2009 Christmas Letter

Our twelve grandchildren, Aug 21, '09

Bonnie asked me to write a 'short' Christmas letter. I told her I didn't have time to write a short one so a long one will have to do. Rambling aimlessly is one of my special talents. Writing a concisely organized epistle, on the other hand, takes a lot more time, effort and skill - attributes which I have in short supply.

We've had three additions to the Frostad clan since last year's letter; Alexander (Greig and Carrie's fourth and their first boy), Carly (Sid and Scottie's third), and Karl (Jody and Jeremy's third). Bonnie just finished sewing their monogrammed Christmas stockings so we now have 22 hung on the staircase.

Last year I confessed to shedding a tear when Aaron, Jill, Kate, and Duke ended their stay with us to move into the new house they built (luckily their new house is only three minutes away). Kate and I were usually first up in the morning and she would sit quietly on my knee in the dark (it was in the winter) as I read my morning 'paper' on the internet and watched the sun come up over Long Lake.

We will soon experience that same bitter-sweet moment when Jody, Jeremy, Peter, Molly, and Karl move into their new house in Lumsden which they also built themselves. We have enjoyed having them here for the past few months and we will be sad to see them go.

Speaking of new houses - this past year, Greig and Carrie moved into their new house, also in Lumsden. They purchased an RTM (Ready to Move) home and built a basement to put it on. It's located right next to the school in Lumsden; an ideal location. When their new house came down the street on the back of a huge truck I told one of the onlookers they bought it on ebay.

Sid and Scottie are firmly planted in Regina Beach. As testament to this, they added a second story on to their house when Carly arrived so they didn't have to move! So everyone is within a 15 minute drive. Or a better way to put it, we can leave our house and drive by all of our kid's houses and be back home in about 35 minutes! It's awesome.

We started 2009 off last January with a trip to Las Vegas - just Bonnie and me. We've done this a few times now and it's actually quite nice to just be together. We spend so much time with family and friends, which we really like, don't get me wrong, but being together, just the two of us for a few days, is pretty special. We are going again this coming January. We like to take in a few shows. This year we have the Phantom of the Opera booked. Funny thing is, we've never seen it so that should be awesome. And we will probably see the Rat Pack Review again for the umpteenth time. We never tire of it. Four excellent impersonators recreate the legendary Rat Pack show of Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Frank Sinatra, and Joey Bishop. And as an added bonus 'Marilyn Monroe' makes a guest appearance singing a JFK-style happy birthday on the lap of some old geezer she finds in the audience.

In late March we took my mother, Myrtle, on what turned out to be an impromptu 82nd birthday tour, out to the west coast and back. The trip coincided with her birthday so she garnered three birthday cakes along the way! She had been caring for Willy for quite a few years up to that point and when he passed away peacefully in November 2008, at the age of 96, Mom was ready to catch up on a lot of what she had been missing. So off we went to visit as many of her descendants and relatives as we could in a 14 day period. We visited all of my siblings (three sisters) - Dena and most of her family in Camrose, AB, Petrine and most of her family in Barriere (and Vancouver), BC, and then Kristine and her clan in Vancouver and Victoria with bonus visits to my mother's sister, Evelyn and husband, Evelyn's daughter Reanne and family, also on the island, Mom's niece, Geraldine and husband, in Mission, BC, and Mom's brother Sid and family in Medicine Hat, AB.

Mom's only direct descendants we did not visit were her grandsons Michael and Darren and their families in Lethbridge, AB, and Vibank, SK. respectively. We plan to take Mom for a visit to Darren and family this Christmas when she is here. They are only a little over an hour away. And we will have to make plans to visit Michael and family sometime soon.

Mom handled the trip very well and when I asked her the other day where she wanted to go next she said she wanted to do the same trip over again but this time to make sure we included the ones we missed the first time around. Sounds good to me.

Of course one of our yearly highlights is our annual motorcycle trip in August to the Sturgis Rally and Races in South Dakota. This spring we got a new ride; a 2006 Goldwing with low miles in like-new condition. There was nothing wrong with our old Goldwing. It would have surely outlasted us but you only go around once right?

If you aren't familiar with the new Goldwings you would be amazed to see what they put on a top notch touring motorcycle these days. It has factory GPS navigation that talks to you and a stereo you can listen to at highway speeds no problem. However, Bonnie prefers to listen to her own tunes on her iPod headphones and I, the purr of the engine, the whistle of the wind, and occasionally the sound of my own voice belting out a tune. It also has heated seats and handlebars, warm air registers for your feet, and an on-board air compressor that is used to adjust the air suspension as you ride. And there's a dial to adjust the aim of your headlights as you travel (pretty handy, actually). We can literally ride twice as far in a day as we used to and feel better in the process. It's just too cool. Oh, and it's stupid fast.

