Three More Books for Stephen Harper, One of Which I Bet Obama Has Read

Monday Yann Martel sent Prime Minister Stephen Harper a rather pointed gift as part of his on-going campaign to provide Harper with some good bedtime reading: The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror, by Michael Ignatieff.

“I believe you said in an interview not long ago that you hadn’t read much of Michael Ignatieff’s work. It’s obvious that you should, isn’t it? After all, you will be facing him every day in the House of Commons this year—he may even take your job—so it would be to your advantage to get to know his mind.,” Martel writes in his cover letter. Ignatieff has a great C.V., he adds, although that isn’t everything that it takes to be prime minister.

“Leadership can’t be reduced to academic credentials or books on a shelf,” he continues. “Personality, vision, instinct, people skills, practical knowledge, toughness, resilience, rhetorical flair, charisma, luck—there is much that goes into the making of a political leader besides grey matter.” Whether Ignatieff has all that isn’t clear yet, but I’d wager a bundle that Martel thinks he does.

The book he sent to Harper just after Christmas is quite a bit different: Blackbird Singing: Poems and Lyrics 1965-1999, by Paul McCartney. Martel notes that Harper says he’s a Beatles fan, and he points out the marvelous way a good song addresses “feelings we might be too shy to deal with in plain speech—raw, hungering lust, for example—or ones that cut deep but are so mundane we are embarrassed to talk about them: loneliness, yearning, heartbreak.”

Loneliness, yearning, heartbreak: are those emotions Harper will know soon? Let’s see what happens next week when the budget comes down.

In the meantime, I’d like to suggest another short book for Harper: The Reluctant Fundamentalists by Hamid Mohsin. It is a short novel by a Pakistani who’s passed many years in the West and has written a most engaging and convincing book about a man not unlike himself who changes his allegiances as he sees the world more clearly. This is a book that I bet Barack Obama has read: at least, he is acting as if he understands what lies behind such disillusion.

The New-Old Message of Barack Obama

The pundits seem divided about the thrust of President Barack Obama’s inaugural address. This division seems to me to be due to a perception that there is a major discontinuity between two main themes of his candidacy and his life, change and what some would classify as old-fashioned values.

Like so many others I watched the ceremony with tears rolling down my face: what a glory! What an accomplishment! Things may actually get better! The US and perhaps the world have undergone a sea change.

But that promise of change is firmly rooted in old ideas like justice, equality, the rule of law, the need for taking responsiblity for one’s actions and for good government. These are values that I grew up believing in and which few have mentioned in the last couple of decades. How wonderful to hear them evoked again!

The 49 Tunes for Barack: Some Not Bad Choices, Although Too Much Mainstream

Five classical selections made the CBC’s Obamaplaylist, 49 from North of the 49th Parallel. That’s not surprising given the way the list--to be sent to the new president for his iPod and exercise enjoyment--was set up. The 100 finalists were divided into four categories, with 11 classical possibilities, 60 mainstream, 20 “Francophone” and 10 jazz. Take the top 50 per cent of vote getters in each category, and voilà ! there’s your list.

The CBC says 130,000 people voted on line over the last week, and certainly there was some international attention, with coverage on the BBC and elsewhere. However I’d like to know just how the voting breakdown, as one of my fears about the contest was a hidden agenda designed to prove that nobody cares much about anything but mainstream music. As it is, there are some good songs among those chosen. I’ve bold faced my favourites, for what it’s worth.

* Arcade Fire, Rebellion (Lies).
* Barenaked Ladies, If I Had $1,000,000.
* Beau Dommage, La complainte du phoque en Alaska.
* Ben Heppner, We'll Gather Lilacs.
* Bruce Cockburn, Wondering Where the Lions Are.
* Buffy Sainte-Marie, Universal Soldier.
* Daniel Bélanger, Rêver mieux.
* Daniel Lanois, Jolie Louise.
* Daniel Lavoie, J'ai quitté mon île.
* Diana Krall, Departure Bay.
* Gilles Vigneault, Mon pays.
* Glenn Gould, The Goldberg Variations.
* Gordon Lightfoot, Canadian Railroad Trilogy.
* Gordon Lightfoot, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.
* Great Big Sea, Ordinary Day.
* Harmonium, Pour un instant.
* Ian & Sylvia, Four Strong Winds.
* James Ehnes, Barber Violin Concerto.
* Jesse Cook, Mario Takes a Walk.
* Joni Mitchell, Both Sides Now.
* Joni Mitchell, A Case of You.
* Karkwa, Oublie pas.
* k.d. lang, Hallelujah.
* Leonard Cohen, Democracy.
* Leonard Cohen, Suzanne.
* Malajube, Montréal –40 C.
* Marie-Jo Thério, Évangeline.
* Marjan Mozetich, Affairs of the Heart.
* Measha Brueggergosman, I'm Going Up a Yonder.
* Mes Aïeux, Dégénérations.
* Michael Bublé, Home.
* Moe Koffman, Swingin' Shepherd Blues.
* Neil Young, Rockin' In the Free World.
* Neil Young, Helpless.
* Oscar Peterson Trio, Hymn to Freedom.
* Oscar Peterson, Place St. Henri (from Canadiana Suite).
* Parachute Club, Rise Up.
* Raymond Lévesque, Quand Les Hommes Vivront D'amour.
* Rush, Closer to the Heart.
* Sam Roberts, The Canadian Dream.
* Shad, Brother (Watching).
* Stan Rogers, Northwest Passage.
* Stompin' Tom Connors, The Hockey Song.
* The Arrogant Worms, Canada's Really Big.
* The Guess Who, American Woman.
* The Tragically Hip, Wheat Kings.
* The Tragically Hip, Bobcaygeon.
* The Rankin Family, Rise Again.
* The Weakerthans, One Great City!

Grace, Art and Barack Obama

Thought on the new president:

Watching him, listening to him, I am reminded of Norman Maclean’s phrase in A River Runs through It: “All good things...come by grace and grace comes by art and art does not come easy.” We have before us a man whose effort has brought him as close to grace and art as is possible. Blessings on him, and on us too.

Globalization, China Butter Dishes and Chickens: the World Is a Small and Frequently Difficult Place

Dinner on Saturday with friends—a former colleague of Lee, his wife and a couple who had been their neighbors a few years ago. Delicious food, good conversation and some fascinating stories. Our host grew up on a chicken farm in New Jersey—“We didn’t have to kill them,” he said, “someone else did that” when I told the story about my grandmother chopping off chicken’s heads--and went on to become an economics professor specializing in globalization. The other couple were Germans who had ended up in Montreal through a long series of comings and goings, he as an avionics engineer and she as a trained midwife. Our hostess was from Cairo, I knew, but until we’d gone around the table with our stories, I’d never heard of her family’s flight from Egypt.

She was not quite 18 and her family was sitting at breakfast the morning when someone burst in to tell them they should flee because foreigners were being expelled from the country. They had very little money on hand, but they were able to make their way to the port where they got passage on a ship There followed several months going around the Mediterranean, but after several other stops along the way, they were able to settle in Canada.

For several moments we sat mutely after she finished, as we tried to assimilate her tale. Then she reached for the china butter dish sitting in the middle of table surrounded by plates and glasses and the crumbs of a good meal. “This is all that’s left. It had been my grandmother’s and we used it every day. I just picked it up off the table and put it my bag.”

The pattern on the china is very similar to that of the few pieces that have come down to me from my chicken-killing grandmother. They probably were bought in the same epoch and are likely of the same quality—dishes not for state occasions but for ordinary use by comfortably-off families. Emmanuel would say they are good examples of material culture, carrying with them layers and layers of living and meaning.

As our host said, globalization is nothing new. People and objects have been travelling and trading for millenia, witness the name we give to a certain kind of dish--china, of course. Those chickens weren't native to either New Jersey or Washington state, either.

Saturday Photo: Jogging on Mount Royal

Back before my knees began to give me trouble, I would switch from running to walking when the temperature hit -22 C. On Thursday morning when it was -26 C, however, I passed a small covey of very hardy joggers--very lean and rather young--as I trudged along wearing my full metal jacket: long johns, running pants, and sweats plus four layers of sweaters and hoodies on top.

