Announcements
by Esther Dyck HAVE YOU HEARD? - You are invited to a commoners party on Wednesday, February 10, 2010 at the Rainbow Room, Rodmay Hote from 7:00—10:00 pm. Admission is free, but donations are gladly welcome. The Chamber of Commoners (not to be confused with the Powell River Chamber of Commerce) is the heart of Powell River. Our community, non-profit, and other people-based groups are coming together to talk with each other and to exchange information and views in an informal setting. The Chamber of Commoners is a social gathering, not a meeting. Join us! SNACKS PROVIDED. CASH BAR - WINE AND BEER Door Prizes! Organization Speed Dating! Catch up with everyone all at once! Please RSVP as soon as possible to chamberofcommoners@gmail.com. There is a limit to the room occupancy and space is filling up! We would love to see you there!
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by Barb Rees Are you ready to take your writing to the next level? Do you need more tools in your writing kit? You’re just starting out and want encouragement? All this and more awaits you as the former Festival of Writers, all grown up into a world-class Writers’ Conference, celebrates its 7th anniversary. Presenters include Heidi Greco with “The Prickly Art of Self-Editing” and award-winning author Brian Brett on creative non-fiction with “Writing Your Life.” Federation of BC Writers’ Director Sylvia Taylor offers a master class on “Building Your Professional Platform: A Blueprint for Success.” Canadian Association of Authors’ President, Anthony Dalton, brings his master class, “Don’t Give Away All Your Rights: Understanding Publishing Contracts.” Back by popular demand, the writing contest, this year entitled “So You Think You Can Write”, offers cash prizes and conference registration. Join us for entertaining opening ceremonies on April 30 at Dwight Hall as Powell River’s version of American Idol judges take on the contest winners. Contestants will write poetry or prose using “Take it to the next level” as the theme. A West Coast Writers’ Banquet on May 1 at 6:00 p.m wraps up the weekend with entertainment. Everyone welcome! For the first time, PRWC Society is offering sponsorship to people who are serious about writing but have financial difficulties. Businesses or individuals have the opportunity to sponsor a writer’s $120 registration or a portion thereof. Writers who want to be considered should write a letter outlining how serious they are about writing, why financial circumstances make it a hardship to attend, and what they can pay towards registration. Sponsors’ names are posted online and on some promotional material. Send requests or offers to sponsor to: Powell River Writers Conference, #14-7624 Duncan St. Powell River, V8A 5L2 |
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One advantage of the diverse horizons and backgrounds in Powell River is the possibility of open cultural exchange. The new Powell River Diversity Initiative (PRDI) starts this year in creative and exciting ways to make Powell River an even more welcoming and inclusive place to live and visit. During the next five months, the Powell River Employment Program Society kicks off a series of fun events where people of all ages, both long-term residents and newcomers, can share their stories in a variety of ways. At a potluck dinner in March, families will enjoy a great movie on a theme that will encourage sharing their own stories and experiences. In April, teenagers will be invited to express themselves at their own chili dinner and a movie. PRDI plans to collect culturally diverse recipes, with their accompanying stories, from interested community members at these events and elsewhere. This “Community Secret Recipe Book” will then be published! An art exhibit, the “There and Here Art Show”, will be the PRDI’s culminating event in May. Community members can display their paintings, collages, prose and poetry, and photography depicting their cultural homeland or scenes of their current habitat in Powell River. The PREPS received funding from the Ministry of Advanced Education and Labour Market Development for this project. The Open Cultural Exchange Project team is excited to participate in this great diversity project with all of you! —Miyuki Kamiya, Assistant Coordinator, PRDI |
