Saturday Photo: All's Good, and the State of the World

 All you need to know about Montreal in 2021:  this industrial building in Mile End has not been used for that for a long time, as you can see.

 Don't know when Sweeney Barrel Co/Ltd went out of business but I wager it was a long time ago, and ordinarily I have a lot of problem with graffiti.  This however seems to me to encapsulate Montreal and maybe the world at the beginning of 2021. That is: remnants of the past, filth of the present, and a reminder that somehow we've got to keep at it, if we are to get ourselves out of the current mess. That "all's good" is something to strive for.

Saturday Photo: Life Continues (if you're lucky,) Welcome 2021

 The photo was taken 10 years ago, during the holiday season we were out of our house because of fire next door. We survived that with little permanent damage, thank you very much, but repair of the smoke damage took eight months. That Christmas was the first one we were grandparents, and I wanted to celebrate.  In the end, we had a good time, but it was a bit of a scramble to make the apartment where we squatted (rather elegantly, also thank you very much) look festive.

This is another new year's message at the end of year that was much worse.  Not that we were touched directly except for the various lockdowns, but it's been a sad experience for far too many people.  Let us hope that the joy of colours and enough to eat and hugs (even virtual ones) make 2021 a better year than 2020.

Saturday Photo: Christmas in the Cemetery, and Health Care

We went for a walk with the gang yesterday, doing the right thing for this Covid-19 Christmas.  No hugs, no inside gatherings, but at least we were together for a little while.

Didn't get to Mount Royal cemetery as planned, though, for complicated reasons that don't belong in this blog, but I had hoped to show the kids and grandkids these markers that I just noticed for the first times last week. They are for Billy Christmas and his wife.  He was an athlete at the turn of the 20th Century, and his beloved wife (apparently she convinced him to give up contact sports when they married) died early of breast cancer.  They also lost a daughter to a brain tumour when she was 15. According to the citation proclaiming him a member of the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame, in the 1930s he was an early champion of hospitalization insurance for ordinary folk. 

I only discovered that latter fact today when I stated looking into who he was.  Nice to give him credit for that fight, as well as his prowess on the playing field.  We didn't get universal hospitalization insurance all over Canada for another 30 years, but it finally came.  Now why can't our friends to the South get their act together do something similar.

Saturday Photo: Lights for This Year...

There have been years when I've railed against people who put up Christmas lights--waste of electricity, bad taste, just generally not cool.  Besides it's hard to hook them up to a plug inside: the one time Lee and the kids brought some home we decided they were too much trouble to bother with.

But this year I decided we needed a little light, so I found some battery-powered ones and wrapped them around a wreath.  They look very cheerful, and seem just what the doctors ordered in this Plague Year.  They complement the paintings on the front door, too, which are rainbows that the grandkids did back at the start of this dismal  period when kids around here appropriated rainbows as a symbol of the hope that everything will be all right.

So far for us, things really have been all right, touch wood.  Do hope you and yours are also doing well.  If you'd like more details about what we've been up to, check out our end of year blog here.

Saturday Photo: What I Can't Find This Year...

This is going to be a Christmas not like any other I've experienced, but we're healthy and we have more than enough to eat, so I shouldn't complain.

But I will, anyway.  The photo is of the salt herring I bought just 10 years ago when we were camped out in a rental apartment after a fire that put us out of our house for 8 months.  (Didn't lose much, weren't hurt, shouldn't really complain about that either.)  What I was preparing to do when I shot the photo was filet the fish and put them to pickle in order to make Swedish sil according to my mother-in-law's recipe.  It was a holiday tradition, and by last year even two of the three grandkids had come around to liking it.

In recent years I've had trouble finding salt herring in Montreal: for the last two years I bought a pail from a local wholesaler who this year has been been having issues with sanitary practices, so I haven't even tried to buy from them.  Two weeks ago we checked out various kinds of commercial pickled herring--including a Swedish import--but even after spending a week in the pickling solution, the taste and the texture of the fish were clearly not up to standard.  

So what I think I'll do is just pickle onions in the pickling solution and pretend that everything is just what it should be.

And that, on reflection, is what I guess we all will do this year.
 

Saturday Photo:No Snow, Temperature Up and Down, Bushes Confused

Took this a few days ago after a short spell of warm weather--up as high as 15 C.  This is not to say we've been spared cold weather so far because there's been two snow falls and a month of September that was quite chilly.

There is no doubt that winter is coming or is here, yet this bush seems to think that the cold nights are really just bad dreams, and so is getting ready to leaf out.  Its hopes (if it's proper to speak of plants having hopes) are certain to be dashed soon.

Our hopes for small gatherings at the end of December--promised by the premier of the province if we were good--were dashed this week as hospitalizations, deaths and Covid 19 cases continue to rise. Looks like it will be a Zoom Christmas...
 

Saturday Photo: Light at the End of the Tunnel?

