Saturday Photo: A Good Year for Pumpkins and Quotes from Emerson

Happy Halloween!

There is something very satisfying about the shape and colour of pumpkins, it seems to me. Like concentrated sunlight--which, now that I think of it, may be the reason why using them as part of harvest festival is so appropriate.

Certainly the many, many pumpkins I've seen on doorsteps these last 10 days add colour to days which are increasingly short. What a contrast with the rather contradictory messages at large this time of year when a festival that originally commemorated the dead has become a festival for children who parade around in costumes and eat too many sweets!

When the kids were small I obsessed about this more, giving out only boxed raisins and insisting that they eat as much as they liked of whatever they collected that night, but that the rest be thrown away. The fact that I've started buying little candy bars to give out to the relatively few little ones now living on our street (streets have generations, too, I realize) amazes them. But as Emerson said (most appropriately,) "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds..."

The quote ends: "... adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines," which is appropriate too, given Montreal's municipal elections tomorrow.

Hitting Greenhouse Gas Targets Won't Kill Economic Growth: Prentice Calls Report "Irresponsible"

Same report, quite different conclusions: yesterday The Globe and Mail and Le Devoir gave front page play to a report on the eonomics of climate change, but from the headlines and the opening paragraphs you’d be forgiven for thinking the stories were about different documents.

A 20 per cent reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, compared to 1996, can be attained while experiencing economic growth, the report says, but it would not be as strong as “business as usual,” both newspapers agree.

Yet the Globe trumpets “Canada can meet its climate goals, but the West will write the cheques,” while Le Devoir writes, “Reducing GES by 25 per cent wouldn’t put the economic brakes on.” (Réduire de 25% les GES ne freinerait pas l'économie.)

If you read both stories, you’ll discover that they’re both right: Canada would have economic growth of 2.1 per cent a year over the next 10 years if it takes action, according to the report, which was commissioned by the Toronto Dominion Bank and conducted MK Jaccard for the Pembina Institute and the David Suzuki Foundation. But growth would be lower than otherwise in Alberta—oil sands country, remember—and Saskatchewan and the Atlantic provinces would also be affected. Growth under the considerably more modest Harper-government objectives would average 2.2 per cent annually across the nation.

This morning both The Globe and Le Devoir carry stories about Federal environment minister Jim Prentice calling the report “irresponsible.” Not surprisingly, his remarks getting bigger play in the paper out of Toronto than the Montreal one.

Here’s the link to the report itself: decide for yourself.

This is another example of "what you see depends upon where you sit."

It's in the Mail--Or Was

Nothing like an accident to put things in perspective: I seem to have trashed all the folders on my e-mail program, but, amazingly!, I realize that this is not such a terrible loss.

This morning has been spent in trying to figure out what happened--it appears that because I wasn't deleting messages I let the files get so big that the program caterpillared, as my mother would say. The address book is still there, though, and that is what I really need. Any important document I have saved elsewhere or printed out. What appears to be gone are all those bits and pieces that I've sent or received from friends and family. Bits and pieces of a life. Flotsam and jetsam.

So why was I keeping nearly three years of messages? For posterity? Yes, I realize now that's indeed what I was doing. The idea that some day someone might want to reconstitute my correspondance was lying around back there somewhere, like a self-indulgent, bloated ghost. Bad karma. Serves me right.

WMCs and the Montreal Election: A Danse Macabre for All Saints' Day

As I’ve mentioned, we’re just a few days from municipal elections where some pretty heavy accusations of corruption have come out. Envelopes with large sums of cash being exchanged, contracts for roads, buildings and water meters awarded to buddies, apparent lack of oversight: it is not a pretty sight. As one comic said this morning on Radio Can, it’s a campaign where “weapons of mass construction” are being used.

What an interesting coincidence, too, that the election is being held November 1, the day after Halloween and the day before the Day of the Dead, given all the skeletons that have been let out of the closet! Will there be victors worthy of singing "When the Saints Come Marching in" this All Saints' Day?

The Importance of Books: Why We Need to Tell Ourselves Stories

What role does the book play in the continued health of civilization? The question keeps coming up as I read and re-read books for book discussion groups.

