Sad Day

Okay, I thought I was conflicted about the Grey Cup. And I was. I started cheering for Saskatchewan and half way through realized that I really wanted Milt Stegall to get his ring and for Troy Westwood to be able to cut off that rat's tail of a pony tail. So I decided that since Saskatchewan voted in the Saskatchewan party they didn't deserve the Grey Cup and started to cheer for Winnipeg wholeheartedly. Sigh...Saskatchewan won...and I could have basked in the reflected glory except I committed an act of apostasy at halftime.

I'm Back!

Saskatchewan is great and my holidays were wonderful (as you can see Robbie enjoyed some relaxation too) but it is fun to be back to see my new back porch. The long list of work emails and phone messages were less exciting. I don't have pictures of my porch yet and cabinets of some sort still need to go in but here is the picture of the tile lay out that my friend who did the work sent me for approval. Love that cross design! Now that the tile is grouted it is straighter than it is in the pictures. And now that all the old carpeting is pulled out the dumpster is full! And I have a lot more purging to do yet.

The other treat I came home to was a brand new copy of Peter Erb's new book Murder, Manners, Mystery: Reflections on Faith in Contemporary Detective Fiction. Thank you Amazon! Peter and I share a love of detective fiction and this is his reflection on the theological themes that appear in some contemporary mystery writers. Peter was my MA supervisor and he has a delightful ability to make insightful comments on 19th cent. Catholic theology one moment and rhapsodize on the joys of cheezie movies the next. I've started the book already - haven't even finished unloading my van - and it is delightful.

On that note one of really enjoyable time of my holidays was spent reading Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love. After a miserable divorce Gilbert takes a year to travel to Italy, to eat pasta, to an ashram in India, to pray, and to Bali to find balance (and incidently fall in love). She writes really frankly about her personal struggles (sometimes so frankly I blushed) and she sees the humour in a lot of it. I laughed outloud a lot while reading it.

Now I have to finish emptying the van.

Lurking Mother

Okay, my mother is one of the lurkers who won't comment. But she caught the ? after Gail Bowen - I'll fix that - she is definitely Canadian. Not only Canadian - she's from Saskatchewan and her detective votes NDP. Gotta love it. Mom suggested Shirley Rousseau Murphy whose detective is a cat. Not my thing but then I like the really dark, dark mysteries. But for those of you who like fey... Thanks for the suggestion Mom!

Speaking of dark I have a few more to add to my list:
Laura Lippman (American, hardboiled PI)
Laurie R. King (American, some police procedural - one with a religious studies prof as the detective - she does Sherlock Holmes ones too but I don't read those)
Tess Gerritsen (American forensic)

Now to a movie recommendation. I just got home from seeing The Lives of Others. What a film! I was blown away by it. It is a German film set in East Berlin in 1985. The main characters are a playwright and his actress girlfriend and a Stasi officer assigned to watch them. There are so many twists you can't believe it but they don't feel contrived. And then when you think the movie is over it keeps going and some more of the threads are brought together for an even bigger punch. It is a really interesting film about what it is to be good and about the choices people make.

I was living in Germany when the wall came down and went to Prague a few months later. This film and another great German film, Good-bye Lenin, bring back a lot of memories of what it was like living in Europe during those years. This is really worth seeing.

Pilgrimage to Dog River

Got the pictures downloaded and here they are - holy Canadian shrines:






We turned off the #1 onto a gravel road because I thought I saw a small Rouleau sign. We drove on faith because it seemed like we were heading to nowhere and then we came to a paved road with a sign saying Rouleau. We drove a little way further and saw all the cars parked by the side of the road. I felt a little goofy hanging out with the tourists taking photos of the Corner Gas set but it was fun. There was a woman standing there handing out postcards and a map of the town with the other buildings marked. We then did a tour of the town and took more photos before heading to the Dog River police station which is an ice cream bar and gift shop. They didn't have a big selection but we bought some gifts and signed our names on the wall with thousands of other pilgrims. Then it was back in the car and up to Regina, all on paved roads this time. After grabbing lunch I went into Starbucks to get a latte for the road and who was sitting there but Brent Butt and Nancy Robertson. On the Corner Gas website Brent writes: “I love what I do,” Brent says. “It’s just like having coffee – only now it’s with a thousand or so people at a time.” Well there he was having coffee surrounded by a couple dozen folks who were being polite Canadians and ignoring them. I wouldn't let my GD go in unless she could promise not to make a fuss and she couldn't promise. It felt pretty cool to see them right after visiting Dog River but I was glad I wasn't wearing a Corner Gas ball cap or something really goofy like that. I'm sure they didn't see the discrete little Ruby pin I have pinned to my MEC bag.

