Not April fool's ... yet

So today I woke up later than I'd have liked to, made coffee and toast, peeled and ate my daily grapefruit, looked outside in wonder at the 17'C sun and warm west wind, and set out to begin a short story I'd just thought about yesterday. I wrote for about 1 1/2 hours. Got of good start (7+ pages in a Moleskin).

Having spoken with Dad just before the writing began, I knew that I'd be heading into Winnipeg tomorrow for Aunt Susie's funeral, which means that in a very real way, this is second last day of holidays. Tomorrow's taken, as is Friday, by a family trip to Steinbach for an Easter gathering. Saturday should be free, so that's my last day of holidays. Sunday's as good as back to the grind.

Then Armin Wiebe phoned just after I was finishing a lunch of leftover steak on a bed of spinach on a slice of harvest bread toast (excellent) to say could he stop by to pick up a bunch of Rhubarb #24s in order to continue the saga of sorting out the mailing to the American contributors to the issue. He sounded a bit miffed about it all, but when I offered to bring the mags in tomorrow, he said he was coming out anyway, to have dinner with Joe and Lois, et. al. He said he'd be by around 2:30 PM.

I decided that in the time in between (sorry DB) I'd try to install the stormdoor I'd made out of barn wood, with a sliding window insert. This is on the south doorway (the door under that ladder that Margruite is on - this picture is from last summer when she and Bekah and Sara painted the barn). It will diminish the pressure of the wind on the steel door there, and look a lot more barnlike - a lot more aesthetically consistent, if you ask me. It's my barn and I'll say what I want. So I changed into work clothes, put on work boots, hauled the requisite tools out, carried the door out, and began the installation. Just to limit the suspense, the installation went quite well. It's in right now and, except for a little shaving needed on the bottom left corner (from the inside), it's working well too.

I had the door hung and was working on the latch when Armin showed up at around 3 PM. I asked if he wanted to have a beer. He said he did. We went up to the balcony patio off of the studio and sat in the sun and the wind and drank my last two bottles of Fort Garry Pilsener (not the best but not the worst beer ever) and talked about things - writing, Rhubarb, free range chickens, the web, teaching, and so on. At 5:30 PM he left for his dinner date in his (well Mildred's RIP) SmartCar, with the box of Rhubarb.

I finished the latch on the door, and while I was doing that Margruite and Bekah drove up. Once I was done cleaning up the tools and so forth, supper was ready. After a supper of "Tuscan-style chicken pizza" and a lovely pear and spinach salad the evening seemed free. Until Tim Mendel phoned. Since he still owed me a bottle of Scotch (I asked for Talisker, but the bugger went and drank more than half of that bottle, so he gave me a 15-year Dalwhinnie (not bad, but not as good)) for some design work I'd done for him earlier in the year, I thought that, since talking with Tim is always a good time, I'd go pick up my bottle. I had a shower, headed into town, talked and drank Scotch with Tim, then picked up Sara from a friend's place, and headed back home.

Came across a post on Metafilter about Spalding Gray and his work. I love Spalding Gray. Here's a link to Swimming to Cambodia which is now posted on YouTube. Somehow Gray's work, on this the eve of April 1st, seems appropriate.

What I'm going to try to figure out tomorrow is how going to the funeral of my Aunt Susie, on April 1st, make sense, not that it has to.

Winter tires, Stone tables, Bike rides, Death

Ah the wonders of Spring Break. This morning I, with confidence, removed the winter tires from the car, and re-installed the all seasons. It should snow and blow tomorrow.

The saga of the installation of the stone table goes on, however today, a significant step forward. Enough with the compromise. Enough with the nearly-good enough. Today we finally realized that since Todd made the top, he will make and install the bottom. Oh how long we have wandered.

GeeVs and I rode 32 ks this evening. The wind was SW about 10 ks. We averaged 30 k/hr. About 15'C.

Found out today my Aunt Susie died (Dad's sister). A good long, life. The funeral is Thurs AM. So it goes. It's Spring!

Nowhere interesting

Spent the morning and some of the afternoon with Geevs, Bekah, and Margruite salvaging wainscoting and other trim from an old Mennonite house on the Buffalo Creek, that will soon be used by the fire department to practice a controlled burn.

Got home and wrote a bit. In the evening I worked on the "stand" for the granite slab table Todd Braun's made for us. This is still a bit of a challenge. The slab is 9' by 42", weighing about 1500 lbs. So the stand has got to manage some serious weight, be stable in all dimensions (tippy would be a very bad thing in this situation), and allow for enough leg room to be comfortable at supper. If this sounds simple to you, I'd love your suggestions.