One of the striking things bout Roberto Bolaño’s astounding By Night in Chile is the way the narrator escapes from the evil abroad during the Pinochet regime in Chile by re-reading philosophers.

In Bernhard Schlink’s The Reader—last month’s book at the Atwater Library—the illiterate woman whom the narrator loves is captivated by books, and may be said to find her personal salvation in learning how to read and learning to repent for what she’d done as a Nazi guard.

Tonight and tomorrow I’m talking about Muriel Barbery’s The Elegance of the Hedgehog in which the concierge Renée soars above her surroundings by reading the classics of Western literature—as well as watching a lot of good films (from Blade Runner to Ozu’s artistic wonders) and listening to good music.

But it is last night’s discussion of Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones which gives me the most food for thought. In it, the one white man left on the island of Bougainville during a time of intense suffering and civil war reads Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations to children who have no other book. The story captivates them, and when the book is burnt along wit the village, they attempt to retrieve bits of it, as both an exercise in survival and a way of thinking about other things than the destruction around them. Yet at the end of the book we learn that the version Mr. Watts read was not the real one, but a simplified, maybe even crudely changed one.

At a time when books as objects made from printed paper are becoming increasingly problematic, this concern about stories and books is very interesting. Perhaps all these books—which obviously have touched a deep chord in people all over the world, as reflected in their enormous sales---shine a light on the human need for a narrative to explain life.

If we don’t have one, we’ll invent one.

For an interesting look at the background to Mister Pip, here is part of a documentary made in the 1990s about the troubles on Bougainville. It's up to you to decide which tells the truth better.

Leaves Fly, But Will the Winds of Change Blow on Sunday?

After a weekend of rain followed by high wind, the leaves are flying. This morning in the cemetery, the hillside, which had remained resolutely green as if defying the changing season, was yellow with red accents where it wasn't already denuded. Even the ginkgos, which frequently are a gorgeous butter yellow at the end of October, stood starkly against the blue sky and the rising sun.

If I remember correctly from my English literature courses, it is considered poor writing—or even cheating—to suggest that the weather reflects human emotions. the classic example is creating a “It was a dark and windy night” scene in order to send shivers up and down the readers spine for no good reason. But I can’t help thinking that there’s a nice symbol in wind blowing away leaves at the moment. We have a municipal election on the weekend, and it would be a good idea to shake things up a little.

Saturday Photo: Bridal Veil, for Memories

We were invited last weekend to the 40th anniversary celebration of a couple we've known for 30 years. Their very accomplished children organized an afternoon of good fellowship and good food at a small restaurant in Montreal's Plateau district.

Other friends also celebrated their 40th this summer, and we hit our 45th August 29 (yes, we were both children.) So now before all the leaves are off the trees--the Autumn Leaves Drifting by the Window, as the old song says--it's time to remember beginnings.

I took this picture in June, and used it for a screen saver most of the summer. As it happened, it was a very good summer for bridal veil--it cascaded everywhere--and its memory is as fresh as the smiles on the face of our friends when they reminisced about the way they met, so long ago.

I Pull Pull the Plug before Geocities Does: Welcome to My New Sites

Geocities announced a couple of months ago that October 26 it would be pulling the plug on its system of free websites. I've had one there since early 2001, and learned a little HTML in order to keep it up to date. The idea behind it was to provide basic information about me and my writing, and to showcase some of the things I've done.

But three years ago it became clear that Geocities was losing interest. It began to do things like no longer support accents, which meant that I had to go in a write ascii code each time I used an accented French word. A pain, indeed! That was about the time I started this blog, which (touch wood!) so far has not run into any support problem of this kind.

By the time Geocities' announcement came, I had closed down much of my website, switching things over to various places on Blogger. And now there is nothing there any more. You'll find all the relevant CV information here, along with cross links to my other blogs. These include ones with news about my writing life, the book discussions I lead and about the trip to Africa that lies behind The Violets of Usambara plus more personal things like our son's wedding, and an annual season's greeting letter (see the one for 2008). Come by and take a look.

Quebec Moves away from PPPs--Maybe of Several Sorts

Great announcement today: the Quebec agency which is supposed to oversee the province's Private Public Partnerships--those famous PPPs that were supposed to save us a lot of money--has been given a new name. It will now be called Infrastructure Quebec, and it will also be responsible for projects constructed in the traditional way--that is by the government as lead player.

