test blog #10

At last, it has happened . With Obergefell v. Hodges , same-sex marriage has been declared legal and constitutional in the United States. Same-sex couples can legally marry, just as opposite-sex couples have always had the right to do. Most importantly, laws prohibiting same-sex marriage are now unconstitutional.* For some years on this blog, I used to note every country that joined the equal marriage club, but about two years ago, I stopped counting . More than 20 countries now recognize same-sex marriage as a right, and that number continues to climb. This issue has always been, is, and always should be a complete no-brainer. Equality is equality. Rights are rights. We can't have rights for some and not others. That couldn't be more obvious. The debate in the US, especially the displays of extreme homophobia and bigotry from the other side, has helped the vast middle of the road to adjust to the idea. That's why yesterday's SCOTUS decision, although incredibly wonderf...

I stumbled on this letter to the New York Times Book Review from a few weeks ago. It's in response to a review of two books about precarious work - one about technology threatening jobs of even the most educated people, and another about the rise of unpaid labour. Barbara Ehrenreich’s chilling review of Martin Ford’s “Rise of the Robots” and Craig Lambert’s “Shadow Work” ( May 17 ) is the best evidence-based response I’ve seen to all the headlines announcing that a recovery is “just around the corner.” But if it isn’t, and unemployment and part-time employment can only get worse, what can be done? Ehrenreich concludes that “the best that the feeble human mind can come up with at the moment” is a guaranteed annual wage. Actually, one human mind came up with another solution over 150 years ago, and that was to share the work among all able-bodied people, with society making sure that all the skills required to serve everyone’s needs are widely distributed. In this way, everyone wou...

The continuing liberation of transgender people is a marvel to behold. We are witnessing history, as trans people and their issues become part of the mainstream. From Chelsea Manning to "Transparent" to Laverne Cox, and of course Caitlyn Jenner, transgender people and issues have never been so front and centre. I don't do celebrity gossip so I don't know anything about the lurid lead-up to Jenner's coming out, but when the woman who cuts my hair asks me what I think about transgender people, I know something big is going on. There is more than one out trans person in the larger circle of my own life, something most of us never could have said throughout human history. Of course the Vanity Fair cover reflects the reality of most transgender lives the way the Cosby Show reflected most African American lives. This New York Times article is a good wrap-up of where things stand - and where they don't - in the mainstream. Naturally I consider myself an ally of tr...

We have to move. We are heartsick over it. Our landlord is selling the house we live in. We're not letting ourselves get kicked out (see below), but chances are very good we'll have to move, so we're taking steps to find a place sooner rather than later. With the shock of our landlord's announcement faded - at least a bit! - we've been able to evaluate our options. And sadly, very sadly, we realize that we should stop renting houses and go back to apartment life. Comfort is easy. Less comfort is not. It's incredibly easy to grow accustomed to certain comforts and conveniences...and famously difficult to give them up. Entire miniseries and movies are premised on spoiled rich people learning how the other 99% lives. But you need not be Johnny Rose to experience this. Even a little comfort, once savoured, is difficult to part with. The house we have been renting for the past two years is the nicest place either of us have ever lived in. We'll probably end up l...

In the prologue to  Fallingwater Rising: Frank Lloyd Wright, E. J. Kaufmann, and America's Most Extraordinary House , author Franklin Toker writes, "Put this book down now if you can't live without the old myths about Fallingwater. But take comfort in the fact that a Fallingwater history shorn of miracles can still be thrilling." Toker examines those old myths, and one by one, he uses his extensive and impeccable research to dismantle them. The truth, for me, was far more interesting. I visited Fallingwater in 1999, and although I have a great interest in architecture and am captivated by that house, I thought a biography of a single building might be too detailed for my level of interest. I was wrong. The book does contain quite a lot of detail. But through that detail, and through his nearly palpable passion for his material, the author reveals the magnificence of Fallingwater and explicates the full depth of its meaning. Toker weaves a social and cultural history o...

"Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody." Recognize it? For me it's one of the most memorable final sentences ever written. I just finished re-reading The Catcher in the Rye , possibly for the first time since reading it (twice) in high school. I remembered it in a theoretical way, but had forgotten the details. It's a funny, sad, perfect little book. I'm not breaking any new ground when I call Catcher the original young-adult novel. Every John Green and Ned Vizzini and Stephen Chbosky narrator, every wise-cracking alienated youth straight through to Buffy Summers and Veronica Mars, inherits their voice from Holden. Catcher , published in 1951, is more influential now than when S. E. Hinton started to write The Outsiders  only 13 years later. I had the perfect incentive to re-read Catcher : it's this month's selection for my teen book club. The core group of members are bored with cookie-cutter youth novels. They want...

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada has just completed its week-long closing event in Ottawa. The Commission was part of the historic settlement between the Canadian Government and the survivors of the former Indian Residential Schools. Its mandate is to inform all Canadians about what happened in Indian Residential Schools (IRS). The Commission will document the truth of survivors, families, communities and anyone personally affected by the IRS experience. This includes First Nations, Inuit and Métis former Indian Residential School students, their families, communities, the Churches, former school employees, Government and other Canadians. I don't know if this is well known outside of Canada, or outside of people who take a special interest in indigenous issues. The divide between natives and non-natives in Canada is vast. Environmental activism - opposition to the tar sands, pipelines, fracking, and Canadian mining globally - offers prime opportunity for cooperat...