Mary Soderstrom's Blog, page 110

Saturday Photo: Drought, But Great Produce

Lot of talk about drought this summer, and certainly the photos of drying fields are enough to make one weep.  But for food-lovers there is an up side: flavour.

The early Quebec strawberries were the best I've ever eaten, the raspberries have been good too.  But the Ontario peaches take the cake.  Because of the heat and sun, the sugar content is very high so their taste is terrific.

The photo is of Bala's fruiterie on Park Avenue early in the morning before the shoppers arrive. In one block there are three green groceries and a standard grocer store, all of which at the moment have a wealth of great things to eat, much of them locally grown.

Well, I Always Say I feel 35, When I Don't Feel 19

Congratuations to Braydon Beaulieu of Essex who just won the Litpop 2012 contest for fiction! http://matrixmagazine.org/litpop/

But I must add that I was on the short list, as M.S. McGowan (the name I was born with ) and I'm feeling pretty good about making that illustrious group whose demographic is more like that of my kids.

Well, I Always Say I Feel 35 When I'm not Feeling 19

Congratuations to Braydon Beaulieu of Essex who just won the Litpop 2012 contest for fiction!

But I must add that I was on the short list, as M.S. McGowan (the name I was born with ) and I'm feeling pretty good about making that illustrious group whose demographic is more like that of my kida,'The story si called "The Ugly Baby" and now I 'll have to find another home for it.  It's parat of the collection Desire Lines: A Geography of Love  that I've been working on for the last year.

An Interesting Blog about Canadian Literature

It never hurts to post about oneself on Facebook, I guess. If Fred Stenson hadn't, I never would have stumbled upon his very interesting blog about Canadian literature,  Along with Susan Olding's Proved on Pulses it is a great way to keep abreast of what is happening in around here.

That is good because the book sections in ordinary newspapers have practically disappeared. 

Pause for a Little Refeshment...

Lunch for a friend's birthday at noon, out of town guests this afternoon.  Much fun, but no time to blog.  See you tomorrow!

Road through Time, or Roads in Time: World Heritage Site and My New Book Project

Now that I've put aside the short story collection Desire Lines: A Geography of Love that I've been working for the last several months, I'm back to working on the next non-fiction book.  It's called Road through Time, and may end up being a reflection both on time and the permanence of roads aas legacies of what humans do to the world. 

So I was delighted to see two interesting stories in  Le Devoir this week about roads, history and memory.  They have their starting point in a conference held earlier this month at Université Laval in Quebec City called Tourism, Roads and Cultural Itineraries: Meaning, Memory and Development.  More than 300 particpants from around the world gave presentations in English, French and Spanish about  cultural treasures that lend themselves to what might be truly called "Road Trips."

One of the most interesting series of talks was about the Inca Road through the Andes.  More than 6,000 km long, it traverses the spine of South America from Ecuador to Argentina, and still is in use.

Don't know just where this is going to lead me. To South America, maybe?

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 you tell from a photo like this?  Well, it probably is a family group--there's a strong resemblance between them.  And that they're reasonably well off to be able to pay for transport, instead of walking.  They women wear headscarves, which probably doesn't mean much about where they stand in the split between different Muslim groups, or just how traditional they are.  What is clear is that they are in a bad position, and even though the 13 or 14 year old boy seems fascinated by something in the air, this is a nightmare.

How this will end I have no idea.  But I've just read a most interesting novel that takes place in the aftermath of another city burnt and population displaced: The Goodtime Girl by Tess Fragoulis (Cormorant Books.)  The main character is a young woman who was her father's darling in the early 1920s in Smyrna.   WhenGreeks were driven from the city by Turks in 1922, she escaped to Pireaus and Athens where she ended up singing other people's songs of distress and love.

The worst of the story happens off stage.  Kivelli has wiped part of it from her mind.  It resurfaces in her dreams and in an abbreviated version told about half way through the book.  But we know always that a number of people were beastly to a number of others for reasons which in no way justify what happened.

Kivelli is a survivor, and sings her sorrows so movingly that she is able to escape. That she sings the songs of other people is also poignant, because Fragoulis makes it clear that while many people may have stories to tell, not all of them have the voice to tell them.

It's a good read, and will send you looking for more information about the bloodshed that followed World War I, as spheres of influence were redefined.  It will also make you wonder just what the stories are of the folk fleeing in the pictures we see all too frequently. 

Photo: Agence France Presse

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, but which turns out to have been made in France toward the beginning of the 20th century.

The borough took the sculpture away for repairs this spring, leaving a sign explaining what was going to be done, and the small spray of water in the middle of the pond.  It's not nearly as nice was the fountain was, but that's life: maintenance, I'm coming to realize as I age,  is just as important as creation. 

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 experience set the scene for its current financial situation) but it is clear that Montreal's 1976 experience was a lasting disaster.

We didn't finish paying off the Olympic Stadium until the turn of the new century, even though the mayor at the time Jean Drapeau proclaimed that the Olympics here could not more lose money than a man could get pregnant.

 That's the inspiration for Aislin's cartoon, of course. Dr. Henry Morgenthaler was the Montreal doctor who persisted in doing abortions until abortion was de-criminalilzed in 1988.

 So what remains? Besides the white elephant of a stadium, this interesting interview with Mick Jagger, talking about effort and fame. His eyes look half-stoned, but obviously the man was sharp even ulnder the influence of whatever..

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 this morning. 

Hairy cinch bugs  have been around these parts of 40 years or so, but apparently this is a particularly good year for them.  The winter wasn't too cold, so many eggs survived, and the combination of hot temperatures and sunny weather has encourage their proliferation.

All the more reason to plants something else in that space in front of where you live.  Green grass is pleasing to the eye: evolutionary psychologists suggest that we have a hard-wired delight in it, because it suggests the kind of savannah-in-rainy season landscapes that meant good hunting and lots of water for our ancestors millennia ago in East Africa where all humans come from.

But grass isn't meant to be green all the time, and keeping it that way uses a lot of water and, frequently, chemicals.  If it's a good year for pests, it's all the more difficult.

The photo is of a neighbor's yard, which shows just how lovely low-maintenance plantings can be.  No brown spots in it!

BTW, the couple in Drummondville who got their fingers slapped for planting their front yeard in vegetables, have gotten much press, and, it seems, a reprieve from city officials.