test blog 5

Just about one year ago today - July 8, 2013, to be exact - our area was hit with a massive flood that swamped homes, cars, highways, trains, and . . . our basement . The basement had been Allan's office. The office in which he was working to meet a publishing deadline. Stressful? You could say that. It could have been much worse. We got an insurance settlement, and we moved - not without some hassles , but we did it, moving in to our current rental home in September. Now, one year later, we mentioned to our current landlord that it's time to renew our lease. He said he'd come over for a visual inspection. That's his right, as he has only been on the property once since we moved in, when the dryer broke. (Interestingly, he questioned whether we had caused the breakdown through carelessness.) He also said there would be a "nominal" increase in rent. We made a date, and he and his wife came to do a walk-through. Everything was fine, of course. A pot-light fixtu...

One of our regular Readers' Den customers approached me with her usual long list of movies. She researches movies online, prints out lists, and comes to the desk to see what we have in our collection. Anything we have, we place on hold for her. She's a great customer, in terms of library use. She has an intellectual disability, and sometimes helping her can be a bit of a challenge.  This customer talks very fast, and a little too loudly. While you're searching for one item, she's rattling off the next few, so after placing each hold, you must ask her to repeat the next title. Because she's reading from a list, the effect is a constant stream of chatter, from which you must pick out the movie titles. After we had exhausted her movie list, she asked, "Is there a way I can do this myself, put on holds, from home?" I know she uses a computer to research movies, and I know she checks her library account online to see which holds are available. I told her, yes, ...

Dark Age Ahead , by the late Jane Jacobs, contains some important insights about the state of North American society. For me, however, the book is more notable for what it doesn’t contain. Picking up where Jared Diamond left off in Guns, Germs, and Steel (which Jacobs references several times in her introduction) and Collapse , Jacobs identifies five pillars of society that she believes are in decay: community and family, higher education, the effective practice of science and science-based technology, taxes and governmental powers directly in touch with needs and possibilities, and self-policing by the learned professions. To readers who are puzzled by her choices for the list itself, Jacobs writes: It may seem surprising that I do not single out such failings as racism, profligate environmental destruction, crime, voters' distrust of politicians and thus low turnouts for elections, and the enlarging gulf between rich and poor along with the attrition of the middle class. Why not...

I'm reading  Dark Age Ahead , Jane Jacobs' 2004 strong caution to North American society. I'll blog about the book in general at a later date, but wanted to share some thoughts that keep coming up as I'm reading. This is the first time I'm reading Jacobs since living in a suburb, the kind of area Jacobs reviled, rather than living in a dense urban environment, the kind she revered. And now, when I read Jacobs' shorthand descriptions of suburbs, I wonder if she truly understood them. Two of the charges levelled against suburbs - and if you've read Jacobs or anyone influenced by her, you've encountered these repeatedly - are (1) no one knows their neighbours, and (2) you have to drive everywhere. The former refers to the absence of shared community spaces. Jacobs often wrote that we must encounter each other face-to-face in order to build tolerance and a sense of community. The latter criticism is often expressed as, "You have to drive [x] distance ju...

Two obituary posts in a row, and I didn't even mention Tony Gwynn. My favourite cartoonist, Charles Barsotti, has died from cancer at the age of 80. My favourite Barsotti character is, of course, The Pup. The Pup often saw his therapist. And sometimes lawyers were involved. But Barsotti had a political side, too. This cartoon has pride of place on my desk, next to Mankoff's "...assuming the FBI is making copies ." Here's another great political cartoon. I'm so pleased that I emailed with Charles Barsotti some years back, after ordering some goodies from his website . If you love someone's work, please let her or him know. You might imagine that successful artists or writers know how much we enjoy their work, but in my experience, people are so pleased to hear from fans. Charles Barsotti's obituary in the New York Times  and Robert Mankoff, cartoon editor of The New Yorker , on Barsotti .

Ruby Dee was a towering figure in the American theatre. She was a great actor, a poet, playwright, and screenwriter, and a steadfast voice for equality. Along with the actor Ossie Davis, her husband of nearly 60 years, Dee never stopped campaigning for full civil rights for all people. Dee and Davis' marriage was something to marvel at and to emulate, a partnership, as the New York Times obit puts it, that was "romantic, familial, professional, artistic and political". Dee grew up in Harlem, performed in many Broadway plays, and was a quintessential New Yorker. On Friday, the marquee lights on Broadway theatres were darkened for one minute in her honour.

I have been alive and kicking on this planet for 53 years today. I'm pretty damn happy about it. I'm celebrating my birthday by taking the day from work, reviewing my talk for this weekend's Marxism conference , getting caught up on some personal business, having a play date with Allan (also ditching work) and the pups, then tonight, having dinner at Kaji , my go-to place for birthday celebrations in recent years. Then I can celebrate all weekend by engaging in discussion, education, and solidarity: Resisting a System in Crisis: Marxism 2014 . This year I'm stewarding a room, and I was invited to participate on a panel for the first time: "Rebuilding our unions: a rank and file strategy". I'm very honoured to be speaking with two big-time labour activists!