Mary Soderstrom's Blog, page 79

At the End of the Rainbow, a Movement to Divest?

Lovely picture on the front page of Le Devoir today: a little girl walking along the railway track in Lac Mégantic with a rainbow in the background.

The symbolism is probably good for the folks there: they have to resume their lives as best they can.  For the rest of us, it might give us the courage to find the way to less reliance on petroleum.

Because the question way, way, in the background in all the discussion of the explosion at Lac Mégantic and the weird weather is: how can we get over our dependance on petroleum?

There is no simple answer, but the first step will be to convince those in power/controlling industry to give us alternatives.  That is why this story from The New York Times about student groups urging their universities to divest themselves of investments on petroleum concnerns is so important.   "Divest" is a very interesting strategy.

CARPING Department: When Is It Not Rude or Harassment?

Something happened this morning that I'm feeling a little ambivalent about.  Went for my usual walk, wearing running shoes, old Bermudas, yesterday's dirty tee shirts, and the baseball cap from my brother-in-law's no defunct construction company. 

And what should happen?

As I walked by a trio of gardeners putting in new pavement at one of the tony houses in Upper Outremont, one of them said quietly: "Mais, que madame est belle."  And then as I got closer, he said it directly to me, "comme vous êtes belle, Madame."

There was a time when I might have been offended, when I might have scowled, thought some nasty thought about men who have no manners, who are rude and sexist.

But, damn, that time was a long time ago!  A grandmother like me who's well past the usual retirement age  can't help but feel more  complimented than offended!

Two More Books on Kindle, for Those of You Interested

This just in: two more of my books are now available on Kindle.

This time they are Green City: People, Nature and Urban Places and The Walkable City: From Haussmann's Boulevards to Jane Jacobs' Streets and Beyond.

(My novel After Surfing Ocean Beach is a Kindle too, in case you're interested.)

When a Drink on a Terrace-Bar Leads to Tragedy: Lac Mégantic

It's been a long time since I've been down to Lac Mégantic.  What I remember  is a nice little towan that seemed to have survived the great changes that have gone on this region.  There are several factores, mostly processing wood products, as well as world-renowned astronomical observatory nearby that is surrounded by a provincial park
.


The mix allowed a certain cute-ification of the place.  The Le Ariko Resto-Bar, for example, advertised "Cuisine du marché," a nice selection of "affordable wines" and a bar and disco on weekends.  Some of the people enjoying a night out last Friday--a lovely evening--were among those blown away by an unexplainable but almost surely avoidable explosion of rail cars carrying crude oil

There have to be some hard questions asked, among them, why do we need to use so much petroleum.

What's in a Name Department: The Canadian Association of Retired Persons

Now I know why I find myself getting so critical about somethings--like the state of the world.  The acronym for a senior citizens' watch dog group in Canada is CARP

Well,  after all these years I expect we've earned the right to carp a bit!

Saturday Photo: Next in the Rotation...

Day lillies are what bloom next in my garden.  Don't have many of them, particularly since one of my neighbors convinced me that they'd do better if I divided them.

Well, maybe the technique works for him, but it sure didn't for me.  I went several years without any flowers at all on the divided plants, and finally I bought some new one. 

This is the nicest, which adds a bright splash of colour in the multiple shades of green.

Geting the Hell out of There: When the Wild Fire Roars

There have been power outages twice in two days because emergency systms have been tripped on the high tension electric power transmission lines coming south from James Bay.

 The culprit is wild fire. Several have been burning out of control for days: this picture was taken from a NASA satillite on Wednesday showing the extent of the smoke. Heat and fine particles from the smoke are tripping the shut down mechanism on the lines.

The fire apparently were started by lightning, something that has gone frequently ever since the trees grew back after the last Ice Age.  What is new is the extreme heat in the region, and the perturbations in weather patterns.

Gonna have to get used to dealing with this kind of disruption, it seems.  The guys who took this video would certainly agree.

