Cats and cars. These are the things that seem to be pre-occupying Owen Sound City Council these days. There are parallels.

If you have a cat, or two, or seven, it's because you love their company. You like their purr, the cozy way they make you feel, and you just like to know they are there when you open the door.

Cars are similar. We're used to that familiar sound of an idling car, the way we can adjust that blast of warm air on a cold drive home, and the neat lines of cars that wait dependably for their owners to come out of the house or office.

In 2009 you may not be asked to vote on who will represent you at any level.

Municipal elections will be in 2010, provincial in 2011 and federal...well, according to the fixed election legislation that didn't appear to apply this time, it is scheduled for October 15, 2012.

So in this breathing space when everyone is supposed to be doing his or her job rather than auditioning for it, let's think together about what we want our representatives to do for us.

Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound has the distinction of being higher than the national average in at least one thing. Two percent more of us voted in the federal election.

Locally, about half of that 61.9% of eligible voters chose the status quo. Whether that was because of the record of our local representative and belief in what he can do for us in the future, or because of trust in the sitting prime minister to look after our best interests, we'll never know.

Before my editor has a chance to add it to my credentials at the end of this column, I'll tell you up front that I was the campaign manager for the Green Party candidate, Shane Jolley, in the last provincial election. I also worked for Sebastian Ostertag when he ran federally for the NDP. And when I was still too young to vote, I helped in Alan Lawrence's campaign at the Ontario Progressive Conservative leadership convention when Bill Davis won the day.

So all my political cards are now on the table.

When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world. ~John Muir

When we first looked at our house in Owen Sound, one of its appeals was a beautiful green view from the kitchen window. There is a small back lawn and then a steep hill covered in lovely green plants. Most of which, it turned out, were goutweed.

A few years ago, Ted took down an old wooden fence in our back yard and replaced it with a few prickly sticks he assured me were raspberry canes. This summer, instead of waiting for a dry day to scrape and paint, he spends a few minutes each evening picking a handful of red ripe raspberries.

It's made me look at boundaries and fences with a new eye.

“A prophet is not without honour except in his own country.” A rather awkward grammatical construction, but a true statement nonetheless. We've had some true prophets in our community, and their wisdom has been met too often with eye rolling and mutters of “here he goes again”.

A prophet is not so much a person who foretells the future as someone who holds up a mirror to the present situation and lets us draw our own conclusions. When we don't like the reflection, we tend to dismiss the prophet.