Oct. 29: Women's shoes speak a language

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Dec. 1: Something I'm grateful for that most people take for granted

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 My church. Martin Luther King once said that Sunday is the most segregated hour, meaning that we tend to go to church with people who look like us. The integration, by contrast, takes place the other six days of the week. This does not apply to my church. I go to a Dutch Christian Reform Church in Cornwall. That denomination, by the way, supported the South African apartheid movement and because of this, was expelled from the World Alliance of Reformed Churches in 1982. Four years later, it changed its stance - thanks, Holy Spirit - and, following repentance, was allowed back into the alliance four years later. It is a dark blot on my denomination's history. We look to the future while learning from the past. - My church is not segregated. There's a whole lot of people from Myanmar there. One of them is a gifted musician who plays a mean guitar and has an amazing voice. There are three Myanmar girls who, from time to time, do interpretive dances to Christian hymns.  My church...
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Dec. 1: What if...

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About 10 years ago, my friend, Natalie, and I were discussing our respective journalism careers. Hers started in 1998 in a small town in southeast Saskatchewan. Mine started in Regina in 1999 after I moved there with her. She got a job at a weekly paper there and she introduced me to her editor, who hired me. "I owe my career to you," I told Natalie. This did not impress her. She said that her role in my career trajectory was an infinitesimal one, that I should give myself some credit for my own success. - Still, if I didn't meet Natalie, I might not be where I am right now. When I moved to Regina, I had no ambitions toward a journalism career; all I wanted to do was write a novel. Natalie told me about the job at the paper and encouraged me to go in and meet the staff and see what happened. I wound up surprising myself, I was a pretty good - if not raw - reporter and that job in Regina led to further opportunities in Saskatchewan, Quebec, Alberta, and Ontario, where I re...
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Dec. 23: Lightning in a bottle

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Paul Simon's Graceland might be one of the best albums of the 1980s. Somehow, he took a concept album - creating a pop/rock songbook that blended African music with American folk - and wound up tapping into the existential angst of the baby boomer generation. Graceland and George Harrison's Cloud Nine are the only two modern rock albums that my father actually went out and purchased. That's saying something since his music of choice has always been country music from the 1970s and earlier. For a while, Graceland was the soundtrack of our house when I was a teenager. It was so beloved by him that my brother and sister even did a lip sync act to the album's lead single, You Can Call Me Al. I didn't like Graceland but I didn't dislike it either. At the time, I found more relevance in the music of Alice Cooper. But now I am older - older than my dad was when he discovered Graceland, in fact - and I can tell you that Graceland comes on my car stereo a heck of a lot m...
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