Introduction (June 5, 2006)

I have been short of words for most of my adult lifetime, and the most visible feeling of my learning experiences has been the shaking of my head. And I am still shaking my head as I ponder to the divisive language used by our conventional leaders; especially most of our sold out politicians who 'group think' and 'newspeak' for the rest of us.

I have written the learning stories in the period July 1998 to March 2005, while first living in Nipawin, Saskatchewan, and later in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. These stories were published, usually few days later after they were originally written, in the web site Ensign* along with their introduction and related artistic images created by Timothy Shire, Editor of Ensign. Some stories are long, some are very short, but all of them were shaped by my own experiences and by the then current social events. I never expected I would have written some 900 stories in an emotional and temporal predisposition. And at the end of this writing I have discovered that good things may happen without prior knowing as long as we get carried away with our good work, with our good curiosity and with our good feelings. I have written these learning stories one by one, and I realize now that these stories, taken together, convey a meaning which goes beyond the individual stories and which relay a universal message to try to understand the world we live in. In the course of my writing I have been particularly motivated by the indefatigable work of Sheila Steele against 'Saskatchewan Justice' and by the writing of Lorie Terry against  'Tort Reform' in Saskatchewan. My stories would not have the meaning they do without the integrating artistic web work of Ensign's editor Timothy Shire.  It goes without saying that I couldn't have written any story without the support of my loving wife Sharon, and the shared social understanding of my sons James and Eric.

Index of Pages

Each page, with the exception of Page 9,  lists one hundred stories with their introduction and illustration by Timothy Shire:

Page 1 - July 19, 1998 to January 28, 2000

Page 2 - January 30, 2000 to August 7, 2000

Page 3 - August 15, 2000 to January 24, 2001

Page 4 - January 26, 2001 to August 16, 2001

Page 5 - August 17, 2001 to December 17, 2001

Page 6 - December 18, 2001 to April 3, 2002

Page 7 - April 3, 2002 to November 28, 2002

Page 8 - November 30, 2002 to July 16, 2003

Page 9 - July 17, 2003 to March 17, 2005

*The Ensign web site (http://ensign.ftlcomm.com) is also known as the North Central Internet News. The Editor of Ensign is: Timothy W. Shire, Faster Than Light Communication, Box 1776, Tisdale, Saskatchewan, Canada, S0E 1T0, Tel. 306 873 2004