Good on them, even though the cold air can do real damage to your lungs if you're not careful. That's one of the adaptive advantages of those funny hairs in your nostrils, you know. Not only do they strain out dust, they also frost up, making a little curtain behind which truly arctic air can become merely cold.

Sounds gross, I know, and my kids used to think the whole idea was hilarious. Maybe the real solution is to wrap a scarf around your face...

Forecast for today: high of -19C, or just below 0F. Who says things don't get better?.

Hydro Quebec Turns off Lights: Chronicles from a Cold Climate Continued

Last night the big illuminated sign on the top of Hydro Quebec’s headquarters was turned off, as the public utility asked Quebeckers to cut back on power use because of near-record demands. We’re having the coldest weather seen in several years, and Hydro expects power use this morning is expected to reach about 38,000 MW by Friday morning. In a press release calling for users to turn down temperatures and turn off lights, Hydro said that “all-time electricity demand peak of 36,268 MW registered on January 15, 2004 was nearly equaled Thursday morning, as consumption hit the 36,250 MW mark.” People were asked not to use washers, dryers or dishwashers between 6 and 9 a.m. and 5 and 8 p.m.

Of course that assumes that you’re using electricity to heat your house and water and to dry your clothes. We heat with oil and cook with gas, but I don’t know where that puts us on the environmental virtue ratings, since those fuels also have their problems. Just to put this in context, it's important to note that electricity use in winter here is nearly double that in summer even though air conditioning is becoming increasingly commmon. It's harder to heat water and buildings from -20 to +20 than it is to cool them from +30 to +20, it appears.

The only thing that’s good, is the news I had from a friend in Calgary yesterday who said that the cold spell has broken there: after several weeks of the frigid temperatures we have now, the mercury went up to plus 5 C there. Can’t wait for the warm front to move east. Until then I think I'll sit by a window and read--not much electricity wasted doing that.

On Gaza: Shalom, Salam, Peace

My mother, who occasionally was wise, always said that two wrongs don't make a right. She was on the money with that saying. It is long past the time that Israel's argument of self-defence could be considered seriously as justification for the violence in Gaza. Stop!

It is also time for Canada to stop its unquestioning support for Israeli actions in Gaza.

And if you'd like a glimpse of a better world, check out this video: The Jewish-Arab Peace Song

Wood Smoke, Smog and Keeping Warm: More Chronicles of Life in a Cold Climate

This morning Environment Canada is warning that the northern Quebec region of Abitibi-Témiscamingue may be smoggy. On Monday the east end of Montreal island also was covered by a yellow pall. Despite the fact that smog is usually associated with hot weather and temperature inversions, the increased use of wood burning stoves for heating has led to winter time smog alerts around here. Unless the stove or furnace is constructed along strict norms, the fine particles that go up the chimney do terrible things to the atmosphere, particularly when winds are still.

The problem has become so bad, in fact, that the city of Montreal has asked homeowners to find other ways of heating, and two districts will ban the polluting stoves in new construction. Ironically this comes at a time when in a search for alternate fuel sources and efficient use of forest waste products has led to some experiements with large scale use of wood for heating. Le Devoir reported the same day as Montreal’s smog alert that a new hospital in a rural community will use forest waste for heating.

The smell of wood smoke on the air or of a fire in a fireplace evokes pleasant memories for many people. But the world is a lot more complicated than it was when farmers burned fields without thinking of smoke pollution and no one gave a second thought to burning leaves in the fall.

This morning may be one of the coldest of the year: -26 C which works out to -15 F. When Lee came back from his walk his beard was completely covered in ice, and my own boot laces were frozen solid when I returned from a tour of the mountain. To live in this climate means burning something for heat in winter, but we should all think of the consequences.

49 from North of the 49th: Vote for Classical Music

We have until 8 p.m. EST Friday, January 16 to vote for the music to include on the playlist CBC Radio Two is going to send to Barack Obama. There are 100 choices in four categories, and as you might expect given the CBC’s campaign to dumb itsself down, the classical category offers a really slimmed-down list. It has 11, compared to 60 for he mainstream category, 20 for the “Francophone” and 10 for jazz. It is possible that the people who are running the contest may keep the proportion in the final 49, that is 30 for mainstream, 10 for Francohone, 5 for jazz and with the rest classical. But maybe not: if if we serious music lovers vote only for classical selections, we make a point, and perhaps increase the weight of our votes.

So vote! You can do so once a day.

Here are the selections:

Affairs of the Heart - Marjan Mozetich (composer)
Barber Violin Concerto - James Ehnes (performer)
Daphnis et Chloe - Montreal Symphony Orchestra (performer)
Goldberg Variations - Glenn Gould (performer)
Handel Serse - Maureen Forrester (performer)
Haydn Piano Sonata 52 - Marc-André Hamelin (performer)
I'm Going Up a Yonder - Measha Brueggergosman (performer)
Mennonite Concerto - Victor Davies (composer)
Rise Up My Love - Healey Willan (composer)
The Hour Has Come - Srul Irving Glick (composer)
We’ll Gather Lilacs - Ben Heppner (performer)

Some Silliness: Memes and Other Ways of Getting Attention

The idea of memes has always seemed to me to be unscientific. Wikipedia says that Richard Dawkins introduced the idea in his book The Selfish Gene “to describe how one might extend evolutionary principles to explain the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena.” The article goes on: “in everyday use the term 'meme' tends to be applied specifically to fast spreading running jokes on the internet, like those propagated through e-mail forwards and Internet forums.”

So, we’re supposed to dignify gossip or (often) questionable humour by imagining that, just as a physical basis for inheritance was found in genes nearly 100 years after Gregor Mendel’s pioneer work, we’ll isolate something concrete to explain why Tina Fey’s Sarah Pallin imitation swept through cyberspace last fall?

Hmmm. I'm not so sure about that. But it seems that I was "memed" yesterday--in essence, one of my writing cronies sent me a sort of virtual chain letter which invites bloggers to reveal/promote themselves. Because Ray Argyle is a such a good guy, I'll go along with the conceit.

Here is what you're supposed to do:

One: Link to the person who tagged you. Here.

Two: Post the rules. That's what I'm doing right here.

Three: Write six random things about yourself.

This is harder that you might think. When you've been blogging for a while you've said a lot about yourself already, and you're likely to have set out guidelines about what you want to share with others. So, this time out, I'll just free associate:

1. Once upon a time I had brilliant red hair and was known to dance on tables occasionally.

2. When Lukas and Sophie got married I danced for four hours straight in high heeled shoes, and had trouble unbending my toes the next morning.

3. I know the words to lots of Broadway musicals, and if you don’t watch out I’ll sing them.

4. Back in my table dancing days, my father offered to buy a radio for Lee’s VW if I persisted in singing. In the end he didn’t, and Lee never stopped regretting it.

5. But I’m sure one of the reasons why Elin became a musician is because my terrible but enthusiastic voice showed that you could enjoy making music no matter how many mistakes you made along the way.

6. Now that that my hair has faded to a sort of light strawberry-blonde (not white yet though!) I volunteer Friday afternoons at Hôpital Sainte-Justine, one of Montreal’s two children’s’ hospitals. When I rock the babies on Unit 6-3, I croon show tunes, songs from my childhood and French ditties like Sur le pont d’Avignon. What puts them to sleep quickest, though, is a simple three note hum repeated again and again which would probably drive both Lee and my father nuts. Who cares, though?

Four. Tag six people. See below.

Martin Langeland

Jack Ruttan

Patricia, Guylène's friend

Saskboy

Skdadl

Tom van Milligen

Five. Inform the tagees and the person who tagged you. Done

Enough silliness for today. Gotta get to work.

Save Energy, Read a Book: California to Regulate Energy Hogging TVs

TV has been blamed—with reason I think—for a lot of bad things, among them increasing obesity and short attention spans. Until this morning, though, I hadn’t thought of what television sets represent in terms of energy consumption. During peak viewing periods, like the Super Bowl, TVs in California use up to 40 per cent of the state’s electricity production, and on average TVs represent 10 per cent of a family’s electricity bill, the Los Angeles Times reports.

The main culprits are those increasingly popular big screen models—up to 52 inches—and new California standards, passed just before the first of year, will regulate them beginning in 2011. “LCD -- liquid crystal display -- sets use 43% more electricity, on average, than conventional tube TVs; larger models use proportionately more. Plasma TVs, which command a relatively small share of the market, need more than three times as much power as bulky, old-style sets,” the LA Times reports. The new regulations mandate more energy effcient sets, which could result in considerable savings on consumers’ power bills.

