Well, it is Wednesday and the last day of a leap year February. A truly useless piece of trivia, I suppose, but I found it interesting anyways. Probably a symptom of how tired I have been. I seem to be recovering from the weekend, physically at least. Emotionally is probably another story. Joan and I were in Meadow Lake on the weekend for the funeral of Newton Friedrich, a very dear friend who died at 54 after a 10-month long bout with cancer. He, his wife Kelly, his mother and father, and his daughter Vawn have all been very important in our lives. they are the kind of people who pick up strays and welcome them into their home. They certainly adopted us when we moved to Meadow Lake in 1987. The funeral itself was an incredible celebration of his life, with the themes of faith, openness and cowboy being central. The Alliance Church (largest in town) was packed to SRO.

Liberties and Freedoms

Continuing my comments from yesterday regarding the Government's proposed internet legislation, I found this very interesting column this morning in the Globe and Mail by Lorna Dueck. I think her opinions are well written and well thought-out, but ultimately, for me at least, not altogether convincing. I am not a libertarian, or a conservative and I generally favor the NDP approach to issues and to society. But I am increasingly concerned both with the growth encroachments on our privacies and the growing amount of unregulated police powers. Certainly I will support anything I can to catch those who engage in child pornography and those who are victimized by it. Drawing the line between privacy and catching criminals is something that requires a civil public discussion, not the cant and bluster each side has evidenced, especially the Harper Government's increasing use of the tactics of fear and demonization of its' opponents. This is not democracy but a shift to a form autocracy and rule by elites, with the rest of us muzzled or bamboozled.

It has been a while since I posted anything. I haven't had much to say I guess. It has been a long winter and it is not even the middle of February yet. I haven't been able to run at all for 3 months now, or x-country ski and the lack of exercise is driving me buggy. It is frustrating and I can feel my physical conditioning slipping away. It is going to take a huge amount of work to get back in shape once my foot heals up. This is my second go-round with plantar fascitis and the recovery this time is taking much longer than last time. My wife can't wait for me to be able to starting running again. She says I am driving her crazy around the house, that I make a very grumpy couch potato. I think she is right and I do see it in myself; I am touchier than normal, and get cabin fever all too easily.
On other fronts the political situation here is starting to really bug me, with the Harper government wanting to take too much of a lead from the Americans. The demise of the Gun Registry is an ideological not a practical accomplishment, making police work much harder without improving our civil liberties at all. The new proposed legislation tabled by the government giving the police all sorts of warrantless information about us is a major infringement on our civil liberties, and the use of "child porn" as a boogieman is not conducive to rational conversation. Opposition to this serious over-reaching of spying powers should not be cause for demonizing someone.

Getting to the end of the first semester. It has been a good semester, especially with the 2 new math classes. Both were a lot of fun to teacher, but also a steep learning curve as I had never taught either of them before, and the Math 20 Foundations class is a brand new curriculum this fall. The Energy and Mines 10 class was very frustrating, as the 3 students in the class attended every other day at best, didn't watch posted recordings and so the class moved agonizingly slowly. Other than that one class I have been blessed with some great students this semester, who, as always, have taught me as much as I have taught them.
Wednesday after school Joan and I drove to Saskatoon, spent the night there, and on Thursday we drive to Meadow Lake. I dropped Joan off to visit with folks and drove up to Waterhen to work with 2 students. That part didn't work so well: there was nobody at school to work with. Then it was back into Meadow Lake to work with a student at Flying Dust. The 2 of us had a good, productive 1 1/2 hour session. Then I had a short visit with Newton, Evangeline and Kelton before heading for home. Newton looks awful, but I guess not near as bad as he could after both colon and brain surgery to remove tumors. He says they got them all. I sure hope so.

A terrifyingly long time since I have posted anything and much has happened. I have moved, from town out to the farm that will hopefully be the place that we will be living in after I finally retire, whenever that happens. I have run a bunch of races and had a lot of fun, but have also succumbed to a nasty bout of plantar fascitis, which is taking 'forever' to heal. Joan has finally fully retired and no longer has any congregational responsibilities, and since the farm is out of the immediate area of Archerwill, we are now attending church at the Lutheran Church in Preeceville. We sang with the Community Choir at Christmas time in Preeceville and are making a lot of new friends in the area.We traveled to Seattle in October to help my mom celebrate her 100th birthday. That was so much fun! My reading and studying continues apace, currently doing a lot of reading in Saskatchewan history, which is simultaneously fascinating and depressing.

It is hard to know where to start, but starting is required and my goal is to make the blog a habit, with entries at least on a weekly basis.

Long overdue for another post here. School is going great and I am having sooooo much fun with my students. They are, as always, teaching me so much. Native Studies especially right now is an area with a lot of ferment and things happening that is making it exciting and changing the very shape of the curriculum at times. Bill C-3, for example, which received royal assent and became law on January 31st this year, once again changes the future shape of Indian Status. What its' long-term implication are financially, socially, culturally and politically remain murky at best.

My training has been going very well, I feel. But we will see this Saturday when I do the 10k at the Saskatoon Police Half-Marathon. I'm hoping for a time in the 56 minute range, which is certainly way off what I was doing even 4 years ago. Age is definitely catching up to me. At least it is still as fun as it ever was, just not as easy. Also in the running world I am still blown away by the fastest ever in the world times from the Boston Marathon earlier this week. 2:03:02 for 26.2 miles is incredible.

Time to put up another post. It has been awhile. Winter continues pretty much unabated. We had a couple of nice days about freezing this week but we also got almost 3" of snow on Wednesday night and then temperatures back well below freezing (-20C last night) and generally fairly windy. In one sense this is perfect and in another it isn't. I, like almost everyone, want some sunshine and warm weather, but we have close to 4 feet of snow on the ground and I definitely do not want it to melt too rapidly. We are going to have enough flooding and water issues without a rapid thaw. Below freezing and sunny would be perfect for most of the snow sublimating away.

Between bouts of cold and wind, 15 of my last 17 runs have been on the treadmill, which has made me very glad I bought it but I would still rather be outside running. At least I am running and getting some good workouts in; the treadmill is turning out to be a great tool for me for doing intervals, much better than outside on the road, and for hillwork in an area with no hills. I am also starting to get in the mileage that I need. Last week was 22.5 miles and this week should be about 25 miles, which is right in the range that I want right now. I'll start upping the mileage a bit more in mid-April, especially the long runs. I still haven't registered for any races this spring or summer and I need to get on that right away or it will be too late. I'm planning on running the 10k at the Saskatoon Police half (Apr 23) and the Half-Marathon at the Saskatchewan Marathon (May 29). After that I don't know. Certainly the Queen City Marathon in Regina in Sept and the Sask Ultra in Oct.

Meanwhile school proceeds with its ups and downs. Mostly this semester they are ups; I have some great students who are enthusiastic and doing great work. Teaching and working with them is fun and energizing. I found this really good op-ed column in the New York Times on kids and school. It really talks about the kind of teaching I would like to be able to do, and that I suspect most teachers would like to do, if they could. But I also think that the bureaucracy would go ballistic, as would politicians and far too many parents, etc. who are predisposed to disapporve of change and openness.