has a panel of 400,000 Internet users across Canada who are panelists, of which 185,000 are in Quebec.
President Jean-Marc Léger notes that as many people are hooked up to the Internet as have land lines (85 per cent.) He asserts that it is easier to reach the young, elderly and poor by Internet than it is to do so by telephone.
This doesn't mean that a high speed connection is what is going to make the difference in future elections, but it does mean that there are ways of finding out what people think, in the aggregate, besides the telephone.
August 9, 2012
Sisters of Charity and Other Things: Nuns on the Firing LIne
One of my prouder moments came during my trip to Africa in 2001 when I was out walking on morning in the West Usambara mountains. I'd left the lodge where I was staying armed with maps and a general idea of just looking around. There was a school and a maternity hospital two small valleys away, I was told, and so I thought, great! I'll see kids on their way to class and I'll get an idea of what health care in rural Tanzania is like.
The youngsters had a lot of questions for this white face, the mzungu, and collaborated to come up with the right way to ask a question in English: where was I from? did I have children? would I give them 100,000 shillings (this last to peals of laughter at the absurdity of the request, which wasn't begging but sheer cheekiness.)
I expected that sort of thing because kids elsewhere had asked me similar questions. What did give me pause was the man I encountered a little past the turn off to the school. "Jambo, Sister," he said with a big smile.
"Jambo" is a greeting, I knew. But the "Sister" business puzzled me until I made it to the hospital. There I discovered neat and tidy buildings and a couple of signs indicating that Irish nuns were in charge her. Since one glance at me suggested that I was from the same gene pool as they were--blues eyes, red hair, fair and freckled skin--the most reasonable thing to assume ws that I too was a nursing sister.
Tanzania at that time had relatively good maternal and infant mortality rates, in part because of these nuns and others who worked hard off the beaten path to provide safe deliveries for thousands of women. Tough ladies, doing good work.
I've been thinking of them in the last few weeks as Pope Benedict XVI tries to clamp down on North American nuns and their strong, principled positions on a number of issues. The discussions they are in the midst of is as important to the future of religion, feminism and social service as was the great opening of Catholicism after Vatican II to the modernization of the Church..
You go, Sisters!
Photo: the West Usambara Mountains of Tanzania. That's not fog you see but smoke from fires set to clear land.
The youngsters had a lot of questions for this white face, the mzungu, and collaborated to come up with the right way to ask a question in English: where was I from? did I have children? would I give them 100,000 shillings (this last to peals of laughter at the absurdity of the request, which wasn't begging but sheer cheekiness.)
I expected that sort of thing because kids elsewhere had asked me similar questions. What did give me pause was the man I encountered a little past the turn off to the school. "Jambo, Sister," he said with a big smile.
"Jambo" is a greeting, I knew. But the "Sister" business puzzled me until I made it to the hospital. There I discovered neat and tidy buildings and a couple of signs indicating that Irish nuns were in charge her. Since one glance at me suggested that I was from the same gene pool as they were--blues eyes, red hair, fair and freckled skin--the most reasonable thing to assume ws that I too was a nursing sister.Tanzania at that time had relatively good maternal and infant mortality rates, in part because of these nuns and others who worked hard off the beaten path to provide safe deliveries for thousands of women. Tough ladies, doing good work.
I've been thinking of them in the last few weeks as Pope Benedict XVI tries to clamp down on North American nuns and their strong, principled positions on a number of issues. The discussions they are in the midst of is as important to the future of religion, feminism and social service as was the great opening of Catholicism after Vatican II to the modernization of the Church..
You go, Sisters!
Photo: the West Usambara Mountains of Tanzania. That's not fog you see but smoke from fires set to clear land.
August 8, 2012
More Friends from Out of Town: A Flash from the Fresno Past
Summer is the time when people travel and we've just enjoyed a visit from old friends of Lee's from his youth in Fresno.