But maybe this is just another reason to turn the darn things off and read a book.

Saturday Photo: Walking the Walk

In the summer time there is a straight, asphalted path along this row of bushes that edge one of Outremont's small parks. But people don't walk in straight lines and once snow falls you can see this clearly.

Going from here to there is usually more convulated that we think.

It's Cold in Lisbon: Learning Portuguese

Yesterday teams of community workers and volunteers went around poor neighborhoods in Lisbon, looking for elderly people living alone who might be suffereing from the cold. Portugal, like much of Europe, has been much colder than usual lately, and the state television network Radio-Televisão Portugal (RTP) has been reporting on how the Portuguese are coping.

How do I know this? From piecing together the short summaries of news items that accompany RTP's internet service and then listening again and again to the report as I work on my Portuguese.

For several years now I’ve been trying to learn the language. Several of my past projects have involved travel to Portuguese speaking countries. The Violets of Usambara has as major characters a couple of immigrants to Montreal from the Azores, and when I was researching that book I spent a week on São Miguel and Santa Maria. My pre-trip language study was helpful, and before I left I road side signs and menus down pat. Then when I was working on Green City, I spent some time in São Paulo, Brazil. By the time I came back from there, I was reading Portuguese very easily. Since then I’ve kept track of what is happening there, by reading the on-line editions of Brazilian newspapers.

Understanding the spoken language is something else though. Spanish was the language I took in high school, I had a roommate from Costa Rica my first year at Berkeley and these days I frequently find myself getting the gist of a simple conversations between Hispanophones on the bus. But for whatever reason the sound system in Portuguese seems so wildly out of synch with the written language that I’m really stuck as I prepare for a trip to Portugal this spring. The next book project will be about the legacy the Portuguese left around the world (there’s a logical connection with my other recent projects, but I haven’t come up with a short explanation of what it is yet) and I’d really like to be able to hold simple conversations and understand more complex things that I do now. Which means that I’ll sign off now, and go watch more internet news from RTP to see if the cold has let up.

The Rapid Shift to Keynesian Thinking Shows How Shallow Mainstream Economics Has Been for Decades

The New York Times had a marvelous story on Wednesday about the sea change in economic thinking that has occurred over these last four months. It begins: “Frightened by the recession and the credit crisis that produced it, the nation’s mainstream economists are embracing public spending to repair the damage — even those who have long resisted a significant government role in a market system.”

The American Economics Association has been meeting in San Francisco, and it seems that the profession has finally admitted how wrong most of them have been for the last three decades. The story quotes Janet Yellen, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco., as saying: “The new enthusiasm for fiscal stimulus, and particularly government spending, represents a huge evolution in mainstream thinking.” The report adds that she said current shift in thinking is “likely to last for as long as the profession is dominated by men and women living through this downturn.”

Paul Krugman, the 2008 Nobel laureate for economics, has always recognized the validity of what's called Keynesian economics in some circles. But in many universities, the line of thinking has not been popular at all. My favurite economist and a few of his cronies have felt quite isolated as they insisted that government regulation is essential, that cutting taxes for the rich is not good policy, and that Keynes was right about stimulus and economic downturns. Now they are vindicated, and he says the swift turn-around in the thinking of mainstream economists shows just how shallow all the monetarists were. I imagine there are a lot of his former students who may have shaken their heads at the time over some of the ideas he brought forth in his micro and macro classes—ideas that were absent from the courses given by most other economists—who are now trying to remember what he said. There may even be some mumbles of: “old Soderstrom was right, after all!”

Too bad it takes a crisis that hurts so many people for foolish ideas to be unmasked.

Barack Obama Needs to Listen to Canada's Best Serious Music: the 49 from North of the 49th Contest

The CBC currently is trying to stir up some interest in its music programming by a contest to choose 49 songs from north of the 49th Parallel to send to President Elect Barack Obama for his iPod playlist.

What an idea! Let’s forget about the faulty geographic premise (hey, Montreal is at 45.3 N, and Toronto, 43.4) and talk about the way the contest is shaping up. As of this morning, very little non-mainstream music has been suggested, and of that, there are some noticeable gaps. No Céline Dion, for example, and while I don’t like her, surely her absence to date represents a huge blind spot among the people participating in the contest.

More seriously, it seems to me, the CBC brass may be planning to use this effort as a way of reinforcing their attempts to move the national broadcaster away from its long tradition of supporting and promoting the kind of culture that defines a country. That’s what makes the lack of serious music nominations very troubling. Do send in your suggestions before 8 p.m. Friday, January 9. Here’s the e-mail address: obamaplaylist@cbc.ca.

Here are a couple of mine:

"Romanian Folk Dances" on the CD produced independently by McGill University music professor Matt Haimovitz, Goulash! Played by the group Ucello, this gorgeous music, performed with verve and style by a group Haimovitz has hand-picked, represents the way that Canada has welcomed people from all over the world, creating a marvelous goulash of a country.

Anything from the CD English Fancy (Analekta) by the baroque group Masques, featuring soprano Shannon Mercer and a number of excellent young Canadian musicians. The CD was made a few years ago and represents the strength of Canada's music scene in the early 21st century, which, I fear, is being eroded by budget cuts and misreading of the CBC's audience by the CBC's brass. If I had to pick, I'd say Shannon singing "Come Away" by Thomas Hampion.

The title track from the joint Atma CD by the Consort of les Voix humaines and the Studio de musique ancienne de Montréal, Rise, O My Soul. This is glorious, soul-stirring music which combines the best of the old world and the new.

Montreal Murders at Record Low, Quebec Youth Crime Down: More Reasons Why We Should Leave Vengeance to the Lord and Not to Stephen Harper

Before the newness of the new year slips away, I want to draw attention to something that happened—or rather didn’t happen—in Montreal in 2008. That is: the number of murders in the area served by the Montreal police (the city itself, and several surrounding suburbs) dropped to 29 from 42 the year before. It was the lowest number since the consolidated police force was set up. Quebec City (the province’s capital and its second largest city) didn’t have any murders at all. And this despite—or maybe because of—an approach to juvenile crime which is far less punitive than the one pushed by the Stephen Harper government.

In comparison, Philadelphia and Phoenix, Arizona report about 400 and 200 murders a year, even though they are about the same size as Montreal. Canada, which has not had a death penalty for more than 30 years and closely regulates fire arms, has murder rates which run consistently about a quarter of those in the US. Between 1996 and 2004, the murder rate in Canada was 1.82 per 100,000 population while in the US it was 6.3 per 100,000.

Nevertheless, Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservatives campaigned last fall on a platform which pushed getting tough on "youth crime." Quebeckers didn't vote for the Conservatives, in part because of this. They had good grounds to be reluctant to sign on. To quote a Canadian Press story, “figures compiled by the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics show Quebec's emphasis on prevention and rehabilitation over incarceration has served the province well. In fact, the youth crime rate in Quebec has consistently been the lowest in all of Canada.

“In 2007, for example, for every 100,000 young people aged 12 to 17 in Quebec, just 1,610 were involved in a crime. In the Northwest Territories, the region where youth crime rates have traditionally been the highest, that figure was 10,491.”

So what does this prove? That punishment should fit the crime, and that vengeance doesn’t work.

This Is the Morning the New Year Really Begins: Back to Work

Got to get back to work today. One of the advantages—or disadvantages—of being a freelance is that you can plan your own work schedule. When people ask if I’m free for a meeting, I often explain that I work always and never. Unless there’s a deadline looming, I can usually set things up to so I can make a meeting, say, next Tuesday at 2 p.m. with no problem. On the other hand, thee are few evenings when I don’t get in a couple of hours of work, even if it is only reading something for research.

The temptation, however, is to let things slide during holiday periods, and that’s what I’ve been doing these last two weeks. My industriousness has not been helped by the fact that I’m in the beginning stages of two major projects. Rather than sit down to spend several hours, staring at the keyboard until I can see where to go in the embryo of a novel that I’m beginning or the large, so-far unfocussed non-fiction book, it has been much more pleasant to take a walk, or bake some cookies, or write letters to friends. But that has to end as of this morning. And so to work….

