Ehlana and Ethan:
Happy 5th Anniversary, Nora and Elliott Roberts!
Before we get to our own news of the day, one of the top world stories is the supposedly-historic peace deal brought to the world by President Trump and the Peace Council that has supposedly solved all problems between the Palestinian people and Israel! The historian twin of our duo doesn’t believe this will prove to be more than more verbal or written promises that will be broken by ‘our’ side at the expense of the Palestinians, but maybe this will actually prove to be an exception; so we’ll wait to see whether any promises are actually kept and hope that the remaining Palestinians will actually be allowed to not just survive in open-air prisons, but actually be helped to thrive and rebuild their lives as they choose.
While we’re covering the world news anyway, the top news out of Ukraine includes stories about claimed Russian missiles landing in Poland and doing no damage with no real proof that it happened at all as opposed to attempts to create false flag outrage against Russia in Poland; major missile and drone attacks throughout Ukraine; and more Ukrainian drone strikes on civilian Russian online retailer warehouse-distribution centers. We won’t suggest that a Russian missile could never go off-course for various reasons, but the ‘evidence’ of craters in fields and debris seems to be as bogus to us as a previous incident was for a supposed drone crash in Poland from a few years ago that had the drone miraculously crash-landing intact on top of a chicken coop! Everyone in the west really needs to remember that Ukraine really wants to draw NATO directly into their war with Russia; and this wouldn’t be the first attempt to help that to happen.
The continuing air attacks into Ukraine and essential shut-down of the Ukrainian Black Sea ports are very serious, and while more focus from the western media goes to the Middle East straits and restricted or stopped shipping there; losing the Ukraine ports could have a serious impact on world food supplies – and not just for the grain products. Ukraine will have serious new issues for transporting military weapons, but also with civilian imports, and without their exports; their economy will be in even-worse shape than it already is and could be devastating by winter.
Thanks to that Peace Council deal announcement, the rest of the problems in the Middle East got moved off the front page for main media outlets and networks, but all of those stresses are still there; and nothing has really changed on the ground. That’s enough for the world news today; so let’s get to our own highlights of the day-so-far.
Calgary is an amazing city – and not just for the Rocky Mountains view. Our fellow Americans might only know Calgary for their annual Calgary Stampede rodeo, and while we couldn’t be here for that event; we did see where that happens while driving around the city today and between work meetings and site visits. We can’t really give the city credit for original names for that venue, since it is simply called Stampede Park and is located on Stampede Trail, but we do know that it is a world-famous rodeo event; and we should mention that the Ridge River Ranch Carters have a connection; since Kristy has trained both horses and stunt riders that have appeared for events at the Stampede. For the record, Kristy has not been here, but that likely has more to do with how busy she is every summer; and she prefers to work from home whenever possible.
We should actually write about Cassie and Michael’s work in at least a bit of detail, and while Alberta – and Calgary – is known for more than the energy and oil industry; that is a major component of their economy; and a major contributor to world and American energy. Canada is the fourth-largest oil producer and exporter, and while the majority of their exports go to the United States for refining, it still accounts for around four percent of daily world usage; around half of the oil imports to our country; and around ten percent of world supply that is exported surplus as opposed to production that is kept by countries for domestic use. That little lesson in energy data isn’t really relevant to the work we are doing in the Calgary area, but we’re including it because it is important; and the work we want to help with here in Alberta isn’t only about the energy needs and economy but also helping to mitigate the serious environmental impacts from the industry. Oil companies and governments are happy to invest in resources extraction, but not so much when there are only costs for fixing the environmental damage they cause in the process. We can’t fix everything, but we can help – and do through family businesses and charities. It would be great if the system was different, but it isn’t; so we’re dealing with reality and that includes partnerships that help to make the money that we spend on those charity environmental projects. As for our sightseeing, other than the cameo views and stops between the work, the only official stop on our itinerary was the Glenbow Museum. We were not there long-enough to come close to checking out everything when they have more than one million objects on-site, but Ethan might have read more of the documents than the curators have in years of study; and the rest of us did the best we could with our own talents for observation and memory!
This update is coming to you between the daytime work and our dinner and play plans for the evening. We’ll be checking out a local cuisine steakhouse for that meal; and we are going to visit the National Music Centre this evening – the home of the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and a display of more than two-thousand musical instruments and artifacts. No, Naomi and the Haunted Harmonies did not get booked to play the music hall tonight, but that would have been fun! ;^)
That’s all we have for today-so-far and we need to get going; so we’re out of here and back to the real life adventures in this amazing city and country!
Until next time, live with love, fellow Magi of the Light!
