Don't get me wrong I love sports and I loved the original idea of the Olympics, but I am beginning to think that the original spirit of the Games has come and gone.

It is no longer the best of each countries amateurs it is now an event where the best that money can buy compete. We also know that on any given day anything can happen and so it isn't even about the best individual or team winning it's the most lucky on that given day. Most sports have a World championship every year or four years and that is usually the true measure of the best individuals or teams than the Olympics. So why doe we get all excited about the Olympics??

Media Hype pure and simple! It is one of the few events where the media has the chance to reach billions instead of millions of consumers. People watch and they buy! People are drawn to the Games and the host city/country gets a shot in the arm with tourist dollars.

But, are the costs worth it??? Just ask Montreal who just finished paying off the bills from the 1976 Games and their pride and joy, the Olympic Stadium, isn't even used by their Canadian Professional Football team! A Billion dollar structure that hosts the occasional concert and whose baseball team left town years ago.

Most hosts lose money on hosting. Here in Canada the 1988 Winter Olympics did make money and I expect the Vancouver games in 2010 may break even. But it is a lot cheaper building stands around the snow and ice venues of the Winter Olympics, than building swimming pools, basketball courts, cycling tracks, and the numerous other venues needed to host a summer games.

With the debt that America is currently in the best thing that happen today was the Olympic committee turning down Chicago's bid. It was good of the President to speak for the bid it is also good that it is going south. I thought all along that it would go south of the equator and it is about time that a non-traditional country got the Games.

Chicago will survive the lost of the Games and they sure will enjoy not having to pay the debt that goes with the Games, and if the Cubs ever win the World Series who will care?
 

I first met Jackie when she entered my Grade 8 social class. She and her parents had just moved from Saskatchewan. She had long black hair, as thin as a rail, and was one of the first girls to wear net stockings. The first thing you saw were her eyes, they twinkled and then you would notice her smile. She was a bright young lady and at the end of the year they advanced her to Grade 10. She loved athletics but was not an athlete so she learned to be a scorekeeper, she would do volleyball, then basketball, and in the spring softball. I made her my official stats girl for the basketball team and she loved traveling with the team. It was on these trips she met her future husband but neither of them knew it at the time. You could always depend on Jackie. Whenever we had a big tournament she organized the scorekeepers and you could be sure that an important part of a tournament would always run smoothly.

Jackie loved kids and my wife quickly made her our official babysitter. Our daughter loved her and was always disappointed if Jackie wasn't our sitter for an evening. Jackie had a way with kids that made them feel safe and happy.

After she graduated she went on to become a legal secretary and I understand it was she that typed up Wayne Gretzky's contract with the Edmonton Oilers. Two years after her graduation we moved a few hundred miles away from her home and I heard she got married to the boy she met in high school. A year or so later there was a knock on the door and there was Jackie and her husband headed for his new job in a city even further north than where we were living. We talked for a few hours, her eyes still sparkled and her smile continued to welcome you to her world.

The years passed and we moved about the province and other parts of North America and we lost touch. Then in the mid 1990's we had heard she had MS. We were wrong, she had suffered a stroke and for a time she was on the edge of death. She could only communicate by blinking and could only move a few fingers of her right hand. But, her husband knew she would recover because that sparkle in her eyes was still there and when she came out of her coma her first question was if Mark Messier still wearing number 11?. After a year the doctors could not believe her progress. She was no longer on a ventilator and she was walking!

For the last 12 or so years she was able to watch her children grow up, start their careers, and families of their own, She and her husband used the time to travel to all the places she had ever wanted to visit and then a week or so ago she knew it was time and she passed peacefully away in her sleep.

They say that children should never die before their parents. Thou I have had students of mine killed while they were still in school and I am sure that others that I have lost touch with have also died this is one of those special people that you meet along the way who has gone too soon.....

We attended Jackie's services today and it took us back to a place we had left 32 years ago. Much had changed and yet much was the same. All those students I taught those many years ago had become old. One of the things I had loved about education was that you got caught in a time warp. Though you aged the students in front of you always stayed the same age. Having moved throughout my career I never really saw my students age, but today they were no longer in their teens they were all in their 50's. It was good to hear of their success and their current dreams. Jackie was there, but it was not the same as her eyes were closed and I knew that the sparkle in her eyes was gone and that was sad and then as the services ended Jackie's three girls, all grown women, began to leave with their mother and there it was, the sparkle, but it had TRIPLED as I saw in each of them that same sparkle!