Cemeteries

I really like walking around cemeteries. It is always moving to see how people honour their dead and to read the history of a community by looking at who died and when. Real Live Preacher has an interesting post a few days ago about a cemetery he found in Mexico.

I explored a cemetery in Dollard, Saskatchewan on my last trip there that was unlike any I had ever been in. It was huge - it looked to be about 5 acres - but all the graves were along the edge and there was about 4 acres of open grass in the middle. Those white spots across the grass are actually graves - many of them were covered with rock. There were only a couple of graves right at the centre and a statue of Joan of Arc, the church bell and a plaque remembering the clergy and sisters from the parish stood next to them. I've never seen a layout like this. It just seems better to have our dead huddled together instead of spread out like this.

The church is no longer functioning, the only parishioners apparently a flock of pigeons. I didn't go in but I did take some photos of it. There is something really sad about finding a church that is no longer functioning. But so many of these rural communities are shrinking as agriculture is transformed. Some of the small communities in the west end of Alberta and the east end of Saskatchewan are experiencing a real estate boom because Calgarians are buying up inexpensive houses. Folks from Calgary have driven up prices along the BC Alberta border to the point that only the very wealthy can buy there. So now people are looking to Saskatchewan for cheap summer or retirement homes. Who would have anticipated that? It isn't Winnipeg but it is the next best thing.

Back Home

I spent my study leave in my favourite place in south Saskatchewan - a little piece of paradise. It was great to be able to read and think and write without easy access to my email and with my cell phone turned off. The local Co-Op brings in cilantro now and there is a really nice coffee place that makes a good latte so it is no hardship to be there. I rent a cottage from a super guy and we had some great conversations over some delicious meals. I've met some really interesting people through him too and had a chance to see some this trip. A friend of mine drove out for a couple of days and that was really great and of course I checked in with friends a bit via email and the aforementioned cell phone. Mostly though I feel quite cut off there - tv is limited and I didn't see a newspaper for two weeks.

Now I'm back to the reality of my van being in the shop again and an incredibly messy house - reality is crushing in again!

One thing I was really happy about though was being able to go to the movie rental place to pick up some more episodes of Battlestar Galactica. I'm hooked. I watched it in the '70s when it was fun but cheesy. Now it is really very dark with lots of sex and violence. Little kids watched it when I was a kid. Now it is hot enough that it set off the cottage's dvd player's parental controls.

It started out as essentially cowboys and indians in space. The bad guys were the cylons, robots invented by humans to do their grunt work. The cylons eventually rebelled and became the classic 20th century enemy - the faceless, emotionless horde that threatened to take over because when you killed one another just stepped forward to take its place. Maybe it was a metaphor for a time of war with an enemy that never seemed to give up and never seemed to diminish. Or maybe it was a way of talking about the dangers of the emerging technology - a kind of more popular (and much more enjoyable) version of 2001 a space odyssey.

In the new version the cylons have developed the ability to adopt human form so the war now is with the enemy within. They still fight cylons in space but the real threat is the cylons living next to them. A show about war has become a show about terrorism. Certainly this reflects the age we now live in.

Hwy #36

Yesterday I drove up to Bassano for a meeting of the Calgary-Macleod Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church of Canada. They are one of the sponsoring bodies of the chaplaincy and I try to get to one of their meetings every year or so to report and to connect. The Mission committee invited me to have lunch with them first so I headed up there about 10:30 - out East to Taber, then north on #36, and then west again on the #1 to Bassano. It took me 1 hour and 50 mins and I figured there had to be a more direct way home. I don't particularly enjoy hwy #36. Over the years I've preached in Taber, Vauxhall, Scandia, Enchant, Tilley, Rolling Hills, Bow Slopes, Brooks, Duchess and Bassano so I've done that road a lot. And I don't enjoy it. The only part I like is the Old Man River valley just north of Taber. Otherwise it is boring to look at and dangerous to drive. I don't know how many times I've nearly been hit by someone trying to pass on the narrow two lane highway. It is a narrow road and there are a lot of trucks on it. Between oil and beef Brooks is booming and that translates into a lot of transport trucks.

