stones and cans and comic books in a kettle

stones and cans and comic books in a kettle One night, a couple of years ago while I was making dinner, I heard an an interview with the singer-songwriter Allison Russell on the radio. I was unaware of her work until then and at one point it was mentioned that she grew up in Montreal. That was nice but not overly suprising. To quote the early episode of This American Life devoted to Canadians: We walk among you. Then she mentioned that she'd gone to the same high (secondary) school I went to: Moving in New Directions, or simply MIND, which I was not expecting. Last year, Allison Russell performed at the Montreal International Jazz Festival and she gave a shout-out to the city where she grew up but also to MIND specifically. It was a pretty great moment. The story of Russell's childhood can only be described as grim, unfair and harrowing but to hear that the school played a small role in making an otherwise awful set of circumstances better, or at least less awful, means that MIND is…