Mary Soderstrom's Blog, page 99

And Further to Thanksgiving

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Happy Thanksgiving: One Thing the US Accomlished That Maybe It Shouldn't Be so Thankful for...

Always knew this, but videos of Hillary Clinton explaining how the US funded insurgent forces in Afghanistan in the late 1970s and earlyl 1980s to defeat the Soviet invasion have been bouncing up on my radar recently. Another "mission accomplished," as George W. Bush so famously said? [image error]

"The rich stay rich and everyone else churns around in the bottom."

Interesting analysis of the Fraser Institute's recent study of income mobility just put out by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. 

The right wing think tank suggests that four out of five low income Canadians moved up the income ladder over the ten year period of 1990-2000. But, CCPA (often a welcome counterweight to the Fraser bunch) points out that most of the "mobility" was from "very poor" to "poor."

Not what you'd hope for when you're trying to make a country a place here income inequality is minimal.  The CCPA's Daniel Macdonald comments: "Although this isn’t the report’s conclusion, my conclusion from the same data is that the rich stay rich and everyone else churns around in the bottom."

Doesn't surprise me in the least... [image error]

Twinkies in the Service of Science

Great story in The New York Times today about the use of Twinkies, those disgusting little cakes, in science experiments.  Seems they don't burn, can be shown to be made up mostly of air, and several other things which demonstrate how to measure materials and how to test  hypotheses.

The company that makes them, Hostess, has declared the death knell for them (or so it seems),  There probably are substitutes, though.  Just got to go on another sort of scientific expedition....


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Why Historical Novels? Why Not Just History?

For my various book groups I found myself reading two historical novels this week end.  One is Caleb's Crossing by Geraldine Brooks and the other is The Midwife of Venice by Roberta Rich. 

The first is the first person tale of a 17th century woman on Nantucket, growing up Puritan  where Native American society is just a stone's throw away.  The second takes place about 100 years earlier in Venice where a Jewish midwife has discovered how to use forceps to help in difficult deliveries.  Both appear very well researched, and present moving stories of plucky women.  Childbirth features prominently in both too.

My friend Ann Charney  once said she didn't see the point in historical novels.  "Why doesn't one just read history?" I remember her as saying.  At the time--and it wasn't too long after I'd strugged with fictionalized biography of the Lower Canadian Patriot Robert Nelson--I was surprised.  A fiction about the past seemed to me to be a great way of making an imaginative leap in time.

However, I've become more critical of the genre lately.  It is true that sometimes an historical novel can present fascinating facts that would otherwise be accessible only through extensive research.  Sometimes, also, the story told can be worth reading.  And, frequently, I suspect, a reader may feel  less ambivalent about reading a page turner when an otherwise-cliched story is coated with a nourishing coat of fact.

But to find out what really happened during the time evoked in a novel, you really have to read some original documents and good history yourself.  If an historical novel is not well written  there's just no reason to read it.




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Saturday Photo: Upside of Climate Change Is Longer Biking Season

Let me say straight out that I don't ride bikes unless my life depends on doing so--got hit by one when I was little and was traumatized.  But I appreciate that more and more people around here are using them as a means of transport.

That's good in ecological terms and might do something to improve our sorry situation concerning green house gas emissions and their consequences for climate change.  Consider what Michael Kesterton reported in Monday's Globe and Mail on a "a ground-breaking method for turning ordinary foodstuffs into fuel.” 

He quotes  Elisabeth Kwak-Hefferan of Grist.org. “The potential is boundless as practically any food item will do – pumpkin seeds, cereal and salmon fillets can all transform into the energy required to get you almost anywhere you need to go while emitting almost no extra greenhouse gases. Here’s how it works: Eat food. Allow your digestive system to turn it into glycogen, which provides energy to your muscles that can be used to power physical motion. Then walk.”

Same thing for biking.  The irony is that with milder winters brought on by climate change also lengthenn the cycling season.  Could this be the start of a benevolent circle as opposed to a vicious one?

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Part of the Story Behind the Montreal Super-Hospital Projects: Residential Developoment of the Mountain?

[image error] For some time I've wondered about the reasons why many parts of the Montreal community were so gung-ho for building two new super-hospitals.  The story goes back nearly two decades, with years of in-fighting over the sites and assurances that there would be both English and French hospital centres.

