Saturday Photo: For Peaceful New Year...

And in hopes that not everything is swept away by the Trump Train...

Saturday Photo: Holiday Greetings and the Link to My Rant...

Things are getting a little hectic right now, so I'll be brief:  here's wishing everyone a fine holiday.  If you'd like more: here's the link to my annual end-of-year blog.

Saturday Photo: Bolo do reis and Putting Things in Perspective

This is a Portuguese holiday cake, covered with crystalized fruit and sugar.  Quite good if you like that sort of thing, which Lee certainly does.  Bought one last week and it was much appreciated.

A Padaria Coimbra, AKA La Baguette dorée, on Mount Royal in the Plateau makes a lovely one.  We discovered it six years ago during the difficult winter we spent in an apartment nearby following the fire that seriously damaged our house. 

Jeanne was a baby then, but now she's six.  Her cousins Thomas is four and baby Louis will be six months on Thursday.  Time passes and frequently in retrospect the bad things (8 months out of our house, fights with the contractor, much uncertainty etc) fall away and the good things stand out.

Would that be the case with the current political situation!

Saturday Photo: Climate Change and Getting Ready for Christmas in Montreal

These are salted herring, to be filleted and marinated to make sil, the Scandinavian pickled herring dish.  It's something I've made every Christmas since I married into the Soderstrom family. Delicious!

But this year I've been having trouble finding the fish.  My usual fish store says they're sold out, and won't receive any more before January.  I called around a bit, and found that National Herring, a wholesaler, has some at $6 a pound that they may sell me if I trek out to their warehouse.  The price is much more than I've paid in the past, but for a holiday treat, I'll pay it.

But why the penury? I wondered.  Seems there's a shortage of herring and other small fish in northern Atlantic waters.  Lobster fishers who use herring to bait their traps,  complained all summer about the lack, and special rules were put into effect.

Nobody I've read puts the finger on climate change  or over-fishing for the decline in stocks, but we all know what happened to the cod fishery.  After 30 years of closure, the stock is beginning to come back off Canada, but the Americans are saying that things are getting worse there, probably because of warmer water which is driving the fish north.

There may be snow on the ground here this morning, but it sure looks like we've messed things up.

Saturday Photo: Getting Ready for Christmas in Brazil

Another photo for three years ago: a cafe in Brasília which was all decked out in pointsettias and red ribbons for Christmas.

We picked up our Christmas wreaths from Jeanne this morning: her school was selling them, and I bought two plus one for a neighbor.  Quite nice.

Now we need some cold weather and sun to make this winter season work....

More later.

Saturday Photo: What Happens to Cuba's Health System after Fidel's Death?

Thinking about Fidel Castro's death: Three years ago exactly I was in Brasília, doing research for my book Road through Time. The top floor of the hotel where I was staying was taken over by Portuguese classes for about 40 Cuban doctors, come to work in the Brazilian hinterland on some sort of cooperative program.

Seemed passing strange to me.  So I asked about this, and I was told by Brazilians that their doctors didn't like to work in the bush, and so their health system depended on Cubans to do what amounted to Peace Corps type work in a country that to all eyes was much more prosperous.

I suspect that other parts of South America also benefited from programs of this sort. What will happen now to Cuba's really quite remarkable health system?

The photo was taken from the top floor of the hotel.  Check out the cars: definitely not what you'd see in Cuba. 

Photo: Yellow Leaves of All Sorts

The leaves of all sorts are off the trees.  This Tuesday will be the last pick-up of garden trimmings too.  After this, the snow is supposed to come.  So be prepared....

Saturday Photo: After a Very Dark Week, Looking for the Light

Last Sunday we celebrated birthdays--Elin's, Lee's and mine--because it was one day we all could get together.  It was great fun, and I was very pleased that Lukas and Sophie had taken my suggestion and got me Leonard Cohen's new CD You Want It Darker.  

On Tuesday I listened to part of it in the car on my way to a book discussion club, before the results began coming in on the horrendous 2016 presidential election.  On Thursday, still shaken from the election returns, I listened to the rest coming back from another book discussion.  I also thought of the fabulous sunset we had had that afternoon--bands of clouds and reds and purples that rivaled the last of the fall's leaves.  What I didn't think, was that this could be viewed as an example of that Cohen line: "There's a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in.  

And then the news came on Friday  that Cohen had died on Monday and had been buried on Thursday afternoon in Montreal.   I don't know what his politics were--probably fairly leftish--but I can't imagine that he would have been pleased with the Trump election.  Perhaps it was better that he died before the results were in.  But certainly, those with a mystical bent might see in the sunset on Thursday a glimpse of light that we all hope lies on the other side of the future.

The photo, taken this summer, is of the gates to the Shaar Hashomayim cemetery where Cohen was buried, a place a beauty and peace.  The sun is out this morning, so I'm looking for the light to guide my way.

Saturday Photo: Klimt Weather

Didn't have a camera with me, so you'll have to believe me: yesterday was a marvelous Klimt-coloured afternoon. Looking up de Maisonneuve toward the Quartier de Spéctacles, the trees on the median glowed yellow, gold and orange,below gray buildings and blue skies. Then in my neighborhood, the only leaves still on the trees were the same glittering mixture of colour, made even more lovely by a light breeze which made each leaf dance. Simply gorgeous.

Here's an idea of the colour, from an old photo that gives a bit of the effect.  And also one of the master's golden works.

Saturday Photo: Quoth the Raven, Nevermore!

