A couple doors down from the condo we rent, there’s another condo that’s probably exactly like ours. Except that there’s a lockbox on the door. We don’t know who put it there. There is no “for sale” sign and no sign of anyone coming in and out. A couple weeks ago, there was a letter …
Continue reading “Strategic Default — The Personal and the Social”
Every morning, I sit down to breakfast, say “what’s going on in Canada?” either to myself out loud to Carrie, open the iPad and read the news online. Reading newspapers online is not entirely satisfying but enough so. We are trying not to subscribe to a paper while here. But reading online leads to another …
I wanted to start this line of posts with the observation that there is no more nationally-specific experience than getting sick. But that’s not necessarily true. In Canada, provinces manage their own healthcare, and when I show you some pictures of where I stayed, you will understand why Michael Moore picked a nice Ontario clinic …
Continue reading “The Cost of (Getting Sick Under) Socialized Medicine”
Doug Henwood, as usual, offers a salutary alternative to the funerary hagiography.
Several blocks around my home have been discussed on Spacing Montreal recently. Three gas stations within a few blocks have been razed and replaced with–wait for it–condos (more here and here). The condo-ization is a relatively straightforward process. Gas stations sit on corners and take up a lot of space yet run relatively low margins …
In comparing our building–a redone calendar factory–with the other dwellings in our neighborhood–more typical Montreal brick duplexes or triplexes–I often joke that we are the gentrifiers. But it’s actually not a joke at all. I knew this intellectually, but now it’s been driven home for me. We are now literally (in the literal sense of …
it’s all in our minds. We just need to snap out of it. Like Y2K. Sure, that’s true to a point, but the more frightening prospect is that all the prosperity that people felt coming up to the crisis was also in their minds, largely fictional, and therefore incredibly dangerous. I know it was just …