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by Eva van Loon The idea of IPPWA is to walk the International Peace Poem--just parts of it, as the whole thing is now over 90,000 lines in length--from one community to the next and to take part in peace-related activities at each destination. The purposes of the new society include public education about peace and peace-building, as well as publication and promotion of peace poetry. Initial directors are Allan Brown, Randy Pinchbeck, Barb Rees, Lyla Smith, and Eva van Loon. IPPWA takes on the sponsorship of the Youth Peace-Poem Competition and the publication of the PRIPPA annual anthology of winning poems from that competition.The Live Poets’ Guild, who started the Competition in 2008, will continue to co-ordinate both activities. The Competition ends with an Awards Ceremony, April 8 at the Max Cameron Theatre, with poetry, lyrics and music. Well known singer-songwriter Valdy will conduct a song-writing workshop and perform with some of the Competition’s participants. IPPWA welcomes new members and look forward to public support and ideas from the public for showcasing the ideals of peace and poetry. |
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Kat’s Meow means the voice of Katherine Ray, present owner of what seasoned PRites remember as “Wilshire’s” store, will soon be heard as a community builder. This new stage is a venue for people to express their art, music and passions to the accompaniment of good food and drink. Katherine’s favorite job of all time was floor director for Celebrations Dinner Theatre and, armed with that experience and a degree in English and history, she wants to produce plays about Powell River and its environs in historical context. “Instead of ‘Crackberry’, let’s stimulate the rebirth of Cranberry as a healthy neighborhood, vibrant with new and old denizens involved in small-business development, proliferation of the arts, and green growth,” she says. Starting about mid-March, stop in early in the morning for a delicious new breakfast menu and great coffee. Featured throughout the day will be exceptional homemade soups, Jeannie’s homemade chocolates, cereals, baking, and desserts. March 20 promises “sexcitement” with the 3rd annual Erotica Show filling not only Cat’s Meow but Katherine’s place next door, Salon 6766. Very popular in its first two years, this year’s version will rock Cranberry with art, sculpture, and such whimsies as erotic baking. Powell River Live Poets’ Guild will meet at the Kat’s Meow March 24 and 31 from five p.m. to seven. Bring your own or others’ poetry, or just a listening ear. This is a supportive rather than critical group--it meets to have fun! April 8, poet Hilary Peach, the founder of the highly successful Poetry Gabriola event, brings her musical poetry show “Suitcase Local”, all about the adventures of a traveling woman boilermaker in the small towns of Canada and America. The following evening, April 9, Kat’s Meow will welcome a musical performance whose identity she cannot yet confirm, but will be well worth pencilling into your calendar. |
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by Caitlin Bryant ON THE BILL IN 2010: The exhibition is taking shape. Here’s a small taste of what to expect. We will, of course, have our usual bar with bubbles, beer, wine and martinis. 
Jeannie Keays will be cooking up some aphrodisiacal, erotica-inspired, gourmet handmade chocolates.
The sexy Manzanita oyster bar will be open for business, serving up oysters naked or sauced, with everyone’s favorite shucker, Al, and his special, yet-to-be-announced helper.
Robert Scott Macmillan (www.central-nervous-system.ca) will be showing many new paintings this year. He will also give a debut performance of songs from his “black catalogue”, songs about love, deception and other blues.
EXHIBITION: Saturday March 20, 7.30pm—12:30am $5 suggested donation… must be 19 or older. VENUE: We are moving this year! Find us in the space soon to be known as The Kat’s Meow Café at 6762 Cranberry Street (the old Wilshire’s Store). This venue now boasts a stage, great wall space, sexy vibes, and an xxx long bar. PREVIOUSLY: A huge thank you to our friends in Townsite who welcomed us with enthusiasm and lots of helping hands. Join us up the hill this year!Passia Pandora (www.crimsonqueengallery.com) is one very exciting guest contributor who’ll be showing a large body of work. Her professionally framed photographs will also be for sale and, lucky for us, Passia offers lower prices for those choosing to buy directly from a show ($180.00 for framed and matted 11x18 prints). 
As usual, so much more comes out of the woodwork in the month leading up to the show! Keep your eyes peeled and ears to the ground!
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Documentary-film lovers will have their fill in the 2010 collection at the Powell River Film Festival. As well as the films featured on Thursday and Friday, the Saturday program will be a full one, with lots of community participation and a light lunch available to tide you over. 