PPPs, as many people have been pointing out for a long time, are not very efficient, and they put profit, not the public good, at the list of their aims. The current Quebec government began to back away from them about a year ago, but this is a sign that perhaps someone has seen the light. Given the current avalanche of questions about payoffs and kickbacks in municipal construction projects, it's about time that the screws on public spending were tightened. We don't need less money or fewer projects, particularly as we try to relaunch the economy, but we do need to have the money spent well.

Which prompted one commentator on Radio Can to say this morning that the name change was made to get away from that other PPP: politics, power and pilfering. Too bad, but probably too true.

More Madness from the Harperites, This Time about Stocking Carbon

Jeffrey Simpson set out more arguments for conservation of energy, not continued production in his Globe and Mail column Tuesday. The Prime Minister has been hopping around the country, making announcements of, among other things, projects to stock greenhouse gases in various ways. According to Simpson, the latest plans will cost $1.6 billion in taxpayers’ money, or or "about $220 for a family of four."

“What do we get for that sum?," he continues. "We get, at best, a reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions of 2.1 million tonnes.”

This means, he says, a carbon reduction of maybe 2 per cent. “On a cost-benefit basis, these carbon-capture and storage projects are madness...They are wildly expensive for the small amount of carbon they will (might?) prevent from entering the atmosphere. They are most definitely not a substitute for a serious climate-change policy that, however structured, must put a price on carbon emissions by those who produce them – either upstream emitters such as industrial concerns and/or downstream consumers.”

But we all know that these announcements, like those funny cheques Conservative MPs have been handing out, are as much about rewarding the Conservative party’s friends as they are about actually doing something. Harper is not serious about climate change or greenhouse gas emissions or anything else that goes counter to his deeply reactionary, head-in-the-sand ideas.

Sigh.

I’m not sad that Ignatieff has stopped talking about taking down the government, but somehow the forces of light in this country have got to find a way to get rid of Stephen Harper and his crew who do not represent the values of the majority of the country.

What Is Stephen Harper Reading? A Collection of Yann Martel's Letters--Or Not?

Yann Martel just sent Prime Minister Stephen Harper a new book-- number 66 in Martel’s continuing campaign to provide Harper with bedtime reading—and Martel hopes the PM has already read it. What Is Stephen Harper Reading?: Yann Martel’s Recommended Reading for a Prime Minisiter and Book Lovers of All Stripes is a collection of the letters that have accompanied the books that Martel has sent every two weeks since April 2007 when he set out to provide a little stillness in the PM’s life.

Each book in the very eclectic collection has come with a short essay explaining why Martel chose it. Sometimes—as with Jane Austen’s unfinished The Watsons—there’s an explicit political message. It was sent during a nationwide discussion about Canada’s continued involvement in Afghanistan, and Martel wrote pointedly that Austen let go of this book because of circumstances in her life. "In that, there is something instructive. There is so much we must leave unfinished. How hard it is to let go.” The message was lost on Harper: Canadian troops are still on the ground there.

At other times, the books were ones supposedly for children—most recently Maurice Sendak’s classic Where the Wild Things Are and In the Night Kitchen—and poetry and plays also made the cut.

Like many others (although apparently not Harper who has never replied personally) I’ve read Martel's letters on his website with great pleasure, and often thought that the list of books would make a great plan for independent reading. Thousands of others have followed the evolving project on the web, but Martel says that he is glad the letters have been published in book form. The internet is ephemeral after all, but “books last.”

He closes this cover letter by mentioning Harper’s appearance a couple of weeks ago at a National Arts Centre benefit, where “ sang poetry to the Canadian people. No one expected With a Little Help from My Friends from you. And look at the effect you had. People were amazed. You made the front page of newspaper after newspaper, and often with a big photo of you at the piano. It goes to show how art can amaze, connect and unify.”

We may know what Stephen Harper has to read, but we don’t know if he is reading it, alas!

Who Do You Want to Lead You: Crooks, Reality TV Wannabes or People with Principles?

The Montreal municipal election campaign has been marked by revelations of contributions from construction companies to highly placed councilors over the last few years. Among them were inflated contracts for water meters, but some of the same practices surfaced over the weekend when the Number Two opposition figure had to step down because it appears he also had dealings with some of the same individuals.

