The Walkable City: From Haussmann's Boulevards to Jane Jacobs' Streets and Beyond
Confession: the photo was taken some time ago when we actually had some sunny weather. It's been gray and rainy for the last couple of days and all the snow is melting. Would love to have the sun greet the new year, but the forecast says no.
Whatever, best wishes for a splendid 2023.
Here's the link to our holiday blog, too, in case you're interested.
But I'm not going out until the sidewalk tractors come by. Snowy sidewalks are a good excuse to stay inside and read.
Spent a good part of the morning filleting and cleaning them, and now I have four large jars of sil in the fridge, ready for celebrations later this month.
But I'm up and around, even walking outside with a cane, despite snow on the sidewalks so it's time to catch up....
I talk about them at length in my new book Against the Seas: Saving Civilizations from Rising Waters that will be out in February from Dundurn Press. Not a moment too soon...
Love plant that comes back every year. I don't know why people bother annuals in this climate go-around.
My contribution is this photo of the perennial plant, Queen Anne's lace, which is just finishing up its reign as queen of wild spaces just now. A member of the carrot family, it supposedly is named after Queen Anne, the wife of England's King James II. She wore a lot of lace ,it seems.
The connection with the monarchy is clear, and so is the beauty of the plant.
When you get to the end of the road at Kegaska, you can continue by going out to sea. Manypeople must have considered doingtht, becausethe harbourhas many inukshuk, those Inuit cairns, that show the way. 
This is as far as you can go on a road up the north shore of the St. Lawrence river. To reach the small villages beyond, you have to take a boat, or fly in.
Kegaska is about 1300 km from Montreal, and we took three days to get there and eight days to come back. Wonderful weather, great scenery and generally a good time.
More photos to come, as fall approaches and the world closes in upon us.
Just as France begins to consider prohibiting women from wearing niqab, or a full veil, fashion designer Riccardo Tisci features a very attractive young woman wearing a sort of pseudo-veil in his new collection for Givenchy, seen at left as shown in The Globe and Mail.
The juxtaposition throws a spotlight on the place where fashion and ideas about modesty—religious or not—intersect. As I’ve said before here, wearing a veil may be a signal of Muslim belief in some quarters, but it doesn’t stop women from caring about how they look.
And, as I’ve just learned, the veil is not only a Muslim thing. It has been a strategy to avoid harrassment in other places, and has gone through some interesting transformations elsewhere too.
I’m reading Louise Levathes’ fascinating When China Ruled the Seas: The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne, 1405-1433 as I research my book about the Portuguese Making Waves. After the great period of Chinese maritime adventure, its defences against attack from the sea declined until its coastal areas were prey for pirates and raiders in the 16th century, frequently called wako.
“China’s coastal famers and fishermen...who had been robbed of their livelihood as well as, at times, their wives or daughters, never forgot the wako. Young girls in the Hui’an peninsula ... to this day tie blue scarfs tightly around their heads, hiding their faces...it has become the local fashion,” she writes. “But the stories, passed down for generations in villages, of a time when yong women fled from the lecherous glances of the bandits who came from across the sea in ships with red sails, have not died.”
Hui’an women are reputed for their beauty, and now wear very short jackets which show their navels along with their scarves. “Sexy Lady on the Sunny Beach – Hui'an Women” one story about their traditional dress says. Fashion trumps all!
Photos of Hui'an women from Chinavista.com and Chinaculture.org. Photo of Tisci creation from onsugar.com
Note from March 6, 2011: for more about Muslim women, the veil and female affirmation see "Good News from the Arab Spring Revolutions: "When Women Change, Everything Changes."
So this guy just ambled out, kept a wary eye on us (who had stopped to look at birds) and proceeded to scratch his belly on the sandy soil. Trying to remove parasites? Scratch mosquito bites? Who knows? Obviously as long as we were still he felt no fear. But as soon as we moved he took off...
This comes as the Monarch is being declared an endangered species, in large part because of wholesale destruction of its breeding fields in North America. Glad to see that some people are still planting those species that Monarchs like. Very unhappy to see that sometimes the fields of milk weed and cone flowers get mowed by public agencies who don't seem to know what they'e doing.
Planting street trees and greening parks are important parts of any plan to combat climate change. Besides, they're beautiful.
