test blog #10

This is probably the easiest way to use zucchini from your garden, and if you're growing herbs, it's an excuse to use those, too. It's also one of those dishes that takes just about anything you like in pasta. I'm keeping it very simple, so as not to drown out the zucchini. I use brown rice pasta. I originally tried it when we thought one of us was celiac, then it became habit. It's delicious and very healthy, but it does need the extra step of rinsing the cooked pasta. If you don't do that, the pasta will all stick together in a one big gluey mess... something I discovered painfully on my own.  Also, if you use brown rice pasta, it's easier to use a "cut" pasta, like penne, rotini, or ditalini. Long pasta like spaghetti or linguini is more difficult to rinse properly.  Pasta with Zucchini and Fresh Herbs 1/2 package of penne pasta  1 large zucchini a variety of fresh herbs, washed and shredded (I used basil, thyme, and cilantro) 2 cloves of garlic...

The conversation was simple enough. Teenage girl: "Where is the nonfiction?" Me: "Nonfiction is upstairs, but it's organized according to subject. There should be some nonfiction books on the Bingo display." Teen: "I think they're all gone." Me: "OK, we'll find you something. What would you like to read about?" Teen: "So far I've read one nonfiction book. It was about a man who left the war in Iraq. It was called The Deserter's Tale . I loved it." !!!!!!!!!!! Why did this make me so unreasonably happy? 1. War resisters! Teens reading about moral choices! Teens reading about conscientious objection to war! I always include Joshua Key's The Deserter's Tale in my youth nonfiction displays. But I've never gotten feedback on it before! And she didn't just read it, she loved it! 2. One of my missions at the library is to offer nonfiction to teen readers. There is no special youth nonfiction section, and I...

The conversation around the movie " Obvious Child " has prompted me to re-visit a long-standing interest of mine, one I share with many other reproductive rights activists: the portrayal of abortion in the mainstream media. I haven't seen "Obvious Child" (I wait for DVD or Netflix, as always), but I've heard that it includes a rarity: an honest and positive portrayal of the choice to terminate a pregnancy. Considering how many women do have abortions - and considering that the choice is usually met with relief and happiness - this shouldn't be exceptional. Yet it is. On fictional TV shows and movies, when women are faced with unwanted pregnancies, certain outcomes are almost predictable. Sometimes abortion is never mentioned as an option, as if it simply does not exist. More often, abortion is mentioned briefly, contemplated with horror, and cast aside. In soaps, a spontaneous abortion (usually known by the antiquated term miscarriage ) often settles the...

Apparently if you grow zucchini, you have too much of it. Being new gardeners, we didn't know how prolific our one zucchini plant would be, or the insane quantities - and size! - of the vegetables it would produce. And those leaves! They're gigantic and there's so many of them! It's been a source of wonder and amusement. We've cut back the leaves several times, as they're crowding out the herbs and the eggplant. And of course cutting back just makes the plant produce even more. I remember that much from my indoor planting days. There's no shortage of recipes online offering ideas and advice on how to use your surplus zucchini, including several suggestions of leaving some on a neighbour's porch. So although there's no need, I'm going to add mine to the pile. My recipes are all adapted from what I've found online, usually a combination of ideas I find in two or three places, tweaked to our own tastes and cooking style. Zucchini Fritters 1 huge...

This year's garden-ette is completely out of control! In a very good way. Here's June. And here's today. No idea what I'm going to do with all the zucchini. Neither of us bakes, so zucchini bread and muffins are not an option. Guess I'd better start Googling... This eggplant is tiny right now, but I suppose soon I'll need those recipes, too. Random Diego pic. And because you're never too old to be a puppy, Tala recently fell in love with an empty peanut butter jar. No idea why.

This month - July 11, 2014 - I have been blogging for 10 years. Ten years! I clearly remember telling Allan I was considering beginning a blog about emigrating to Canada. He thought it was a great idea. July 11, 2004. I was working weekends at my (incredibly easy, wildly overpaid) job at Most Evil Corporate Law Firm. Our applications had been submitted , and we were waiting . August 30, 2015 will be the 10-year anniversary of our move to Canada, but I felt the 10-year anniversary of wmtc was worth a mention. Thanks for being part of what I love * about blogging. * Or hate, in some cases

I've been trying to write about Israel's latest slaughter of Palestinian people ever since the hideous spectacle began, without results. I post little bits of horror and disgust on Facebook, but can't sustain anything worth posting here. Because... what is there to say? A mighty military power unleashes deadly force against a civilian population. Some people within that population have dared to use violence to resist their own oppression. Therefore the entire population must be terrorized, hundreds murdered, thousands maimed, lives destroyed. Another great military power and a second-tier military wannabe *  rush to the defense of the military power, and anyone who speaks out against it is accused of bigotry. People who normally would recoil at such warmongering are silent, or, incredibly, call the slaughter defense . It's a topsy-turvy world. In the US, if you don't blindly support, without question, every single military action perpetrated by the government, you a...