You might recall from last year's letter that after 6 years of retirement, out of the blue, I was given a contract offer I couldn't refuse. So I began working again - for Magna IV Engineering out of Edmonton on a project up in Fort McMurray. That project came to a premature halt after just a few months when oil prices fell through the floor. So I was back home again.

This summer, after being off for about 6 months, the same company called me up and asked if I'd be interested in heading up the company expansion to Saskatchewan. Sounded good to me so now I work here in good 'ol Saskatchewan. They are such a good company to work for. I call them the WestJet of engineering companies. They have this crazy idea that if you treat your employees well they are productive, they stick around, and everybody wins. And does it ever work. Who knew! I told my boss the other day they may never get rid of me.

Bonnie continues to be herself, replete with boundless energy; especially after she finally found a doctor who cleared up her occasional shortness of breath with the right diagnosis and therapy. She excels, beyond my ability to put into words, in her God-given gifts as a wife, mother and grandmother. Just watching her exhausts me.

Feel free to drop us a line, or better yet, drop in for a visit. We are home most days.

Pete and Bonnie Frostad.

This Little Light of Mine

It starts out slow, but stick with it, we get a-rock'n.

You think we could get Tiger to come to Regina Beach

Did you know that some of the high profile golfers get appearance fees to play in certain tournaments? The first time I heard about this was a number of years ago when Greg Norman was paid $1 million to play in some out-of-the-way tournament. He got the money just for showing up regardless of how he played. Where do I sign up for this!

This week Tiger is playing in Australia for the first time in 11 years. The Golf Channel website reported yesterday that Australia is paying him $3 million dollars just to step off his private jet onto Australian soil! And to top it off, the Australian government is paying half the fee.

Some people might be appalled by this. You've heard the rhetoric before, "professional athletes make too much money". It is true that there are much better causes than paying Tiger to hang out at your golf club. Just think about how many hungry people you could feed with $3 million.

But check this out. In The Golf Channel article, John Brumby, premier of the Australian province of Victoria, where the tournament is being played, stated that Tiger's appearance would have an economic return of at least $19 million. If your ultimate goal is to 'do good', you can do a lot more good with $19 million than you can with 3. What Australia does with the money is anybodies guess but if I had $3 million and could turn it into 19 just by having some guy step off a plane, I'd do it to.

And just a side note. Tiger won't just take the 3 million bones and burn it in his fireplace. He puts a lot of his money into the Tiger Woods Foundation which helps underprivileged kids. The rest of his earnings, now estimated by Forbes to be over $1 billion since he turned professional, are in the system somewhere generating economic activity which creates jobs which, you guessed it, feeds the hungry.

So take a pill, folks, and enjoy the tournament.

I wonder if we could entice him to come to Regina Beach, hehe.

Here's a little of the real Obama

I gotta be honest, I'm pretty tired of everyone bashing the incumbent president. God knows we had 8 years of Bush bashing and I'd like to have a break from all this negative stuff for a while. But I just checked out Obama's comments today about the Ft. Hood shootings. His comments last about 2 minutes and 35 seconds.

The first time I viewed the video things seemed to be going OK and then he starts repeating himself and saying 'ahh' a lot and basically not making a lot of sense. So I look at it again and, sure enough, the first minute and 45 seconds (I hovered over the progress bar to get the time) he's reading from some prepared notes and then, like a shot, you can tell when he gets to the end of his notes and decides to add a few closing remarks off the top of his head. He still glances down occasionally but it's likely just out of habit because its obvious he's putting his own sentences together. The result is dumbfounding.

And I don't mean this in a partisan way. I think one of the greatest speakers off-the-cuff I've ever seen is Bill Clinton. Heck, I can't think of anybody as bad as Obama. George W. had his has gaffs, for sure, but this is way out there. As far as thinking on your feet, Palin, for God sake, puts Obama to shame, and that's saying something.

Check it out for yourself.

I wish I was a better writer . . .

Man, there are a lot of good writers out there. Makes me wonder what I'm doing here.

One of my favourite writers is Roger Ebert. It helps that I usually agree with his movie reviews.

Attaining Eberts's writing ability is beyond my reach but what intimidates me are the Joe Blows who contribute to his blog. I'd be happy to be able to write like some of them. Check out this entry, reproduced below, by CanInDeed on September 25, 2009 3:03 PM.

