Mary Soderstrom's Blog, page 85
May 6, 2013
Saturday Photo: The Week the Leaves Came Out
The first week in May is the week the leaves apppear almost without fail. It's almost explosive, you can practically see them grow from hour to hour.
Here are two pictures of the same branch, one taken on Tuesday, and the other on Thursday, to give you some idea. Does the heart good to see the green festoon the trees.
This abundance of growth and good weather are to blame for the fact that this Saturday photo is being posted on Monday: Jeanne was here on Saturday and Thomas on Sunday, and we had a good time playing, going to the park and not spending time in front of the computer. That does the heart good from time to time too.
May 3, 2013
Drought in California, Dry Days Here: What's the Future of Water Resoures
A friend in California just wrote about their extended drought, just as the first news of brush and grass fires make the news. I spent a couple of hours this morning working in our yard, and while the snow has only been out for two weeks, already the ground is pretty dry.
Which brings up the problems of water management, a subject that we are going to have to care more about if we're going to weather the climate changes ahead of us.
Quite clearly water storage during bountiful years and snow melt will be necessary, but where? Dams may be part of the answer but The New York Times today has an interesting story about replenishing aquifers as a partial solution. The idea is that underground water storage reduces evaporation considerably, and does not change the landscape the way dams do. Both Florida and Holland have projects underway with promising results.
Which brings up the problems of water management, a subject that we are going to have to care more about if we're going to weather the climate changes ahead of us.
Quite clearly water storage during bountiful years and snow melt will be necessary, but where? Dams may be part of the answer but The New York Times today has an interesting story about replenishing aquifers as a partial solution. The idea is that underground water storage reduces evaporation considerably, and does not change the landscape the way dams do. Both Florida and Holland have projects underway with promising results.
May 2, 2013
Summer Time and the Living Is Hectic...
Running around all day in the hot sun--I'm not acclimatized yet, so no post today...
May 1, 2013
Why Beekeeping in Cities May Be the Wave of the Future
Seems the Eureopean Community members have voted to ban certain pesticides because they are implicated in the striking bee die-off the world has seen in recent years. Bully for them!
No sooner had I digested that news than I heard Pierre Gingras on the Radio Canada morning show deplore the drop in the number of swallows. At his place in a rural area across the river from Montreal he has yet to see one, even though in past years hundreds have nested on his property which he's made particularly swallow-friendly.
The reason? Possibly the lack of insects because of the use of pesticides, he says.
I have yet to see a swallow around here--and it seems to me they show up a little later than this--but I will keep my eyes open to check if this cityscape is any more friendly to the birds than the countryside. Could be that it will be. Pesticides are banned in Quebec for esthetic use, and beekeepers say that the pesiticide-free urban area have become fertile terrain for beekeeping.
The photo is of a fat bee I watch bumble around last fall. The video is of collecting honey from a rooftop hive on topeof teh Queen Elizabeth Hotel if the heart of the city.
No sooner had I digested that news than I heard Pierre Gingras on the Radio Canada morning show deplore the drop in the number of swallows. At his place in a rural area across the river from Montreal he has yet to see one, even though in past years hundreds have nested on his property which he's made particularly swallow-friendly.The reason? Possibly the lack of insects because of the use of pesticides, he says.
I have yet to see a swallow around here--and it seems to me they show up a little later than this--but I will keep my eyes open to check if this cityscape is any more friendly to the birds than the countryside. Could be that it will be. Pesticides are banned in Quebec for esthetic use, and beekeepers say that the pesiticide-free urban area have become fertile terrain for beekeeping.
The photo is of a fat bee I watch bumble around last fall. The video is of collecting honey from a rooftop hive on topeof teh Queen Elizabeth Hotel if the heart of the city.
April 30, 2013
The Merry Month of May When We'll Hit a CO2 Danger Point
Lovely soft morning with the trees leafing out and the forsythia in bloom, which are reasons to wait for the beginning of May around here. But
Le Devoir
reports on another thing that will happen this coming month that makes the day seem less promising: a UN warning that the world is about to cross a milestone level of 400 ppm CO2 in the atmosphere.Looking a little further I found this interesting report on the PhysOrg website in which UN climate chief Christiana Figueres opened a conference of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), by pointing out that the organization has said the atmospheric CO2 level must be limited to 400 ppm for Earth's average temperature rise to be contained at between two and 2.4 degrees Celsius (3.6 and 4.3 degrees Fahrenheit).
