Thee AP has a long piece today about Montreal's hype-hype-hyped music scene.

I moved here in January, and unwittingly showed up in the middle of this (apparently) super-hot scene. Since I arrived, my roommate (Matt Miller of Mandatory Moustache, the series mentioned in the article) has been interviewed I don't know how many times by journalists who have shown up looking for the hot new thing, making documentaries and filing wire copy.

Having been to shows at Casa Del Popolo, El Salon, Sala Rosa, Pharmacie Esperanza and other venues mentioned as "hotbeds" or whatever the cliché of the day is (and lived with two people who are immersed in the "scene"), I couldn't have told you that there was a red-hot music scene going on. I'm told that turnout to shows is a fair bit higher than normal, though.

I'm not sure if this just means I'm blind, but this paragraph struck a chord:

In many cities, this would qualify as a see-be-seen crowd. But in Montreal, it's the status quo. This is one cosmopolitan city where celebrity and pretence don't exist -- just a strong community of musicians and artists dedicated to their craft.

They don't necessarily need approval from the outside world, despite the onslaught of international media attention. But now that it has arrived -- making Montreal a successor to former musical "hotbeds" like Seattle; Austin, Texas; Omaha, Neb.; and the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn -- many here have mixed feelings.

I felt like I had the quintessential Montreal experience a few nights ago. I was heading to a friend's place on my bike, and caught a tiny glimpse of what was apparently the grand finale of a massive international fireworks competition, but I was late, and kept going. All I mean is that there are billion decadent, exciting things going on all the time, but I end up missing almost all of it because there is a whole layer of other creative activity on a smaller scale to distract me, whether its indy rock, activism or a horde of zombies clashing with the Society for Creative Anachronism.

New York and to lesser extent Seattle felt that way too when I spent time there, but Montreal feels like a place where more people do things, and fewer people jockey to get into positions of power where they'll be able to do things.

That's probably totally subjective and possibly quite unfounded. However: assuming for a moment that its true, I'd have to further hypothesize that it's due to Francophone Quebec's willingness to substantially support cultural endeavours (I can go see free dance and theatre any time, though I'm alway busy) and its socially progressive edge. I hold the latter (and the high level of tenant organizing and public support for antipoverty work, squats, etc.) responsible for Montreal's celebrated low rent, which is usually attributed to seperatism and an economic downturn, which haven't been factors for a decade. When the intensely militant Quebec students beat the government and rolled back education cuts, it was indicative of the underpinnings of Montreal's unique status quo that are more often than not ignored by those who benefit from them.

All of which is to say: yay Montreal! It's the most militantly left-wing city north of the Rio Grande, it's a great place to live, a firehose of art and music whether it happens to be hyped or not, and let's not forget why, you silly hyped anglos.

Through a serendipitous and unintentional sequence of events, my intervention on the NCMR, "Media Reform and Media Revolution: A Critique of Free Press and the National Conference on Media Reform", made it into the latest issue of Z Magazine.

So if you haven't read it, there's a dead-trees copy available at your local news stand.

Eva in Tibet: "A highlight for most travellers is arriving between 3 and 5pm, when the monks daily debate. Debate. I had pictured small groups of introspective monks. I approached the courtyard to an orchestra chattering and slapping. Someone was getting a beating. The debate procedure, as it turns out, is to take a text or philosophy (or, as my night students later explained, a simple concept like 'yaks have horns. Those without horns are not yaks.' I don't know how exactly one defends or destroys that statement, but then i'm no philosopher.) and spout it out in a rapid stream of sounds, emphatically punctuated with a slap of the right hand into the left. Before the slap and during the babble, the debater winds up like a baseball pitcher, one knee bent and leg high up until he marks his point by stepping forward and slapping (again, the hand)."

I've mentioned a few times that a bunch of friends of mine bought a farm in Tatamagouche and are making a go of it... their plan is to farm, build stuff, and generally live sustainably, but also create a kind of rural hub for social activism, as well as set precedents for new forms of land ownership (or non-ownership: they've set it up as a community land trust). There is also talk of setting up cooperatives, hosting refugees, and other fun stuff. This is their first summer on the farm, and the transformations have been pretty dramatic. Barns have been cleaned out, a greenhouse built, a field planted, a house fixed up, and so on ad infinitum. They're hard-working folks. They're also hosting the Tatamagouche Summer Free School in a month. (Obligatory plug: I've been doing a fair bit of organizing for the free school and it's looking like it's going to be pretty amazing. You should come. Check out the growing list of sessions that will be offered.)

In any case, my descriptions never seem to do their setup justice, so here are some photos. And when/if the oil runs out and things collapse, you now know where I can be found.

Update: Added a bunch more photos, now featuring the entire cast of characters (or at least, those that were there this weekend).

...is, at least for the moment, floccinaucinihilipilification.

Is it possible for rich Europeans to address African poverty without understanding colonialism, racism, corporate plunder, illegitimate debt run up by dictators and handed to corporation, or the humanitarian catastrophe that the IMF has imposed? If that's possible, then it must also be possible to conceive of an entire campaign to eliminate poverty in Africa that ignores the many African social movements, and assumes that it knows what is good for Africa better than Africans do. And if that's doable, then why not just go ahead and praise the people who are imposing this mess on the third world to the heavens?

Welcome to the UK's Make Poverty History campaign.

It's all very sensible.