Mary Soderstrom's Blog, page 87

Preparing for Conflict? Bagpipers in Outremont

Bagpipe alert! Somebody was practising bagpipe scales (very badly) on Durocher between St. Viateur and Fairmount this afternoon. Will be interesting to see if the player persists.

In the meantime:

Stiglitz and Muclair VS. Trudeau and ?

Just returned from the NDP policy convention.  While I'm not pleased that those assembled voted to replace the preamble with a more touchy-feely document (the vote was something 900 to 200), I was delighted the convention kicked off with Joseph Stiglitz talking about the dangers of austerity (!!!) and proceeded with a number of speakers and policy discussions that deal with a wealth of problems.

Compare that with the coronation, also this weekend, of Justin Trudeau.  That the Libs decided not to have a real convention is very interesting: it shows their financial problems since real conventions cost a lot of money, and underlines the paucity of ideas coming from Trudeau and those around him.

Saturday Photo: Enough Snow Already!

We've had snow in April before, but for the last several years it's been warm enough for me to eat breakfast on the back porch, albeit usually with a coat on.

Last year took the cake: the week  March 21 saw really balmy temperatures: the Youtube video below made of a big student march where, as you can see, people were wearing summer clothes.

But it snowed yesterday, and while the temperature is well above freezing this morning, there's still a lot of the white stuff around.  The snow drops, which have been quite lovely, are covered again, although, as the snow melts, they've begun to live up to their French name, perce-neige, as they peek up through the snow cover.
March 22, 2012

Day One of NDP Convention: Health Resolution Gets Good Priority

Just spent the day at the NDP Convention in Montreal.  As some may know, I've spent years working for the party, but for the last several months I've taken a backseat, since there are a number of other projects I'd like to see finished.

But I couldn't resist a convention, particularly not when it's in my home town.  I went ready to fight for giving high priorities to health resolutions and was delighted ot discover that there were others, including MPs, already in line to do do just that. 

More later....

New Shoes Songs: The Horrors of Shopping

I absolutely must get a new pair of walking shoes now that winter is nearly over. So I spent far too much time today looking for what I need, and which, of course, I couldn't find. When I came home I went looking for shoe songs to lift my spirits while I rested my feet. Here's what I came up with: These boots are made for walking... and Gumboots and The Red Shoes

Is There an Upside to Climate Change? Maybe, If You're Trying to Grow Wine in Canada

Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS)  a group of scientists have analyzed what climate change may mean for wine production around the world.  The news isn't good for growers in many regions that produce the best wine, like the south of France and Italy.  Drier weather and higher temperatures will stress the vines and likely reduce production  (up to 68 per cent in Mediterrean Europe, and 60 per cent in California.)

But other regions which are now on the edge of wine production may fare much better.  The study specifically mentions "high latitudes in Western North America," but high latitudes in the eastern part of the continent may also become more welcoming to wine production.

While this shift may cause problems for existing ecosystems--and the study cautions that trying to maintain a corridor of wildness for big mammals like grizzlies in the Rockies will become that much harder when faced with competition from vinyards--it also means that Canadian wine drinkers and growers may enjoy much better harvests.

Santé!

Big Brother and Studying: What's Wrong with Education I

CourseSmart is a new tool for university professors which allows them to track a students reading in e-texts.  Apparently it's a coming thing, but it seems to me to be just another symptom of the problems with higher education today.

The tool might have some use in high school, but by the time someone hits university he or she should have figured out how to study and if that hasn't been done, there's nothing like a bad grade as a wake up call. 

These texts are going to cost more than standard texts too, which means more money for the publisher (and probably not for the people who develop the content, but that's another story.)  Given the debt load of university graduates, more expenses are not what is needed. In Canada the average graduate finishes with $20,000 in debt which will take 14 years to pay off.  The figure is higher in the US.

What may be better is to rethink the idea of what a university education means.  According to a recent OECD study, slightly under 40 per cent of young people in both Canada and the US  finish post secondary degrees.  (The Slovak Republic heads the list with about 60 pe cents, followed by Ireland with about 50 per cent.)  And what use has all this education meant in terms of creating successful citizens in all senses of the term?  Since both  the US and Canada have sizeable groups that subscribe to ideologies that deny a scientific approach to the world, I'd give their  systems of higher education questionable marks.

Tracking e-reading isn't likely to change that much.

Suburbs: Inequality in the American Dream

The neighborhood I live in was built a century ago as a "garden suburb" on a street care line with housing for a mixture of incomes. 

Our block is made-up of attached, single-family houses designed, it seems, for families on the way up.  Our house, for example, has a tiny room of the kitchen that probably was one the hired girl slept in.  We know that a railway conductor and a glazier were among the first residents: lower middle class with aspirations, in other words. 

Across the back lane are triplexes with large apartments--six or seven rooms--where families the next notch down f lived.  In contrast, a block over are  semi-detached houses of the next notch up: they have much nicer rooms where their live-in helped slept.

The kids from these families would have gone to schools in the neighborhood, and their mothers--or the maids--would have shopped at the same stores.  While there were class distinctions, everyone rubbed up everyone else.  This inner suburban hodge-podge has continued, even though property prices have gone up.

But that is not the case for suburbs built later in the 20th century.  Neighborhoods were almost always stratified by income, as an interseting story in today's New York Times points out. "Suburban Disequilibrium" is the title, but it warns that inequality between nieghborhoods is likely to incnrease, not decrease: "The point is not simply that rich and poor people live in different places through a kind of class sorting in the marketplace. The places themselves help to create wealth and poverty. Because of this power of places to fix inequity over time, current patterns are likely to outlive their residents."

The article calls for property tax sharing and planning on a larger scale than is usually practiced, as well as more income equality.  Will this happen? 

Not likely unless we get some much better leadership on all levels of government.

Saturday Photo: Snow Drops and A Hymn to Spring

The snowdrops are in bloom, which does the heart good.  I planted a dozen or so bulbs 10 or 12 years ago and they have slowly spread.

Haven't got a complete cover of white flowers--they have to compete with the scylla that bloom next--but they are enough for Jeanne to be charmed by spring.

I'm also posting a lovely compilation made two years ago of videos to an instrumental version of Félix Leclerc"s Hymne au printemps.  it does the heart good too.

Trio of Shame III: If I Don't Know about It, It Doesn't Exist

I kept the way the Harper government is systematically undercutting any independent effort to find out what is happening in the environement to the last item of this trio. 

Last weekend, I thought I'd mention the end of the Experimental Lakes Area project, and call it a day.  But there seem to be an increasing number of funding cuts which seem to have no real purpose other than to remove the possiblity of any objective comment coming from the scientific community.  These include Canada's withdrawal  from the UN Convention on Desertification and the muzzling of scientists who must get approval from the communications wonks before they can say anything

The truth will make you free, eh?  Well, not if you don't have it.

BTW, the photo is from this morning's Le Devoir , and is of an ice sculpture on display in Montreal now.  The idea is underline how quickly the Arctic ice is melting.