Mary Soderstrom's Blog, page 96
December 27, 2012
Back at Work...But Not Really
Lots and lots of snow today--glad everybody made it home yesterday from the holiday festivities. I was out for a while this morning, and ended up taking buses on a route I usually walk because the sidewalks hadn't been plowed. Therefore it's a good afternoon to stay inside and work on stuff I should have done some time ago. It won'ted by until the storm stops and the snow removal crews are out that the going will be easier.
(The picture was taken several years ago after a really nice, bit storm. )
December 24, 2012
Merry Christmas to All
Dear FriendsGot to wrap a few presents and make potato sausage before everyone comes over, so there won't be much blogging for the next few days.
Best wishes from our house to yours, and here's the link to our holiday blog, in case you're interested.
Mary
Doomsday Prophets Have Got It Wrong: Krugman"s Got It Right Again
Fiscal conservatives and the Mayan calendar nuts: both wrong in their prophecies, Paul Krugman says once again:
" The key thing we need to understand, however, is that the prophets of fiscal disaster...are at this point effectively members of a doomsday cult. They...will hold to their belief no matter how many corners we turn without encountering that crisis.
"So we cannot and will not persuade these people to reconsider their views in the light of the evidence. All we can do is stop paying attention. It’s going to be difficult, because many members of the deficit cult seem highly respectable. But they’ve been hugely, absurdly wrong for years on end, and it’s time to stop taking them seriously."
" The key thing we need to understand, however, is that the prophets of fiscal disaster...are at this point effectively members of a doomsday cult. They...will hold to their belief no matter how many corners we turn without encountering that crisis.
"So we cannot and will not persuade these people to reconsider their views in the light of the evidence. All we can do is stop paying attention. It’s going to be difficult, because many members of the deficit cult seem highly respectable. But they’ve been hugely, absurdly wrong for years on end, and it’s time to stop taking them seriously."
December 22, 2012
Saturday Photo: Christmas Tree 2012
So this is Christmas... or at least the Christmas tree as it looked when the gang finished putting it up last Saturday. There are some presents under it now, to which will be added quite a few more, I expect, before Tuesday morning.The reasons we put the tree up last weekend was so that Sophie and I could make pickled herring, which requires at least a week to marinate for optimal eating. But, as it turns out, we made the right call: Jeanne, who usually comes over to play with us on Saturday while Elin teaches here, is home with a cough and Lee is dragging around with a fountain for a nose. Much better for all of us to rest and not share microbes so we'll be in fine form for the holiday itself.
Hope your end of year festivities are shaping up well.
December 21, 2012
Carol of the Bells by Alphabet Photography
And this is cool too:
Holiday Countdown: a Hallelujah Chorus in Flash Mob Mode
Not quite sure where this was made, but it is great
December 20, 2012
Gangnam Syte Means the World is a Small Place: One Lesson Learned in the Last 60 Years
About ten years ago, I started my travels with a trip to Aisa. My first venture outside of North America was to Singapore, which meant involved taking Korean Airlines from San Francisco to Seoul and changing there ot Singapore Airlines. I was charmed by the Koreans, and emboldened to try a small escapade that one of my guidebooks suggested.
Since I had 5 hours between flights, I got a temprary visa and took a local city bu into downtown Seoul. It was about 7 a.m. local time when I started and it was obvious that the pasengeres were regulars with nearly everyone nodding greetings to the others.
I tried to take in as much as I could, and when we got to the centre of the city, I got off thinking I could take the same bus back to the airport. Alas, it was not to be. Given more than five hours I mih have found where to take the return bus, but I had much less time.
So I decidend into the subway system, trying to remember exactly what the subway map had said about getting to the airport. As I stood in the car, staring up at the subway map, a yount man asked in very good English if he could help me. He didn't understand my accet, but when I showed him on my map where I was headed, he was most helfpful.