Saturday Photo: Gate Open into the New Year

This is another picture of a gate I find quite lovely, and which I think sort of stands for what I feel about a new year. We don't know what is awaiting us, but as the days begin to lenghthen--yes, this morning it was clear that sunrise came earlier than it did two weeks ago- there is a certain excitement in the air.

Let us hope that what awaits us is more positive than negative, and that we can find the strength necessary to cope with the negative times. Perhaps we may even learn something from them.

What We Say and How We Say It: Our Bastard Language Is a Thief and a Creole

Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English by John McWhorter was under the tree this year, and I’ve spent some enjoyable hours reading it. McWhorter’s unstated thesis is that English is a Creole language, with nothing pejorative intended in the phrase. What happened to English is that it was transformed when a prolonged wave of newcomers struggled to communicate with the people already living in England, dropping grammatical niceties right and left. The result of this simplification is a Modern English that does not routinely give gender to nouns the way every other language in Europe does, has eliminated the case markers that make German, Latin and Ancient Greek such chores to learn, and picked up some interesting features found only in Cornish and Welsh.

McWhorter is a brilliant young linguistic scholar who has spent much time researching creoles, the new languages which people create when invaders, immigrants or people otherwise thrown together must figure out how to talk to each other and to a larger community. He argues that what has happened to English (and perhaps to an ancestor language, Proto-Germanic) over time is not a simply borrowing of thousands and thousands of words, but more fundamental changes in the way sentences are structured.

Languages and how people express themselves is something I find fascinating. This year I also had the pleasure of reading Mark Abley’s books, Spoken Here and The Prodigal Tongue which also deal with the history of language and where language, particularly English, is going. Abley tells a good story, but there is more here than well chosen anecdotes and some remarkable little known facts. Spoken Here has an important political question as its subtext. Abley is an Anglohone Quebec writer and Spoken Here was written against the backdrop of Quebec politics. Francophones think their language is in danger, while Anglophones here jealousy guard theirs, but nowhere in this book does Abley mention this, I think.

Nor does McWhorter, an African-American, talk much about Black English even though he has been criticized for comments he’s made elsewhere. While Abley’s and McWhorter’s books can be read with pleasure by language buffs of whatever colour or place of residence, a careful appreciation of them requires a little parsing of them for their political grammar. Speaking (or at least understanding) the same language is essential for determining where we go from here.

By the way, McWhorter--like the cell phone novelists I wrote about a couple of days ago--apparently has nothing against heading toward a more electronic culture: his new book is available for down load as an e-book too.

Happy New Year, and Happy Anniversary, Fidel!

This New Year's Day I'm remembering the way the year began 50 years ago.

When we came back to school after the Christmas holiday in 1959, our Spanish teacher Mr. Frankel was very excited. His wife was Cuban, and he wanted to talk to us about something that had happened on New Year’s Day: Fidel Castro and his revolutionaries had seized power, toppling a brutal regime. Being the ignorant kids we were, few of us were aware of what had happened, and even fewer had come into contact with the kind of jubilation that comes when a government who had tortured your nearest and dearest was overthrown. By the end of the class, Mr. Frankel was crying, and we were stunned.

This was San Diego, of course, and when we took the story of what had happened home, I suspect there were some shocked parents. It was—and still is in large part, I imagine—a conservative place, where military and strategic concerns were uppermost. I don’t remember Mr. Frankel ever mentioning Castro or Cuba again, and it’s highly likely that his initial enthusiasm faded as time went on. But 50 years afterward it’s good to remember the perseverance and determination of Cuba.

The accomplishments include the best and most accessible health and educational systems in Latin America, as well as an example of how to overcome horrendous economic difficulties. What the Cubans did after the USSR collapsed and petroleum imports dried up while export markets disappeared should be an example for the rest of us in hard times. The shift was to urban agriculture and targeted food aid to children, the elderly and pregnant women. The result was a healthier population, believe it or not. Check out the reports in important medical journals. And take a look a fascinating YouTube video of a 48 hour visit to Havana.

Happy New Year to all, and Happy Anniversary to the Cuban people.

Are Cell Phone Books the Way Fiction Is Going? Oh, No! I Prefer Turning Pages to Scrolling Any Day

When I started to read Dana Goodyear’s article in the current double issue of The New Yorker , “I (heart) Novels” I wasn’t sure if I was reading reporting or fiction. It is, after all, one of the magazine’s two fiction issues, and maybe, I thought, this is a slightly futuristic short story. But Goodyear's piece about novels written on cell phones was serious, and I obviously had missed an article earlier in The New York Times about the literary phenomenon that is sweeping Japan. Millions of copies have been sold of cell phone stories---usually thumbed in by young women—both on line and in print. Even elderly Buddhist nuns are getting in on the act: an 86 year old published one this fall which has been an instant success.

Is this the wave of the future? Is it possible we should forget about Kindle and other e-book formats because this is the real direction books are heading? Or maybe we've found the ultimate way to have a story at your fingertips?

Don’t know, but I imagine the novels—and they run to 50,000 or 80,000 words, it seems—are better read if you have the good eyesight of the young. Much is made about the dexterity of thumb-texting kids, but it’s not my digits that give me pause in situations like that, but my vision. For a taste of what one is like in easier-to-read typeface, try a sample from an English translation of the biggest seller to date.

And here’s an Young Adult novel written originally in English

But I think I prefer sitting down in a comfortable chair and not having to constantly scroll, but being able to rest except for moving a page every minute or so. That's the agenda for this New Year's Eve in fact.

Food, Food, Glorious Food: The Two Best Meals of 2008

It seems we have been doing nothing but eat these last few days. This is something I like to do a lot, and each good meal has summoned up thoughts of our good fortune in not facing the prospect of hunger—and in fact enjoying some truly memorable culinary events this year.

The first was our Christmas present last year from Elin and Emmanuel: a festive meal as it would have been served in the home of upper middle class folk in Montreal or Quebec City in 1750. I wrote about it at length back in February, so suffice it to say for now that it lasted five and a half hours, and included things that would have been imported at the time like salt and macaroons, as well as locally produced pork and boudin noir. (That's the menu on the right.)

The second also was French, but of an entirely different sort. This was the dinner at Les Papilles that my cousin Cathy Retterer treated us to when we were in Paris in May. Lukas’s friend Éric Monteléon, a chef, prepared a list of restaurants for us to try, and this one not only turned out to be just around the corner from where we were staying in the Fifth District, but it was absolutely wonderful.

The place originally was a wine shop, but has evolved into a small restaurant where one menu is in force each night, but you can pick your wine from a marvelous selection. The night we were there we began with a green pea potage, accompanied by lardons and mint and several other things, followed by a rack of lamb cooked with Indian accents. Then came a cheese course featuring a lovely bleu. The meal was capped by an exotic pudding that combined tropical fruits with a sort of crème brulée.

Both meals merit five stars and are to remembered for a long time. Many thanks to Elin, Emmanuel and Cathy.

Beware: Black Ice, or A Thought for the End of Very Difficult Year

As I made my way carefully around the neighborhood this morning, I began to think of black ice as a metaphor for the challenges we are facing now. Black ice, for those of you who do not live in this climate, is not an oxymoron, but a condition where a thin layer of ice has formed on pavement. The asphalt or concrete shows through, so you don’t know the slippery surface is there until you slip on it. It is one of the joys of driving in winter here, and the cause of hundreds, if not thousands, of broken bones every year.

We had rain and temperatures well over freezing over the weekend, followed by high winds and a plunge in the temperature. The result is pavement that appears clear but certainly isn’t.

Beware: is the message. What’s underneath the surface may be strong and reliable, but what’s you can’t see on top may be very dangerous. The irony is that ice that is roughed up, that has hard bits embedded in it, is a lot safer than the transparent stuff.

So is there a moral there, I asked myself. Maybe only that to proceed we may need to dig in harder—to strap on the crampons, as it were—so that we can get through this bad patch to the other side.

Saturday Photo: Winter Wonderland

This was taken 10 days ago when we had freezing rain, followed by snow. It was most beautiful. Now, having gone through at least three more storms and one episode of thaw and freeze, the snow is still relatively deep, but not nearly as beautiful. The sidewalks are terribly icy too. It's a good day to stay inside and read....

