12:45 a.m. - 2003-06-03
Time in a Bottle
Just a time capsule today.
"Listen to the rhythm of the falling rain..." Yes it is. Cools down the home and makes everything smell fresh and sweet - for free. Mother Nature is awesome and scary at the same time. Where else but in Canada, could one read about someone being killed by an iceberg. Apparently, a family was harvesting some ice from one in the Province of Newfoundland. When one of them struck the berg to chip off the ice, it split in two and rolled, taking one of the people with it. Watch "The Shipping News" if you're curious about daily "Life on the Rock". On the other side of the country a rock slide on a mountain road swept a semi into the lake below. Don't mess with The Mother.
"It was fifty years ago today..." that Queen Elizabeth II was crowned the reigning Monarch of Great Britain. Time flies. I wasn't born at the time, but in Canada it isn't difficult to find memorabilia if you know which knick knack or book shelves in your parent's home to check. Kudos to another classy lady - there aren't that many around.
Big news this week comes out of our sister city to the North - Edmonton. A process has been developed at the university there, to transplant cells from the Islets of Langerhans (pancreas) so that type I diabetics don't have to take insulin shots anymore. One lady has been free of the disease now for about 18 months. It was a Canadian doctor who first developed the treatment of injecting insulin for diabetics too. Good news for health care and great news for anyone struggling with the disease - add quality to quantity of life.
The big scrap in our province right now is over education funding. The current government has been gouging money out of it, each year since it first came to power - a decade ago. One of my old school mates is a Vice Principal at a nearby elementary school. That one facility just had to cut 10 people from its staff. When you have a small, close knit group like a school staff the effects are devastating for both the teachers and the children. So much for valuing and safe-guarding our future generations. It's easier to rule - excuse me - govern a population with less education, but a society or a community is only as strong as its weakest link.
Of course our politicians don't care. They're near the end of their lives and they have their pensions nicely attached to said students' future earnings. I think if I were the students who have been hurt by all the slash and burn tactics that have been applied in the past decade, that the first thing I would do when I was old enough to vote is call a referendum and slash those pensions at the same rate as education funding. Instant Karma - save those politicians from being frog spawn next lifetime.
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