The days are getting shorter and shorter--only three weeks to the Solstice, more or less, and the sun around here is rising about 7 a.m.  Dark days, indeed.  The prospect of a holiday season in confinement makes it all even more depressing.

But this morning, when reading that the Canadian government projects having the majority of the population vaccinated against Covid 19 by next September, I suddenly felt much more hopeful.

Yes, things are rotten right now, but all signs are that it won't last forever, if we're prudent.  Next year at this time we ought to be able to be planning big get-togethers, promising grandkids a visit to see Caisse Noisette, not worrying about crowds when shopping...

Of course, we have to get there, and it may be a long slog.  But let us enjoy what we can this year, and hope for the best for next.
 

Saturday Photo: What to Do on a Dark Winter Day

 

Elena Ferrante’s top 40 books by female authors

What to do these long, dark days when you may be in semi-lockdown: Elena Ferrante's top 40 novels by women (from The Guardian.) I've read 13, how about you?

• Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Fourth Estate)
• The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood (Virago)
• The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree by Shokoofeh Azar, translated by Anonymous (Europa Editions)
• Malina by Ingeborg Bachmann, translated by Philip Boehm (Penguin Classics)
• A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin (Picador)
• Outline by Rachel Cusk (Faber)
• The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion (Harper Perennial)
• A Girl Returned by Donatella Di Pietrantonio, translated by Ann Goldstein (Europa)
• Disoriental by Négar Djavadi, translated by Tina Kover (Europa Editions)
• The Lover by Marguerite Duras, translated by Barbara Bray (Harper Perennial)
• The Years by Annie Ernaux, translated by Alison Strayer (Fitzcarraldo)
• Family Lexicon by Natalia Ginzburg, translated by Jenny McPhee (Daunts)
• The Conservationist by Nadine Gordimer (Bloomsbury)
• Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff (Windmill Books)
• Motherhood by Sheila Heti (Vintage)
• The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek, translated by Joachim Neugroschel (Serpent’s Tail)
• Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami, translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd (Picador)
• Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri (Flamingo)
• The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing (Flamingo)
• The Passion According to GH by Clarice Lispector, translated by Idra Novey (Penguin Classics)
• Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli (Fourth Estate)
• Arturo’s Island by Elsa Morante, translated by Ann Goldstein (Pushkin)
• Beloved by Toni Morrison (Vintage Classics)
• Dear Life by Alice Munro (Vintage)
• The Bell by Iris Murdoch (Vintage Classics)
• Accabadora by Michela Murgia, translated by Silvester Mazzarella (MacLehose Press)
• Le Bal by Irene Nemirovsky, translated by Sandra Smith (Vintage)
• Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates (Fourth Estate)
• The Love Object: Selected Stories by Edna O’Brien (Faber)
• A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor (Faber)
• Evening Descends Upon the Hills: Stories from Naples by Anna Maria Ortese, translated by Ann Goldstein and Jenny McPhee (Pushkin)
• Gilead by Marylinne Robinson (Virago)
• Normal People by Sally Rooney (Faber)
• The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (Harper Perennial)
• White Teeth by Zadie Smith (Penguin)
• Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (Simon & Schuster)
• The Door by Magda Szabò, translated by Len Rix (Vintage Classics)
• Cassandra by Christa Wolf, translated by Jan van Heurck (Daunts)
• A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara (Picador)
• Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar, translated by Grace Frick (Penguin Classics)

Saturday Photo: Concrete and the End of the Road...

 The Globe and Mail this weekend is featuring a number of articles about cities.  Among them is one about the role that concrete has played in building them, and the threat it poses for us all.  Check it out here.

Saturday Photo: Bicycles and Winter...

It snowed on Tuesday, and is shirt-sleeve weather today.  Good day to go for a bike ride--or if you're like me, a walk.

Bixi, Montreal's bike share service, goes for another week, good weather or bad weather.  I haven't seen the stats on its use this year.  Probably down a bit because of the lock down early in the season, although a general increase in bike riding for the same reason might weigh the balance the other way.

Whatever, more and more people in Montreal are riding bikes all year 'round.  Probably good for their health, probably also good for the CO2 balance.

 

Saturday Photo: A Little Change-up, a Change in the Kitchen and Bathroom Chez Nous

After a couple of years of chat, and 11 months of planning etc. our renovations are complete.  New floors, countertops, more cabinets and paint in the kitchen.  New walk in shower to replace the clawfoot bathtub in the bathroom.  So nice to have something accomplished in this year when so many things have not turned out the way they were supposed to!

 

Saturday Photo: Trees in the Golden Forest...

No message today because I'm calling for the election. But if you have a chance to get out, do.  The light and the trees are wonderful.

October's bright blue weather, indeed`

Saturday Photo: Grape Leaves, Or the Fruit of Sunlight

There isn't a whole lot of sunlight in our backyard because the maple tree two doors to the south shades everything most of the day.  But that hasn't stopped a volunteer grape from flourishing.

