Riotous Super Moon in Quebec

Riotous Super Moon in Quebec

Last night, May 5, the moon apparently came 15,300 miles closer to the Earth, making it appear 14% bigger and 30% brighter. The super moon reached its most luminous point at 11:34 pm last night, but unfortunately that was too late for my kids, so we saw it at 9:30 pm. It was a warm spring evening, and surprisingly there were few people in Jarry Park. We found a spot on a little hill to take this picture. For all the spectacular pictures you are seeing this morning, they were taken with a telephoto lens, which works like a telescope. If that's beyond your means then just invest in an inexpensive tripod.

Manif tout nu

The full moon is said to induce erratic behaviour in people, increasing the number of psychiatric hospital admissions, suicides, murders, emergency room calls and car accidents. Some police forces are even rumoured to schedule extra resources in case of some rare event. This week, there were several out-of-the-ordinary occurrences, such as the near-naked (manif tout nu) demonstration by Quebec students and the riot that ensued after student demonstrators clashed with riot police outside the Liberal general assembly in Victoriaville on Friday, resulting in 106 arrests and leaving one demonstrator with life-threatening injuries. Equally rare, on May 5, the Liberal government finally came to an agreement with the three student union leaders after more than 80 days of strike. Was this the pull of the super moon on Mr. Charest's brain or was it politically motivated with elections expected in the not-so-distant future?

I'm not alone in thinking that the government could have averted the injuries, arrests and damages to public property, not to mention the waste of public resources, if it had just sat down with the students a long time ago. Mr. Charest's poor judgment only made the students look better. Besides being articulate and tech savvy, the students were extremely well organized. No longer can anyone say that this generation is a bunch of spoiled individualists. If anything they've made it abundantly clear that those in high places are the ones with a monopoly over the much-bandied insult--entitlement. In fact, this student movement may have helped some of the students hone some hands-on organizational, public speaking and leadership skills that might not have otherwise been developed in class. Check out the translated kinetic typography speech of Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, one of the most vocal leaders of CLASSE, the more demanding of the student unions. I hear a great leader in this voice. What about you?