Hold on to your hats. Reading this essay on re-evolutionary industrial organizational theory and practice on Future Positive, the thought, mind-blowing crazy as it is, occurred to me that our present stalemate council is perhaps the perfect incubator for setting the Dr Wilkins plan into action at the municipal level. We're nearly doing it anyway, only in a destructive spirit; formally adopting the Ortegrity method simply saves us the stigma of not doing it the old, broken way:

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We come a long way, baby
Wow, has it really been five years already? Apparently ... and man oh man it's a trip to take a random shot at that list of 54 backpages down at the bottom of the front page and just jump in on the goings on at that point. Hot stuff, neat things, flash points, spills chills and thrills!

It's nearly planting season, and for this year, why not plant a little science in your garden and help out our pollinating friends:

Help our Bees! Plant a Sunflower in your Garden!
By watching and recording the bees at sunflowers in your garden, you can help us understand the challenges that bees are facing.
It takes less than 30 minutes.
It's easy. Free Sunflower seeds for planting.
No knowledge of bees required!

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Right on schedule, the sun is out, the glaciers are receding and there's lots and lots of stuff to do!

April and May in Southern Georgian Bay will be a time of re-awakening
for the communities around the Bay. Combinations of Music Festivals, Heritage
Dinners, National Wildlife Week activities, Earth Day clean-ups, Astronomy Day,
and the re-opening of the areas historical attractions are part of the rituals of
spring.
[ see Spring Awakenings ]

Kelsey Carriere wants to talk to you about local goods and sustainable markets, and about the plan this summer to hook the two together in Wiarton

You ARE INVITED TO APPLY TO BECOME A FOUNDING VENDOR OF THE BRAND NEW WIARTON FARMERS' MARKET.
The Wiarton Farmers'Market will be held Friday afternoons from 3:00 to 8:00, May 30th to October 10th (20 weeks) in the parking lot just South of Town Hall on Berford Street. The initial season of this venture is sponsored by the Town of South Bruce Peninsula and will be run by an association of vendors and stake-holders in subsequent years.

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All that beautiful crystaline speckled snow out there, here's something we probably already knew: It's ALIVE! No, seriously ...

Scientists have long known that the ice crystals in clouds which become rain or snow need to cling to some kind of particle, called ice nucleators, in order to form in temperatures above minus 40 degrees Celsius.
But they did not realize, until now, that the most active particles involved in this process are living ones, Christner said.

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Reporter Phil McNichol doesn't want to go to Council meetings anymore, and his reasons, which we all already know all too well, are put forth hilariously in last Saturday's column:

"Life is too precious not to enjoy at every possible moment. Members of council might want to take more than a little time to think about that, rather than psych themselves up for their next battle with their colleagues."
[ Keep your eyes and years on your local council... ]

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There's no actual timetable of course, other than Bell's 12th anniversary of 'three to five months' predictions, but at least we now know that the Feds have specifically fingered Sauble Beach for a share in that $650-Million slush-fund for rural broadband. No idea if my emails with Maxime had anything to do with that, but whatever the reason, one can dream of bathing in pür unfiltered multi-megabits and that day when all of Sauble gets with the twenty-first century!

"Today's decision will not only make telecommunications services more accessible to all Canadians, but also serve to enhance social and economic development in under-served communities"

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Not that I expect it is any great surprise, but research published today out of UI-Chicago Biology Dept is fingering videophilia and the general shift to a sedentary home-based digital lifestyle for the downward trend in both our use and interest in natural spaces, and in our general public health:

The biologists examined figures on backpacking, fishing, hiking, hunting, visits to national and state parks and forests. They found comparable statistics from Japan and, to a lesser extent, Spain. They found that from 1981 to 1991, per-capita nature recreation declined at rates from 1 percent to 1.3 percent per year, depending on the activity studied. The typical drop in nature use since then has been 18-25 percent

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