Category: Community
-
The big recital
It’s been more than a week since Erin played her big local recital. It went very well. She was amazing. The community hall was full: maybe 150 people? Not bad for a community of under a thousand! The concert was a fund-raiser for the Valhalla Fine Arts Society, the organization which among other things backs […]
-
Here and There Slocan
Just a quick note to let you know that Here and There Slocan, our photo blog, is active again. Fiona and I have been taking lots of photos together and for now at least we’re managing a photo a day.
-
Old Cedars
Today we went off to do some rock-climbing and Goddess-Questing. First thing this morning Fiona and I met up with another family with young kids and did a few quick climbs at a rock face half an hour south of us. It was my first roped climbing in 17 years, I think! I did okay […]
-
Day off work
Erin’s day off work is laundry day for her work shirts. The place she works is great. It’s a little café / gallery / gift shop that has great food as well as great staff shirts. It’s at the T-intersection of the two secondary “highways” in town, and gets lots of tourist traffic. But it […]
-
Wolf
Only in a small town can a guy roll in on Monday, visit with a few friends, offer to do a talk on wolves and a visit with his own “pet” wolf, and get a full fifth of the community’s residents out to the event a mere two days later. Standing room only. Fiona took […]
-
A gig
The gig-worthy quartet got a gig. Not just an invitation to provide a 20-minute volunteer set, but a 2-hour job playing in the garden of a small independent gallery during the opening reception of a new exhibition. They were joined for the affair by a wonderful oboe player, a teen who spends part of each […]
-
Gig-worthy quartet
Noah’s quartet played yet again at a community event. Today it was after the big dedication of the “Valhalla Mile” project and before and during the serving of the Happy Birthday Canada cake. The Valhalla Mile dedication brought a couple of hundred people out plus a bunch of politicians and other dignitaries. A mile-long segment […]
-
Historic dad-guy
It’s Canada Day, and Silverton hosts a day-long community celebration. History and heritage are big. Chuck was asked to be one of the blacksmiths demonstrating at the living museum “Fingland Cabin.” They used coal, which was new to him — he normally uses charcoal (made in the shark hole) . They made a lot of […]
-
A School of Common Sense
The comments in response to my post about all-day junior kindergarten got me thinking again about what we could change about our society, our communities, our lifestyles, our institutions and our values to promote Gross Domestic Happiness rather than Gross Domestic Product. As I wrote in my follow-up comment, there’s no simple answer; systemic change […]
-
May Days
May Days is a long-weekend community celebration here. Basically an invitation to the community to come out and play. There are dances, actual sporting events like a bike race and ridiculous events like canoe-jousting, three-legged races and potato sack races, there’s an outdoor market, game tents like fish ponds, carnival food like ice cream, elephant […]
-
Weird facts
For our orchestra concert today I asked all the performers to write down on a cue-card one unusual fact or anecdote about themselves. I then read them aloud in the breaks between numbers and asked people to guess who they belonged to. I like to do something fun like this at all our orchestra concerts […]
-
Car wash
This post is for my friend K____ who always takes Fiona under her wing while Noah and I are busy at quartet rehearsals, sometimes sitting down with her to look through this blog and read and talk about the stuff they find here … and who bugged me about not posting about the bottle drive […]
-
Holiday lights at the Kohan
Every year sometime over the Christmas holidays we load up the big thermos with hot chocolate and head down to the Kohan Reflection Garden late in the evening. The garden is volunteer-maintained — we’re usually part of the spring and fall work-bees — and in December a bunch of stalwart volunteers spend hours putting up […]
-
Community Choir
The camcorder went belly up just minutes before the choir concert so Chuck used his little Kodak EasyShare to shoot this. The light levels aren’t great — you can’t really see Erin at all, for instance (she’s fourth from the right). But you can hear her okay. Her solo kicks in in the second half […]
-
Choir boy
It was the night of the Community Choir Christmas Concert and Noah was singing for the first time. He also wore a tie for the first time. He was a little stressed about the tie thing at first, but eventually decided he quite liked wearing one. He looks pretty smart in it, doesn’t he? The […]