Columns

With just eight months to go until the next municipal election, city council has updated its to-do list for the home stretch, and it could result in more dollars for arts and culture.

I preface this column by stating that I am not a mind reader. While intrigued and often amused by the predictions and musings of psychics and seers, I am content to focus on the here and now. I try not to worry about the small stuff.

I was standing in line, waiting for a coffee when the clerk smiled at my swelling belly and asked me if I hoped for a boy or a girl. “No preference,” I replied, politely.

The year 2010 is turning out to be most interesting for those of us who live in North America. South of the border, the United States has a president who is articulate, pragmatic and civil.

Depending on who you talk to, the St. Albert of tomorrow could be an eco-friendly oasis where residents leisurely bike or stroll to high-powered jobs, or the annexed lands will remain little more than empty farmers’ fields.

In 1975 at Ottawa I took a course on forensic psychiatry, the interface between the legal system and mental illness. At one session a law student denounced psychiatrists’ readiness to lock people away in bleak mental hospitals.

On the same day that I’m writing this, I will attend one of the five yearly meetings of the Edmonton trails, paths and routes advisory committee. (I’m co-chair this year.

By filling his underpants with explosives and then boarding an aircraft bound for Detroit, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab provided us with another glaring example of how airline security can so easily be compromised.

War, one of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse entrusted with maintaining the tender balance of light and dark, is accused of breaking sacred law and unleashing chaos upon the earth.

Smell that. The winds of politics are swirling and doesn’t it smell sweet! The new year is just two weeks old and local political junkies are in their glory with drama at every level of government.