a re-print from “The Record”
My mind was swirling after being stopped by the police for speeding; one hundred and six km/hr in a fifty km/hr zone. How could this happen? The ticket is $718 and I’m being docked 10 demerit points! The worst thing is I can’t drive for a week! They impounded my car. Ouch!!
What does it all mean? I couldn’t help but think there is something deep in my life that I am supposed to understand. I sat next to the tow-truck driver while my car was being carried home to Waterloo, feeling depressed and in shock. What if I had hit someone? I felt like a criminal. “Slow down!”, I told myself. Better that I get nailed for a bit of money now than something tragic happen to me or someone else.
a re-print from “The Record”
What is it with pop music that attracts our youth? This form of musical expression, ready for the making, is for anyone wishing to embrace a musical instrument, pen and lifestyle, and prepared to take over the unsuspecting student at the click of an Ipod.
Up until now our music industry has been controlled by accountants and lawyers, graduates of the school of thought that anything goes when it comes to making money. Like serpents in the Garden of Eden they are superb salespeople.
a re-print from “The Record”
By Frank Nixon
Two members of Brome Lake’s cultural committee, Judith Duncanson and Yves Lamarche, have embarked on an oral history project which will form an important part of the town’s cultural policy.
They want seniors to tell their stories from the seven villages that comprise Brome Lake – Bondville, East Hill, Foster, Fulford, Knowlton, Iron Hill and West Brome — which were amalgamated in 1971 to create the Town of Brome Lake. The cultural policy, once completed, will be submitted for approval and adoption by town council.
open the full post » Cultural committee launches TBL oral history project
a re-print from “The Record”
The only true constant is change. It is ubiquitous. Encompassing every aspect of life, from the most insignificant to the very questions philosophers have pondered since we first looked to the stars and wondered. It is frightening, wondrous, feared and embraced. It is the very essence of life.
But it is not random, nor is it irrational. Change is integral to who we are. It is growth. And without growth, we become static and really, who wants to remain in the same spot all the time?
a re-print from “The Record”
Stop! Pretending you’re somebody you’re not. Stop! Thinking you’ll become who you are by acting like someone else. Maybe that’s who you are. In which case continue being who you are. Confused?
“Stop!”, Radio Communautaire Missisquoi’s battle of the bands TV show which plays every week on Vox TV out of Granby, insists on young-budding and sometimes older-budding rock musicians to write their own songs if they want to be on the show. You won’t find musicians performing a song by Offspring for instance, but you might find an artist sounding like them. The challenge for regional artists is to create something musically their own.
Isn’t this what it’s all about when trying to build community? If people living in the Town of Brome Lake, for example, want to put on a music festival, should they spend thousands of dollars on great BIB (bigger is better) / internationally renowned talent thinking locals will pay the ticket price, or should they rely on good local artists to fill the bill? You all know what I think, but allow me to elaborate once again.
Pony Roll
A Brome Lake / Loch Leven state of mind
a re-print from “The Record”
“Hidden away at the head of Loch Leven the Highland village of Kinlochleven is in a unique location. Set amongst a stunning combination of mountain, loch, river, moor and woodland makes Kinlochleven a special place,” according to the Kinlochleven Community Trust Website.
This Scottish village has a unique connection to the Town of Brome Lake, one that resonates in a similar unconscious fashion to its very own veiled presence.
Scott Edmonston, Radio Communautaire Missisquoi’s first official salaried employee, is from Kinlochleven. “I find the people and surroundings of the Town of Brome lake to be similar to my home village,” says Edmonston. “City people don’t have the presence of nature in their daily lives so much, and are therefore different psychologically from people living in rural areas.”
a re-print from “The Record”
Understanding “being who we are”, Radio Communautaire Missisquoi’s mission statement, is not always that easy. This past week at CIDI’s studios I had an experience that helped me put things into perspective.
Michaela Sefler, host of Poetry and Transcendence, a program on CIDI that airs every Thursday night at 11pm, is producing a series on love, and thought it would be appropriate to have an interview with the owner of a local vineyard in the Brome Missisquoi area, supporting the concept that wine and love are synonymous.
I thought this was a good idea and set her up with a remote recorder for an interview she had arranged with John Antony at the family-run vineyard Chapelle Ste Agnès located in the Sutton Mountains of southern Quebec.
a re-print from “The Record”
Radio Communautaire Missisquoi celebrated the new year with a live broadcast and party at the CIDI studios last weekend. This will hopefully become an annual event, with musicians playing live and volunteers schmoozing in the corridors and backrooms. Everyone at the station these days is up about the incredible year we’ve had building community in the Ville de Lac Brome area.
Developing the arts has become a reality for RCM, and now that we have a world-class piano, an operational radio station, website (rcmmedia.org) and TV show (Stop!), our tool chest is filling up. Tools are important, but second only to great volunteers. Equipment is useless if there is nobody to run it.
Happy New Year!
What a wonderful world it could be
a re-print from “The Record”
Counting down the last few hours to New Year’s Day, when in fact every day can be considered a new beginning, seems odd. What is it with the New Year’s Eve ritual celebration anyway? Is it held in recognition of all that we have to be thankful for over the past year, a moment of nostalgia for the lost days, or simply an excuse to party?
As the last 12 months melt away we now aspire to be a little wiser, make New Year’s Eve resolutions and revitalize our will to succeed. But only after the clock strikes twelve on Dec 31st, it seems, are we able to move forward in a spirit of change. For now it’s still business as usual. Whew!
The thing with change is that it feels better when it comes naturally. Or does it? The environment has become the major issue of last year as a result of us gambling with Mother Earth, and if nature has its way we’ll lose more than the 250, 000 lives that perished in the Tsunami five years ago. According to the experts, we have to work harder at settling our accounts with the earth in the coming years if we want to ward off disaster. No slacking!
a re-print from “The Record”
Guess what? Santa Claus came early this year. Radio Communautaire Missisquoi’s Steinway piano has arrived in time for the holidays. A big thanks goes out to the CARKE foundation for having procured the instrument on behalf of RCM, and M. & Mme. Clement Gaudreau (the piano’s owners) for agreeing to have it become part of RCM’s strategy for supporting the arts in Brome Missisquoi and Shefford counties.
As the piano movers struggled with the CIDI staircase on a frigid Tuesday afternoon, I couldn’t help but reflect on the past few months. When the idea of CIDI acquiring a world-class piano first came up, people looked puzzled and at times smiled in disbelief, saying “Yeah sure”. Why would they say such a thing? I guess it’s considered to be a big deal, something obviously out of reach for “us ordinary people”. Well guess what? Dreams do come true.
The magic ingredient is confidence. Believing in oneself is a powerful thing, the product we at RCM offer to our community. Four years ago, when RCM’s board of directors, myself, Dewey Durrell, David Anderson, Eric Wabant and Jim Ferrier began the process of rebuilding the CIDI project we followed the corporate non-profit building guidelines of Peter Drucker (”Managing the non-profit organization”). Drucker pointed out in his book that the non-profit has to identify what product it sells before it can be successful.
