We had just visited an apartment (under renovation), holes in the ceiling, dilapidated, with a promising future ($1600/month plus expenses, for a four and a half). In this famously gay neighborhood, my grandfather shared a bed at your age, exactly 20, during the crisis of 1929, with a fellow Gaspé resident who worked night shifts. Everyone has their own shift on the bed and we didn’t wash the sheets often. I told you without conviction:
— There are worse… and a courtyard in the city is precious.
— There were bedbugs this winter, Mom. They can sleep in the walls for a year. And one of the two bedrooms is really small. There is room for a single bed…
— The owner provides the appliances. In my grandfather’s time, it was an icebox, a furnace, and a washboard.
Every time I talk to you about my grandfather Alban, your look becomes incredulous. See if the world was similarly poor! For you, one washboardit is a musical instrument.
— Last night I read in a report really freaking from the Canadian government, that among the 35 disruptions likely in the years to come, we will no longer be able to live alone. It’s going to cost too much. It’s already started. Have you thought about polyamory?
– Mom ! You should stop reading stuff like that at night. It’s not good for you!
— My page is called “Zeitgeist” (the spirit of the times) not “It’s going to be fine”! And among the other disruptions anticipated during this decade: we no longer support the elderly, household debt has reached a critical point, downward social mobility is the norm (that’s you!), people can no longer distinguish what is true and what is not, mental health is in crisis… Should I continue with AI?
— No, I have laundry to do. I’m going to take out my washboard… Try reading some Eckhart Tolle or watch Curb Your Enthusiasm This evening. It’s funny !
Let’s all celebrate F1 in Quebec and ignore the jealous critics
The century of anomalies
I didn’t make you more enthusiastic with my report Disturbances on the horizon, which analyzes a world already in crisis in the light of social, political, economic, environmental factors and their effects on our lives. Yet it’s the most important thing I’ve read this year. That, and the CIA report, published every four years. The last one, that of 2021, seems conservative today in view of the spiraling climate, the political tensions in the United States, in Europe, the wars which have broken out since its publication, during COVID-19.
I always pretended you ate your white bread first.
— Anywaythere has never been white bread in our house, momz !
Additionally, populism tends to grow after economic crises or changes in the ethnic or religious composition of a society following migration.
This week, I went to bring you a big bag of brown, flaxseed and black breads, collected from a café/bread depot in my hood. They throw them in green bags at closing. It’s an employee who passes them on to the neighbors. Here I am, a political deletarian.
Here is an anomaly of your century: 58% food waste in Canada. I sent you the video of the French baker who throws away still warm bread at the end of his day, on Instagram. And that of the farmer who has to let the leeks rot in his field, because they are too… big! Column of losses of capitalism and abundance. Indecency has no column.
The disturbances are the parents of my ex-roommate Maria who are dying from the heat (without running water) in Mexico. “Day Zero” is approaching. The Mexican Water Technology Institute estimates it to be July 25, 2024 at noon (we even move forward to June 26 for Mexico City): “This is the day when we will no longer be able to supply the population with water », Explains the site.
The anomalies are these young people your age who are perfecting their swing in golf (a great comeback), but seem to ignore that the green not eaten.
The anomaly is adulescence up to the age of 40 and this belief that the past will be a guarantor of the future.
We lived like zombies who go back to sleep despite the alarm ringing, and who have forgotten that history is not linear
The smoking “show”
Another historical anomaly, this roaring and backfiring Grand Prix at our doors all last weekend.
“It brings together everything leftists hate: prosperity, oil, people, competition, speed, success, noise, pleasure, winners. People who attend or enjoy the Grand Prix will soon be called “petromasculinists” too. » Signed: Éric Duhaime, the leader of the Conservative Party of Quebec, who forgets to mention the infernal noise, the helicopters parked in the air, the cult of screaming metal, toxic masculinity, capitalism at its peak, sexual exploitation women, and, I forgot, the environmental damage… (All financed from our taxes, as Laure Waridel recalled last Saturday in The Montreal Journal.)
Jean-Marc Jancovici, my second favorite French engineer, says that “Marine Le Pen is the child of carbon” and that “the deterioration of the social climate is linked to the incomprehension of what is happening to us”. He refers to Marine, but it’s good for Éric Duhaime too. Happy are the hollows, my grandmother said.
In the introduction presenting the CIA report, the correspondent of the World in Washington, Piotr Smolar, summarizes: “It announces upheavals, in one generation, like no other has experienced until now in the history of humanity: of climate, of connectivity, of biotechnology, of artificial intelligence. He depicts more fragmented societies, under tension, faced with threats and challenges without borders. » Another pandemic, for example. Or the resistance of superbugs to antibiotics.
In short, the anomaly was to think that we had everything under control, the F1 pedal to the floor, and to believe ourselves above the fray while destroying biodiversity to eat McDonald’s.
In an interview with the newspaper The world last year, economist Nouriel Roubini, author of Megathreats, concluded that when faced with the five stages of grief, we are stuck somewhere between denial and anger. Then there is bargaining, depression and acceptance. I’ve felt my inner Nostradamus and I’m already at the sadness-acceptance stage.
But you are right: when there is no more bread, we will go and dig for brioche from the trash bins of progress.
Instagram: josee.blanchette