Apparently police investigations are underway, and at the moment it is premature to lay blame right and left—in this society one is innocent until proven guilty after all—but this sort of hanky panky sullies what ought to be a high calling, that of being a leader in a democracy.

One thing puzzles me in all this: what do the politicians implicated in these affairs gain for themselves? In the sponsorship scandal which shook the Liberal Party of Canada a few years ago, and here again, the money given clandestinely was purportedly to finance political campaigns with the understanding that contracts would be thrown in the direction of the donors.

Individual politicians supposedly did not pocket the cash, and in some of the cases the money shows up in party accounts. But surely politicians don’t stick their necks out unless there’s something in it for them. Either the money went to finance a nice life style (like the thousands that Brian Mulroney received from Karlheinz Schreiber which went not to party coffers but to Mulroo’s personal safe), or the politicians in question want to be re-elected so badly they betrayed the public trust.

The first possibility is bad enough, but the second one is also troubling. Is the lust for celebrity and power that much of a reward? We don’t need leaders whose motivations resemble those of Reality TV personalities any more than we need crooks.

PS. If you'd like to read more about politicians torn between the high that comes from political life and doing the right thing, check out my novel The Violets of Usambara.

Saturday Photo: Why Not a Fall Picnic? Perhaps with Some Apple Jack?

You might need gloves to keep you fingers warm, but a sunny day like today is a good enough excuse to take your sandwiches outside. Bring a long a bottle of wine too, since it still isn't cold enough to freeze alcoholic beverages!

Although, now that I think of it, I'm reminded of my uncle who used to make apple cider in Prohibition days, and then leave it outside in the Eastern Washington winters. The apple juice part froze, but the alcohol stayed liquid longer--distillation, in effect, without the apparatus.

Cigarette Machines in Libraries? Only if They Sell Books, Not Smokes

It’s enough to make a person of a certain age do a double take: a cigarette machine in the library. Wikipedia says that the machines were made illegal in the 1980s in Canada—I can’t confirm that independently, but certainly I have not seen one in ages.

Yet yesterday there one was, near the entrance of my neighborhood library.

Only this Distroboto (that’s what they’re called, apparently) wasn’t selling cigarettes. It was stocked instead with little booklings put out by a couple of avant garde publishers here. The price for each was $2, and had I not been in a hurry I would have emptied my change purse of $2 coins (called a Twoonie, to match the $1 Loonie bearing the image of a loon.)

The organization behind the machines is Archives Montreal, a non profit which says its mandate is to assist in the "promotion, distribution and preservation of local independent culture.” And while the one at Outremont’s Bibliothèque Robert-Bourassa is newly-installed, the idea has been around for nearly a decade. Louis Rastelli, the force behind it, was featured in a 2001 New York Times story. At the time there was only one in the back of the Casa del Popolo, a neighborhood bar which is a trendy venue for music and poetry readings. Now it seems Distroboto has eight locations in Montreal, including three in libraries.

Selling books from machines is nothing new--I saw many in public spaces in São Paulo a few years ago--but this idea seems unique. Since Canadian cigarette packages are larger than US ones, the machines which sold them lend themselves better to the selling books. This means that Distroboto may not be directly exportable South of the Border. But pressure is mounting to get rid of soft drink machines: why not convert them to vending culture, too?

Frosty Morning Photo: Leaves on the Grass, and A Nip in the Air

Too much to do today to post anything more than a photo I took yesterday morning when the sun was out and the temperatures were cold. It's even colder today and much cloudier. Brrr..... I'll just have to get to work to warm up.

Fun Can Make You Change Your Behavior? Well, Maybe for a Little While

Thanks to Penney Kome for passing this one along: she's the source for some marvelous videos. The idea in this one is apparently to test whether having fun--The Fun Theory--is effective in changing behavior.

Well, I’m not sure this one proves that—and I imagine that the noise could be a nuisance if you worked just off the corridor leading to the escalator. Certainly, once the novelty wears off, people are likely to go back to riding the escalator. And how much energy does a loaded escalator use? Can’t be all that much, although if you consider personal energy budgets, climbing stairs instead of taking escalators does ] make a difference.