Boxing Day or St. Stephen's Day: When the Snow Lies Round about Smooth and Deep and Even

Canada has a holiday the day after Christmas, Boxing Day, whose origins apparently go back to the time when the working folk received gifts from the better off . Taking an extra day after the great feasting of Christmas seems to me to be great good sense. We'll lie around the house, read our gift books, listen to our gift CDs and eat left-overs. It will be fun without the pressure of Christmas or New Year's,

It also is St. Stephen's Day, I see as I google around, which brings to mind a carol I thought of frequently as I've been walking around the neighborhood these last couple of weeks.

Good King Wenceslas looked out, on the Feast of Stephen,

When the snow lay round about, deep and crisp and even;

Brightly shone the moon that night, tho' the frost was cruel,

When a poor man came in sight, gath'ring winter fuel.

"Hither, page, and stand by me, if thou know'st it, telling,

Yonder peasant, who is he? Where and what his dwelling?"

"Sire, he lives a good league hence, underneath the mountain;

Right against the forest fence, by Saint Agnes' fountain."

"Bring me flesh, and bring me wine, bring me pine logs hither:

Thou and I will see him dine, when we bear them thither."

Page and monarch, forth they went, forth they went together;

Through the rude wind's wild lament and the bitter weather.

"Sire, the night is darker now, and the wind blow stronger;

Fails my heart, I know not how; I can go no longer."

"Mark my footsteps, my good page. Tread thou in them boldly

Thou shalt find the winter's rage freeze thy blood less coldly."

In his master's steps he trod, where the snow lay dinted;

Heat was in the very sod which the saint had printed.

Therefore, Christian men, be sure, wealth or rank possessing,

Ye who now will bless the poor, shall yourselves find blessing.

Season's Greetings from the Soderstroms

No computer stuff today for me--lots of good fellowship and good food in prospect though. If you have a minute or two and would like to see what the family has been up to this year, check out our holiday blog.

Best wishes for a very pleasant day.

Mary

Sausage is Better Than Lutfisk: How Holiday Traditions Change

Lutfisk is what Lee's family always had for Christmas Eve dinner. It's a form of dried and lyed and otherwise tortured cod which is soaked and boiled and served with white sauce. Dreadful stuff, if you ask me: one source prefaces a recipe by saying that is "also served in Norway but the Danes have more sense." When we discovered that we couldn't find it the Christmas after we arrived in Montreal decades ago I cheered, and went looking for something to substitute for it.

What we have now is a real Swedish dish, but one that Lee's family sometimes had for Christmas dinner, not Christmas Eve: potato sausage. It's terrific and not hard to make, even though stuffing the meat into the sausage casings is daunting the first time you try it. So here's our contribution to a holiday feast.

Soderstrom Potato Sausage

2 1/2 pounds lean ground pork
1/2 pound ground beef
6 medium raw potatoes, ground in grinder or grated, then cut into small pieces with scissors
l large onion, ground or grated (don't include large pieces)
3 tsp pepper
4-6 tsp salt
2 tsp ground allspice
3 tsp ground ginger
4 meters of sausage casings (available in specialty butcher shops: we have a neighborhood Italian one where the staff is much amused that I make Swedish sausage once a year.)

Mix together thoroughly and stuff into casings either using a cookie press (use a tipwith an opening about a half inch in diameter) or a two litre soda bottle with the bottom cut off:. In both cases you must hold the casing over the opening and push the sausage mixture through the opening. The amount fills about 4 meters of casings; if there's any of the misture left over it can be cooked as patties or formed into sausage shapes.

When ready to cook the sausages, prick them all over with a coarse needle. Bake in a covered pan for 1/2 hour at 350 F, then uncover and cook until brown, 15 - 20 minutes. Or steam for an hour.

Serve with pickled herring as a first course, and accompanied by mashed potatoes, a couple of good winter vegetables (I think we'll have beets and broccoli this year,) a green salad and a favourite holiday dessert. This year Sophie's making her Grandmaman Mercier's mocha cake which is fast becoming another Soderstrom tradition.

A Few Good Books to End the Year

Just want to mention a couple of good books that you may not have thought of as the perfect gifts. Both are by my friend Ann Charney (just to let you know where I stand) and one should be considered as much a classic as The Diary of Anne Frank. Dobryd begins with "By the time I was five years old I had spent half my life hidden away in a barn loft." But rather than being a dismal story, it is full of joy and the triumph of the human spirit.

The second book is Distantly Related to Freud, a novel published this fall by Cormorant Books, which could be considered a story of what happened next to the girl in the first book. Only it is much more: a coming of age story in the best tradition.
Both are definitely worth seeking out.

And while we're suggesting good books, check out Canadian historian Christopher Moore's blog this month. He has asked a number of his friends and colleagues to suggest books for the history buff on you list. You'll be surprised at the number and variety of the suggestions.

Martel Sends Fictions to Harper: When Its Good to Read (Or Hear) What You Don't Want to Read (Or Hear)

Yann Martel just sent Stephen Harper a collection of short stories by the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, Fictions, as the end-of-year offering in his campaign to provide the PM with some good bedtime reading. It’s the 45th in the series, and it’s not even a book that Martel likes. Doesn’t sound like a present sent with much holiday good feeling to me.

But, as those who’ve been keeping track know, Martel accompanies his fortnightly gifts with a letter of introduction. This time he explains the book was chosen “because one should read widely, including books that one does not like. By so doing one avoids the possible pitfall of autodidacts, who risk shaping their reading to suit their limitations, thereby increasing those limitations. The advantage of structured learning, at the various schools available at all ages of one’s life, is that one must measure one’s intellect against systems of ideas that have been developed over centuries. One’s mind is thus confronted with unsuspected new ideas.”

Hmmh. That’s interesting, particularly when you take a look at the list of the names of Harper’s economic panel who have, we’re told, agreed to spend two days this pre-holiday week for the token sum of a $1 a year. There’s only one economist in the lot, the rest are all business types, and certainly Harper is not likely hear anything from them he hasn't heard before, and wouldn't be happy to hear. No Canadian equivalent of Paul Krugman among them, for sure.

So Martel’s point is probably very pertinent. As was the letter he sent with his last offering, The Good Earth by Pearl Buck sent December 8, the day the Lib/NDP coalition was supposed to bring down the Harper government. Martel pointed out that while Buck’s story is still found in bookstores everywhere because it remains an “excellent introduction to old China and a vivid parable on the fragility of fortune." He goes on: "This lesson will not be lost on you considering the political turmoil you are now going through. The fate of a politician is so terribly uncertain.”

To be continued at the end of January.

Saturday Photo: Snow Sports for School Holiday

Early yesterday afternoon as I walked through Parc Beaubien a gaggle of boys aged 13 to 15 were hustling down the hill toward the outdoor hockey rink, hockey sticks, skates and other equipment slung over their shoulders. School was out at noon most places, and two weeks of holiday were in prospect.

You can ski, skate and sled in most public parks this time of year around Montreal, with outdoor rinks maintained by most municipalities. Lots of fun, particularly if you get some sunny days.

Today playing outside is going to be a little chilly, though. Currently it's -17 C and with the wind, it feels like -28 C (that's near 0F or -15 or so F.) Don't know that the boys are out on the rink this morning.

Score Two for Humanity: Rwandan Genocide Decisions Handed Down and Health Care Strike Ends in Burundi

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda handed down verdicts yesterday in the cases of four senior officers of the Rwandan army during the 1994 genocide, while in neighboring Burundi health workers went back to work after a month long strike.

Colonel Théoneste Bagosora, director of cabinet in the Rwandan Ministry of Defence—he’s the “devil” Canadian General Roméo Dallaire described shaking hands with—and two others will receive life imprisonment for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. A fourth officer was acquitted

Conflict between Hutus and Tutsis in the Great Lake Region of Africa has not gone away in the 14 years since Bagosora gave the order to slaugher Tutsis and moderate Hutus. Many aspects of the continuing turmoil in the (ironically named, I think) Democratic Republic of Congo hinge of this ethnic conflict and the desire for revenge which flourishes after massacres.

Within Rwanda itself things seem calmer today, and in neighboring Burundi, which has about the same proportion of Tutsis, Hutus and Twa that Rwanda had, work toward peaceful accommodation seems near fruition. Only a few obstacles remain before complete legitmatization of a government of reconciliation, it seems. And business appears to progressing in many respects as it would in any other “normal’ country. The labour conflict in the health sector is a case in point.

