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Spring tonic
Tisdale - Thursday, April 1, 2013
by:Timothy W. Shire

Yesterday the sun was above the trees down the street at 6:30 AM and later at breakfast the light overcast cleared away and the sun came through the window giving me my very own hot flash. Remarkably those monster piles of snow and ice are settling a bit and the town of Tisdale’s crews are busy steaming out culverts. Each night the temperature goes down into the negative teens and it takes until noon to clear the freezing hurdle but little by little there are signs of spring. At the bottom of the page two Niska have made it back to Tisdale after their trip south and back, they are standing on a bit of grass beside the soon to flood Dog Hide River near the bridge just east of town. This was on Wednesday afternoon. Today there were at least two more with them.

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Clearly I am suffering from cabin fever and I suspect I am not alone. On Thursday I got the motorhome out of what will become a swamp shortly, our back yard and as I moved onto the garden which our neighbour had cleared of snow I was startled to discover the front wheels heading into the soil, soil which had been shielded considerably by the heavy snow cover and that suggests that once the snow melts and the water starts moving the local fields will dry quickly.

From the news it would appear that North Korea is suffering from a severe form of cabin fever as well and it might be a bit flippant for people to disregard the threats being made. It may just be that the people in that desperate place really have very little to lose and they might do just about anything.

I was saddened today to learn that Roger Ebert passed away in Chicago this morning. Each week I include a link to the reviews of movies showing in Tisdale and Melfort (Porcupine Plain no longer shows movies) and I prefer to give the reader Roger Ebert’s learned and well written review to pre-judge the movies available. He is the only movie critic ever to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for literature. Speaking of movies, Melfort’s Dynasty Theatre is well on the way to installing their digital projection equipment and the new owner of Tisdale’s Falkon Theatre will be installing Digital equipment as soon as technicians can come and do the job, the equipment is already sitting in the theatre.

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Gosh the news seems to continue with the cabin fever theme. There are some buried surprises in the federal budget that might surprise you. Though members of the government in the past have declared that there would be no special tax on iPods and MP3 players sure enough there is in this budget just such a tax. Another little gem is the provisions in the budget to have legislation already in place should one of Canada’s major banks get into trouble. In such a scenario the federal budget has provisions to abscond with people’s money to keep the bank solvent. Uninsured deposits of over $100,000 could all or in part simply be the banks money, not the depositor’s and the same provision is in place for banks to help themselves to depositor’s mutual fund holdings. Just goes to show you that corporations in Canada are more valued by our government then the private property of Canadian citizens.

I’ll bet no one was surprised to hear that Regina lawyer Tony Merchant was one of many wealthy individuals hiding money off shore to avoid paying taxes. It seems extra special that his wife is also a senator who made a declaration that no such off shore bank accounts existed.

I was also not surprised to learn that Russia is going to be setting up bases in Afghanistan. This is really a strange turn of events. Russian forces fought a nasty war in that place and left without victory. The same thing has happened with the United States who will have most of their forces out of country by the summer of 2014. The government of Afghanistan is being proper up by the American taxpayer and the Afghan government is spending money on Russian weapons. So many weapons that Russia will have to set up bases in the country to service the equipment sold. Americans seem to get themselves into so neat difficulties because they also provide massive support to Pakistan only to be treated by that country as the enemy and Americans are continuing to ship money to Egypt which is about to become a “failed state” similar in lawlessness to Somali and Libya.

But a few geese showing up we should soon see more spring birds and perhaps even consider what we intend to do with the garden this year.

Tomorrow we are dashing into Regina and of course Environment Canada is predicting snow for Friday and Saturday. The winter tires are still on the car.

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