One piece at a time

This week I've been back to work on the house at 702 Main Street.  Originally, this was the house RiVA was fixing up to be a community arts centre.  A couple of years ago the Board decided not proceed with this project - it is a gigantic mountain to climb, no doubt about it.  Since then, our "Centre for Culture and Creativity" business has reached an agreement with the owners to fix up the house with the plan of eventually relocating our teaching there (along with a rental office, public art gallery and an apartment).  It's still a gigantic mountain to climb.

This week I have been arriving early in the morning to continue with the demolition and cleaning.  We had a pretty extensive meeting at Town Hall yesterday and got some detailled information about what it's going to take for us to get to the next step - approval of our development plan and getting a building permit.

We are undertaking this project because we have a vision for the house and the important role it can play in our community.  Right now there is no dedicated space in Woodstock for people to experience visual art, live music and to access educational programs and artistic resources.

I have always been interested in making change - not for the sake of change, but so that our communities better meet the needs of our citizens, and so that everybody who would like to make a contribution is enabled to do so.  Today as I was trucking up and down the stairs, I realized exactly how difficult that is going to be - with a plethora of rules we are faced with.  I am not complaining - I am determined that this project will prevail.  It may take far longer than I care to think about, and it may require some serious sacrifices on my part, but I think it's tremendously important for our community to have a place for people to develop themselves artistically and to experience a caring community.

Women of note

When I go to gigs or music events, I do a count of women on the stand.  I can't help it, I am curious to see how many of my fellow female musicians are singing or playing in public.  As this article about women writers shows, we are vastly outnumbered by men in the public eye.  

 

The numbers for women seeking political office are similar - at least in NB and Canada.  In Rwanda, female parliamentarians are more than 50%, and some of the Nordic democracies have reached gender parity).  But I digress....

We attended the East Coast Music Week this weekend.  While the men are still outnumbering the women, I did see a number of female musicians on the up-and-up.  Check them out: Breagh McKinnon (Cape Breton), the Hay Babies, Zwerg (female bassist, yes!), and not to be overlooked, Carmen Townsend.  

These are only a few females among many, of course, but it is encouraging to see the ladies out there rockin' and croonin' and groovin'.  Our Dooryard applicants are over 50% female so that's pretty cool as well.  

The rural imagination

Everyone knows the 21st century will be an urban century.  People have been leaving farms and countryside in a steady stream since the Industrial Revolution began.  Nobody seems to have any real vision for what it means to be rural - especially not government policy-makers.  It makes me wonder if that's because the people who make policy come from sub-urban and urban backgrounds . . .but,  the idea that people can live a fulfilling live in the country (or a very small town where most people are on a first-name / kinship basis) seems to be at odds with today's society.

I grew up in the country.  I still miss it - I miss the smell of the air, the rhythm of the seasons, the woodsmoke (the wood heat!!), cold brooks, big stars, earthy gardens and silence so thick you can drink it in.  And I used to bike 2 kms on fall and spring mornings to get to Debec Elementary School, where my extended and immediate family have attended since it began in the 1960's.

Soon DES is closing, and with it another chapter of rural life - along with the passenger trains, the barn raisings, the end of horsepower and the blacksmith, and locally-raised food.  I know the 21st century will be a liberating one in many ways - notably for women and the LGBT community worldwide - but I also wish little Debec Elementary had a place in that century.  I owe it a lot.

Okay, tough guy, now get back to work

Here's a great article about why we have to get back to the 40-hour workweek.  It's worth reading in its entirety, especially if you are the kind of person who a.) thinks that working longer hours means more productivity, or b.) that people who don't work more than 40 hours are lazy c.) feels burnout and notices that it's taking longer than you thought to recover.

One of the most interesting points: people who do manual or industrial jobs can be productive for up to 8 hours a day.  People who are 'knowledge workers" - ie. people who sit in front of a screen, or who are constantly reading and calculating, would be better off sticking with 6 hours daily.

Variety is the spice of life, I say.

How many can you take 'for the team' ?