Katrina and Mike, a young couple up the street, are extremely creative.  She has a high end couterière shop, making marvelous dresses.  He has a vegan restaurant that is supposed to be the best in town.  They're also parents to a sweet little sprite, Victoria, and they decorate their house for special occasions with great class.

This is what began this year's Halloween display: a pumpkin and a stuffed crow.  By the end of the week it looked like the pesky squirrels had discovered it, and had begun to gnaw at the pumpkin, but who cares?

Not I, certainly.  The combination of taxidermy and agriculture is simply delightful. 

Saturday Photo (Very Late): Fall Afternoon

This was taken about a week ago, before we had three days of hard ran. The leaves which had not turned colour, did so during the storm, and many of those who had are no carpeting the grass.

Fall is a lovely season. 

Saturday Photo: The Turning of the Leaves

This morning it's gray, but until today we've had a great run of marvelous weather.  Last weekend's rain pushed the leaves into glorious colour, and then the sun came out.

Yesterday I chatted with a couple of Argentine guys, out for a ride on Bixis.  The colours on the mountain, they said, were unbelieveable.

Yes, it's that time of year when the world seems to explode with reds, oranges, yellows and golds.  Simply spectacular!

Saturday Photo: Something Different, Only I Can See My Grandkids Loving This

Pretty terrific, don't you think!

Saturday Photo: Asters in Bloom

The front yard is full of asters right now. They're the last flowers to bloom, and this year, while there were a lot of buds, they didn't seem to be in any hurry to flower.

But the right combination of day length and rainfall arrived this week and now we have billows of flowers.

A reward for making it through the hot, muggy days to arrive at the other side....

Saturday Photo: Smoke in the West Usambara Mountains

The photo was taken 15 years ago when I was travelling in Africa--Burundi, Tanzania and Kenya. People were preparing for the planting season, burning the stubble left from the previous season. 

It was a little disquieting because the rains were weeks away, and the air was frequently filled with smoke. But people told me there was nothing to worry about.  Certainly there always seemed to be someone near the fire, and the fact that underbrush and leaves were raked away meant that there was little on the ground under trees to aburn should a fire begin to grow. 

Saturday Photo (Better Late Than Never): Road through Time

This is a little late because I've been doing such things as looking over the copy edit of my new book Road through Time: The Story of Humanity on the Move.  And just as I was finishing up, I received the cover.  Pretty nice, eh?

Here's the bumph from the University of Regina's Spring 2017 catalogue:

In this thoroughly researched and beautifully written history of roads as vectors of change, Mary Soderstrom documents how routes of migration and transport have transformed both humanity and our planet.
Accessible and entertaining, Road Through Time begins with the story of how anatomically modernhumans left Africa to populate the world. 

She then carries us along the Silk Road
in central Asia, and tells of roads built for war in Persia, the Andes, and the Roman Empire. She sails across the seas, and introduces the  rst railways, all before plunking us down in the middle of a massive, modern freeway.
The book closes with a view from the
end of the road, literally and figuratively, asking, can we meet the challenges presented by a mode of travel dependent on hydrocarbons, or will we decline, like so many civilizations that have come before us?

Sound interesting?  If I hadn't written the book, I'd want to read it, says she, smiling!  The catalogue gives the pub date as April 15, 2017, so I guess we'll have to wait a bit to do that!

Saturday Photo: From Haiti, with Love

Something like 45 years ago I took my first trip outside the North American continent when my sister and her husband invited me to go with them to Haiti.  He had some business to do, and she wanted company.

It was a life changing trip for me.  They were not ones for venturing outside the hotel compound until mid day, but I decided I couldn't let the opportunity go to waste.  So I got when the church bells chimed at 5 a.m. and went exploring.  My reasoning was the the people out and about at that time were solid citizens, so a gringo lady would be safe. 

I was.  The experience was very rewarding, since I got to talk to people going to work, school and market, and could observe them going about their daily lives.  Since then I've refined the method a little: I don't talk to men ordinarily but greet all women with a smile.  But during the many miles I've notched up since then, not once did I come back with anything but positive impressions of the basic kindness of people, even though their circumstance may be difficult.

This is a painting that I bought on that trip, one of the many, many primitive works being sold to tourists then.  Love the mixture of colour and somberness.  Haiti has been on my mind the last few weeks as I finish up my next book, about unidentical twins, that is States and states that have much in common yet are very different.  One of the pairs is that of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, but more about that later.

Saturday Photo: Out the Door, School Is Coming....

...and Jeanne just turned six!

It was a week of birthdays: Lukas on Monday, Stuart on Tuesday and Jeanne of Friday.  So last weekend they all were over to celebrate along with Thomas who'll be four Sept. 9.  Great fun!

And tomorrow Jeanne will start Grade One.  How time flies, to repeat a truism. 

Saturday Photo: Reflections on a Summer Day

This is the pavillion in the middle of one of our local parks.  In the winter it's closed up and is used as a place to warm up when you're skating (the circular pond becomes a skating rink.)  This time of year there are tango dancers and other activities. 

But I like it best at the beginning and the end of the day when the light is low and the reflections are lovely.

Saturday Photo: Back to Giverny

Reading a book about Monet and his garden at Giverny, and I'm transported back to one of the loveliest places I've ever been.  We've only visited in May, so I'd love to go back in another season.  Like right now: high summer!

But given all the stuff I've got to do between now and the middle of September, I think I'll just have to get to work.....Another year, perhaps.