 

Bah humbug! Fireworks Make Too Much Noise...

The Fourth of July holiday has got me thinking about the way we celebrate.  I remember the joy surrounding fire works displays in my childhood.  There was only one, on the night of the Fourth, and we looked forward to it with great anticipation.

Now fireworks are set off for practically everything.  This video
 from The New York Times s ays that almost all the fireworks in the US come from China, and adds that athere will be at least 14,000 shows tonight.

We won't have any here, of course, but there have been four shows since the first of June--la Fête nationale, Canada Day, plus the start of the Francofolies festival and the Montreal Jazz  Fest.  And now comes the Montreal Fireworks Festival, itself. We hear all of them even though we live miles and kilometers from where they go off. 

Frankly, it's over kill.  The proliferation is just another bit of noise pollution in this increasingly noisy world.

What say we just all light a candle?

How to Change the Debate: Lessons from the Snowden Affair

Edward Snowden is apparently still hanging out in the transit lounges of the Mocow airport, but his story spins on.  European leaders are waving their fists at the idea that the US spied on them, and few countries  seem to be willing to allow a plane that might be carrying Snwoden to land for a refueling stop.

The "debate" in the media over the whole matter is a strange one. The questions asked are not, in the main, the ones I'd ask.

Juan Cole, the Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan, last week summed up the atmosphere of disinformation that reigns on US television: "...the way to distract the public in a democracy is to allow more and more vigorous debate about a more and more narrow set of issues. By narrowing the debate to “how illegal were Snowden’s actions?” instead of allowing the question, “how legal are the NSA’s actions,” the US mass media give the impression of debating both sides of a controversy while in fact suppressing large numbers of pertinent questions."

This is occuring at a time when Greece has completely shut down its publicly-supported broadcast media, as a budget austerity measure, and when Stephen Harper and his friends are menacing CBC/Radio Canada.  

It used to be said that the first casualty in a war is the truth, but it seems the death count is rising even in this time of purported peace.

Javelins or Baseballs, Our Shoulders Have Evolved for Throwing

It's interesting how when you're involved in something, you find relevant information everywhere.  Since I'm hard at work on the chapter about how the first modern humans left Africa to people the rest of the world for my new non-fiction book Road through Time , I've found interesting research everywhere.  The last couple of weeks have been a lateral-thinkers delight, as I've been able to justify following up every lead that presents itself!

The latest is a story in The New York Times about the way human shoulders are engineered to throw overhand.  Chimpanzees, our closest living relatives, are much stronger than we are, but they can't throw nearly as fast as a 12 year old Little League pitcher, it seems.

The reason is related to our upright posture and the construction of our shoulders. 
James Gorman writes in the story about research recently reported in Nature : "Looking at the fossil record, (lead author of a study Neil)..Roach and colleagues put the moment at which these changes came together in one body at about 1.8 million years ago, when Homo erectus first appeared. “It’s possible that Homo erectus could throw as fast as we do,” Dr. Roach said.
"What objects he threw is an open question. The most likely are rocks or some sharp projectile in hunting, Dr. Roach said. Homo sapiens, the species that would eventually form both the American and National Leagues, did not appear until about 200,000 years ago, and did not evolve the intellectual power and wisdom to invent the rules of baseball until the 19th century."
Without a doubt, though, throwing hard and well helped when hunting, which meant that the pre-human guys who could, provided more food for their offspring, and left more descendants.  The adaptation exists in women too, even though "throwing like a girl" is one of the ultimate playground insults.  “It’s like walking,” Gorman quotes one of the scientists involved. “You have to practice.” Everyone who is able practices walking, but not everyone practices throwing."
True: one of the things that amazed Lee was how hard it was for Lukas and his buddies to play catch at age 6 or 7.  They were able little boys, but all their practice time had gone into slap shots and hockey moves.    And Jeanne, at two and a half, can't throw very well either, but her soccer- and rugy-playing father has showed her how to dribble a soccer ball.   The culture you grow up in obviously counts too.