The Murray Chronicles

November 01, 2016

Matchstick Coffee on Main Street

Matchstick Coffee is a Vancouver roastery and coffee shop with three locations. The newest is referred to as Riley Park on their website, and it's within walking distance of Nat Bailey, the winter famers' market and Hillcrest Community Centre.

There's a Winnipeg thing going on here, or maybe the trendy coffee shops in Winnipeg have a Vancouver thing (Thom Bargen in Winnipeg serves Matchstick coffee).

Clean, relatively unadorned, minimalistic. Friendly staff, highly efficient and dedicated to the art of coffee making.

Pastries are baked on site and the croissants are excellent ~ maybe not the best in the city, but excellent nonetheless. The coffee is superb. Not the most comfortable seating.

October 31, 2016

Autumn's leaves

The summer sun is fading as the year grows old.
And darker days are drawing near.

October 28, 2016

The American Way ~ When was America ever great?

Stronger Together.

Make America Great Again.

Are they serious?

Here's a photo from 1937 that is just as much real today as it was then.

During the Great Depression propaganda was used to raise spirits among the citizenry, like this billboard created by Arthur Rothstein in February 1937. In this case, the billboard is shown in Louisville, Kentucky, just after a massive flood ravaged the city. Seventy percent of Louisville was submerged under river flood waters, and it was almost entirely lower income, lower class neighbourhoods that were impacted.

The photograph was taken by the legendary Margaret Bourke-White for Life magazine. Her image shows people in line for aid, in front of the billboard. They are all African-Americans, bundled up in layers of clothing to protect against the cold. They are flood refugees and many are living with the knowledge that they have lost everything.

Rothstein's propaganda poster shows an ideal of the US that reveals the prevailing ideology of the time. A perfect nuclear family, complete with dog. What's good for General Motors is good for the US.

Bourke-White's photo suggests a huge disparity between the reality and the propaganda.

Has anything really changed since 1937? Is national greatness measured by how the wealthiest of a nation live, or by how that same society looks after its poorest citizens?