There, he pointed out, that's where I should change trains. And there was the spot where I'd be just steps from the airport check in section. How much he understood of my English is unclear, but what is certain was his delight in helping me. What a contrast with the heavy weapons on the bridges over the rivers, andmy own memories of the Korean War.
When the gangnam style video began makin its appearance in the cybersphere, I wasn't keen on seeing it,. Yet this is wha is coming out of that country, 60 years after that war.
The moral? Well, maybe that if fi you wait long enough popular culture will triumph.
Since I had 5 hours between flights, I got a temprary visa and took a local city bu into downtown Seoul. It was about 7 a.m. local time when I started and it was obvious that the pasengeres were regulars with nearly everyone nodding greetings to the others.
I tried to take in as much as I could, and when we got to the centre of the city, I got off thinking I could take the same bus back to the airport. Alas, it was not to be. Given more than five hours I mih have found where to take the return bus, but I had much less time.
So I decidend into the subway system, trying to remember exactly what the subway map had said about getting to the airport. As I stood in the car, staring up at the subway map, a yount man asked in very good English if he could help me. He didn't understand my accet, but when I showed him on my map where I was headed, he was most helfpful.
There, he pointed out, that's where I should change trains. And there was the spot where I'd be just steps from the airport check in section. How much he understood of my English is unclear, but what is certain was his delight in helping me. What a contrast with the heavy weapons on the bridges over the rivers, andmy own memories of the Korean War.
When the gangnam style video began makin its appearance in the cybersphere, I wasn't keen on seeing it,. Yet this is wha is coming out of that country, 60 years after that war.
The moral? Well, maybe that if fi you wait long enough popular culture will triumph.
December 19, 2012
The Kids Are All Right: Voter Participation Rates Go Way up among Quebec Youth
Young people in Quebec voted in large numbers in the September provincial elections, according to a study reported today in both
Le Devoir
and
The Gazette
.
"According to the study, the biggest single increase in voter participation in the Sept. 4, 2012, election was among youths age 18 to 24," The Gazette story says.
"In 2008, only 36.15 per cent of voters that age cast ballots. In 2012, the number was 62.07 per cent, an increase of almost 26 percentage points....Voting was up among 25 to 34-year-olds, too. In 2008, only 41.83 per cent voted. This time around, 66.36 voted, an increase of almost 25 per cent."
Pretty impressive, it seems to me. So is the difference between the headlines in the two papers. Le Devoir talks about a "spectacular bound" while The Gazette says the change is just "part of a return to the norm." True, in the 2007 election, participation was higher than in 2008, when voters were not happy about being called to the polls after only a year. But any way you cut it, this time the participation rate was higher than it's been in a long time, reflecting the rise in political awareness among all levels of Quebec society after the protests of the Maple Spring,
"According to the study, the biggest single increase in voter participation in the Sept. 4, 2012, election was among youths age 18 to 24," The Gazette story says.
"In 2008, only 36.15 per cent of voters that age cast ballots. In 2012, the number was 62.07 per cent, an increase of almost 26 percentage points....Voting was up among 25 to 34-year-olds, too. In 2008, only 41.83 per cent voted. This time around, 66.36 voted, an increase of almost 25 per cent."
Pretty impressive, it seems to me. So is the difference between the headlines in the two papers. Le Devoir talks about a "spectacular bound" while The Gazette says the change is just "part of a return to the norm." True, in the 2007 election, participation was higher than in 2008, when voters were not happy about being called to the polls after only a year. But any way you cut it, this time the participation rate was higher than it's been in a long time, reflecting the rise in political awareness among all levels of Quebec society after the protests of the Maple Spring,
December 18, 2012
Winter Wonderland Department: A Moose on the Roof, No Weapons Please
This photo was doing the rounds of my friends yesterday, with a tagline saying it was taken in Blainville, north of Montreal. Seems that it probably isn't, but it's great fun anyway.What wouldn't be fun would be to have a hunter take aim at the animals.
