Feb 09 2012
The City of Nelson is going to refurbish Cottonwood Creek just above and below the bridge at the 4-way stop on Baker. They have hired Thomas Loh to design it. Here is my video of Thomas explaining his plans. You can read the rest of my story about this in The Nelson Daily.
Feb 07 2012
Photo source: Sean MacEntee, Flickr, Creative Commons
Will European companies be allowed to bid on Nelson City Council’s contracts for construction or procurements? Will this hamper the city’s ability to buy locally? The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement between Canada and Europe is heading us in that direction.
The matter was brought before Nelson City Council this week by the local chapter of the Council of Canadians, who asked Council to ask the provincial and federal government to exempt municipalities from the agreement.
I have just written an article outlining Nelson City Council’s approach to this, and you can read it at The Nelson Daily.
Jan 14 2012
One of the pitfalls of getting older is social and intellectual isolation. Often it happens after retirement when we lose our work connections. Sometimes the death of a spouse is the cause. Or, if we get physically or mentally frailer, we don’t have the confidence or the patience we once had, so we stay home.
Photo by Marcin Kempski
Click here to listen to Keep Learning, Keep Connecting, episode 10 of Old Growth, my radio series about life after 65. (Scroll down to episode 10)
Learning about everything
The 100 members of the Learning in Retirement Group in Nelson set learning tasks for the group– learn about geology, photography, healthy aging, aquatic fitness, writing and publishing– and they go out and find someone to learn it from. They take field trips, making sure they go on a bus rather than in cars because it’s more fun that way.
Pursuing social connection
Social connection is part of the point. The four members of the group I interviewed for this show– Judy Biggin, Marilyn Pollard, Roger Oliver, and Phyllis Dale– all talked about how they had made so many new friends. They are clear that social connectedness is a social determinant of health, and they are enthusiastically pursuing connection.
Activism and excitement
They are activists too. They discuss their attempts to get more seniors programs at the pool in Nelson and to get better sidewalk maintenance in the winter.
There is a real sense of excitement in this group, and I hope this episode of the show conveys that.
Tune in
Click here to listen to the podcast of this episode of Old Growth (scroll down to Episode 10).
For a complete list and descriptions of all Old Growth shows, click here.
I produced the eleven episodes of Old Growth for Kootenay Co-op Radio on a New Horizons for Seniors grant in the fall of 2011.
Jan 05 2012
Last summer my friends Lynn Shervill and Sheila Peters were in Kelowna so I visited them for a couple of days.
Say the Names brings stories from the people who live in the towns and travel the rivers and lakes situated along the proposed route of the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline project in British Columbia.
Sheila Peters (Photo by Pat Moss)
Lynn and Sheila lived in Smithers when I did in the 70/80s, and they still do. Sheila has a blog about the Enbridge pipeline called Say the Names. The quotes here are from there.
Al Purdy wrote a wonderful poem called “Say the names say the names” which celebrates the names of Canadian rivers – Tulameen, Kleena Kleene, Similkameen, Nahanni, Kluane and on and on in a celebratory song.
The visit in Kelowna was the first time we had seen each other in about maybe 10 years. We were friends in the Bulkley Valley when their two boys, Daniel and Michael who are men now, and mine, Patrick who is now 27, were born.
Enbridge is planning to build a dual pipeline that will carry bitumen and condensate across hundreds of waterways between Edmonton and Kitimat. Some of these waterways are rivers like the Parsnip (or what’s left of it), the Nechako, the Morice and others are smaller creeks whose names are often known only to the folks who live along their banks or who fish in their shadows or who bend to wash or drink as they cross paths.
We were young parents of young children together. Looking back, and looking now on the street at young parents hanging out with each other and their young children, that’s an activity shared that is even more precious than I realized at the time, or than the young parents now realize perhaps.
Bill Metcalfe and Lynn Shervill 2011 (Photo by Sheila Peters)
I want to collect the names of these rivers and creeks, to collect your stories, your poems, your songs so we can collectively give voice to the land living under the line Enbridge plans to draw.
We lived those years in the territory that Enbridge will be crossing. My son was born and lived his first couple of years a stone’s throw from Driftwood Creek just above its mouth on the Bulkley River.
You can read what others have written, check out the pipeline’s route via the link to the pipeline map, post your own comments, or email me (sheilapeters900@gmail.com) your own stories and I’ll post them for you. The copyright remains with you.
Lynn and Sheila lived beside Driftwood Creek too, a few miles upstream, and still do, by the fossil beds, on the road to the Babine Mountains where we hiked and they still do. They publish non-fiction, fiction, poetry, photography, and painting from the Northwest at Creekstone Press.
