[PHOTO] Cranes by evening, Yonge and Eglinton, Toronto

[URBAN NOTE] "What the new TTC map is going to look like"

In an article by NOW Toronto's Jonathan Goldsbie, we see thanks to a TTC report (PDF format) what the Toronto subway map will look like with the Eglinton Crosstown line and the Spadina Extension in place.

The final names of new stations on Line 5 Eglinton will ultimately be decided by Metrolinx, the provincial transit agency with responsibility for the project. The above map shows only the current proposals, which'll be subject to consultation with local councillors and communities.

And see that little "TBD" over Eglinton West station? "To reduce customer confusion," TTC staff suggests that its name be changed to either Allen or Cedarvale when Line 5 goes into service. The board is being asked to pick one when the report is considered this Monday, November 23.

( The TTC, on completion )

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Centauri Dreams considers what Pluto would actually look like.


• The Dragon's Gaze notes the complications facing planetary systems with multiple stars.


• The Dragon's Tales updates on the way in Syria.


• Joe. My. God. notes a bill proposed by Ted Cruz that would ban Syrian Muslim immigrants from the United States.


• Language Hat notes the discovery of he first abecedary, in the Middle East.


• Language Log notes the peculiarities of K-pop English.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the concerns of librarians under George Bush about the implications of the Patriot Act for their careers.


• Marginal Revolution notes the problems facing Muslims on the French job market.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer notes the lack of evidence that Europeans are more pacifistic.


• Towleroad notes the opposition of Estonian conservatives to same-sex civil unions.The Volokh Conspiracy provides advice to liberals and conservatives on how to respond to Syrian refugees.


• Why I Love Toronto highlights the Weegee exhibition on at the Ryerson Image Centre.

[LINK] "Chinese Visitors to Japan Double in October in Boon for Economy"

Stephen Stapczynski's Bloomberg article shares some good news.

The number of visitors to Japan rose to a record for the month of October, as arrivals from China doubled in response to the cheap yen and looser visa laws, a sign that the government’s efforts to boost tourism are paying off.

The number of visitors in October rose to 1.8 million, up 44 percent from last year, the Japan Tourism Agency said Wednesday. Chinese visitors doubled to 445,600, followed by visitors from South Korea, who numbered 378,000. Visitors from Canada rose to 22,000, a record for a single month, the agency said.

Since the start of the year, 4.3 million Chinese tourists have visited the land of the rising sun.

With the world’s third-largest economy falling into recession the second time since 2012, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is betting that overseas tourists can help boost growth. The Abe administration is targeting a rise in international visitors to 20 million by 2020, the year of the Tokyo Olympics, a target officials have said is well within reach. There were 16.3 million visitors in the first ten months of 2015.

[LINK] "The Resurrection of Vaclav Klaus"

Transition Online's Katerina Safarikova writes about how Czech president Vaclav Klaus, in his post-Communist opportunism, has now become decidedly pro-Russian.

he fact that the former Czech head of state flew out to the island of Rhodes for a friendly chat with Vladimir Yakunin and other Putin admirers − many of whom are on EU and U.S. black lists – caused astonishment in the West.

For Central Europeans, it came as no surprise. It was just another example of the incarnation of Klaus we’ve known for years. Klaus started his career in the 1990s as a staunch admirer of the West with Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan as his role models; indeed, every member of his party had to have a picture of the Iron Lady hanging in his or her office if they wanted to be noticed by Vaclav Klaus.

During his time in office, from 2003 until 2013, however, he turned his back on the West. He became harshly Euro skeptical – he was the last head of state to sign off on the Lisbon Treaty of the EU in 2009 – and began looking up to Vladimir Putin.

Klaus singled out the Russian president as the inspirational leader of our times, despite the fact that Putin possessed a long list of political opponents behind bars. In one speech in Moscow, Klaus said that the real threat to democracy and freedom in Europe was not Putin’s regime, but the EU.

When Klaus stepped down as president, no one expected him to retire from public life completely. He opened the Institute of Vaclav Klaus, financed by a private company with major stakes in Russia and China, and continues to do what he did at Prague Castle – giving lectures, conference-hopping, and staying in the spotlight.

In fall 2013, he tried to form an electoral coalition, but the hotchpotch of obscure right-wing parties and individuals gained only 0.44 percent of votes. His latest contribution to Czech political life, however, is different. Klaus spoke out against the EU migration quotas, dubbing them “the suicide of Europe.” That was nothing extraordinary; the majority of Czech political representation contests the resettlement of refugees within EU states. Here, Klaus was banging on doors that were already wide open.