Sure, we all take one or two from time to time.  But some of us have a problem balancing self-care and time out with the endless lists and demands.  If you're part of a 'movement' of any kinds - arts advocacy, anti-poverty, environmentalism, you know how easy it is to do too much.

A Meditation for Valentine's Day

"To love is, first of all, to accept ourselves as we are"  Thich Nhat Hanh

Regardless of whether your age or marital status or even if you think Valentine's day is a big pile of hooey, here is a beautiful meditation you can do to practice metta (loving kindness) every day.

Sit still, calm your body and your breathing and recite the meditation to yourself.  Sitting still, you're not too preoccupied with other matters, so you can look deeply at yourself as you are, cultivate your love for yourself, and determine the best ways to express this love in the world.

May I be peaceful, happy and light in body and spirit.


May I be safe and free from injury.


May I be free from anger, afflictions, fear and anxiety.


When you have done this, meditating on yourself, you can repeat it, take out the "I" and substitute someone else - your partner, your family members, your colleagues or anyone.  Spread the love, no purchase required.

What to do when you find out your farmer is retiring

Sheesh.  We just got rolling with Stu and Nancy and their awesome farming and food delivery service.  But it seems Stu's back isn't well so they're retiring from the delivery aspect of the business later this spring.  Talk about a panic when I found that out - I've just got in the habit of re-thinking my purchases around what they can provide.

Luckily, at the wonderful Youth Entrepreneurship Showcase this weekend (hosted by Falls Brook Centre) we met the Livingstones, who have a farm in Pembroke and are doing a weekly food box from June until November.  You should consider getting food there too - here is their website.

It is encouraging to see a sustainable family farm like this setting up around here.  We need more wholesome food grown by people who care about health and the land.  Stu has certainly spent his lifetime in Carleton County trying to encourage this sort of thinking.  Stop by the Speerville Mill website sometime and read the story of how they got started.  Kinda reminds me of a plucky little arts festival I know (not to mention the story of the founding of the Carleton County Historical Society).  Thanks goodness for good people and good food.  I don't want to imagine a world without them.

It's not what they say, it's how they say it.

We saw our third play of 2012 last night, a UNB production of Michel Tremblay's "Bonjour, la, Bonjour."  I've seen three of Tremblay's plays now and I really like them.  He writes primarily about working-class francophones, which aren't too far from the working-class anglophones that constitutes 95% of my extended family.  What could contain more 'drama' than family, youth, identity, and intimacy?


A few years back at Mount A., I saw "Messe solennelle pour une pleine lune d'ete," (Solemn Mass for a Full  Moon Summer) and now that I look back on it, the characters perched on Montreal balconies in the heat of summer probably inspired my fascination with that city.


The Mount A. production was in French, and after seeing two subsequent Tremblay plays in English (the other was a TNB Production "For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again"), I will try to see more Tremblay productions in the language they were composed in. Although my French is far from perfect, you can surmise a lot from watching good actors even if you don't get every word. 


And words are important in these plays - Tremblay is known for introducing vernacular Quebecois French joual to the stage - it's analogous to the outback type of "Dooryard" words and phrases we have here in Western NB.  And the characters are defined as much by the way the speak and not just what they say.  As someone who has taken her 'county' slang to wine and cheese receptions and scholarship interviews, I can tell you that how you say 'er really does have some import (wink, wink).


I guess it just goes to show that "English" or "French" are very nebulous ideas in some ways - whose English (London, Caribbean, Carleton County, Mumbai) do we really speak?  I will never forget the story my Acadienne friend told me about her trip to France.  She showed up speaking French, mais oui, only to have French noses turn up at her unrefined accent.  I think she was back on the plane to 'the New World" within days, but I digress.


So, speaking of English and French, next week we're off to - where else? - Mount A! to see Alex Fancy's Tintamarre team present "Camp."  Students help Fancy write these bilingual productions, so it will be interesting to see what they've come up with.  We're also going to see a wonderful friend present a vocal recital in the hall where we studied (and enjoyed) so many excellent performers during our wonderful student days.  Felicitations, bravo and congratulations Jessica!