My summer youth programs have been going really well. Attendance has increased with each program - first 7, then 13, then 15 - and yesterday we hit the jackpot with 23 teens. We actually had to turn away three kids without tickets, as our program room was so packed with people and materials. I wasn't planning on blogging about individual programs, but there seems to be some interest. Plus, since I regularly Google for ideas for programs and displays, I'm happy to give back by adding to the ideas out there. Upcycling was a huge hit! For those not familiar with the term, upcycling is an expression for taking an item that would normally be thrown in the trash or in the recycling bin and creating something useful or decorative from it - moving it "up," figuratively, in the lifecycle of the product. I like to begin programs with a bit of context, and to immediately get the teens engaged. This is not difficult to do: I structure a brief introduction in the form of questio...

Nadine Gordimer was a great writer, and a steadfast voice for justice. Gordimer, a white South African, was a member of the African National Congress when the organization itself was illegal. Several of her novels, which explored the affects of apartheid on those who lived it, were similarly banned. Gordimer was a courageous woman, an outspoken intellectual, and a writer for whom art and politics became inseparable. She lived life on her own terms, and died at the old age of 90. Despite that, her passing feels like a great loss to the world. Nadine Gordimer's obituary in The Guardian , and The New York Times .

Back-to-back obituaries again. Obits are taking up a large percentage of wmtc real estate these days, yet another indication of how little I'm writing. The passing of Thomas Erdelyi this week, better known as Tommy Ramone, brings an uncomfortable reminder of mortality for people my age and younger: the last surviving original Ramone. Like a lot of people, I discovered the Ramones in a kind of backwards fashion, through the Clash and other great British punk and new wave bands. No matter how many times I've read and heard that these guys from Queens were a heavy influence on British punk, to me it always seemed the other way around. The Ramones, perhaps more than any other band, embodied the true spirit of punk. So strange that they are gone. Tommy Ramone, 1949-2014

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong child, her American doctors, and the collision of two cultures by Anne Fadiman contains dozens of passages that I'd like to share. My library copy is shamefully dog-eared, and I intend to buy a copy of the book for my bookshelf. But I'll restrain myself and will share only a single anecdote, related in the early pages, which drew me in. In an intermediate French class at Merced College a few years ago, the students were assigned a five-minute oral report, to be delivered in French. The second student to stand up in front of the class was a young Hmong man. His chosen topic was a recipe for la soupe de poisson : Fish Soup. To prepare Fish Soup, he said, you must have a fish, and in order to have a fish, you have to go fishing. In order to go fishing, you need a hook, and in order to choose the right hook, you need to know whether the fish you are fishing for lives in fresh or salt water, how big it is, and what shape its mouth i...

A few days ago, the Federal Court of Canada ruled that the Harper Government's denial of health care to refugee claimants from certain countries is unconstitutional and cannot stand. In a surprisingly strongly worded statement Friday, the federal court ruled Ottawa’s cutbacks to health-care coverage for refugee claimants are unconstitutional because they constitute “cruel and unusual” treatment. The decision was quickly lauded by many, including the Canadian Doctors for Refugee Care, the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers and Justice for Children and Youth — groups that, along with two refugee claimants, challenged the law. Of course the Government plans to appeal, but the decision will be difficult to overturn. The Government and its complicit media partners can lie to the public - fabricated stories of refugee claimants who supposedly receive better health care than Canadians, calling refugees whose claims are rejected by the Government "bogus" - but hoodwinking th...

Yesterday was my first summer program at the library. Attendance was low, but very keen. An artist and activist (who happens to be a friend of mine from the war resisters movement) led a workshop I called "Comix that Save the World". We explored the use of the comics form to express larger social concerns. It was so much fun, the teens were so into it, that I'm thinking of expanding it to an ongoing series, where kids could really develop something. The summer at Mississauga Central Library will be packed with programs for teens - sometimes as many as three a week - and all are free.  Mondays are special events with presenters, held in our lovely glass pavilion that faces Celebration Square . Wednesdays are DIY days, put on by yours truly with another staff member to assist. And every Friday is Game Day, where teens hang out and play board games and video games. That one is presented by our "TAG", the teen advisory group, who earn volunteer hours by planning and...

We won! And we won so easily, we're left scratching our heads and asking, "What just happened?" As you'll recall, our landlord asked for an illegal rent increase - 10.5% when the legal allowable is 0.8%! - and implied that he would resort to dirty tricks if we didn't pay. We did our homework, checked and double-checked that this home does not fall through a serious loophole in Ontario rent laws . We crafted an email with just the right tone - straightforward and firm, but with nothing that could be considered belligerent. When he received our email, he asked when he could come over to discuss it. Part of me felt like shooting back, "There's nothing to discuss!"... but we successfully ignored that (younger, more volatile) self, and made an appointment. Waiting to speak with him was nerve-wracking! We vowed we wouldn't negotiate or be intimidated, that we wouldn't agree to any increase over the legal one, and also that we wouldn't be baite...