You laugh? Not really, given the gun culture in the US and in parts of Canada. Maybe the slaughter on Friday will give rise to more restrictions on weapons South of the Border, at least outlawing assault weapons. But I've been appalled by 1) those who say, well, the principal should have had a gun and 2) let's blame it on mental illness.
The first statement is completely unacceptable. The second has a little more validity: a number of massacres have been committed by mentally troubled individuals. But, as Richard A. Freeman points out in The New York Times today, the vast majority of people with mental illness don't hurt anyone. One large study "which followed nearly 18,000 subjects, found that the lifetime prevalence of violence among people with serious mental illness — like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder — was 16 percent, compared with 7 percent among people without any mental disorder. Anxiety disorders, in contrast, do not seem to increase the risk at all."
He continues; "You can profile the perpetrators after the fact and you’ll get a description of troubled young men, which also matches the description of thousands of other troubled young men who would never do something like this."
More cooboration that the problem is complex, and a warning that those with mental troubles should not, once again, get the rap for a society that doesn't know how to behave.
December 17, 2012
The New Town Kllings: When the Social Safety Net Protects Everyone:
Why do mass killings in the US happen? Partly because of the culture of violence there, but also because of problems with the social safety net.
Having mental problems is always difficult, and therapy is frequently not very effective. But things are much, much worse when there is no public system to help. Adam:Lanza's mother, as far as I know, didn't write or talk about her son's difficulties, but another woman has--most eloquently.
After telling about the latest in her son's explosions, Liza Long writes about how she had to head for the emergency room and the police when he came at her over something silly. "Michael was in a full-blown fit by then, screaming and hitting. I hugged him close so he couldn’t escape from the car. He bit me several times and repeatedly jabbed his elbows into my rib cage. I’m still stronger than he is, but I won’t be for much longer."
Finally he was subdued, but the chances of finding good help for him are not very great.
"With state-run treatment centers and hospitals shuttered, prison is now the last resort for the mentally ill—Rikers Island, the LA County Jail and Cook County Jail in Illinois housed the nation’s largest treatment centers in 2011," Long writes.
"No one wants to send a 13-year old genius who loves Harry Potter and his snuggle animal collection to jail. But our society, with its stigma on mental illness and its broken healthcare system, does not provide us with other options. Then another tortured soul shoots up a fast food restaurant. A mall. A kindergarten classroom. And we wring our hands and say, “Something must be done.”
"I agree that something must be done. It’s time for a meaningful, nation-wide conversation about mental health. That’s the only way our nation can ever truly heal."
Gun control would help too, but never forget that the Right Wing agenda is not good for people, either.
Having mental problems is always difficult, and therapy is frequently not very effective. But things are much, much worse when there is no public system to help. Adam:Lanza's mother, as far as I know, didn't write or talk about her son's difficulties, but another woman has--most eloquently.
After telling about the latest in her son's explosions, Liza Long writes about how she had to head for the emergency room and the police when he came at her over something silly. "Michael was in a full-blown fit by then, screaming and hitting. I hugged him close so he couldn’t escape from the car. He bit me several times and repeatedly jabbed his elbows into my rib cage. I’m still stronger than he is, but I won’t be for much longer."
Finally he was subdued, but the chances of finding good help for him are not very great.
"With state-run treatment centers and hospitals shuttered, prison is now the last resort for the mentally ill—Rikers Island, the LA County Jail and Cook County Jail in Illinois housed the nation’s largest treatment centers in 2011," Long writes.
"No one wants to send a 13-year old genius who loves Harry Potter and his snuggle animal collection to jail. But our society, with its stigma on mental illness and its broken healthcare system, does not provide us with other options. Then another tortured soul shoots up a fast food restaurant. A mall. A kindergarten classroom. And we wring our hands and say, “Something must be done.”
"I agree that something must be done. It’s time for a meaningful, nation-wide conversation about mental health. That’s the only way our nation can ever truly heal."
Gun control would help too, but never forget that the Right Wing agenda is not good for people, either.