You’re invited to say something to them or me or Enbridge below. No login required, just start writing.
Jan 01 2012
Ed Natyshak at the Fat Tire Festival 2009, Nelson, B.C.
“Don’t stop moving, just because you think you’re tired!”
That’s Ed Natyshak yelling at the people in his fitness class. It’s his first line in my 5-minute documentary about his classes that aired on CBC radio recently. Click here to hear a podcast.
Ed’s are the most insanely tough fitness classes anywhere, taught from his wheelchair.
Gruelling and inspiring
I first heard about Ed’s Sasquatch Performance Training classes a while back when my friend Julia had just come out of her first one moments before, and she wasn’t looking so good. She managed to mumble something about hell. Just been there and back, something like that. But Julia is young, strong, and fit, so I wasn’t worried. Then I kept hearing, from Julia and others, about how gruelling and inspiring Ed’s classes were.
Paralyzed by a bike accident
So I phoned Ed and proposed this radio piece. I have known him since before he became a quadriplegic in a mountain bike accident in 2005. I used to go to the Summit Gym, which Ed co-owned back then. He was a biker, rafter, skier, you name it. I knew him as a big, brash, outgoing, stoked, physically strong, energetic, community-oriented, positive guy. And guess what. He still is. After getting paralyzed from the chest down and going through years of rehab and facing the rest of his life in a wheelchair, his personality has basically not changed. Ed said a big loud yes to the idea of the radio piece.
Non-stop and action-packed
Then I pitched it to Radio West, the new CBC weekday afternoon show out of Kelowna. Producer Kathryn Marlow said yes, but she put a time constraint on me: max five minutes. So I had to make the piece as fast and action-packed as one of Ed’s classes.
Shouting them on
The first one I attended (not as a participant!), a men’s class, really scared me, I’m not kidding. Part way through the half-hour class I was worried. How will these guys survive this? Has Ed gone completely crazy? Maybe I was imagining myself trying to survive it. It was non-stop, stopwatch-timed, and unforgivingly relentless, with Ed shouting them on, driven by very loud rock music.
Don’t stop, don’t wait, don’t ask questions, don’t think about the past, just drive forward. That’s his approach, with an underpinning of planned exercise routines he says are based on solid science.
Kootenay girls go to the top
The second class I attended, a women’s class, was the same way but it didn’t freak me out as much. I’d become acclimatized to the intensity. After it was over I interviewed the group of strong, exhilarated women about their view of Ed’s uncompromising style. I guess they are the girls Ed was shouting about during the class. “Kootenay girls go to the top of the mountain! They go right to the top! They don’t let up! Not for a second!”
You’ll enjoy hearing them talk about how they think Ed is the greatest and that they don’t think of him as paralyzed. They tell is that if a guy in a wheelchair who used to be a world-class athlete is urging you to do more, why wouldn’t you push harder than you thought was possible?
Please comment below on this post or the podcast. You don’t have to log in or anything, just start writing.
Dec 08 2011
Samara Nicoll and I are the mentors, hosts, teachers, guides… (what are we exactly, Samara?) in the Literary Lounge at SelfDesign High. We’re there online to help SDH learners in English 11 and 12 with their writing. It might be remedial (where students need technical help with the basics) or inpirational (helping writers find their voice). Or anything in between.
We started recently and have already been working with a few students who obviously love writing and are good at it. We don’t mark them, grade them or act like teachers. We give them pointers on what they could do (or not do) to make their writing even better.
Samara and I are still working on the design and content of our home page. (It’s within the SDH online platform, so non-students can’t see it.)
And not only that, but I am working as a substitute mentor for a group of online English 12 students for a couple of months. I like it!
Here’s a video Samara and I made about the Literary Lounge.
Oct 12 2011
There are some things about getting old that have no bright side that I can find. One of them is the possibility of getting Alzheimer’s or some other form of dementia.
Source: miss-brit, Flickr, Creative Commons
But it is consoling to see people deal with a family member’s Alzheimer’s really well. Like Cal and Loree Renwick’s journey through the late Maurice Renwick’s illness. The Renwick father and son are well known to many people in Nelson.
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Update November 19. You can listen to the podcast of this episode here. Scroll down to episode 2 and click the podcast link.
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A Family With a Story
When planning an episode of Old Growth about dementia, my first call was to Linda Hoskin. She provides support for families dealing with Alzheimer’s and other dementia throughout the West Kootenay. I told her it would be good to interview her about some facts, figures and advice about dementia, but it would be much better to interview a family with a story. Did she know anyone who could do that?
She suggested Cal and Loree Renwick. They agreed, and at the microphones they talked about the progression of Cal’s father’s illness and how they cared for him along the way. Linda occasionally joined the discussion with the perspective of one who has worked with many families in similar tragedies.