The grapes themselves are small, bitter and full of seeds, but the vine does a good job of covering a multitude of ills, including a garage that needs a good paint job but which certainly won't get on this year.

Then this time of year the leaves turn a wonderful yellow that makes me think of all the sunshine the vine absorbed over the summer.  So lovely...

Need all the brightness we can is this difficult time.
 

Saturday Photo: Never Hurts to Stop and Take Stock, Or Happy Thanksgiving

 I'm far from being a religious person, but I think it's important to occasionally stop and consider what we have in this life.  That's particularly true in this Plague Year, where the forces of darkness are out there, hammering at the gates.

Ordinarily we have a big buffet for family and friends on this weekend, which is Canadian Thanksgiving, but of course, Covid-19 oblige, we'll just be me, Lee and the turkey (or as one of his friends just said, me and two turkeys!)

Nevertheless, we've made it so far with no one falling ill, we've just about finished a renovation project that has been in the works for more than a year, and we are among the lucky ones who have suffered no financial uncertainty this year. 

So, while I think that giving thanks to some deity is not in the game, I'd like to thank those who helped keep our corner of the world safe, beginning with Tommy Douglas, the Father of Canada's Medicare program. As for the rest of you, well, come election time I'll be on the phone for you.  

Besides, as the French saying goes, quand on se compare, on se console,  That is, when you compare, you can be comforted.  It always helps to put one's own life in perspective. 

Saturday Photo: The Book Launch Will Be BYOB, Unfortunately

 

Usually when I have a new book come out we have a little launch party at an independent book store.  Last year just about now we were preparing for one for Frenenemy Nations: Love and Hate between Neighbo(u)ring States at Librairie Drawn and Quarterly.  We shared some good things to eat and drink, and I got a chance to hold forth in front of about 40 friends.   (That's what it looked like then.)

This time things are different, Covid-19 oblige.  There will no way of getting together in person to celebrate and talk about Concrete: From Ancient Origins to a Problematic Future, so we've organized a virtual launch through the resources of the publisher, the University of Regina Press.  There's a little video about the book to show and I'll, of course, hold forth.  Would be great fun to have you join us, even if any toasts we might make will have to be provided by you or done in your imagination..  Here's the link to the reservation: it's free, but we need to know how many folks to expect.  bit.ly/marysoderstrom

 

Saturday Photo: Golden Rod, One Thing That Shines in These Dark Times

The golden rod has been blooming around here for several weeks.  In fact, in some places it's actually well past its prime, and is looking a little faded.  But this morning I found this bunch just as the sun began to shine on it.  Somewhere there are a few bees buzzing around, although I couldn't get close enough to catch them in action.

 We are heading in the wrong direction when it comes to Covid-19, and the political situation in the US is pretty grim.  I keep looking for hopeful signs, and while these plants have absolutely not impact on the state of the world, they made me smile this morning, which is not a bad thing. 

Thin Air Festival Featuring Concrete, Believe It or Not

 It may sound like an oxymoron, but concrete in North America frequently contains up to 6 per cent

air.  Why, is something I talk about in Concrete: From Ancient Origins to a Problematic Future,  which will be officially published Oct. 10.  But before then there's a chance to learn more about it and my thoughts on the material that built the world as we know it.

Winnipeg's Thin Air Festival is now on, and is featuring two videos I've made about concrete as well as an interview with festival staffer Teresa Horosko.  Then on Sunday October 11 I'll be leading a 90 minute interactive workshop on writing non-fiction, called Thanks for the Memory: Writing Non-Fiction in a Time of False News.  Check it out at: https://thinairfestival.ca/user/136/

Saturday Photo: Cosmos, the Flower That Keeps on Giving...

 

If you wait long enough, that is.  Cosmos are wonderful flowers that reseed themselves and change sunny places to corners of cosmic delight.

I've never had much luck with them because our neighboring trees cast too much shade.  But I love these flowers that burst into bloom at the end of summer, and dellight the eye when the senses begin to think that summer is over.

Would that the Cosmos were as well regulated...

Saturday Photo: Good Crop of Umbrellas This Summer

 Well, it rained a lot here in August, so obviously these folks were on the case.  The umbrella stayed there for a couple of weeks, during the worst of the downpours.  This morning it had disappeared.  Can't decide if that was because the forecast is for sun, or because someone came along and "harvested" it.

Saturday Photo: Reclaiming the City...

One of the up-sides of this Plague Year is the way people and cities are rethinking public spaces.  Around here a number of neighborhoods have widened sidewalks by allowing terraces in street parking place or even shutting down whole blocks of commercial streets so cafés can expand seating a kids can play in the liberated space.

And then there are the folks who have been at it for a long time like sculptor Glenn Demesurier whose sculptures made from found bits and pieces of old machinery are sometimes whimsical and frequently lovely.

These are three of his now gracing the corner of Bernard and Waverly in Montreal's Mile End district.  They make me smile every time I walk past.