[ISL] "Tokyo sues Okinawa in US base relocation dispute"

Al Jazeera America notes ongoing tensions between the Japanese government and the island of Okinawa over American bases there.

The Japanese government took the local government in Okinawa to court Tuesday, launching a legal battle in their longstanding dispute over the planned relocation of a U.S. military air base on the southern island.

A lawsuit filed in a regional high court in Okinawa seeks an injunction to overturn Okinawa Gov. Takeshi Onaga's recent decision to cancel a previously issued approval for land reclamation work for the base relocation.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and local officials have been at loggerheads for months over the base’s relocation, sparking protests from tens of thousands around Japan concerned about the base’s impact on the local economy and environment.

Tokyo wants to move the U.S. Marines' Futenma base to a less developed area on the island called Henoko, but many Okinawa residents — whose home was the site of bloody battles near the end of World War II — resent hosting the U.S. military at all.

[LINK] "Storm Chips are here as New Brunswick's Covered Bridge reveals new flavour"

CBC's report on the mainstreaming of #stormchips in the Maritimes is a delight.

A New Brunswick chip company is cashing in on a social media trend started right here in the Nova Scotia newsroom of the CBC.

Covered Bridge Potato Chips unveiled their latest flavour this week: "Storm chips" aren't just one flavour but a "flurry of flavours" in one delicious bag.

Here's how it all began:

On a cold and stormy January day in 2014, Mainstreet host Stephanie Domet mused to newsreader Ryan Pierce that on her list of things to get at the grocery store in advance of the storm were ripple chips and dip.

In fact, those two items constituted the entirety of her list. Pierce admitted his own list was similar and #stormchips became a thing.

[LINK] "Walmart’s $10 Smartphone Has Better Specs Than the Original iPhone"

Vice's Nicholas Deleon reports on Motherboard about a ten dollar smartphone on sale at Walmart that may, if I read the specs correctly, by more powerful than my own.

Walmart is now selling a TracFone-branded LG smartphone that costs $9.82 (it also ships free if your online order total tops $50). Now, there are a few reasons why you may not want such a smartphone—for one, it’s running an outdated version of Android that may make it vulnerable to hackers—but there’s no denying that it represents something pretty special.

For less than $10 (plus the cost of data access) the user gets access to the Google Play app store, giving him or her the power to summon transportation at the push of a button, instantly connect with friends, and watch livestreams from all over the world. A bona fide smartphone, in other words.

It’s perhaps even more impressive when you consider that its modest specs—a 3.8-inch display, 3G and Wi-Fi networking, and a 3-megapixel camera—surpass those of the original iPhone, which was referred to in the tech press at the time as the “Jesus phone.”

The sole user review of the TracFone on Walmart’s website gives it four stars out of a possible five, with user traeguth calling it “pretty darn good” and “a steal” for the price.

[LINK] "Telling Thanksgiving's Story in a Vanishing American Language"

Wow. From National Geographic's Scott Johnson, the story of a new film on the Pilgrims' first thanksgiving in New England told in Western Abenaki.

The saga of the first Thanksgiving at Plymouth Rock has been told, for the most part, in just one language: English.

The voices of the Native Americans who were there—speaking in their own languages—have usually been left out.

The new film Saints & Strangers, which recounts the events surrounding the arrival of the Mayflower in the New World in the autumn of 1620, attempts to change that. In this relling, Native Americans are as much at the heart of the story as the Pilgrims. And those Native Americans are speaking in a native tongue, in a language called Western Abenaki.

“This was a huge challenge,” says Jesse Bowman Bruchac, 44, a fluent speaker of the language, who coached the film’s Native American actors on how to deliver their lines in Western Abenaki.

The language has just a handful of living speakers. But Western Abenaki becomes a character of sorts in Saints & Strangers, creating a living window into personality, history and culture.

[URBAN NOTE] "Making the Davenportage"

Torontoist's Josh Wise writes about the aftermath of the Davenportage, up the length of the old First Nations route that is Davenport Road.

This Sunday marked the second, now annual, Davenportage—a 16.5 kilometre portage from the banks of the Humber River skirting the top of downtown Toronto to the Don River. Yes, that’s right: a trek across a significant portion of Canada’s largest city with a canoe on your shoulders.

My love of all things canoe, Toronto and quirky piqued my curiosity enough to participate in this year’s Davenportage. I was able to convince a few buddies to join and we met the group gathered at Etienne Brule park on the shores of the Humber River just north of Bloor to begin this bizarre journey.

We were met by organizer and Davenportage founder Michael Bumby, who, along with two others, began his journey hours earlier by paddling down the Don River, across the Toronto harbour and up the Humber. Bumby and his crew, already 19 kilometres of paddling into their day, were set to complete their loop back to the Don along with four additional canoes and 19 so-called “historian athletes”, ranging in age from eight to 60.

