Welcome to the Brandon Sun Community News Edition. And welcome to this column “The Good, the Bad, and the Unsustainable.”

    I enjoyed writing an irregular column for two years in the old Brandon Shopper and News. I look forward to the new publication, and hope you do, too. The new format promises to be inviting to you, the reader. This column will appear regularly, on the last Thursday of the month.

    I have lived in the Brandon area for more than a quarter of a century. How the time has flown! Of course, an important part of living in Westman is the continuity of the Brandon Sun. The Sun is a publication I have read, and occasionally written for, ever since moving here in the 1970s.

    “The Good, the Bad, and the Unsustainable” will focus on daily life, and the ways that our lives connect to the wider world - the big and sometimes little things, which affect our own lives and the world around us; the natural environment and the environment of our community - it's Westman in the world, the world in Westman.

    Recycling, for example, can be a metaphor for life. It has continuity and connection. People have recycled for millennia - ancient peoples in the Bronze Age or Iron Age appreciated the scarcity of resources and the value of conservation.

    Think of that soup can that you opened for lunch. Some of it could have been recycled from metal tools used by people all over the world, over hundreds or even thousands of years. Talk about inter-connection!

    Environmental stewardship is part of the modern expectation of citizenship. And citizenship is one topic I would like to explore in future columns: how do the ways we live affect our neighbourhood, community, region, and beyond? And, yes, unsustainable is the new ugly.

    Looking back, looking forward, looking near, looking far - I plan to be wide ranging. For both you and me, I hope this column can be enlightening, entertaining, and enjoyable. A newspaper column is a journey, not a destination. I’m looking
forward to the journey together.

    In the future, l plan to add a website to be a place for you to comment and also a way to read previous columns.
After reading this, don’t forget to recycle it! The newspaper you recycle today could be part of a new Brandon Sun Community News Edition in just a few weeks.

    See you then!