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By Ms. G, September 8, 2013 11:34 am

This is our new cat, Bailey. He, Fletch and Shadow are getting along fine. Being inside sure must beat living on the deck. Updates to follow.

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By Ms. G, August 25, 2013 1:59 pm

An odd pairing: Sugar Barons: Family, Corruption, Empire and War in the West Indies by Matthew Parker; and Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal by Mary Roach.

I bought Sugar Barons, Val bought Gulp. I started reading Sugar Barons. I needed to put it down so I picked up Gulp which Val had not yet got to. I continue to alternate between them. When the wars, enslavement and debauchery of the English islands of the Caribbean in the 17th century get me down I turn to the lighthearted, comedic romp through flavour and digestion. Mary Roach is a very funny writer; I hope the people she profiles, often scientists obsessed with their niche fields,  appreciate her sense of humour in describing their interesting pursuits. So far I’ve been entranced by the stories of pet food flavouring (dogs devour anything while cats are picky) and saliva. I could actually hear my stomach churning during that chapter. I’m just now getting into the part about actual digestion, so I may  be reading less often. That means my blood will have to boil as I try to fathom the treatment of Africans by their fellow humans, the British slave owners.

I would love to say that I will finish Sugar Barons during the first few weeks of school. After all, for about the last eight years or so we’ve had YM Reads, 20 minutes of daily reading during the school day. Sadly it is now gone and with it the beautiful silence while my students and I read.

Up next I hope to get back to one of my favourite authors, Michael Pollan. I saw him recently on TVO and decided I’d like to give his Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation a try.  I also caught a few minutes of Steve Paikin’s interview with Michael Moss whose Salt, Sugar, Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us sounded right up my vegan alley.

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By Ms. G, August 7, 2013 10:45 am

Karl Marx: A Nineteenth Century Life

by Jonathan  Sperber

I have had this book on my to-read list ever since it came out. I was not disappointed. However, it is driving me crazy that so many things I say and teach about Karl Marx and Marxism need to be amended now. For one, Marx’s radicalism needs to be very closely tied to the 1848 revolutions, something I don’t do. For another, the way I teach Marxism as a fully formed  late nineteenth century ideology is a bit premature.

Though this book is over 500 pages long, it is a perfect demonstration of historical thinking, particularly historical perspective. The entire point of the book is to interpret Marx in the light of his own times, not in the rear view mirror of twentieth century communism. Doing so really changes one’s impressions of Marxism as an ideology. Marx was not at all sure what a communist society would like, and, in fact, he didn’t even like to speculate about it.

This is yet another book in a long line I have read about characters who are not personally likeable but who are historically significant: Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, now Marx. For me, Lenin and Marx get higher marks for their personal characteristics. Marx, it turns out, was a loving husband and father, though he did father a child with the household servant. While he had many quirks and held many of the prejudices of the time, he was committed to his writing and espousal of revolutionary viewpoints. The reader feels sorry for his health problems and loss of multiple children.

The one thing that puzzled me most throughout the book was that I could never get the connection I was looking for between Marx and the proletariat. It was made utterly clear that Marx was basically a bourgeois intellectual who had little contact with real industrial workers, though his colleague, supporter and main source of funding, Engels, certainly did with his ownership of a cotton mill in Manchester.

This book makes me want to read a biography of Engels. He comes across as somewhat of a hero for his financial support of Marx.The two were very close friends. Essentially there would be no Marxism without Engels’ attempts to get the works of his friend known after his death. It turns out that I have been right all these years in insisting that my students refer to both “Marx and Engels.”

Because historical context is so crucial in Sperber’s interpretation of Marx, it needs to be said that to understand this book one needs a good grounding in European history. Marx essentially based his concept of revolutions on the French Revolutions, plural because of the fact that the moderate revolution of 1789 was of course followed by a more radical one a few years later. Readers must understand the Napoleonic Code to see its effects on the part of ‘Germany’ where Marx grew up, the Rhineland. Then there are the revolutions of 1848, the Franco-Prussian War, the Reform Act of 1867 in Britain, Italian nationalism, all events and movements that served as backdrops for Marx’s ideas.

I don’t want to sound too Eurocentric, but I’m not ready to drop a lot of the European history from my grade 12 course. Though we’re still waiting for the new curriculum to be released, I anticipate that it is moving toward world history and away from European history. I am already feeling nostalgic for “The West and the World.”

At times it was difficult to read the biography, laced as it was with Hegelian philosophy and political economy. At other times it was surprising to read about Marx, this supposed icon of communism, as the proper Victorian man.  In the end I feel more grounded in nineteenth century history. Rarely have I felt so accomplished after reading a book.