As much a portrait of an extraordinary family as an experiment in sustainable living, the film of the Dervaes’ struggle to live lightly on the land is a reminder that the future has a great deal to learn from the past. Possessed of a warm, humble spirit, HomeGrown is a gentle indication that we are only a few generations removed from the family farm, and that sometimes, the very best thing to do is go home again.
Preceding the feature, Jon Ornoy will present his short film Plastic Bottles, on an artist’s quest to make a difference. 10:00 a.m., Saturday, February 20th.
The horror, the poison and the appalling, vast wasteland we’ve created! These words easily come to mind as we witness the spectacle of the Athabasca tar sands, in Petropolis: Aerial Perspectives on the Alberta Tar Sands, directed by Peter Mettler. This film gives a spectacular bird’s eye view of the beauty and the grandeur of the north being irrevocably altered by our quest for oil. Slowly revealed through unforgettably stunning images, the magnitude of development can be comprehended only when seen from above.
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by Connie Polman Tuin With its Employment Services program, Powell River Association for Community Living (PRACL) supports adults with developmental disabilities with all aspects of employment; career development, job search and training, or supporting independence on the job. It’s important to match the right person to the job. Our skill- and interest-assessments maximize the chances of successful placement, for both client and employer. Employers benefit by gaining valuable employees; clients benefit by acquiring meaningful employment. There are no guarantees, but our placement-success rate far surpasses the failure rate. 
Employment Services supports employers, too, by offering free job coaches to assist and train new employees. The goal of our long-term commitment to successful placement is on-the-job support for employees by both co-workers and employer.
For employers who have difficulty thinking of where to place someone, our service will come to the business and assist in identifying opportunities. For example, we asked one business what was not being done in the store. Management provided a list of items; then we put a job description together, customised for a particular client. That employee has worked there for five years, loving every minute.
Customising benefits clients who need jobs designed specifically to their skills and abilities. While they are expected, as is any employee, to do a good job and to value that job, customising acknowledges that some people may not meet the entire job description but, with a little customising, can fulfill the job.
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by Wendy Devlin Seedy Saturday is coming, March 13, 2010 to the Powell River Recreation Complex! Everyone is invited to Seedy Saturday, with or without seeds to swap. If you have seeds, package them in closed envelopes and label them clearly to swap for other people’s seeds. The number of seed packages you bring is recorded by a volunteer who puts your seed packages into the exchange and gives you a signed chit for them. You can then browse over the hundreds of alphabetically indexed seed packages and make your selections. When you return to the front table, a volunteer checks out your seed packages. 
If you don’t have seeds to swap, you can purchase seed packages for fifty cents each, up to a 10-package limit.
Two community seed-packing parties have already packaged up 1500 packages of local seeds for the swap. Seedy Saturday also features a gardening, farming, and self-sufficiency book-and-magazine swap.
The plant exchange has been discontinued. Any non-profit groups planning plant exchanges or sales, however, can submit time and place information to our Seed Saving Committee for placement on a list of upcoming garden-related events. That list will be made available at Seedy Saturday.
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by David Parkinson For those of us opposing prevailing forces in society, it sometimes feels as though we toil in obscurity. To work to preserve the environment, create a more just food system, alleviate poverty, or further any number of worthy causes is to work against the grain of a culture consumed with consuming. It takes a sort of willful attention-deficit disorder to tear one’s eyes away from the media and political spectacles to begin to see the dim outline of a world shaped around more human values. As the whole shaky structure begins to crack, though, we need to look for ways to engage people who lose faith in the world that has been handed to them. People need hope, assurance, that they are more able to take charge of life than parents, teachers, political leaders, and the TV have led them to believe. Simple things are what we need more than anything else: the faith that we are part of a world which offers a decent life for all creatures; the hope that things are getting better, not worse; and charity, not in the sense of scraps of wealth doled out to the pitiful poor, but in the sense of caritas, a widespread recognition that we all have roughly the same needs and wants and that we need to show basic kindness to others, especially those who suffer more than we do. |
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