1100 KM into the Sunset

Fish Creek Park, less than 4 km from my house.

- Peace

$40 000 Per Homless Person in Canada

From CBC Homelessness 'chronic' in Canada

[Study] cites government numbers showing a cost of up to $6 billion a year to service a "core" homeless population of 150,000. That cost includes health care, criminal justice, social services and emergency shelter costs.

You'd think that for $40 000 a year we'd be doing a better job. Compare to the average Canadian income up to 2005.

- Peace

1000 KM point with friends

Dave (me), Calvin and Dave. Thanks Guys.

- Peace

900 KM

Passed the 900 km mark on Friday.

- Peace

Eat Me

Good Bye My Good Friend

Our dear friend Melissa Loewen was killed yesterday in a car crash. This is the only picture I have of her, she tended to get up tight around cameras. Can't believe how much of an impact she had on Sarah, Kim and I in just a year. Right now, I wish I could convey how much this woman was alive with love and grace.

update: A few people have found this page googling for Melissa Loewen. There was a story in today's Hearld but they don't mention her by name. Not sure how long the story will be available.

update II: The Calgary Sun has a story that adds one bit of information: The car the woman was driving was hit on the passenger door by an eastbound Mercury Sable, said Mounties, who believe she was wearing a seat-belt. I know a number of us had wondered about the seat-belt thing.

update III: Kevin has posted his goodbye to Melissa. Thing is I was thinking today how I'm quite sure it was Melissa who first invited me to tag along to a post Xalt function. I know she was the first to invite Sarah along to something, even if I couldn't go. She had a way of making people feel welcome and at ease.

updte IV: From the Calgary Herald: School Mourns Popular Music Teacher

Last week, Grade 5 Langdon School student Andrew Culver was all set to earn a "yellow belt" in music class.

Popular music teacher Melissa Loewen had come up with the idea of awarding students with different colour belts, like in karate, as an incentive to learn new songs.

All Andrew had to do was play his part in a recorder duet.

"Me and my friend were trying to pass a song to exceed a grade level," Culver said Saturday.

"But my friend couldn't stop laughing in the middle of the song."

That's when Loewen stepped in.

Together, she and Culver piped out the tune Chatter with Angels on their recorders -- earning the youngster his passing grade and earning the favourite teacher another glowing accolade.
...
The well-liked teacher was known for finding creative ways to make music class fun, teaching everything from recorders and xylophones to musical Jeopardy and new dances for the Christmas play.

News of the accident spread quickly through the hamlet.

"It's very hard on the community," said Anita Wagner, whose two children attend the kindergarten-to Grade 8 school. "It's very sad. The kids did very much like her."

Loewen taught music and art to most of the school's 550 students.

Wagner sat down with her children Saturday to break the devastating news.

"We wanted them to be able to talk about it, and get their feelings in the open and not be presented with it at school," she said. "It's just really harder when this happens in a small community, and when she's so young."

On Friday afternoon, teachers had held a retirement party for the school's outgoing librarian.

Loewen helped organize the event and stayed behind to help clean up. She was heading into Calgary when the crash occurred, Wagner said.

We'd been talking about vocation a couple of weeks ago, and Melissa made it very clear it was the kids that mattered to her. I was glad to see this article captured that.

Update V: Nat posts

It was just last Sunday she sat on our living room couch with us as we enjoyed ice cream sundaes, sharing embarrassing moments and summer plans, and she excitingly talked about her plans to travel to Australia. She was full of life, of heart and plans for the future.

Update VI: Ed and Debbie have blogged their thoughts. I need to add an amen to Debbie's thought about Melissa "you who fit perfectly in all of our lives and who seemed like you had always been there".

Update VII: Melissa's obituary has been published. I'd like to thank everyone who's taken time to share there memories of Melissa, she touched so many lives in such short time. It's been truly beautiful to read your comments.

Upate VIII: From Lisa Smith - Dear Melissa,

It has been several weeks, and some days I still don't believe that you're gone. It is too much of an impossibility that someone so vitally young and alive could somehow not be anymore. And I don't think you'd ever realize how big of a gap you left. I still feel ill at the fact that I didn't do more. In the rush of preparing to rush off to yet another foreign country, all the funeral details passed me by. I couldn't even find a moment to write of how much I'll miss your steady, gentle, organized and hilarious presence in my life. But maybe the seeming unreality of it all kept me from this moment. I think I'm still in shock. However, I'm writing to you now, with apologies for the tardiness.

Click Dear Melissa to read the rest.

- Peace

Water On the Path

Not a 100 km point, just liked the shot :)

- Peace

The Jesus Way

The plain intent of the Prophet's gospel as he forms it in the conjunction of "your God" and "my servant," and then preaches it with such exuberance by the Messenger on the mountains as beautiful, is that there can be no violence or propaganda on the way of the Lord. Life on the way is never violent. Sin is not rejected it is borne, carried in an act of intercession. We enter the world of Isaiah 53 and take our stand with Jesus alongside the sinner, the other, the outsider. We in some impossible-to-define way become surety for others. But no coercion of ant kind in practicing the commands or following in the steps of the Master. No invective, no denunciation, no threats. Every raised voice, every curl of a sneering lip, every impatient dismissal is banished from the way.

Eugene H. Peterson, The Jesus Way

800 KM in the Burbs

Radical Orthodoxy on Ideas Podcast

Ideas description

The modern world seems bent on its own destruction. A theological
movement called "Radical Orthodoxy" believes it has uncovered the
roots of the modern mistake. David Cayley talks to the movement's
founders and leading writers, John Milbank and Catherine Pickstock.

post cast: http://podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/ideas_20070604_2421.mp3
btw they only leave these up for four weeks so get it while its hot :)

- Peace

Autostich Free Panorama Software

After trying to stitch pictures by hand, I found Autostitch from UBC to be quite good. Here's the software version of Calgary:

vs my by hand version:


- Peace

Panorama of Calgary

Stitched together using the Gimp. It's my first Panorama.

- Peace

700 KM

Hit the 700 km mark last night after Lisa's Birthday Party. This was just before that point, but I don't have a shot from the 700 km mark.

- Peace

600 KM, Goat Creek

I made the 600 KM mark while chasing Rawliegh on Goat Creek

Who Reads What / Resonate Media Radar Down

Seems like the new Resonate Server and my WRW Code are not getting along. Most attempts to read the Resonate Bloggers list produces a low level IO (Input Output) error. Sigh. This will take sometime to figure out.

- Peace

Brian McLaren on "Prefab worship"

Speaks to some of things we've been talking about at Xalt around our times of Worship.

Thanks Jordon.

- Peace

Mike Warnke Calgary

Mike Warnke is coming to Calgary next week. In his bio he claims to have been a "satanist high priest". I wish people would do more research. They realy should read The Cornerstone series on Mike Warnke. Nuff said.

- Peace
Dave