Mary Soderstrom's Blog, page 75

Family Photos: The Wonders of the Internet

This summer one of my cousins and I sat down for the first time in years and talked family.  She's started doing geneology and told me she'd come up with some picturs of our grandparents.

Lucky me!  Here's one she just sent me by internet: our maternal grandparents John Frederick McDonald and his wife the former Mary Belle Deckman about 1926 in Portland OR (I think.)

This was a high point in their lives, when he--who didn't get further than third grade and started out as a train brakeman--had struck it rich in real estate.  She, as always, was smartly dressed: she always looked stylish even when they had no money.

Demonstration on Saturday against the Proposed Quebec Charte des valeurs québécoises

Here'a the link to info about the demonstration.  As one of the people say they're going, one woman asks if she should wear a hijab, a kippa, or go as the cross on the wall of the Quebec legislative assembly?

Questions, questions.  Think I'll just pull out one of my scarves and tie it around my head.  If someone shows me how to do it properly, so much the better,

The Hidjab Files: Banned Sign Is Also High Fashion

The current Quebec government just released its plan for a "Charter of Quebc Values."  Chief among them is the "neutrality" of the state when it comes to religion.

Sounds pretty good, doesn't it?  But the way this neutrality will play out involves forbidding all government employees from wearing any "religious sign".   Small cruxifices or Stars of David on a chain will be all right, but the Jewish kippa, the Sikh turban, and the Muslim hidjab will be banned.  Hospital and day care workers as well as  teachers are covered by the ban.

What absolute nonsense!   Besides being hardly likely to survive a constitutional test, it raises a hornet's nest of issues.  Anyone who's visited a hospital or day care centre in Montreal lately has noticed the many competent, well-intergrated Muslim women working there who where the hidjab.  They should not be penalized for their beliefs, particularly since the head scarf is as much cultural as it is religious.

If you don't belief that last assertion, take a look at just what Muslim fashion is.  Rather nice, and certainly no more un-Canadian than a sari or African kanga.    And here's a link to some high fashion from Tehran.  Plus a YouTube video that isn't quite as edgey.

Saturday Photo: Harvest Time

The Jean Talon Market was full of tomatoes and people this afternoon.  As the harvest comes in, the outdoor market attracts hundreds who  buying cases of tomatoes for making sauce, as well as hundreds more just shopping for the best of the end-of-season vegetables and fruits.

There are few things as good as a vine-ripened tomato or just-picked corn, both of which we're going to have for dinner.

As for our garden, I gave up on vegatables several years go because the backyard is just too shady and the squirrels, too pesky.  But the pears have been abundant.  I picked most of them before we went on vacation, and now I'm bringing them out a few at a time to ripen.  Not bad at all!

Minimum Wage,Fast Food and Finding Something Good to Eat

The New York Times reports this morning on the growing protest among workers at fast food outlets (restaurants is hardly the proper description, I think) for a minimum wage of $15 in the US.  Seems that on Thursday there were walkouts at about 1000 outlets in 50 cities.

They've been supported by the Service Employees International Union since they began a month ago, a fact which "should reinforce the labor movement as something new and relevant to the young workers of today,” the NYT quoted Jeff Rosenfeld, professor of sociology  and labour  at the University of Washington. Its story continues: "pointing to the use of the Internet to spread the strike call, he added, 'The combination of old and new organizing strategies really seems to have paid off here.'”

That's really interesting, and perhaps a harbinger of a sea change in public opinion.  I'd like to think so.

But it also may have an impact on perceptions of the role of fast food in North American culture.  The French call it "la malbouffe," literally "eating badly."    We certainly found that on our little trip in August.  Most of the time we picnicked or ate with friends and twice we really dined at nice restaurants ( Anthony's in Bellingham WA and Offshore Seafood  Restaurant in the BC village are both recommended. )But a few times we were forced to look for a quick meal.

A Pizza Hut in a largish Nanaimo striip mall was expensive and really bad.  That started me thinking about the best small restos around here.  None of them are in high rent premises, and most are ethnic, frequently run by relatively recent immigrants following a dream.  Among them is Kim Bob Cafe in Dorval: it has a breakfast menu that caters to workers at the nearby Trudeau International Airport, and Korean lunches that are really good.  That suggested that a non-franchise resto in an ordinary strip mall mght mean better food.