And I like Ebert's response at the bottom . . .

CanInDeed writes:

Homer the Philosopher,

Tuesday

11:15 am : One should not end one’s life prematurely, for life is like a really bad movie, and ending it is like walking out before one knows its ending. [note to self, revise: of course we know the ending, we die.] This is the wisest thing I’ve said all day, but I woke up at 11:00 am, so things might improve.

2:15 pm : Still sitting at table, thinking.

4:10 pm : Took my weekly shower. The soap smelled like roses. Always stop and smell the roses. That sounds familiar, possible plagarism.

5:55 pm : Had epiphany: Life is like a box of crayons, if your parents buy you the really small box, you know you’re screwed from the outset. [note to self, revise: this has to tie in somehow with life-affirming stuff.]

7:25 pm : Uh, well, life is . . . Lost my train of thought.

9:30 pm : Regained my train of thought. The idea sucked.

11:15 pm : [note to self, don’t give up the day job.]

Wednesday

2:15 am : Just realized I don’t have day job.

3:15 am : Just heard the rat trap snap. Now where’s that cookbook?

1:30 pm : Slept late after my first decent meal in days.

3:45 pm : Getting bored. Must go for monthly walk around the block.

4:00 pm : Back from walk. Exhausted

6:66 pm : Just realized there is no 6:66 pm

8:10 pm : You talkin’ to me, ‘cause I don’t see anybody else in this room.

9:00 pm : Answered rap on door. Someone left a box of puppies. Now where’s that cookbook?

11:30 pm : Just shared a nice meal with the puppies. Thank God for dumpsters.

12:00 am : A new day begins. Smile. Life is like a box of puppies, you never know when things are going to get better, just that they will.

Ebert: Nothing eventful happened Thursday?

So you're saying there's a chance . . .

You think Lloyd Christmas had some long odds? Wait till you hear this . . .

No doubt you've heard the scientific theory about how life began on Earth? Supposedly a long time ago in a warm pond a chance alignment of amino acids created the first primitive bacteria.

Well I'm hear to tell you that there's trouble in Evolution City. We evolved, for sure. The fossil record is there for all to see, but how life began and subsequently evolved is being looked at in a whole new light these days.

In May of 2001 Chandra Wickamasinghe and Fred Hoyle co-authored an article on the Action Science website entitled Evolution of Life: A Cosmic Perspective. As an introduction to the problems being encountered by evolution theory, I want to highlight section 12 of that article where the authors calculated the odds of amino acid molecules randomly lining up to form that first primitive bacteria. The odds are 1 in 10^500,000! Those are unimaginably low odds. Forget about Lloyd Christmas. If ever there was absolutely no chance of something happening, this is it.

Now Lloyd wouldn't give up that easy so we won't either. Let's have a look at just how long these odds are. After all, there could be trillions upon trillions of amino acids molecules, in billions and billions of ponds all over the Earth. The odds are long, yes, but over many many years, couldn't it still happen?

Nope, nadda, forget it . . . and I'll do a little example to help you (and Lloyd) see the light:

Assumption 1: let's suppose that the entire Earth's surface is covered in a 100km deep warm pool of amino acid molecules,

Assumption 2: let's take a guess that there are 100 trillion amino acid molecules in each millilitre of liquid (I actually have no idea how many would fit in a millilitre but that should be enough for our purposes),

Assumption 3: the amino acid molecules will be moving around in this warm liquid providing numerous opportunities for just the right alignment to occur. So lets say for each 600,000 amino acid molecule (the approximate number needed for a simple bacteria) they will move into a new position, or 'give it the old college try', about 1 million times a second (again I have no idea how fast these little things move but that should suffice).

Assumption 4: how about we let this soup steep for 50 billion years which is 10 times the approximate age of the Earth.

So what's the odds of this example producing a simple bacteria? The number of 'tries' is about 10⁵³ (I won't bore you with the math). Because of the large difference in magnitude between 10^500,000 and 10⁵³, the resulting odds can be approximated as the ratio of the two yielding 1 in 10^500,000/10⁵³ = 1 in 10^499,947!

Sorry Lloyd, but all those tries don't have any meaningful impact on those long odds.

So if a chance alignment of amino acid molecules is not possible then how did life start and evolve on Earth? I'm putting my money on a theory called Cosmic Ancestry. Cosmic Ancestry states that the genetic material needed for life was already present in the materials that formed Earth and that this material was the source of the beginings of life on Earth. It also states that evolution was driven by this original material as well as continual genetic seeding from microbes carried to Earth by comets. There's a lot of research going on right now to test this theory and the evidence is steadily mounting. Indeed, the theory maintains that this process continues today.