To the title: Just read the essay "Direction Nowhere" by Nate Chinen of At Length about the March 6-7, 1970 dates Neil Young and Miles Davis shared at the Fillmore East. Thought it was worth sharing, or at least remembering.

Sunday morning go to meetin'

Well that was Palm Sunday (I'm almost an hour late in posting), and in anticipation of the much greater worship season to come, I suggest you spend five or so minutes in rapt attention to the right Reverend Petey Greene of the Church of the Watermelon. Amen!

40 k ride today. Temp 6' C; Wind SSW 9 ks. Love my road bike.

Foreign film night

So what do you do on a Saturday night in southern Manitoba? Watch a Norwegian film, of course! Kitchen stories was both hilarious and profound, if you can manage off-beat rural characters mocking liberal IKEA-minded social scientists on the prowl. The film is weirdly comforting. Makes me want to sit in a Boler trailer, eat birthday cake, and share bourbon with Paul Bergman. Actually there are a lot of things that could be worse than that.

Spring Break!

Not much else to say! Here are a couple of interesting webprojects (I don't quite know how to genrefy or categorize these kinds of offerings, but there are more of them about, and they are, in my view, worth paying attention to ...). 1) A notebook confessional 2) A history of the sky by Ken Murphy. One of these days I'll take the time to take a photograph at the beginning of my ride every morning, or some such thing, and then turn it into some coolio web thingy. Until then, I'm just another guy gawking at all the wonders that abound on this interspace.

The ride in

Temp -10; Wind 7 ks SSE

The ride home

Temp 5; Wind 15 ks S

What rough beast

Today Ann Coulter will speak in Calgary. This debate over free speech is muddied by Coulter's style and politics. She not only represents a partisan political and economic view, she garners attention by lacing her opinions with the sorts of comment that we usually expect to get from edgy comedians, or rock stars. Her speech at the University of Ottawa was cancelled, due to concerns for her safety. Predictably Coulter has turned this into a cry of censorship and intolerance.

Today in the staff room a few of us debated how far one can take freedom of expression, in this case religious, in a secular democracy. In Quebec the debate has been over Naima Atef Amed's right to wear a niqab and receive public service. The Charest government has announced that it will legislate that if you want to receive a public service, you will have to bare your face.

These issues are linked. The questions is: How far does my right to self-expression, of any sort, extend in a liberal democracy? Whether I'm trolling for attention with incendiary and racist comments that I know will be bought (literally and figuratively) by an element in society, or tacitly challenging a societal expectation by expressing an uncommon religious tenet in a public way, what are the limits a society can tolerate, while maintaining a coherent and functional vision of itself?

Canadians tend to be widely-visioned; our sense of the periphery is keen. Still, in both of these cases, many of us said that Coulter and Amed were outside of our field of vision. Are we, like Yeats suggested we would, beginning to find out when "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."

The ride in

Temp -20; Wind NW 7ks

The ride home

Temp -7; Wind SSE 10ks

Cool, clever, lame?

This "cool ad" suggests that the more we read online, the more we will read period. It's a classic example of the kind of webtimism and technofication that makes me smile and feel good at first, and wince with concern shortly thereafter. The ad itself works those same emotions, but in the reverse order. What's a reader and book lover to do?

The ride in

Temp -14; Wind NW 5-10 ks

The ride home

Temp -7; Wind NNW 30-50 ks

Joseph Akol Makeer presentation

Today Joseph Akol Makeer, one of the "lost boys of Sudan," spoke to the period 4 class (ELC 40S). His presentation begins with a 20 minute documentary about his return to Kenya and the Sudan to visit the refugee camp he stayed in, as well as his native village, Duk Payuel, where he meets his relatives for the first time in 20 years. Although he is soft-spoken, his delivery is so honest and open that it was easy to listen intently for more than 40 minutes.

Joseph's vision is to raise enough money to build schools and orphanages for the children affected by the war in Sudan. For more information, visit his website, africansoulamericanheart.org. He currently lives with his wife and children and brother in Fargo, ND, where he graduated from NDSU.

First things

This blog will be a starting point for Paul Krahn's students, who are currently attending W.C. Miller Collegiate. Along the left you will find a link to the blogspot for each of my classes. At the beginning of each week I will post a link, or links, to a site, or series of sites, on a specific topic or issue. I will expect you to view and read each week's post and then comment on it, in the comment area below the post.

You are expected to comment on each post at least once. You will have until Friday of each week to do that. I hope that you will comment more than once, and that you will comment not only on the content of the post, but on the comments of your classmates. Please read the guidelines for commenting that I outline on your class's page.

I'm looking forward to this experiment, and hope that the process is enjoyable for you too.

PK