I asked my foodie niece what she thought of the idea, and she answered that the best food they'd had on a recent trip to Hawaii was in strip mall Indian place.  So we tried the Mongolian Grill in Mukilteo, WA.  Very good, and not a franchise (although apparently it may have started out as one.)  Run by a Chinese family with help from a Latino couple, I hope they're making enough for a living wage. 

Honest Mayor Says Cities Need Municipal Political Parties with Idea and Principles

Given the orgy of revelation about political contributions and corruptions in the construction industry around here and in Quebec cities, it probably should not be surprising that political parties have been bad-mouthed.

Certainly parties which are only mechanisms for amassing election funds have been found wanting.  But parties where ideas and principles are debated and carried forward, I've always felt, are extremely important.  That's part of the reason why I've stayed out of muncipal party politics: few of the players around me have had either ideas or principles and I've fond it more useful to be free to attack any or all of them.

But occasionally a good political party develops on the municipal level.  The one led by former Quebec City mayor Jean-Paul L'Allier is one.  That's why I was delighted to read about him saying just that in Le Devoir today. 

With a real political party "you have 1500, 2000 people who watch very closely what you're doing  because what you do is being done in their name.  That's a big protection," he said. 

I couldn't agree more.

School's Started...

This is the kind of thing you'll be seeing around you this week as kids go back to school--this one is near where our kids did elementary school.

But what I remember is Chuck Berry singing "Hail, Hail Rock n Roll."  Here are the lyrics:

Up in the mornin' and out to school
The teacher is teachin' the Golden Rule
American history and practical math
You studyin' hard and hopin' to pass
Workin' your fingers right down to the bone
And the guy behind you won't leave you alone

Ring, ring goes the bell
The cook in the lunch room's ready to sell
You're lucky if you can find a seat
You're fortunate if you have time to eat
Back in the classroom, open your books
Keep up the teacher don't know how mean she looks

Soon as three o'clock rolls around
You finally lay your burden down
Close up your books, get out of your seat
Down the halls and into the street
Up to the corner and 'round the bend
Right to the juke joint, you go in

Drop the coin right into the slot
You're gotta hear somethin' that's really hot
With the one you love, you're makin' romance
All day long you been wantin' to dance,
Feeling the music from head to toe
Round and round and round we go

Hail, hail rock and roll
Deliver me from the days of old
Long live rock and roll
The beat of the drums, loud and bold
Rock, rock, rock and roll
The feelin' is there, body and soul.

And here's the man himself

Recovering Today: Happy Labour Day

We had a triple threat birthday party last night for Lukas, Jeanne and Thomas.  Most pleasant and the two cousins (three and one) played together for the first time. 

Now Grandma is loafing: too much of a good time!!

Saturday Photo: Street Furniture on a Late Summer Morning

The Montreal borough of the Plateau-Mile End has been rather agressive in trying to make its streets pedestrian and bicycle friendly.  Among the initiatives has been the addition of rather attractive street furniture on some streets to encourage community life.

Walking around yesterday morning I found these two scenes.  The right one is of the official stuff, being used at 7:30 a.m. by only two women in front of bagel shop.  The left was two streets over where no one was out yet, but the lawn chairs were set up in the sun, waiting for the first loungers. Inside you'll notice the man with his coffee, almost looking like a healthier version of the famous Edward Hopper lunchroom painting

The summer is so short here that you've got to take advantage of every minute.

Thank You, David Cameron, For Being a Klutz: The Syrian Files

It's always interesting to watch while political maneuvering backfires.  That was the case this week when Britain's Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron tried to rush things and get Parliament to approve military action in Syria before the UN had fully reported. 

Within hours, if not minutes, Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper did an about face, and stopped beating the war drums, so it looks like the US (with maybe a little help from France) will go it alone. 

The last time the US rallied the Western World was 10 years ago when it led the invasion of Iraq.  Canada stayed out of that one, largely because of huge demonstrations in Quebec. Then Prime Minister Jean Chrétien rightly read the signs and bowed to public pressure: at the time I said I was never more proud of having chosen Quebec and Canada as my home.

This time around the lack of participation by the Brits and Canadians will not be due to truly high-minded principles.  Most observers suggest that Cameron might have won his vote if he hadn't tried to rush it.  And Harper, well Harper is such a toady, such a monarachist suck-up that he'll follow Britains lead. 

Besides he may also be rather glad not to face a wave of protest at home were he to go to war  without a debate in the House of Commons here.  He's prorogued it until October, doesn't want to call it back before then, and probably would have forged ahead anyway if the British House had voted yes.  But it didn't, so now he can kiss some babies on this long Labour Day weekend.