But for a moment, it's fun to watch the people having fun taking the stairs. And maybe it will do something positive for music appreciation, too.

Seasonal Weather: Time to Bring the Plants Inside

The temperature was just a little above freezing this morning on the back porch, and the weather lady on Radio Can said there were flurries over high ground. That’s nothing like the cold and snow that’s already hit the Prairies, but certainly the season has changed.

Because we were expecting such a houseful on the weekend, I didn’t want to bring in the big house plants who spend the summer in the garden. One of the hibiscuses—the larger one, at six feet—seemed to be doing all right outside, but the one I’d put in front—the smaller, at five feet—looked remarkably unhappy yesterday morning. But it revived by night fall, once it was ensconced in the sunny front bedroom upstairs. Everything else I brought in also made the transition well. Only the two Christmas cactus plants and the fig remain outside. They can stand lower temperatures than the other things, and there is only so much one can do in a day.

As for me: well, I ate breakfast outside on the back porch as I usually do between mid-April and mid-October, but I didn’t tarry, despite my warm jacket. We turned the heat on too for the first time this season.

And this just in: Environment Canada is forecasting overnight lows below freezing by the end of the week. To everything there is a season, and I guess the one for cozying up inside has come.

Better Late than Never: Happy Thanksgiving!

The dishes are done, and I feel quite thankful for all sorts of reasons. Our American roots show in strange ways, and one of them is a delight in the idea of Thanksgiving. Not that we believe there is a being or whatever to whom we should give thanks, but it is a very humbling idea to take stock of the many things one has to recognize how privileged one is.

That--and the way that so few people in Quebec do anything for this holiday--led us a few years ago to begin inviting friends for a buffet on the Sunday of this weekend: people who are tied up from the middle of December until early January are frequently free this time of year. Yesterday we were somewhat more than 30 (I lose count after a while) ranging in age from about 28 months to 80 years. We ate a turkey and three chickens as well as an astounding array of side dishes. Lots of wine (or apple juice, depending on one's age) and much good conversation and fellowship. Emmanuel carved the turkey with much panache--or rather he started by carving one of the chickens, an indicator, he said, of the tough economic times. But there's still food left, even though I sent home quantities with the kids and assorted friends who stayed around to help clean up.

So best wishes on this holiday that comes just when the temperatures drop and the harvest is in. May you experience a bumper crop!

Saturday Photo: The Beating Heart of Fall

Well, that sounds a bit extravagant, but the gorgeous display of this creeping vine at the moment deserves superlatives. I'm not sure of the name--it's not Virginia creeper--but it has begun to spread from house to house around central Montreal during the last couple of years. It covers houses in green during the summer and turns brilliant reds and magentas beginning in late September.

I've seen it creeping up trees, too, and that might create problems if it gets too exuberant. But at the moment it is providing lovely colour just before the trees burst into flame, metaphorically speaking.

Living Until the End: Exercise for the High Middle Ages

The year I was 50 Lee bought me a bicycle for my birthday, and I learned to ride it. A series of articles in yesterday’s Globe and Mail reminded me of that. “Fit after Fifty” was the banner, and below a half dozen stories told of people--all members of what the Globe suggests may be “the fittest generation”--and their athletic and fitness activities.

The stories’ subjects are just entering their High Middle Ages, but what they’re discovering is something that became clear to many of the previous generation some time ago. My own land mark birthday is some ways behind me, and I NEVER ride a bike if I can avoid it, but keeping the old body moving proves to be more and more important. So far the best cure for arthritic knees (I ran my last 10 k just before my 60th birthday) seems to be a half hour of exercises suggested by a physio therapist and walking—at least an hour a day--nearly everywhere. My mother could barely go up stairs when she was my age, and I’m sure I was headed that way too, but so far, so good.

The person who takes the cake though, is our friend Sid Ingerman. He’ll turn 81 next month, and, while he’d swum a lot all his life, he took up triathlon when he was 75. He’s still going strong, completing his most recent one just a month ago.

Disease or accidents will bring us all down at some point (and the emails this morning included news of a friend whose chronic condition has just turned acute with very unpleasant prognosis) our aim should be to LIVE up to the end, and exercise will help us do that.