Mary Soderstrom's Blog, page 109

Summer is the time when people travel and we've just enjoyed a visit from old friends of Lee's from his youth in Fresno.

There was much talked about the class of 1960 at high schools there, and stories about what has happened since then. Made me think of American Graffiti, the great film by George Lucas, only two years younger and from Modesto, just a little way up Highway 99.

This is what it was like back then, kiddies.

We've been bothered by a family of racoons--count 'em, one adult and six young ones--for the last several weeks. They cry at night, they get caught in garbage cans, they generally are a nuisance.

Both the city and the SPCA say that caging and transorting them is neither practical or a permanent solution, that people have just got to stop leaving food out for them, or, worse, feeding them directly.

La Presse had a story on the weekend about obese racoons on Mount Royal, while this video shows a family not at all concerned by tourists taking their pictures. As one of my neighbors (who spent a Saturday night vigil with me, rescuing the beasts from trash cans) points out, they have no predators around here any more, so they just keep multiplying in Malthusian fashion as long as the pickings are good.

There's a lesson there for everyone, I think.


There

Much talk these days about what impact Twitter and Facebook will have on elections.  Since last Wednesday Quebec has been in provincial campaign mode, with everything being analyzed right and left (and center, too). 

Tweets and Facebook also played an important role in passing the message about anti-tuition hike demonstrations earlier this yeara.  Will comments in the Twittersphere make a difference in engaging young people this election?  Who knows?  Certainly Twitter can be dangerous.  The leader of the terribly named Coalition pour l'avenir du Québec (CAQ, and it sounds as bad in French as it does in English) has already got into hot water with his tweets.  His remark that girls put less importance on wages then boys do is a classic.

These social media are a bit like an echo chamber, though: comments on them go around and around and can end up being amplified to deafening levels among those who are listening.  The audience is circumscribed though.  Those outside the circle only hear a faint roar when commentators on more traditional media mention them.

Certainly so far none of the political parties seem ready to put aside posters and ads on radio and television.  And who can judge what winds blow through the spirits of voters?  The Orange Wave of the 2011 federal election was not accompanied by a lot of social media action, yet some pretty major changes went on in voters' intentions.

À suivre, as they say around here.

Lot of talk about drought this summer, and certainly the photos of drying fields are enough to make one weep.  But for food-lovers there is an up side: flavour.

The early Quebec strawberries were the best I've ever eaten, the raspberries have been good too.  But the Ontario peaches take the cake.  Because of the heat and sun, the sugar content is very high so their taste is terrific.

The photo is of Bala's fruiterie on Park Avenue early in the morning before the shoppers arrive. In one block there are three green groceries and a standard grocer store, all of which at the moment have a wealth of great things to eat, much of them locally grown.

Congratuations to Braydon Beaulieu of Essex who just won the Litpop 2012 contest for fiction! http://matrixmagazine.org/litpop/

But I must add that I was on the short list, as M.S. McGowan (the name I was born with ) and I'm feeling pretty good about making that illustrious group whose demographic is more like that of my kids.

Congratuations to Braydon Beaulieu of Essex who just won the Litpop 2012 contest for fiction!

But I must add that I was on the short list, as M.S. McGowan (the name I was born with ) and I'm feeling pretty good about making that illustrious group whose demographic is more like that of my kida,'The story si called "The Ugly Baby" and now I 'll have to find another home for it.  It's parat of the collection Desire Lines: A Geography of Love  that I've been working on for the last year.

It never hurts to post about oneself on Facebook, I guess. If Fred Stenson hadn't, I never would have stumbled upon his very interesting blog about Canadian literature,  Along with Susan Olding's Proved on Pulses it is a great way to keep abreast of what is happening in around here.

That is good because the book sections in ordinary newspapers have practically disappeared. 

Lunch for a friend's birthday at noon, out of town guests this afternoon.  Much fun, but no time to blog.  See you tomorrow!

Now that I've put aside the short story collection Desire Lines: A Geography of Love that I've been working for the last several months, I'm back to working on the next non-fiction book.  It's called Road through Time, and may end up being a reflection both on time and the permanence of roads aas legacies of what humans do to the world. 

So I was delighted to see two interesting stories in  Le Devoir this week about roads, history and memory.  They have their starting point in a conference held earlier this month at Université Laval in Quebec City called Tourism, Roads and Cultural Itineraries: Meaning, Memory and Development.  More than 300 particpants from around the world gave presentations in English, French and Spanish about  cultural treasures that lend themselves to what might be truly called "Road Trips."

One of the most interesting series of talks was about the Inca Road through the Andes.  More than 6,000 km long, it traverses the spine of South America from Ecuador to Argentina, and still is in use.

Don't know just where this is going to lead me. To South America, maybe?

This morning I spent a  long time looking at a photo of a group of people in the back of a truck fleeing the Syrian city of Aleppo. 

What can you tell from a photo like this?  Well, it probably is a family group--there's a strong resemblance between them.  And that they're reasonably well off to be able to pay for transport, instead of walking.  They women wear headscarves, which probably doesn't mean much about where they stand in the split between different Muslim groups, or just how traditional they are.  What is clear is that they are in a bad position, and even though the 13 or 14 year old boy seems fascinated by something in the air, this is a nightmare.

How this will end I have no idea.  But I've just read a most interesting novel that takes place in the aftermath of another city burnt and population displaced: The Goodtime Girl by Tess Fragoulis (Cormorant Books.)  The main character is a young woman who was her father's darling in the early 1920s in Smyrna.   WhenGreeks were driven from the city by Turks in 1922, she escaped to Pireaus and Athens where she ended up singing other people's songs of distress and love.

The worst of the story happens off stage.  Kivelli has wiped part of it from her mind.  It resurfaces in her dreams and in an abbreviated version told about half way through the book.  But we know always that a number of people were beastly to a number of others for reasons which in no way justify what happened.

Kivelli is a survivor, and sings her sorrows so movingly that she is able to escape. That she sings the songs of other people is also poignant, because Fragoulis makes it clear that while many people may have stories to tell, not all of them have the voice to tell them.

It's a good read, and will send you looking for more information about the bloodshed that followed World War I, as spheres of influence were redefined.  It will also make you wonder just what the stories are of the folk fleeing in the pictures we see all too frequently. 

Photo: Agence France Presse