From Books to Beers and Stacks to Snacks (Leap Year Edition)
"You Work An Extra Day This Year - Why Not Celebrate The Fact?"
Come to O'Hanlon's at 1947 Scarth St. -- we'll start at 5 pm on Friday February 29.
RSVP on the event page. Spread the word far and wide -- especially to others who are not on Facebook. The event page has RSVP instructions for those who are not on Facebook or you can post to the wall to let us know you are bringing more people.
Hope to see you there!
Your hosts, Julie Arie, Jason Hammond and Julie McKenna
Borders and Lulu.com have teamed up to create Border's Lifestyle,
a new service allowing anyone to design and publish their own book and
have it distributed through Borders stores, even including your own
book tour and in-store readings. Is it, according to Ben Vershbow of if:book, “bringing vanity publishing to a whole new level of fantasy role-playing,” or a real innovation in book distribution, bypassing the professional gatekeepers?
(via MetaFilter which, as always, has lots of good comments worth reading about self-publishing, print-on-demand services and the libraries' role in all of this)
Better World Books – Recently recognized by Fast Company as one of the best for-profit social enterprises of 2008,
they offer a wide selection of new and used books with free shipping in
the US and less than $3 shipping elsewhere. A portion of the profits go
to fund literacy organizations such as Room to Read and WorldFund, and their shipping is carbon-neutral. The only thing missing is the ability to import Amazon wishlists.
Like many places, Saskatchewan has numerous towns with unique names – for example, Moose Jaw, Elbow, Eyebrow, Climax (which is just down the road from Conquest)! Even my own hometown of Indian Head has provided the occasional laugh for the less politically correct among us (although the true reason it has that name is no laughing matter.)
But there is one town that tops them all for “huhzawhat?” reactions in our province. In fact, I know a guy who dated a girl for six months before she admitted to being from this town and then, only because they were getting engaged and she realised she'd no longer be able to only arrange meetings with her family in Regina, in his hometown, at Moose Jaw and other neutral locations. The town? Big Beaver, Saskatchewan.
I was in a nearby town today and had a couple hours for my lunch break so decided to take a little tour to see the Big Muddy badlands and then Big Beaver.
It's a town of 21 people, most famous for an old-fashioned prairie general store named Aust's with the slogan “If We Don't Have It, You Don't Need It”. They also sell cute t-shirts showing Canada's national animal with the words, “Big Beaver, SK” on it (which you can buy from the web site I linked to above.) I'm not saying whether I bought one for Pace or not but I do think he's going to be quite the hit at playtime in a couple years!
If you're an English major, you might see some great and deep symbolism in the fact that we took Pace to the womb-like waters of a mineral spa almost exactly nine months to the day after he was born. Today is his nine-month birthday and it's almost unbelievable how quickly the time has flown – and I know it will only go faster.
Did I ever share that cool explanation of why time seems to go faster as you're older? It's not just your mind playing tricks on you – there's a logical explanation. When you're 10, a year is 1/10th of your entire lifetime. When you're 20, a year is 1/20th. When you're 50, it's 1/50th and so on. So yes, each year that you're alive will seem shorter because it is a smaller fraction of your overall time being alive relatively speaking. Kinda cool (and kinda depressing.)
But anyhew, Pace was nine months in gestation and now he's nine months old and I'm not sure what that means but I'm sure it means something. Here's a shot of Pace, Shea and I at the Mineral Spa.
(Note to self: always remember to change the batteries in the digital camera or else the only shot you might be lucky enough to get is one of your son rubbing his eyes instead of smiling happily at the camera.)
TechCrunch recently had a story about a new study which found that lower-income people tend to prefer Yahoo! and higher-income people prefer Google.
(Shea's reading over my shoulder and goes “That's funny – I didn't know anyone preferred Yahoo!”)
Anyhow, that made me think about the “Everything You Wanted To Know About the Internet (But Were Afraid To Ask)” public sessions I've been giving in rural libraries for the last month and a half. I introduce my presentation as “a guided tour of the Internet's most useful and most popular web sites” and tend to have an audience of very new, inexperienced Internet users who are mostly online for e-mail and some basic web surfing. In very general terms, they've heard of Google, Hotmail, Ebay (but definitely haven't bought or sold anything online!) and occasionally Facebook but that's about it.