Cosmic Ancestry . . . it's got a nice ring to it doesn't it.

I'll have a lot more to say about this in the days to come.

Cheers.

What does 'black' mean?

Can someone tell me what the term 'black' means. Is this an anthropological term? If so, what does it mean anthropologically?

Obama, who, up to this point, is my most written-about subject, is called America's first black president. Using information from Wikipedia's main entry on Obama; his mother was of mainly English descent, which presumably would mean she was Caucasoid (I'm using anthropology terms here), and his father was Kenyan, which presumably means he was Negroid. Now keep in mind ethnic origin does not at all guarantee racial origin so if anyone has further information about the racial origin of Obama's parents please speak up. (Obama apparently writes a lot about race in his books so if you have copies of any, you could help out here.)

So in today's vernacular, using the above assumptions, Obama is half white. So why is he referred to as 'black'. Wouldn't a more apt description be mixed race or half black and half white?

Another perplexing example is Tiger Woods. He is often referred to as black. In the words of Wikipedia he is 'one-quarter Chinese, one-quarter Thai, one-quarter African American, one-eighth Native American, and one-eighth Dutch'. Again, ethnic origin does not guaratee racial origin so if you have any further racial info about Tiger, please speak up. But using his ethnic origins as a basis, his racial makeup is presumably five-eighth's Mongoloid (that's the Thai, Chinese, and Native American), one-quarter Negroid (African American), and one-eighth Caucasoid (Dutch).

Or in other words, Tiger is one-quarter black. So why do some people call him 'black'.

I believe the currently accepted word for Mongoloid is 'brown'. Since he has more than twice as much brown in him than any other race, why don't people call him 'brown'? Personally I prefer not to call people any colour. To me, Tiger is just Tiger, and he's AWESOME!! But his awesomeness is a topic for another day.

Tiger's wife is Swedish and she certainly appears to be mostly Caucasoid. If so, this would make Tiger's kids one-eighth black. I'm wondering if anyone will refer to them as 'black'.

Why do I care about this? I look forward to the day that a person's colour, that is, their race, is irrelevant, period. We are getting there. I hear less and less references to Tiger being black. He's just Tiger, one of the most amazing people on the planet. And to his credit, I think he has had a hand in that. He never seems to grind the axe on race and it's good on him. Instead he puts his money where is mouth is with the Tiger Woods Foundation and helps countless underpriviledged kids . . . of all races.

Now, ethnicity is fine. I'm proud of my ethnic background as most people are. And the richness of ethnic cultures around the world justs adds to our collective charm. But race? It has no place.

Race has no place. That's my motto for the day.

Cheers.

"Words, words, words, I'm so sick of words . . . "

Today, Barack Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize . . . for his words. I've been reading some of the objections to his win. One overwhelming sentiment is that all he has done, in his short 8 months in office, is make three speeches; one in Germany, one in Cairo, and one at the United Nations.

My belief is that our political leaders have very little direct power, either domestically or internationally. Their power lies in their ability to convince people to think the way they think. How do they do this? If they are good at making speeches, as Obama is, then that would be a very good method.

I can think of a few people who used public speaking to advance their agenda; Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, Martin Luther King's 'I have a Dream' speech, JFK's inaugural address where he says 'Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country'. Even Ronald Regan's 'Gorbechev teared down this wall' speech.

It's a pitty that 'the great communicator' fumbled that line but what he did to inspire and influence not only his friends but his enemies is a matter of record.

By the way, how come Ronald Regan didn't win the Nobel Peace Prize but two notoriously unsuccessful democratic leaders did. I'm thinking of Jimmy Carter, and that idiot who claimed he invented the internet. What was his name? Oh, right, Al Gore. Ronald Regan's contributions to tearing down the Iron Curtain make Carter and Gore's accomplishments, in comparison, laughably insignificant. But I digress.

Can a president win the Nobel Peace Prize by making three speeches? Sure. Our former Canadian Prime Minister, Lester B. Pearson, did it with one; to the UN.

I haven't listened to Obama's three speeches but I'm going to check them out and see if I agree with the Nobel Prize committee. (Do speeches count when you use a teleprompter? Just kidding.)

Obama's speech in Germany

Obama's speech in Cairo

Obama's speech to the UN

Hello world

Thought I'd try some blogging. I like writing and sometimes think I have something to say.

We'll see . . .