2010! A new year and a new decade!  It was appropriate that 2009 ended with a blue moon.  On New Year’s Eve, as I mulled over the past year, I marveled at the brightness of the full moon on the frozen lake at Saskatchewan Beach.  I recalled Cat Steven’s lyric from a few decades past about being “followed by a moon shadow”.  The moon actually did cast shadows,  wonderfully clear shadows of the tree limbs on the white snow.

While my past may be like moon shadows, 2010 brings with it much brightness and excitement for the future.  Already I have begun my English 110 and look forward to meeting my students each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.  The theme of the course is ‘the journey motif in literature’.  It is good theme for beginning a new decade– a new journey!  The Odyssey is our first book.  I do hope that there are no Polyphemus’s, Charybnis’s, or Scylla’s during the semester journey.

I still have much to learn in the Dean department of my life.  Getting courses firmed up for the Spring/Summer and Fall terms, advertising for sessional positions, sending out contract offers,  all continue to be new experiences.   I will chair the Academic Review Committee today.  That involves deliberations concerning faculty applications for Career Growth Increments, Merit Increments, Tenure, and Promotions!  All very serious ‘stuff’!  I am glad that the committee members have to do the deliberations at this point!  My deliberations only come later.  I am still surprised with the number of items which come through this office for consultation or decisions. But I look forward to new ideas, experiences, and challenges that continue to be just around the corner of my journey into 2010.

A challenge for me during this past week is to respond to the calamity in Haiti.  It is difficult to feel helpless in face of such suffering.  I will do what I can do, offer Mass and prayers for all in Haiti and for those families who mourn, and ache for loved ones.

Frank