Strikes by health workers, particularly lengthy ones, are never trivial, but the fact that this one appears to be settled by negotiation and not by fiat seems to me to be a good sign. Unions are allowed, bargaining can go on, the importance of health is recognized: Burundi in its own tortuous way is making progress.

Sometimes things do get better.

Fighting Economic Bad Times: Give a Ticket, Buy a Book, Promote Infrastructure Projects

"Recession? What recession?" was the headline on a story in Quill and Quire’s online edition Tuesday. Canada’s publishing industry magazine reports that independent book stores seem to be doing pretty well so far, thank you very much, despite the terrible economic news. That could be because bad news has led to poor expectations or because last year—when the Canadian dollar was near par with the US dollar but book prices hadn’t caught up—was quite a bad year and any up tick looks good, Q&Q says.

The last couple of days I’ve spent some time in bookstores, shopping for friends and family. At the excellent children’s book store Babar en ville, staff said that things going well, more or less to their surprise. Chapters in downtown Montreal was packed when I was through in mid-afternoon yesterday as was nearby Paragraphe books. And at Drawn and Quarterly, the eclectic store run by the even more eclectic publishing house, there was a line of young people at the cash, waiting to be served.

Books make great gifts. They last a long time, they can be found in all price-ranges, and are suitable for all tastes and age groups. Tickets to events are more transitory as gifts, but the memories of good dance, music or theatre performances can last forever

And books written and published close to home, as well as tickets to local performances are just what the doctor ordered when it comes to economic stimulus. The money goes into the pockets of nearby producers and creators, rather than into coffers of companies far away. Money that goes around near you comes around near you too.

That’s part of the reason why any governmental stimulus package should include projects close to home, particularly infrastructure undertakings. A tax cut won’t help much, as The Globe and Mail eloquently argued on Monday. “People Can’t Be Bribed into Spending.”

Further note on the problems of depending too much on corporate and private sector sponsors: the Montreal International Jazz Festival is bracing for tougher times as GM announces it will pull out of sponsorship after next June’s 30th anniversary celebration. Who’s going to step up to the bat on this one?

Giving When Times Are Bad: The Private Sector Fumbles While Ordinary Folk Remain Generous

A crisis in philanthropy appears to be following the world wide financial crisis—except when it comes to ordinary folk. In recent years as conservative governments have slashed programs, charities of all sorts, educational institutions, and arts organizations have been encouraged to turn to private sources to finance their activities. But when big corporations run into hard times, among the first things they cut are their sponsorships while the crazy financial crisis of recent months has seen the value of invested funds tumble. The last week's headlines have included the news that Yale’s endowment has dropped 13.4 per cent, Nascar sponsors are pulling out, and the Vancouver International Children’s Festival is facing lean times, to name only a few. In addition, the massive Madoff fraud case is affecting hundreds of charities who entrusted their funds to the slippery Ponzi scheme.

I’ve always been troubled by the idea that private charity should take the place of publicly financed programs. Our societies have a collective responsibility to encourage arts, healthy sport, education and decent standards of living for all: governments shouldn't foist that task off on the private sector. Now the danger in relying on the whims or resources of the wealthy is becoming increasing apparent.

There is one encouraging thing, though, and that is the way that ordinary folk are stepping up when asked. Seasonal charity campaigns are reporting little drop off in contributions, and some like the big charity drive in Quebec—La grande guilgnolée des médias—actually have seen gifts go up. Ordinary folk understand that it is important to be generous: would that our governments in both the US and Canada understood their responsibilities in the past.

Green Christmas Trees: Real Is the Real Thing, at Least In Canada

We're off to get our Christmas tree this morning at Jean Talon Market. One of the nice things about Lee not teaching, is that we can undertake such endeavors any time we feel like it, and today promises to be about the only one this week without extreme weather. The tree we’ll get will probably be about 9 feet tall (our old house has high ceilings) and what is called her démi-cultivé, that is planted on a farmer’s woodlot but not pruned and cosseted as it grew.

This is the kind of tree we’ve had every year since we had enough money to buy a full-size tree. But even when Lee was in graduate school and I was a humble reporter on a suburban daily we’ve bought “real.” Now I’m pleased to see that our choices have been ecological sound, at least as long as we’ve been in Montreal. Geeta Nadkarni, CBC Montreal’s green specialist recently gave the run down.

Fake trees, she says, “are made of toxic, non-biodegradable materials and are often shipped over from China.” But real trees are carbon sinks and thus help to reduce greenhouse gases. As well they are replanted upon harvest, grown in soil that isn't usually used for cultivation, and they create local jobs that wouldn't other wise exist, Furthermore, in recent years many cities have been picking them after the holidays to chip and compost.

Many of the several million trees produced in Quebec are sold as far away as California and Mexico: La Presse Affaires reports that prices in US dollars are down this year, but given the exchange rate producers here should see an increase in profits as measured in Canadian dollars It’s possible that transportation might increase the carbon footprint of trees hauled all the way across the continent, but still, I think there’s nothing nicer than the smell of a tree.

Now to chip the car out of the garage and brave the ice in the lane ...

And Now for a Musical Interlude: The Kind of Thing Radio Two Should Be Playing Much More

A marvelous concert last night: The Studio de musique ancienne de Montréal performed some polyphonic music from 16th and 17th century Rome. Its 16 singers, supported by organ, cello, harp and bass (all period instruments, I think) sounded as heavenly as the angels they were singing about. A real treat.

The concert was being recorded, although there was no mention in the program that it would be broadcast at some future date. It definitely should. This is the kind of music that appeals to a wide public, from the dedicated early music aficionado to New Age mystics who are into hypnotic sound. Let’s hear more of it on Radio Two and Espace Musique.:

But as we know, talking about the appeal of serious music to CBC/Radio Canada brass is like talking to the wind. In the meantime, some of the music from last night can be heard on SMAM’s most recent CD, Roma Triumphans from ATMA. Definitely something to think when you’re making your Christmas list.

Saturday Photo: Icy Branches and St. Lucia Day

The full moon was setting when I went for my walk this morning, the perfect complement to the rising moon I saw last evening as I walked home through a couple of parks. The snow stopped about noon yesterday, so it was still breath-taking. Ice from Tuesday's storm clung to the trees, too: this week has been tough but truly beautiful.

Right now I have the dough for Safronsbrod rising in the kitchen. This is St. Lucia's Day, the shortest day of the year in Scandanavia before the adoption of our current calendar, and the sweet, saffron-laced buns are traditional there, it seems, as well as at our house. You'll find below good recipe. I discovered it the year Lee and I were married in a pamphlet put out by Fleischman yeast. His mother never made them, so it's not an old Soderstrom heirloom, but we've been enjoying them long enough that it's fair to say they're a Soderstrom tradition.

Safransbrod, Lucia buns, Nisse buns, Luciakitti

3 tsp. dry yeast
1/2 cup warm water
1/2 cup scalded milk
good pinch saffron
1/4 cup butter
l tablespoon grated lemon rind
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp salt
2 eggs
4-5 cups flour
l/3 cup mixed, diced candied fruit
1/3 cup raisins
1/3 cup chopped almonds

Put yeast in warm water to dissolve. Heat milk with saffron and butter. Let cool after butter melts. Mix with yeast, sugar, salt, eggs and lemon rind. Add about half of flour and mix until stiff dough is formed add fruit, raisins and nuts. Turn out on floured surface and knead, adding flour as necessary until a smooth, elastic dough is formed (about 10 minutes.) Let rise in a warm place until double in bulk. Punch down, then divide into l6 equal pieces. Roll each out until long and skinny, Form an S bun. Let rise until double again (about an hour.) Bake at 375 F for about 15 minutes, until golden brown.


Note: The photo was taken on Thursday, on a day of brilliant sunshine. My skill as a photographer was not enough to capture the sparkle of the ice, unfortunately.

Shock Resistance, Naomi Klein and the Big Three Automakers

The news this morning is that the US Senate has not passed the bailout program for the US automobile industry, and now all three of the Big Three are talking bankruptcy. Woe is me, cry many, while other observers gleefully chant "Serves them right."

