You’ll miss us when we’re gone

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BellLetsTalk, canadian politics, cycling, diet, exercise, family, fitness, hockey, Mental Health, working out

I’m going to leave the health and hockey beat for a few minutes and talk about journalism and more specifically, local news. Local news coverage is dying in Canada and you should care.

Canadians read, watch and listen to more news in all its formats than ever before and they can find it more easily than ever. The problem is, few people are willing to pay for it via online subscriptions and the advertiser-supported models generally don’t come close to creating a sustainable revenue stream to support journalism.

So media companies – and I’m not going to apply “old media” and “new media” labels because, honestly, Yahoo! has been around for two decades so, when do they and MSN and Google become traditional vs. new? – cut costs by laying off people, including reporters.

And that means there are fewer different news sources covering city hall, or provincial court, or paying attention to your school board. And that’s when bad things start to happen.

My friends are well familiar with me saying things as I head to work, like, “just another day protecting our democracy.” Yes, I said stuff like that tongue in cheek. And yes, it’s actually true.

Strong local news coverage is the bedrock of democracy and journalism. Reporters in small towns create accountability in the system by reporting on town council and school boards and courts and chambers of commerce.

It’s like that old saying that integrity is what you do when you think no one is watching. It’s a good rule of thumb for assessing someone’s real character – and how much we need local reporting.

If you are comfortable with leaders who are lying and cheating and behaving badly because they think no one is watching, you will love where local reporting is headed right now. When they find out their bad behaviour was actually known? Sputtering indignation.

Five for Friday; Vol I

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blue jays, canadian politics, cycling, dalhousie tigers, diet, exercise, family, fitness, general, hockey, ropes, sit ups

A new, intended-to-be-regular feature. Let’s call it Five for Friday where I pontificate pointlessly on random, recurring and unrelated things. Or perhaps related. It depends. I won’t really know until I’m done.

– – –

Firstly, I did it again.

I was just past the entrance to Glen Abbey Golf Club on Dorval this morning when I realized I had forgotten my chest belt. Stop laughing.

For the benefit of the new and/or uninterested, we wear MyZone chest belts at ATC when we work out to monitor heart rate and gather data on the intensity of our effort. I had already forgotten my belt once this week.

And not that it really matters, but the computerized data base records your “effort points” so if you forget your belt, you get zero effort points even if you work your butt off. On a month-to-month basis, the cumulative effort points benchmark yourself against the group and against your own previous effort. And in a room full of competitive people, the points matter whether we admit it or not.

If I showed up without the belt again I was in for grief.

So. U-turn. Go home. Retrieve belt. Onward. I have no idea whether Laura heard me. If she’s smart she now knows I can show up just about any time looking for shoes or clothes. Mostly she just ignores me now because this is becoming so common.

I worked out three mornings this week and once at noon. For each of the 6a workouts I forgot something. My shirt. My belt. My suit. My shirt and my belt. My Shoes. A water bottle. My mind.

Giving thanks, but not for Alvin

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baseball, birthdays, blue jays, chipmunks, colds, cycling, diet, exercise, family, fitness, general, pest control

I came home from work Monday night and went through the usual routine.

After greeting Laura I dragged my gym bag to the basement to toss my sweaty stuff in the laundry. I flipped on the laundry room light and two beady, nervous eyes stared back. It’s not every day you see a chipmunk standing on your washing machine.

First reaction: This isn’t a good thing. A rodent by any other name is still a rodent. And this is a rodent.

The chipmunk was staring up at the small window. I was staring at the open washing machine wondering if there was some way I could knock the critter into the drum and close the top. Neither of us got what we were wishing for.

Alvin – let’s call him Alvin – jumped to the floor and disappeared into the labyrinth of basement that unfolds from easy access from the unfinished walls of the laundry room.

Ch-ch-changes

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birthdays, blue jays, colds, cycling, diet, exercise, family, fitness, general, kids hockey, man cold, parenting

It’s a funny thing about family and kids. I can’t get enough of mine.

When the kids are born, as any parent will tell you, all they are is work for the first few months. They don’t do much other than scream, sleep, execute normal bodily functions and create gobs of laundry and lineups of people who “want to see the baby.”

But in short order, the actually start developing personalities, then they learn to sit up, crawl, signal when they are hungry, smile . . . and from that point on, it’s 24-7 fun. No, really.

There were multiple stages of watching our two boys growing up that I said to myself, geez, I wish I could freeze this moment in time forever because this has got to be the best. And that might have been dragging one of them around the rec room in a cardboard box while he giggled crazily, or skiing, or tobogganing, or snuggling on a sofa watching The Lion King for the 4215^th time on a cold snowy day.

Or it might have been a moment of victory or loss in a rink or on a field. Or it might have been a band concert or school grad or an assembly. Or it might have been Christmas morning or Halloween night or watching one of them with a group of friends, happy and confident and articulate and smart.

My point is, I have learned that every great stage in parenting was followed by one that was just as great, or even better.

Call it democracy

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diet, family, fitness, general, hockey, journalism, politics

Kiss the ladies shake hands with the fellows
Open for business like a cheap bordello

— Bruce Cockburn, They Call it Democracy

In almost exactly a calendar month from today, election-weary Canadians will vote to elect a new government.

If it feels like the election has been going on forever, that’s because effectively, it has. Partisan politics have evolved into something in Canada that is akin to a 24-7 election cycle — the advertising never stops; the bombardment of commentary on social media — informed and otherwise — is ceaseless, often mean spirited, generally anonymous and frequently without redeeming value.

Against that backdrop we have the longest federal election in Canadian history — 11 weeks. In an age where communication is instantaneous and video and images can be relayed and shared in real time, many wonder what’s the purpose of such a long campaign.

The cynical will say the well-fund Conservatives want to make the other parties spend money they don’t have, accumulating huge debt and crippling them for subsequent elections, that may come sooner than we think if this vote spits out a minority.

The less cynical might argue that a longer election gives the masses more time to sift through the noise of social media and learn an understanding of issues at a more comfortable pace, especially in summer.