In an inspired move, the National Hockey League today staged two games outdoors in Edmonton. The temperature was -19 Celsius, and over 57,000 crammed into Commonwealth stadium for the Heritage Classic.

The first game, a 30 minute affair, featured players from the great 1980s Edmonton Oilers teams and the 1970s Montreal Canadiens teams. Edmonton won 2-0. The regular season game between the current versions of those two clubs had Montreal ekeing out a 4-3 win with goalie Jose Theordore looking cooler than anyone in his mask and touque.

There is not a pro hockey player in the world that did not learn a significant amount of his or her game on outdoor rinks in countries like Canada, the USA, Finland, Sweden, Russia or the Czech Republic. Returning hockey to its roots is a fantastic way to re-inject the spirit of the game into the professional league. Suddenly egos go out the window, and the players become kids again and actually play.

If I disappear for a while, it’s because I have become completelyy immersed in this website, Research on Place and Space. Astounding, is perhaps the best word to use to describe it.

No apologies necessary. It’ll be years before I even get to physics!

Run, don’t walk, to the CBC Radio webiste for Ideas where you will discover that this year’s Massey Lectures are by Thomas King on the “The Truth About Stories, a Native Narrative.” for you to savour. The lectures run all this week on Ideas, which can be heard on the web. Possibly they will show up in the archive for a spell too, but I doubt it.

However, as they do every year, House of Anansi has published the book and I picked it up today and read four of the five lectures. They are stunning. Get engaged with this stuff. I’ll post from the book when I have a little more time.

At the Practice of Peace conference last week, there was a lot of laughing going on. There was an offering on laughing as practice, and Alexander Kjerulf offered a session that, from my vantage point through a window, looked like a battle between two sides of hysterical fighters, trying to out-joy each other.

And now comes news from Flemming Funch that an Ethiopian man named Gima Belachew has broken his own laughing record.

The story is quite a read, including this great quote:

I want to draw your attention to a community Open Space unfolding today and tomorrow in Oftringen, Germany and posted online in real-ish time.

I’m back from the Practice of Peace conference on Whidbey Island which featured Harrison Owen and friends and colleagues opening space for peace around the world. Have a read of the proceedings at the conference website.

And lastly I have spent the last two days in Open Space at a forum for Emerging Aboriginal Leaders. The procee4dings from that conference will be posted at the openspaceworld.net wiki site in the next few days.

Phew.