I’ve been wondering what Naomi Klein, the author of The Shock Doctrine, makes about all this, so I was delighted to find an interview with her on her website, originally from rabble.ca. In it, she talks about “shock resistance” and how it seems to be developing. Her first example is the reaction to the draconian measures included in Stephen Harper’s arrogant budget update 10 days ago. But it also applies to the ground swell of protest against big bucks for the Big Three: “You didn’t buy our shitty cars,” one mock ad reads, “so we’ll be taking your money anyway.”

Klein is featured in a New Yorker profile this month: check it out. Like Paul Krugman winning the Nobel prize for economics, the article suggests that maybe the message that free markets don’t work has gotten through.

Winter Interlude: Kamouraska and Sun on Ice-Encased Trees

Not much of a post today. The sun has come out, illuminating a wonderland of trees encased in ice and powdered by snow, so I must go take some pictures.

Last night’s discussion at the Atwater Library has put me in mood for a little winter wandering. The book was Anne Hébert’s Kamouraska, a Quebec novel set in 1838 and a few years later which was made into a brilliant movie by Claude Jutra and starring Genevieve Buold at her most beautiful. At the heart of the story (based a real case) is a murder that takes place in the dead of winter on the shores of the St. Lawrence. The book is full of extremely evocative descriptions of a 200 mile-long trip by sleigh, which in the movie was transformed into terrific cinema. The book is available in both English and French and is well worth reading, but, unfortunately, the movie seems not to be have been re-released in DVD and the VHS has been pulled from the shelves of most video stores.

And if you can wait there will be an opera opening in Toronto next Spring. But that is a long time away. Now, to get my camera out…

Brrr! Winter Is Here, But It's Not Keeping Us Warm That Is Increasing Green House Gas Emissions

It’s not because Canada is such a cold place that our production of greenhouse gases has increased, according to a new study released Monday by Statistics Canada. Between 1990 and 2004 consumption of fuel to heat our homes rose by about 10 per cent, but green house gas emissions generating as we attempt to keep us warm actually decreased by 1 per cent due to more efficient heating systems and increasing use of cleaner natural gas.

Our reliance on automobiles and trucks, though, resulted in an increase of 29 per cent of the green house gas emissions coming from transport of people and goods. This far outstrips population growth, which rose by 16 per cent, Stats Can notes, attributing the increase in GES production to “the increased popularity of larger motor vehicles that require more fuel per kilometre driven.”

The moral on this wintry day (20 cm of snow when only 5 had been forecast) is that in order to solve our energy and green house gas problems we must act on two fronts. More efficient equipment is necessary, but we also must think seriously about how we organize our lives. Sales of new trucks rose 79 per cent in the study period, and without a doubt some of them were necessary for moving goods and people. But how many were used simply by individuals in non-work situations? And what about improving public transportation so we don't need to use cars as much too?

Bad News for Newspapers, Good News for Québec Solidaire

These are parlous times for newspapers, and that is bad news for democracy. Monday that the Tribune Company which publishes The Los Angeles Times and The Chicago Tribune filed for bankruptcy. The same day The New York Times announced that is going to borrow $225 million against its new building in Manhattan “to ease a potential cash flow squeeze as the company grapples with tighter credit and shrinking profits.”

All the stories I’ve read about these financial difficulties list a long series of staff cuts that these newspapers and others have already put into effect. Advertising revenue is down, competition from Internet sources is great, newsprint cost is up: the media giants have now choice.

Or so we’re told. Actually, given the low Canadian dollar Canadian newsprint is costing newspapers in the US much, much less than it did a year ago, so that argument shouldn’t be trotted out. As for advertising revenue: hard times mean tighter advertising budgets for lots of companies—and yet aren’t the automakers still running big ads?

The Internet presence of big papers is growing, and I just don’t understand why advertising revenues from it can’t grow substantially too. There is no reason why a newspaper can’t use cookies to track the hits it gets and guarantee advertisers coverage in target audiences. Political parties are doing that: this fall when I visited Zimbio.com to post my blog entries on their wikizines, I’ve been getting ads for the Bloc Québécois (during the Canadian federal election campaign) or the Parti Québécois (the provincial election which ended yesterday.) Surely a bright advertising department could bundle up a bunch of local ads and do the same for newspaper sites.

But newspaper are not about advertising really. They’re about information, and when newsrooms shrink so does the ability to track important debates, do in-depth reporting, uncover the corruption, give voice to vices that would otherwise not be heard. Without newspapers of quality, we’ll all be losers.

And the one good thing that’s in the news of my world today stems directly from hard work in the field and not being dissuaded by impossible odds: the victory of Amir Khadir for Québec Solidaire in Mercier. A little party on the left has elected a really top notch guy. Bravo to all who were involved.

And While We’re Talking about the CBC: Bad Scheduling Choices by the Nation's Broadcaster

Tell me, why is Shelagh Rogers’ new program The Next Chapter scheduled right in the middle of Saturday Afternoon at the Opera? I’d like to listen to both, as I’m sure many others would, but at the moment one must choose. At least with Eleanor Wachtel’s Writers and Company which now competes with Sunday Afternoon in Concert, the show is rebroadcast late Thursday evening so the listener who likes literature AND serious music can catch them both.

The terrible suspicioun that is lurking in the back of mind is that the brass really don't want any of these programs to have good listener scores so they can cancel them. Or am I just being paranoid?

Classical Music is "Steady Performer?" Tell That to the CBC

Even the CBC admits it: the new programming on Radio Two hasn'’t worked miracles in increasing its listenership according to the most recent BBM ratings. Of course, in a press release the CBC puts a good face on it. The formerly mostly serious music service had about the same number of listeners overall as in the last round of ratings sweeps, “Its share of 2.9 per cent is down slightly as expected.” the release said. It quoted Denise Dorion: "When you change a radio station as we did with Radio 2, you have to expect a dip in listening patterns before you gain new listeners."

That's not going to happen, I think. Certainly in the Toronto market the all-classical station CFMZ went up frm 4.1 per cent to 5 per cent: CBL FM remained steady at 1.9. Figures for Montreal—where all-classical CJPX competes with both Radio Two and Radio Canada’s Espace Musique--appear unavailable to the public. A new listenership survey system has just been put in place here. Listener-kept diaries are gone, replaced by electronic measurement of what households are listening too. Some figures are available free for stations which sell advertising—to sell advertising is the raison d’être of listenership surveys—but that means that there is no easily available way to see how many people are listening to non-commercial stations.

Maybe like Kremlinologists in the bad old days, we’ll be able to read between the lines if the CBC keeps us posted on what its ratings are. Certainly it is interesting that the Mother Corp is boasting of improvement in ratings for certain programs across the country: The Current 12 per cent (10.9 a year ago) , The World at Six 15.9 per cent (13.9), DNTO 8.1 per cent (7.3), Vinyl Tap 12.1 per cent (9.5), Cross Country Check-up 15.2 per cent (12.7). You’ll notice that with the exception of Vinyl Tap, these are hard news and opinion shows, and that Jian Gomeshi and Q are not among them.

And here’s an interesting bit of market analysis from Bohn and Associates, media analysts. Earlier this fall, they noted: "The Classical format continues to be a steady performer while flying under the radar of most mainstream broadcasters. Ranked fourth in the S1-2008 format sweepstakes, Classical garners more tuning than Classic Rock, Country, Gold, AOR and Modern Rock. The 15 stations programming Classical, which included the roster of CBC stations, is more than the amount programming Classic Rock, AOR or Modern Rock. Classical’s share of hours tuned continues to rise and is now up to a 6.7% share from a 6.2% in S1-2007, an increase of just over 8%. In addition to the CBC, there are privately owned Classical stations in Toronto (CFMZ) and Montreal (CJPX). With a 5.2% and 4.2% share 12+ respectively, both stations rank in the top 10 in their markets."

Saturday Photo: Kicking Up My Heels!

Ron Diamond, the Electronic Rights Defence Committee's treasurer and terrific professional photographer, just sent me this photo of Ms. Julie and me at the Quebec Writers' Federation's gala a couple of weeks ago. Ms. Julie, the saucy librarian who is promoting writing by Quebec English language writers these days, and I were comparing our marvelous shoes. It was great fun to be more than a little silly that night.