There was much talked about the class of 1960 at high schools there, and stories about what has happened since then. Made me think of American Graffiti, the great film by George Lucas, only two years younger and from Modesto, just a little way up Highway 99.
This is what it was like back then, kiddies.
There was much talked about the class of 1960 at high schools there, and stories about what has happened since then. Made me think of American Graffiti, the great film by George Lucas, only two years younger and from Modesto, just a little way up Highway 99.
This is what it was like back then, kiddies.
August 7, 2012
That Strange Thing Crying? It's a Racoon, Or Why Messing with the Food Chain Presents Problems
We've been bothered by a family of racoons--count 'em, one adult and six young ones--for the last several weeks. They cry at night, they get caught in garbage cans, they generally are a nuisance.
Both the city and the SPCA say that caging and transorting them is neither practical or a permanent solution, that people have just got to stop leaving food out for them, or, worse, feeding them directly.
La Presse had a story on the weekend about obese racoons on Mount Royal, while this video shows a family not at all concerned by tourists taking their pictures. As one of my neighbors (who spent a Saturday night vigil with me, rescuing the beasts from trash cans) points out, they have no predators around here any more, so they just keep multiplying in Malthusian fashion as long as the pickings are good.
There's a lesson there for everyone, I think.
There
Both the city and the SPCA say that caging and transorting them is neither practical or a permanent solution, that people have just got to stop leaving food out for them, or, worse, feeding them directly.
La Presse had a story on the weekend about obese racoons on Mount Royal, while this video shows a family not at all concerned by tourists taking their pictures. As one of my neighbors (who spent a Saturday night vigil with me, rescuing the beasts from trash cans) points out, they have no predators around here any more, so they just keep multiplying in Malthusian fashion as long as the pickings are good.
There's a lesson there for everyone, I think.
There
August 6, 2012
Will Twits Make a Difference in the Quebec Election?
Much talk these days about what impact Twitter and Facebook will have on elections. Since last Wednesday Quebec has been in provincial campaign mode, with everything being analyzed right and left (and center, too).
Tweets and Facebook also played an important role in passing the message about anti-tuition hike demonstrations earlier this yeara. Will comments in the Twittersphere make a difference in engaging young people this election? Who knows? Certainly Twitter can be dangerous. The leader of the terribly named Coalition pour l'avenir du Québec (CAQ, and it sounds as bad in French as it does in English) has already got into hot water with his tweets. His remark that girls put less importance on wages then boys do is a classic.
These social media are a bit like an echo chamber, though: comments on them go around and around and can end up being amplified to deafening levels among those who are listening. The audience is circumscribed though. Those outside the circle only hear a faint roar when commentators on more traditional media mention them.
Certainly so far none of the political parties seem ready to put aside posters and ads on radio and television. And who can judge what winds blow through the spirits of voters? The Orange Wave of the 2011 federal election was not accompanied by a lot of social media action, yet some pretty major changes went on in voters' intentions.
À suivre, as they say around here.
Tweets and Facebook also played an important role in passing the message about anti-tuition hike demonstrations earlier this yeara. Will comments in the Twittersphere make a difference in engaging young people this election? Who knows? Certainly Twitter can be dangerous. The leader of the terribly named Coalition pour l'avenir du Québec (CAQ, and it sounds as bad in French as it does in English) has already got into hot water with his tweets. His remark that girls put less importance on wages then boys do is a classic.
These social media are a bit like an echo chamber, though: comments on them go around and around and can end up being amplified to deafening levels among those who are listening. The audience is circumscribed though. Those outside the circle only hear a faint roar when commentators on more traditional media mention them.
Certainly so far none of the political parties seem ready to put aside posters and ads on radio and television. And who can judge what winds blow through the spirits of voters? The Orange Wave of the 2011 federal election was not accompanied by a lot of social media action, yet some pretty major changes went on in voters' intentions.
À suivre, as they say around here.