If not, we're headed for some major changes, documents accompanying Figueres warning said: Atmospheric levels of CO2, the main greenhouse gas, were probably last as high as 400 ppm in the Pliocene period, between 3.2 million and five million years ago when Earth was a warmer place.
The carbon concentration never exceeded 300 ppm for some 800,000 years, it added. Before the Industrial Revolution, when man first started pumping carbon into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels, CO2 levels were at about 280 ppm.
April 29, 2013
Call It Geezer Chic or Advanced Style, I'm in
Just came across this video and this story in The New York Times. Makes me feel good just to think about it!
The Rich Get Rich Dept: Academic Gap Widens between Rich and Poor Kids in the US
It's obvious in some ways, but rich kids do better in school and succeed in all sorts of things more often than poor kids do. We all know that, but an op-ed piece in
The New York Times
today shows just how much that gap has grown in the US over the last 40 years. I don't know the corresponding figures in Canada, but what's happening there has policy implication here for day care, parental leave and social services here.
Sean F. Reardon writes in the piece that the big increase appears to have come from higher performance by richer kids who, in general, have started school with a backpack of cognitive skills that poor and middle class kids may not have. After outlining the problem, he writes: "Maybe we should take a lesson from the rich and invest much more heavily as a society in our children’s educational opportunities from the day they are born. Investments in early-childhood education pay very high societal dividends. That means investing in developing high-quality child care and preschool that is available to poor and middle-class children. It also means recruiting and training a cadre of skilled preschool teachers and child care providers. These are not new ideas, but we have to stop talking about how expensive and difficult they are to implement and just get on with it."
This makes enormous sense, particularly when these days it takes two middle range incomes to assure a middle class standard of living. Quebec, for all its faults, has had a large, mostly publicly financed child care program for the last 15 years which assures that relatively few kids arrive in kindergarten without a having listened to a lot of stories, heard songs, drew pictures, and played in a group. In addition, parental leave programs give most working families a chance for one parent to devote nearly a year to staying home with a baby. What happens as this cohort makes its way through the school system is being studied and ought to influence policy across the country.
What is clear is that Jeanne, at two and a half, has learned lots of stuff asince she started day care seven months ago--putting on her coat and boots herself for example--that her mother (who's pretty smart) wasn't doing until she was more than three.
Sean F. Reardon writes in the piece that the big increase appears to have come from higher performance by richer kids who, in general, have started school with a backpack of cognitive skills that poor and middle class kids may not have. After outlining the problem, he writes: "Maybe we should take a lesson from the rich and invest much more heavily as a society in our children’s educational opportunities from the day they are born. Investments in early-childhood education pay very high societal dividends. That means investing in developing high-quality child care and preschool that is available to poor and middle-class children. It also means recruiting and training a cadre of skilled preschool teachers and child care providers. These are not new ideas, but we have to stop talking about how expensive and difficult they are to implement and just get on with it."
This makes enormous sense, particularly when these days it takes two middle range incomes to assure a middle class standard of living. Quebec, for all its faults, has had a large, mostly publicly financed child care program for the last 15 years which assures that relatively few kids arrive in kindergarten without a having listened to a lot of stories, heard songs, drew pictures, and played in a group. In addition, parental leave programs give most working families a chance for one parent to devote nearly a year to staying home with a baby. What happens as this cohort makes its way through the school system is being studied and ought to influence policy across the country.
What is clear is that Jeanne, at two and a half, has learned lots of stuff asince she started day care seven months ago--putting on her coat and boots herself for example--that her mother (who's pretty smart) wasn't doing until she was more than three.
April 27, 2013
Saturday Photo: The Scylla of Spring
For some reason, the scylla are particularly nice this year. How I love flowers that naturalize and come back year after year.
April 26, 2013
Shameless Self-Promotion Department: an Interview about Writing
Mary Eva of the Riverside School Board asked me a whole lot of interesting questions and I went on and on :)
Coming up on Sunday: A Blue Met Walk in the Bairro Português
I think there are still places left in the walk I'll be leading on Sunday morning as part of the Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival.Called How the Portuguese Saved the Plateau, it will lead participants through on of Montreal's currently trendy neighborhoods which was saved from urban distruction by Portuguese immigrants.
In the best Jane Jacobs tradition, the neighborhood is a walkable village that has stood the test of time. For info, try this link. The photo is of the Parc du Portugal where we'll be starting about 11 a.m.