So, after I left the meeting I stopped at the Esso and got gas and directions. It turns out that there is a shorter way back on a new dirt road that isn't on the map. You turn south at Lathom and take some jogs and you end up at Bow City. This means heading east (and south - that is where the jogging comes in) again but not as far as to the #36 and then you get to head west to Lomond before heading south to Coaldale and then west to Lethbridge. Did you get that?

She tells me to be very careful because the sign for Lathom is small and easy to miss so I head back down the #1 watching carefully for a sign when I see one that says, construction, 80 km. So I slow down. There is another sign saying that the left lane will be disappearing. Then I see a big flashing sign indicating that I should go right - and it is pointing right at the Lathom sign. And there is no construction in the left lane. I don't know if you remember the scene in Bruce Almighty where he's driving and complaining that God isn't saying anything to him. Meanwhile every sign he passes, ever vehicle that passes him is flashing a sign warning him of danger ahead. Well I felt like Bruce only I paid attention. I turned south and followed the dirt road until I came to a place where I thought maybe I was supposed to jog - she had warned me to jog and not go straight or I'd end up back at the #1. I wasn't sure what to do but a truck came up one of the two options and the driver waved. This way, I figured that meant. So I took the jog and came to another corner. Was this where I jogged south? I kept going east but then realized that there were people coming up the other road. Turn around I thought. I stopped and asked the woman on the ATV with her kid. Was this the road to Bow City. Yes, she said, just go straight. So I did, although straight was more metaphorical since there were lots of jogs yet but easy jogs without all the options. Oh, except the corner where a big piece of farm machinery blocked the wrong way. How is that for divine guidance!

The funny thing is that this short cut may have been shorter in distance but it took longer than the highway would have. So it took me 15 mins longer to get home but I enjoyed the drive a lot more. I got to drive along the Bow River valley for a short while and it is lovely. The valley is greening up and the coulees are beautiful. Then it was south along #845 and through several coulee valleys including the Old Man River valley and I find those so lovely. I was wishing I had taken my camera along.

I have friends who long for the beauty of the Rockies, or the ocean but I love the prairies. Mountains are showy and the ocean is pretty dramatic. But the prairies are subtle. There are a million colours but they aren't in your face colours. And the prairies are wide open so you can breathe deeply but they aren't flat. The joke about watching your dog run away from home for three days may work in parts of Saskatchewan but in Manitoba where I grew up, and south west Saskatchewan where I vacation, and southern Alberta where I live there are hills and valleys and trees and bushes and thousands of different grasses. I've seen pronghorn and white tail deer. I've seen pheasants, owls, eagles, hawks, a million geese, coyote, and fox. And you can breathe here. Well, okay, this part of the country has the highest rates of lung problems in the country because of all the wind and dust, pollens, etc. But think metaphorically. When I studied in Southern Ontario I used to feel so claustrophobic and when I'd fly home I could feel my lungs expanding when I looked out the airplane window and see all the farmers' fields below. My grandpa used to feel uncomfortable when he'd come from Victoria to visit us because he said he felt so exposed. But I've lived next to the Great Lakes and in the Swabian Albs and nothing can compare to a prairie sunset.

Little Mosque on the Prairies

Little Mosque on the Prairies premiered this week and apparently 2.1 million people were watching. I watched it and enjoyed it. It is drawing comparisons to Corner Gas because they are both Canadian comedies set in small town Saskatchewan but they have a different feel. I'm a huge fan of Corner Gas which moves at a slower pace than Little Mosque. Dog River is a smaller town, the cast is smaller and the scope of the stories is smaller. If I had any criticism of Little Mosque it was that it was a little too hyper - it felt more like Ontario than Saskatchewan. But it shows great promise.