And last night was the annual holiday supper of Les Durochères, a group of friends and neighbors who have been meeting monthly to discuss books for more than two decades. Over the years we've evolved a great format for the evening--a sort of tasting menu, where everyone brings little portions of something savoury and something sweet, with all of us sharing the cost of a few bottles of good wine. Among the things we talk about is which was the best book we've read in the last year, and we pick up winner by secret ballot. This time it was Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones with Kiran Desei's The Inheritance of Loss running a close second. Most of us read the books in translation, as nine of the eleven Durochères are Francophones, Desei's book was published as La perte en heritage, while Mister Pip carries the same title in translation. So taken were several with the latter who hadn't been forced to read Great Expectations in high school that they were inspired to read, Grandes Espérances. Their reactions were far more positive than I remember my own: that's one of the delights of reading classics of another literature as an adult.

By the way, in case you're wondering, the name of the reading group comes from the street that most of us lived on with it started meeting, avenue Durocher.

What Is to Be Done? Grassroots and Google-age Gimmicks

I spent a couple of hours yesterday at the campaign office of Amir Khadir, the Quebec Solidaire candidate in the neighboring riding of Mercier. The team was pretty impressive--they put me to work on the phones as soon as I arrived but by the middle of the afternoon, they had more people willing to telephone than than telephones free. Then this morning Le Devoir reports that Claude Béland, the former head of the credit union giant Caisses Desjardins, has thrown his support to Khadir and his co-leader Françoise David. That's also good news for people who are concerned about social and economic issues.

The detour by the office lifted my spirits a bit: whatever was Michaëlle Jean thinking when she agreed to the prorogation of Parliament until late January? I am afraid the only thing that can happen is that Harper and his gang will spend a bundle trying to convince us of their take of the world. That view was certainly not that of the 63 per cent of Canadian voters who voted for another party October 14: a Liberal/NDP coalition with support from the back on budget matters for 18 months (the content of the famous agreement, remember) is far more in tune with what the great majority was thinking then.

What will be required is a vast grassroots effort on the part of those who care about progressive issues to counteract the Harper propaganda deluge. That, and some creative thinking on web messages and other tactics. We must do it. The future of democracy in Canada requires it.

Who's Walking to School These Days? Less Than a Third of Quebec Youngsters, Study Suggests

Only 30 percent of Quebec elementary school children walk to school, and of those who do, eighty per cent live less that 600 meter (less than half a mile,) a new Quebec study suggests. Paul Lewis, professor of urbanism at the University of Montreal's school of urban studies, led the research group, which interview parents of 1495 children attending 67 schools in central areas and suburbs of Montreal and Trois-Rivières.

The difference with the results of a similar study done in 1971 are striking. Then 80 per cent of kids aged 7 and 8 walked to school. Among the reasons for the big change, Lewis and his group name increased urban sprawl, greater numbers of parents who drop their kids off on their own way to work, and the increasing practice of choosing a school outside the neighborhood.

The figures aren’t a big surprise to anyone who has passed an elementary school just before the bell rings. The line of cars stopped to let kids out is frequently long. Even in a neighborhood like ours where public transportation is good, many people bicycle well into winter, and walking to work isn’t hard for many, Fairmount Avenue is snarled for a good half hour every morning as the parade of SUVs wait to discharge the next generation attending the two schools on the street.

The effect on the physical fitness of children is great, the group says. It suggests making school zones safer, as well as campaigns to convince parents of the importance of walking as exercise. Parents should set the example, the researchers insist. “Mothers and fathers should set an example for their children by having at least one parent walk or use public transit to commute,” insists. the press release announcing the study’s results .

That’s a good idea which may work in intrinsically walkable neighborhoods, but in suburbs the impact is bound to be much less. Densifying sprawl is part of the answer there, but more about that later.

Photo: On the next street in our walkable neighborhood, a steady stream of parents and children walk to school--but even here a lot of parents drive their SUVs to drop their kids off before they continue to work.

Coalition Countdown II: Here's Some Bedtime Reading for Stephen Harper on How to Believe What You Want to Believe Despite the Facts

Watching Stephen Harper and his guys carrying on yesterday I was reminded of how easy it is to start believing what you want to believe. Harper was absolutely enraged about something that he was quite willing to consider four years ago: an accommodation with the Bloc Québécois in order to make some parliamentary changes. Whether this went so far as an actual letter to the Governor General as some claim, I don’t know, but even Heritage Minister James Moore, talking on As It Happens, conceded that Harper was quite glad to work with Gilles Duceppe then.

How can Harper forget that? Why are he and his troops preparing, it seems, to storm the country by shifting the debate about a disastrous budget update into a “coup d’état,” a power grab, or an attempt to split the country apart? To stay in power so they can advance a pernicious conservative agenda, I would answer. But the mechanism that transforms that into the appearance of principled outrage is even more devious—but more human--than that.

Evolutionary psychologists suggest that believing one’s falsehoods is a really good survival strategy: if you think you really have to lie, it’s best to give the appearance of telling the truth and the only way to that is to begin to believe what you’re saying. Beneffectance is what some social scientists call our drive to delude ourselves about how benevolent and how effective we are. But it’s much more widespread than the strangeness of the term might indicate. Two psychologists Carol Tavris and Eliot Aronson have recently published Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts. It supposedly is “supported by years of research on how the brain works, what extraordinary steps we take to deal with dissonance, and the happy world of self-deception,” according to one review.

It sounds fascinating. I haven’t read it, but I’ll seek it out. And it might be a book for Yann Martel to send to Stephen Harper as part of continuing (but for how long?) campaign to give the current PM some good bed time reading.

Nestlé, Babies (Mine and Other People's,) Bottled Water, and Long Running Battles

When Elin was in high school one of the classes she had to take was a consumer economics course. Along with practical stuff like how to read a lease and balance a cheque book, there was a unit on business to which was invited a retired executive from Nestlé. When I heard I was very surprised—not that somebody from business would be in the class because that might be interesting particularly if balanced with a visit from a union militant, but because the man was from Nestlé.

She was still a toddler when the international campaign to boycott Nestlé for its aggressive marketing of baby formula in developing countries began. I enthusiastically jumped on board—no Quick for us!—but by the time she was in her mid-teens I’d thought that battle against the Swiss multinational’s doubtful practices was won. It wasn’t, obviously, and I gave her some of the literature from the anti-formula campaign and a couple of questions to ask Nestlé’s man. Luckily, at that moment she was more anti-establishment than anti-parent, and so she agreed to innocently ask the man why Nestlé could do such awful stuff.

She came home very pleased with herself. He’d been embarrassed, she reported. He promised he’d look into it, if anything had been done that was questionable in the past it certainly would have been corrected by then, he assured her. The kids in her class learned a lot from the way he had to paddle very fast in order to stay afloat, she concluded.

But Nestlé continues its doubtful campaigns. The most recent incident is its marketing which claims that "bottled water is the most environmentally responsible consumer product in the world". “ Not so says a group including the Council of Canadians, Ecojustice, Friends of the Earth Canada, the Polaris Institute and Wellington Water Watcher. It filed a complaint Dec. 1 under Canadian Code of Advertising Standards against Nestlé Waters North America arguing that Nestlé is attempting to mislead the public on the true impacts of bottled water.

Toronto City Council is set today to vote on a ban on sales of water in plastic bottles. Will be interesting to see how that plays out, particularly since it seems it’s part of a larger cut-down-waste program.

Coalition Count Down: Quebeckers are for a Coalition While the Village of Ottawa Refuses to Accept the Second Coming of Keynes

La Presse reports this morning that 76 per cent of Quebeckers are in favour of a coalition government if the Harper government falls next Monday. That’s really not surprising, given the way Quebeckers voted—Stephen Harper had hoped for a break-through here but certainly did not get it.

At the same time Le Devoir columnist François Brousseau points out how social democrat the world has suddenly become. You’d think that everyone had been a closet Keynesian all those years. Many political leaders are using this rapid turn to the left their own advantage--Brousseau mentions that when France’s Nicolas Sarkozy talks left, he’s undermining his enemies the Socialists--but finally the stupidity of blind free market orthodoxy has become clear to leaders around the world.

Except in one little village, Brousseau notes: Ottawa, where the present Prime Minister is the man who said in October that it was a good time to buy stocks, and where a stimulus plan is supposed to be a sales tax cut that went into effect nearly a year ago.

Come on, guys, we can't afford to keep this government in office.