No frost yet. The garden’s on hold waiting for cold to harden the carrots and sweeten the turnips. Still not many ripe tomatoes. The ripe ones don’t stand a chance while Scarlett is on patrol, she grabs and eats them before they can be counted.

***

September 11th is our parents anniversary. It is also Kelsie and Tom’s. A beautiful time of year to have a wedding. The trees turning and usually bright blue skies. The time of year you wake up to a chill, but are warmed throughout the day until a fire can be put on. The last of the long nights and early mornings.

***

9/11 is also a time in history the United States was attacked and commenced a 20 year war against terrorism, invading two countries killing hundreds of thousands. Doing so, George W. Bush, and the American political structure entered into a situation that further alienated the US from the rest of the world while trying to achieve some level of retribution that can’t possibly exist in world affairs where our best strategy is to try and live with each other’s differences that are not that great when thought about.

US President Trump and Biden decided to end the war in Afghanistan. Both would have ended it differently. The job however, fell on the Biden administration who choose to end it with the United States, the most powerful nation in the world, tucking its tail.

It was done by design and it’s a good thing. The US can now withdraw from its disastrous foreign policy and focus on its many internal challenges.

***

Canada is in the midst of a federal election. Trudeau no longer looks like the fair haired boy of his youth. Leading a nation through a pandemic is sure to do that.

Still what are the choices. Our riding goes either Conservative or NDP without the Liberals making a blip on the screen.

So here are the choices:

NDP: the local candidate is a long time politician and government employee who served a term as MLA. He was reported on CBC as an MLA who was collecting a large defined government pension while collecting his 6 figure salary. In other words, a greedy bugger, who doesn’t know how most of his constituents live hand to mouth.

Conservative: The conservative incumbent for Kootenay-Columbia is an ex-cop from Vancouver parachuted into the riding to capture the last election, and it WORKED! Nobody hears much from him. Conservatives say they like him however. Just a reminder the dumbest guys in high school became cops.

One of the two of these jokers are going to be MLA. It’s a choice between a shit sandwich and a kick in the teeth. Many will hold their nose and pick the least of the worse.

But what if we we voted for candidates different from the same old same old? Canada and the entire world needs to change if we are going to survive, we have to get our greatest engineers and thinkers away from Apple, Google and Facebook and working at saving this planet and maybe humanity. That isn’t going to be done be voting NDP, Liberal or Conservative. It’s going to take something more. This election we may not have a choice, with luck we will in the future.

Things are changing.