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By Ms. G, August 4, 2013 9:23 am

At Lang Pioneer Village, on July 22,  we came upon two pigs in their enclosure outside a 19th century period house. One was busy rooting around in the mud, as pigs do. The other was in the pig house, sleeping the afternoon away. If it were true to life he’d be awaiting his upcoming transformation into bacon. In the 21st century he merely entertains tourists and school children.

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By Ms. G, July 29, 2013 9:01 am

As a vegan I try to be well informed about the food I eat. In the summer a lot of the fruits and vegetables Val and I eat come from farmers’ markets, particularly the Peterborough market on weekends. When we were at the cottage for a week recently I emailed one of the farms we buy from to see if we could visit to see how it worked. Luckily the farmer emailed me back and offered me the opportunity to be one of his inspectors for the Certified Naturally Grown program. It is pretty close to organic, minus the massive amounts of paper work.

We arrived at Tiny Farm in Peterborough, near Trent University, to begin the inspection/tour. Mike gave me a clipboard with the inspection questions and we were off. The photos that follow are courtesy of Val, of course.

Going through the report was an excellent opportunity to learn about everything from irrigation to cover crops. We discussed organic cow manure, seeds, transplants, buffering from nearby chemical sprays, you name it. Here Mike is explaining soil compaction.

At the end Mike kindly gave us some freshly dug beets and carrots. We visited the Tiny Farm stall at the market the next day and got some lovely baby bok choy and green onions.

It was an educational and inspiring visit. Farming is very hard work. Thanks to farmers like Mike for making the effort to feed us healthy, naturally grown food.

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By Ms. G, July 17, 2013 5:50 pm

The Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade that Gave the World Impressionism
by Ross King

My first book of the summer.

Ross King, whose other art history books I have read and enjoyed  – Brunelleschi’s Dome and Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling – is a writer who really gets the idea of social transformation. That is probably why I am so attracted to the late nineteenth century, the era in which the book is set. While society was changing, artistic tastes were slowly catching up. King does a beautiful job of illustrating this by chronicling and juxtaposing the rise and fall of artists Ernest Meissonier and Edouard Manet. Aristocratic tastes and subjects fell while more common, perhaps provocative, ones rose.   Impressionism is so popular today that it is intriguing to read about the original intensity of reactions against its newness. Like any technology or social movement, artistic styles are reflective of their social surroundings.

It’s a good lesson for me; I’m the person who grinds my teeth when I see people glued to their cellphones, yet I have three impressionist posters hanging in my house. How revolutionary I would have been in the 1870s.

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America

By Erik Larson

My second book of the summer turned out to be an easy read, highly enjoyable even though some of its subject matter is dark. It is the story of Chicago’s World’s Fair, held to honour the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ “discovery” of America, though technically it opened in 1893 rather than 1892. The parallel story is of a medical doctor who goes on a secret murderous rampage of young women and their children who stay in his hotel.

While the book is interesting in its contrasts of the two main characters, fair lead Daniel Burnham and murderer H.H. Holmes, its main interest for me is the description of society in the 1880s: the easing formality between men and women, the competition between New York and Chicago, and between Chicago and Paris, the previous host of the world’s fair. In third or fourth year university I took a course on popular culture in which I read a book called Highbrow/ Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America that gave me my first introduction to the White City, the nickname for the buildings designed for the fair that were all painted white. I can’t recall if they were highbrow or lowbrow, so I’ll guess lowbrow.

Though this is not technically a history book (unusual for me) it is well researched by Larson, an investigative journalist specializing in true crime.

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By Ms. G, July 12, 2013 9:22 am

This guy (maybe she’s a girl) lives in our pond and is very still while being photographed.

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By Ms. G, July 7, 2013 5:17 pm

Here are some recent photos with the 200mm macro lens.

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By Ms. G, June 27, 2013 6:25 pm

Today, reading an article about a public school closing for good tears came to my eyes. I definitely cry easily but there was something very close to home about the subject. My public school closed two years after I left it. I guess I never said goodbye. The building is still there and I love to sneak a look whenever I’m walking by – it’s very close to my mom’s house

Of course a school is more than its walls and rooms and desks. However, those structures are something special. Today, on the last day my grade 12s would be in the school, I told some of them to say goodbye to the room. I definitely love my room and try to take good care of it. I’m even nervous about who might be occupying it during summer school.

My students are absolutely more important than the room. But together in the room we have fun and we learn. That is why I feel so sad for the staff and students of Pringdale Gardens Jr. Public School in Scarborough. They are saying goodbye to their places and memories.

As The Beatles sang,

“There are places I remember

All my life, though some have changed,

Some forever, not for better,

Some have gone and some remain.”

I love you York Mills. I miss you Fairmeadow. I feel for you Pringdale.

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By Ms. G, June 16, 2013 9:48 am

Thanks for a wonderful semester.