----A New Day

FTLComm - Tisdale - September 26, 2000

At six thirty this morning the big light began to emerge toward the East (picture below) as the temporal awareness moves me from yesterday to today. The air is crisp, -2, yet the dead calm and silence does not make it cold. After getting this image the fresh air raised my awareness a notch or two after the smoothering smoke that filled the town yesterday from burning fields and I found myself coughing, a lot. This fresh new day and all that comes with it boosts my spirits and I want to see more of this rising sun. Back into the house for keys and I was on my way with the frosted windshield heading East down the street toward the brightening light. Windshield washer fluid cleared the frost for a moment, long enough to avoid four ladies and one dog on their morning stroll. When I turned right onto Main street and headed South the morning going-to-work traffic was steady and as I headed from the four way stop, a Raven swept down the street and provided me with an escort four three blocks, dodging on coming traffic, he floated along heading South in the North bound lane at fifteen feet and twenty miles an hour. The clearly superior attitude to lesser non-feathered mortals was clear as he chuckled and held a steady pace a car length ahead of me, slowing at times to let me keep up. I dropped the window and fired off a blurring image in the low morning light to record his game with me and then at Chicken Delight he accelerated and climbed away vapourising from my view. Heading East on #3 the orange glow headed straight down the pavement toward me turning the road to the shimmering colour of the sky. Three miles East afraid that the crimson would washout I ducked off the highway and into a harvested wheat field. The image above shows the prospective new day arriving as the cloud to the South seemed held at bay by the rising glow. Dead battery flu occured and you did not get to see the sun pierce the Eastern sky at six minutes to seven.

In minutes I was in Hannigans with fifteen other blessed morning soles, easy over, bacon, white. In Shakespeare's Julius Caesar we all remember the speech "There is a tide in the affairs of man, when take at the flood leads on to victory". I was half way through the first coffee when I wondered if the premier had felt that this was the time, that this was the tide. In Ottawa the Prime Minister summons his oracles who open the entrails of unpublished polls to see if it is time. Is this the tide that leads on to victory? Mike Duffy asks the premier why not run as a Liberal and join his friend Jean and as I told you months ago, Roy responded with an interesting divergence about a move to bring the middle and social left together to meet the challenge of American Conservatism as demonstrated by the upstart Stockwell Day who the Premier said "I do not share those values, nor do I think do most Canadians." Not only does the Prime Minister believe in polls, but so does the retiring Saskatchewan premier and he knows full well that "most" Canadians do not share Mr. Day's view of the world, but given enough time and the hammering away of the deep pockets conservative press, things could change by spring. Is this the tide? South of the border Bush has moved back up a point or two and the rightious who fear a fool in the Whitehouse have moved their campaigns up to meet the challenge, as Dave Letterman ran an execution commercial last night ridiculing the governor of Texas, an easy task. But there are tides everywhere, yesterday I attended the funeral held to commemorate the life of a twenty year old man who did not see the tide coming and in desperation will not be able to go on to anything more. The huge crowd of those attending, a whole gymnasium full, suffered the loss of a good young man, they did so together and individually and it is to be hoped that each will seek and resolve to find their own tides that will sweep them onward. This week I personally, like the premier, have decided the time has come to put my surfboard back into the water and return to the classroom after five long years of absence and I wonder where this tide will lead me. And, you good friends. Will this project be able to continue? All that awaits us is unknown. The Premier, the Prime Minister, the mourners, the former teacher once again teacher, will there be a tide to lead us to victory, or will we sweep out on the crest only to founder. The Premier and the Prime Minister have their polls, we have only our common sense and as with most things, victory is always a possibility, but perhaps more sensibly, the measure of victory. Timothy W. Shire