[LINK] "Canada will implement UN Declaration on Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Carolyn Bennett says"

This Toronto Star report was lovely news.

ndigenous and Northern Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett says the new Liberal government will rebuild the relationship with First Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples by including them in every decision that affects them and their land.

“That means starting out right, such that everything has been considered before a decision is taken so that you can find that win-win of ‘you can develop there but not there,’ ” Bennett said in an interview this week, when asked how the Liberals plan to make good on their promise to implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gave that sentiment a boost when he told his new cabinet ministers in their : “No relationship is more important to me and to Canada than the one with Indigenous Peoples.”

The Crown already has a constitutionally protected “duty to consult” with aboriginal peoples on issues that might affect their interests, but the UN declaration goes much further and calls on governments to obtain “free, prior and informed consent,” including when it comes to natural resources development.

The idea that this could turn into a veto was one of the concerns that Canada — under the previous government of Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper — cited as a reason for its opposition to signing UNDRIP in 2007 and then its refusal to adopt an outcome document last year.

[WRITING] "Ethnographic Poetry and the Leaping Bilingual Mind"

As I'm starting to write fiction again, Savage Minds' guest essay by teacher and anthropologist Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor is inspiring. What she writes about the interactions of different languages, about the power of the ethnographic gaze, gives me hope.

Acquiring Spanish as a second language led me to poetry, and becoming a better poet helped me become a better bilingual. I had been a good high school and college student of Spanish and had studied abroad in Spain and Mexico. After college, I wanted a way to give kindness back to the many Spanish speakers who tolerated and nurtured my emerging bilingualism. As a Spanish major with coursework in theatre and creative writing, it made sense to become an elementary school teacher. I was quickly overwhelmed. I struggled to teach third grade math, science, and California history in my new classroom in South Central Los Angeles.

This was 1992. Rodney King. Race riots.

Each school window had iron grating on the outside. On the inside, we decorated with window paint and crepe paper, a beautiful carpet displaying the map of the world. My students were all considered “LEP,” limited English proficient.. The institutional structure gave me, their inexperienced “bilingual teacher,” a few short months to teach Spanish literacy with the explicit caveat that English monolingualism was the true goal. To be successful in public K-12 education, my students had to forego Spanish proficiency. Meanwhile, I was learning more and more Spanish than ever before. The same bilingualism which was so privileged and nurtured in my college education was shut down for young, immigrant youth,; this didn’t seem right. As a hard-working teacher, I felt I had no time or energy left to contemplate this irony. I turned to poetry, and, then, to graduate school.

My first graduate school teachers were anthropologists of education at UC Santa Cruz. Dr. Greta Gibson and Dr. Cindy Pease-Alvarez taught me how to take field notes, to understand sociocultural theories of learning, to immerse myself in classroom life and interview bilingual parents and children. I was engaged by what I learned in educational research, but I yearned for methods and texts that were less planned and more playful, evocative of surprise and feeling. I read poets on the side: Martín Espada, Dorianne Laux, Chitra Divakaruni, Wislawa Symborska, June Jordan. I was moved by the ways in which these poets wrote about human experience across race, social class, language and culture. I wanted educational anthropology to stir as their words did, to reconsider bilingual policies and practices that seemed cruel and ineffective.

During one of my many summer indulgences in poetry, away from dry social science prose, I attended the Squaw Valley Writers conference. As I searched for my nametag, I saw Renato Rosaldo’s name a few rows away on the table. The “Renato Rosaldo,” author of Culture and Truth (1989)? Could it be that a prominent anthropologist was also an emergent poet? Indeed it was. Renato encouraged me to read other “antropoetas” as he referred to them: Ruth Behar, Dell Hymes, Kirin Narayan, and others. There was a small tribe of poetic anthropologists and they convened in the Society for Humanistic Anthropology. The word “humanism” became a new “homeroom,” a place to put my bookbag down and represent poetic evocations of ethnographic learning.

I had a quest, to place myself among a community of artful social scientists and socially evocative artists. I learned to use ethnographic strategies to understand forms of bilingual education and I could sift theory with fieldnotes and interview data and find the images, the music, the performance of bilingualism in everyday life. If I gave myself permission and I studied craft in both poetry and anthropology, then I might contribute to the creative and humanistic renderings that have continued to inspire my teaching and learning. I have written a great many terrible poems. I have also written many bland academic words in prose. I feel lucky that part of my job has the goal to improve the quality of my writing so that it might evoke greater understanding and action.