Suffused With Kindness
I’m not going to go into detail here— you’ll have to listen to the show— but their experience sounded to me like a textbook on how to do it right. Textbook is the wrong word though, because the show is suffused with Cal and Loree’s compassion and kindness. My guess is that that they found some of that while caring for Maurice, and some of it they already possessed.
On the Radio
Old Growth is a series of ten radio shows about getting old, funded by a New Horizons for Seniors grant. They will be aired on Kootenay Co-op Radio starting in November, but the dates have not been decided yet. Podcasts will be available afterwards. The first two episodes, The Courage to Get Old and My Art is Like Coming Home, have been described in earlier posts here.
Old Growth Forest (Source: wackybadger, Flickr, Creative Commons)
Mar 21 2011
A friend of mine said he listened to my music show Giant Steps on Kootenay Co-op Radio. He said the music was “out there” and he had a hard time listening to it.
An unfamiliar path
Actually as far as jazz goes the music I played is not really out there. You can easily find stuff that makes Vijay Iyer and Darcy James Argue and the Claudia Quintet (all of whom I played on that show) sound tame.
But I know what he means. The music does not follow the beaten path. The beaten track is Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue or any other kind of jazz that follows rhythmic or harmonic patterns that are familiar. On the beaten path, you can relax. On an unfamiliar one you have to pay attention to everything all the time, and you have to figure out whether or not you really want to be there at all.
Living not dead
I love Kind of Blue and Motown and Pink Floyd and the Beatles and the blues and Vivaldi, but I don’t listen to them. I am not really into musical nostalgia. I like listening to new artists that my daughters introduce me to, and to jazz players who are actually living, not dead, and who are respectfully and excitedly moving ahead of tradition.
Many people think the old music of the old days (50s, 60s, 70s, take your pick) was better, but I think they are wrong. The quality and creativity in all areas of music these days is stunning.
Attracted
In at least one genre I am trying to demonstrate this on my show. But to hear it and decide whether you like it or not you have to be attracted to unfamiliar paths.
The thing is, you don’t have to be. I don’t mind if you aren’t. I’m just explaining what my show is about.
3-4 pm Mondays.
Music (Photo by Laura Metcalfe)
Mar 19 2011
I went to Blackberry Wood at the Royal last night. In Japan, they are having a tough time controlling the fire at the nuclear reactors.
Percussion
Blackberry Wood was pretty good but one member was excellent–a young women who had a table-full of little percussion instruments: shakers, scrapers, a little xylophone thing, etc. She was little and quick, with lightning-fast reflexes like an athlete, and she gave some real speed to the band. Before you realized she was doing one thing she was doing something else, and then moving on to something else, all instant, ahead of everything, on it.
Risking their lives
The lead singer said, “Here’s to all the people in Japan who are risking their lives to save the world!”
Right, we don’t think much about those people, the ones trying to put that nuclear fire out. We just think about ourselves, and we worry and blame, and feel sorry for the victims.
Honing
So let’s hone our reflexes like that percussionist and get more concentrated. Get quicker but more meditative. If we are going to have nuclear reactors around (and we will– calls to get rid of them will not convince the Chinese or the Americans) we will need to become nuclear reactors ourselves, of the spirit and soul. And this will include knowing about nuclear reactors, and about Libya, and about the oil sands (etc.), in detail.
The percussionist girl was fun because she was wearing a mask that made her performance look like a little circus.
Mar 17 2011
A note to Eileen Pearkes
Hi Eileen. Thanks for lending me Jon Turk’s The Raven’s Gift. When we heard Jon speak at Oxygen I was about half way through and I have just finished reading it now.
Reading the second half knowing what an animated and uninhibited story teller he is really changed the reading experience. I kept visualizing those physical swoops and huge gestures. In person he reminded me of a jazz musician a bit– it seemed like sometimes he would start a sentence having no idea where it was going, but trusting it to go somewhere. And it always did. It’s interesting how his writing style is much more conventional than his storytelling antics. I guess that his because he is such a physical person, his whole life given to physical exertion and precision in his various adventures, and he carries that physicality in to his story performance.
I was constantly amazed by his lack of fear of incredibly remote and downright threatening places, like on those huge treks across the Russian tundra.
And as for the shaman, well, I was very touched by his love for her. This book is the most convincing argument for some other spirit world and the availability of magic I have seen for a while.
So thank you for bringing that remarkable man to town, for lending me the book and for writing that guest blog on Arts in the Kootenays, which I recommend that people read if they have not already.
Source: bitmask, Flickr, Creative Commons
