And life continues. After a long spell of very cold weather it has decided to warmup. And of course my computer (the hp laptop) has decided to go on the blink. I now have to redo all my lessons for Monday and Tuesday on my Mac.. from scratch... This is going to be a long frustrating job as all my notes and old whiteboards are on the pc.
Done!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It was indeed a long frustrating job and took essentially all of Sunday to accomplish. Off this early morning at 6 am to bring my troubled pc to Credenda offices in PA for sorting out.
Out of my little corner, the world continues to go its own way and I keep reading the 'news' and wondering where and how it will all sort itself out. I see the United States sliding blithely and obliviously into either disintegration(I think most likely) or ongoing life as a 2nd rate power in the world, like Russia is today. While much is right and good about it, the things that are not are so big as to overwhelm the good. I am also afraid that the US will drag Canada down with it, and more afraid of what will happen to the rest of the world while the US goes down thrashing and flailing about.
The good: (1) the spirit of entrepreneurship is alive and well; people all over are brimming with new ideas
The bad:(1) living with fear as a driving force in national life and politics produces only reactions no action; the physical infrastructure of the country - roads, bridges, highways, railways, water and sewer, trash disposal -- all continue to crumble and hardly anyone seems to notice. (2)The public education system, elementary, secondary and tertiary, all are sliding into disfunction; much of the elementary system, especially in urban centers is already pretty much a total failure. The secondary system does not seem to be far behind and the tertiary system, which has been a world leader and able to make up for the failures under it, is itself starting to crumble badly given the various financial crises it faces, and the nature of much of the funding that it does receive.(3) Congress has almost ceased to function as a viable entity, it is so tied up in partisan warfare and drowning in lobbyists and their money.(4) The seemingly overwhelming power now being wielded by big business, with the result that democracy, political and economic, suffers badly. Small voices, often with very important and valuable things to say, get cut out of the conversation as the 'independence' of the media vanishes. Will net neutrality survive the next few months and if it does not, the great commons that is the internet will vanish with it.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Monday, January 4, 2010
Aaahhhh. Back in the work saddle after a nice 2 weeks off. Ready to go again. Ran a lot over the break, for me that is. Have run 16 of the last 19 days, mostly 3-4 milers, with only 1 6-miler. The weather has been too cold to gone for really long runs and drywalling, etc has taken up a big chunk of my energy. But they have been great runs for the most part, especially out at the farm with the deer and the elk to watch -- no moose thankfully.
Have been doing a good bit of reading: 2 books especially that have grabbed me are John Ralston Saul's 'A Fair Country' and Alex Ross's 'the Rest Is Noise.' I am not at all sure that I agree with everything that Saul has to say but most of it I do like and he has given me a lot to think about, both about Canada and the United States. That Canada is a Metis nation and that gives it a unique shape and identity in the modern world seems obvious to me but at times he really seems to push the concept beyond it's legitimate bounds. He beats on the nation's elite pretty hard, and for the most part they undoubtedly deserve it. But he does seems to belabor the issue for far too long and into thickets that he finds it hard to get back out of. While he, I think, clearly identifies Canada's national inferiority complex, he misses the fact of the US also having one vis-a-vis Europe, though in the American case it is much more schizophrenic.
Overall I thought it a very good book and hopefully a serious national conversation starter for where we as a country are going and why. I would like to have a discussion of it involving the Aboriginal community and their own perceptions, as they, like Hispanics and other minorities in the United States, are becoming major players on the national stage in their own right and not just the old "What are we going to do with/about them?"
Have been doing a good bit of reading: 2 books especially that have grabbed me are John Ralston Saul's 'A Fair Country' and Alex Ross's 'the Rest Is Noise.' I am not at all sure that I agree with everything that Saul has to say but most of it I do like and he has given me a lot to think about, both about Canada and the United States. That Canada is a Metis nation and that gives it a unique shape and identity in the modern world seems obvious to me but at times he really seems to push the concept beyond it's legitimate bounds. He beats on the nation's elite pretty hard, and for the most part they undoubtedly deserve it. But he does seems to belabor the issue for far too long and into thickets that he finds it hard to get back out of. While he, I think, clearly identifies Canada's national inferiority complex, he misses the fact of the US also having one vis-a-vis Europe, though in the American case it is much more schizophrenic.
Overall I thought it a very good book and hopefully a serious national conversation starter for where we as a country are going and why. I would like to have a discussion of it involving the Aboriginal community and their own perceptions, as they, like Hispanics and other minorities in the United States, are becoming major players on the national stage in their own right and not just the old "What are we going to do with/about them?"
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