And to be fair, “rural villages” are almost perfectly split between using Yahoo! and Google according to the TechCrunch article while “small towns” skew towards Google. It's places like “struggling societies”, “blue collar backbone” and “remote America” that spend more time with Yahoo! (Just don't ask me what those different categories mean!)
During the presentation, I also do a section on sites that are useful
for our everyday life in the province – sites for maps, phone books,
local news, etc. and a plug for the library's web site and all it has to offer.
But for the bulk of the presentation, these are the sites I talk about (with related subjects I cover in brackets.)
Amazon.com (buying online and e-commerce) Download.com (viruses and keeping your computer secure) Ebay.com (how sites like Amazon and Ebay among others have leveled the playing field for people in rural areas who are now able to buy (and sell) a massive range of products that used to require special trips to the nearest major centre to obtain in the past) Facebook.com (online privacy) Flickr.com (your digital footprint) Google.com (basic tips to improve your searches, different features of Google beyond search) Hotmail.com Wikipedia.org YouTube.com
This is also especially ironic given my recent discovery that only three of the four major search engines find my blog – Yahoo! is one that does along with MSN Live and Ask.com. Google is the only one that doesn't!
I've only got a couple weeks left but are there any other sites that you'd introduce to an audience of beginning Internet users (er, other than Yahoo? )
I best knew Willie as the sideman for Fred Eaglesmith whose band he played in for over 22 years. But Willie was also widely known for being part of an early wave of Canadian folk music along with artists like Bruce Cockburn and Stan Rogers. Although he never achieved their level of acclaim, his mentorship of younger folk artists was widely respected. In fact, a super-group consisting of Tom Wilson, Colin Linden and Stephen Fearing named themselves “Blackie and the Rodeo Kings” after a Willie P. Bennett song.
Here's a clip of Willie P. solo at the Fred Eaglesmith Southern Picnic in Alymer, ON that Shea and I were lucky enough to attend while we were in London a couple years ago…
After his first heart attack last year, a benefit concert was held in his hometown of Peterborough and many former and current members of the Fred Eaglesmith band were able to join Fred and Willie on stage for the encore…
Finally, I wasn't able to find a clip of the Fred song, “Codeine” where Willie especially shone with his mandolin playing and harmony vocals. But here's Fred doing one of his favourite end-of-show songs, “49 Tons” where every band member gets a brief introduction and solo (2:20 for the start of the hilarious intro of Willie or 3:40 if you just want to hear Willie play)…
[Edit: a friend from Ontario posted this tribute video…]
The vocal-only track of David Lee Roth singing “Running With The Devil” has been making the rounds of the Internets but this is the funniest mash-up I've seen – what if Diamond Dave took his act to the American Idol audition room?
(I have no problem using the “humour” tag on this post but am somewhat reluctant to use the “music” one! )
When I was in undergrad, I was a regular at the Bushwakker Brew Pub for Robbie Burns Night each January. Every year, they had a draw to go with the celebrations and on one particularly memorable occasion, I happened to win a free keg. Since the next major holiday after Robbie Burns Night (barring Groundhog Day of course) is Valentine's Day, I thought it would be a good idea to have a party, invite all my single male and female friends, tap the keg and voila – romance (or at least drunken foolishness) was sure to follow.
The party was a blast (although, in retrospect, probably not as charming for the women who were brave enough to show up as for the men) and ever since, I have always thought of Valentine's Day with the name we used for the party, “Valenkeg's Day”.
Also since then, that slight turn of phrase has helped take the edge off an otherwise insufferable holiday. When you're single, you're made to feel like a leper for not being in a relationship. When you're in a relationship, there is Christmas Consumption level of pressure to buy crap – flowers, chocolates, expensive dinners, tickets to even more expensive shows, etc. to show/express/prove your love.
So have a pint on me and remember, own the holiday or it will own you!
(And in a tribute to grade school when everybody shared the love, I offer a copy of this card to each and everyone of you…)
I know this is “below the fold” in newspaper parlance but here is a list of… WORDS PEOPLE HAVE USED TO DESCRIBE THE TASTE OF BUSHWAKKER'S PALLISER PORTER BEER TO ME Banana Chocolate Cigarette Coffee Dirt Earth Oak Smoke
Borders and Lulu.com have teamed up to create 
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