test blog 3

Blue , 1971 Front Cover The back cover is solid blue. Inside, only lyrics and credits. Ask people their favourite Joni Mitchell album, and you are very likely to hear Blue . In my experience, this is especially true of older fans who discovered the album in real time. Blue is a masterpiece; there is no doubt of that. It is also the masterpiece that is more straightforward and accessible. When a Joni fan names Blue as their favourite, I wonder if this was the last stop on her journey with Joni's music. That may not be fair, but my experience continues to reinforce the theory. In my post about Ladies of the Canyon , I wrote that in that album we hear foreshadowing of the future Joni. This is true. But after those first three albums, no one could have been prepared for Blue . With Blue , Joni rockets into an entirely different universe of talent. The music, lyrics, vocals, arrangements, the emotions and ideas expressed, are all light-years beyond what came before. Here Joni shows he...

Is there a New Yorker alive who hasn't spend time in The Strand? A New York City tourist who didn't thrill to their first visit to The Strand? The man who gave NYC this unique gift died recently at the age of 89. Although his father founded the store, Fred Bass made it the book-lovers' mecca that it came to be. Here you can see the ever-present he outdoor shelves. I won't recount my memories of the hours I've spent in The Strand, because I'm sure they're no different than anyone else's. After we moved to Canada, a wmtc reader told me the store had been ruined. I returned to find an elevator had been installed, and the public washrooms changed from nauseatingly dirty to liveable. There was a cafe, better lighting, and new books, at a discount. Not ruined. Just a bit modernized. The Strand was always  expanding. It was like the expanding universe of books. You might think The Strand contained every homeless book the store took in -- but you'd be wrong....

I've wanted to write about these two books for a long time, but adequately summarizing them is a daunting task. I just want to say to every activist and organizer: READ THESE BOOKS . I don't want to represent the authors' ideas, I want you to read them yourself . No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age by Jane F. McAlevey and The End of Protest: A New Playbook for Revolution by Micah White are both aimed at activists and organizers -- people who already believe in the need for social change and are trying to influence the world in a progressive direction. Both books identify pitfalls and shortcomings in the current ways we approach our activism, and they offer concrete ideas for change, along with theory and philosophy to guide our decisions. Both are beautifully written, powerful, and essential. No Shortcuts  focuses on the labour movement, but McAlevey's analysis could apply to any movement. The labour movement is an excellent lens through which to...

I am reading a YA novel about adopted people connecting with their biological siblings and parents. This is a topic I have written about and have an interest in, and it's supposed to be a very good book: Far From the Tree , by Robin Benway. On page 3, the teenage protagonist knows she cannot raise a child, so she immediately begins the adoption process, interviewing prospective parents during her pregnancy. Fine. The word abortion is never used. Not fine. There is no "She knew she would never have an abortion, so she...", no "It was too late to have an abortion, and anyway she doubted she would do that...", no "She was from a religious family, so abortion was out of the question." Not one word. As if the option does not exist. As if abortion itself does not exist. How realistic is that? Not at all? Such is the state of YA in the United States. Does the author, or perhaps the publisher, think if the word abortion  appears once in a 300-page book, the bo...

Many of my co-workers keep colourful lists like this, or use Goodreads or Shelfari to track their reading. I prefer plain old text. Like most avid readers, my to-read list contains far more titles than I could ever read in a lifetime, even if I did nothing but read. Although I add books at a considerably faster rate than I tick them off, I do still keep The List, and I consult it when I'm looking for my next book. I do this with movies, too. I also read books  not  on my list, much more so now that I work in a library, and my reading tastes have broadened. But I don't keep a list of all the books I've read. This really bothers me. It has bothered me for a  very  long time. But at no time did I ever start keeping a list of All The Books I Read, because... I didn't start it a long time ago, so it will always be incomplete, so there's no point in starting it, ever. I know this is not rational, I know it's part of All Or Nothing thinking, which I work at avoiding, b...

I don't do New Year's Resolutions, but I do enjoy using the revolution of our Earth around the Sun as an excuse to take stock in where I am and think about where I'm going. This is not a Big Promise To Do Something; it's not even goal-setting. In my ongoing work to free myself from a strong tendency towards All Or Nothing , to not paint myself into a corner, to not create Rules which I then use to limit my experiences, I don't even set concrete goals. My thinking takes the form of general precepts that I'm trying to remember. When the weather is nice, spend more time outdoors. Walk more. Remember to make plans with friends sometimes. Do a jigsaw puzzle now and again. At work, take my full one-hour dinner break without doing union work. Remember that it's all right to make mistakes. Explore local history. Stop multi-tasking. Remember to blog instead of Facebook. Read more.

I see by the wmtc tag "graphic novels" that I intended to write about graphic books I read and enjoyed...and I see by the scant number of posts with that tag that I have not been doing so! The last wmtc post tagged for graphic novels is from four years ago , almost to the day. In any event, I want to tell you about a graphic book I just finished and really enjoyed: Sarah Glidden's Rolling Blackouts: Dispatches from Turkey, Syria, and Iraq . In 2010, Glidden traveled with three friends who had journalism visas to the three countries in the book's title. Two of the three were part of a nonprofit, progressive media collective; the third was a former US Marine who served in the Iraq War, and was a childhood friend of one of the journalists. Glidden doesn't merely report on what they found -- which would be interesting in itself. She stands outside the frame, as it were, and writes about their process and all its implications -- the ethics of their interviews, the indu...