Now I think the answer lies in the real estate adage: Location, location, location...and greed.

The original arguments for the new health facities were that new structures were needed to meet the technical challenges of cutting edge health care, and replace aging infrastructures.

There was no discussion at all of the effects of closing down three existing hospitals, the Royal Victoria, Hôtel-Dieu and the Shriners.  All three are on prime real estate, either on Mount Royal itself, or just beside it with grand views of Montreal's most striking topographic feature. Now extremely troubling news is coming out about the way these projects got underway and the profits to be made by construction companies, developers and their friends.

The most serious involves Dr. Arthur Porter, brought in about a decade ago  to captain the McGill University Health Centre project.    La Presse reported last month that  he is implicated in $22 million in doubtful payments made by the engineering consulting firm SNC-Lavalin  during the awarding of the contract for the hospital project.   This last is part of the puzzle that Quebec's commission on corruption in the construction industry is now putting together.  Payments, kickbacks and death threats have been asserted daily since the Charbonneau Commission began sitting in September.

(It should be noted that Porter  also headed Canada's top spy agency, but resigned last year after The National Post reported he had "wired $200,000 in personal funds to Ari Ben-Menashe, a Montreal-based businessman who often acts as a middleman in negotiations between the Russian Federation and developing countries.")

This month McGill started proceedings to sue  Porter for $287,000 for non-repayment of a "housing loan" which has involves a condo right across from the soon-to-be-vacated hospitals.

But Porter is nowhere to be found.  He left post office box addresses in the Caribbean, and when La Presse sent reporters to check out one of properties he owns in the Bahamas, he answered a telephone call, but responded to no questions and said he was "out of the country."

Hmmmm.  Very interesting.  So is the fact that Université de Montréal sold for a vertiable song a convent buildiing it had acquired as  part of an elaborate plan de expand  its medical school to one of the suspect construction companies implicated in the construction scandal.  It should be noted that in this case the building also is prime real estate on the flanc  of Mount Royal. 

The watch dog group Les Amis de la montagne is calling for public hearings on the future of Mount Royal next spring, but it is probably too late to stop more infringements on the mountain.

And it certainly is too late to stop millions being made by speculators and others using  public money and playing on our desire to have good health care to cut themselves some nice deals.  [image error]

Building on a Swamp Doesn't Make It Not a Swamp, Or My Mother on Rising Sea Levels

[image error] The New York Times has an opinion piece today arguing that rebuilding along the New York and New Jersey shoreline in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy is not a good idea.   "Retreat from the Beach" it's called, and it points out that people know what locations are chancey, and have a for a long time.

"Respecting the power of these storms is not new," writes Orrin H. Pilkey. "American Indians who occupied barrier islands during the warm months moved to the mainland during the winter storm season. In the early days of European settlement in North America, some communities restricted building to the bay sides of barrier islands to minimize damage. In Colombia and Nigeria, where some people choose to live next to beaches to reduce exposure to malarial mosquitoes, houses are routinely built to be easily moved. "

My mother, who loved the beach and delighted in living not far from one in San Diego, also was careful to buy a house on high ground.  "You can build on a swamp, but that doesn't make it any less a swamp," she said many times.  It was good advice decades and decades ago,  and it becomes more pertinent as sea levels rise with climate change.

BTW, the picture is of Sunset Cliffs, where she loved to sit and watch the surf, but where she would never have bought.  [image error]

The Super Rich, Austerity and Life in the These Difficult Times

Chrystia Freeland says that the top .01 per cent control about 8 per cent of the world's wealth.  So crazy that's is probably true!  Check out her interview on CBC's The Current  or her book. The Plutocrats.

So why should anybody be surprised that, finally, protests against austerity for everybody else are coming together in Southern Europe? 

Maybe the next revolutionary slogan should be: ordinary folk of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but you bosses.[image error]

Jeanne Visitng, Grandma Busy...

Elin and her friends are heading for Victoria today, to round out their Western tour.  They got a lovely feature in Vancouver's Georgia Straight , and sounds like their audiences have been most appreciative.

Jeanne and Emmanuel have done quite nicely in Elin's absence, but he's doing school workshops this week, so Jeanne has come to spend some quality and quantity time with Grandma and Grandpa (or Mana and Bada as she calls us: go figure.)  That means that my posts will be sporadic this week while we have a good time together....[image error]