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Prairie Drama this Week: The Red Truck

We got back to the house at 1:30 this morning from our road trip to Meacham to see James O'Shea's The Red Truck.

For a play about rural Saskatchewan, the setting is just right. Dancing Sky Theatre operates out of a converted community hall in the village of Meacham, east of Saskatoon. There is room for just over 100 seats, plus a restaurant where you can get a meal before the show.

The silences and pauses are the best part of the play. As funny as many of the lines are, the unspoken disagreement between the farmer and his son say more about their relationship.

O'Shea puts a new twist on the story of passing on the family farm to a new generation. In this case,  the father wants his son to escape the financial burden of keeping a farm running, but the son prefers farming to anything else he's tried.

Of the staged readings, productions and broadcasts I've come across on this subject, most are way too earnest or melodramatic. Nice to see a professional cast breathe life into a good script.

O'Shea's first play Dogbarked started at Dancing Sky and progressed to the Prairie Theatre Exchange and the Globe Theatre. That's precisely what a theatre like Dancing Sky is supposed to do: allow Canadian plays to prove there are stories written here that can make good theatre.

The Red Truck, by James O'Shea, directed by Angus Ferguson. Patricia Drake, Tom O'Hara and Rob Roy.  Music by Ernie Kurz, lighting design by Denise Hansen.

See also:  For Love, not Money, Canadian Theatre Encyclopedia, Dogbarked, Dogbarked Study Guide (PDF).

Tags: james o'shea, dancing sky theatre, meacham saskatchewan, the red truck, drama, plays, prairie, playwright

Fairy Tale with a Twist - Kelley Jo Burke's Charming and Rose at UofR

Kelley Jo Burke's Charming and Rose: True Love is playing Monday and Tuesday night (April 30, May 1) at the University of Regina's ShuBox Theatre.

Since I'm married to the playwright, I'll avoid bias and just say this is a superb play that tackles the myth of the perfect woman as defined by controlling men.

Rose is a fairy tale princess who falls for Prince Charming. The results are dramatic. I'll be there Monday night.  Looking forward to seeing Kate Herriott as the fairy godmother, Greg Ochitwa as Prince Charming, and Talitha Cuthbert as Rose.

Language and sexuality warning, blah, blah.  Call the UofR box office at 585-5500, for tickets, or bug the Theatre department.

Here's Kelley Jo's website (just three pages so far, but more to come).

The Canadian Telco/ISP Rip-off Continues

What the hell is wrong with the ISP and mobile phone business in Canada?

Gone are the days when you could just buy a service. Now, everything you do is an attempt to reduce the service levels below useless, or ding you for "extras" (no one has the guts to charge extra yet for services like "phone rings when someone's calling you," but that day will come). It's all about getting maximum ARPU (average revenue per user).

This week, Tod Maffin got me to fiddle with a Bell cell phone, so he could record the experience for his technology column on CBC Radio. It was rather ironic that two geeks spent a good 10 minutes trying to figure out how to download a movie and watch it on the cell phone. Not only do they want to increase your spending, but they can't be bothered to make it easy for you to do that.

Today Techdirt has a good piece about Rogers throttling back its Internet speed for customers using torrents and other peer-to-peer downloading services. Their latest step is to reduce the speed of traffic that's encrypted.

What's wrong with this picture? One of the most common uses for encryption is e-mail, which should be the fastest thing in the pipeline, not the slowest.

Need more evidence there's something wrong with service in Canada? Here's Mark Evans:  Wireless Deals in Canada?; Wow! Signs of Competition in Canada; Less Regulation in Canada, Less Competition.  See also Boris Mann on prices higher than Mexico.

My very small act of defiance was to buy a smart phone that can access wireless LANs instead of tying me to buying all my bandwidth from the phone company. I had to buy a phone from Europe in order to pull that off, because the same phone distributed in North America has the wireless capability removed. (See Boris on his Nokia E61.)

What's wrong with this picture? I'm having trouble seeing what's right with this picture. We spend more to get less service, and valuable functions are disabled before they get to market.

Tags: telecoms, rogers, telus, bell, cell phones, mobile, wireless, throttling

Krista B. Blogs the Junos

I met Krista Baliko at a podcasters' meetup last year, (even though neither of us is a podcaster), so I like to watch her progress working at the CBC Mother Corp.

Good to see she's got a blog this week, as she posts about the goings-on in Saskatoon around the JUNO awards. The awards show time has been yo-yo-ing around, while organizers battled with CTV to avoid having the awards broadcast hours past prime time in Atlantic Canada. Sanity has been restored, and the show will start two hours early this Sunday.

Check out Krista's Juno Blog, for some behind the scenes action. I haven't seen any shocking celebrity news there yet. No Nelly Furtado hissy fits about the temperature of her bath. No Jian Ghomeshi throwing a phone at a bellboy.

C'mon, Krista, there's dirt out there to be found, you're just not looking hard enough!

I used to work with Krista's mom. (Hi Joan!)  Also, I'm finally able to provide a bit of link love to my spouse, who is coordinating a JUNO section of the Saskatchewan CBC website. Don't forget to pick up some milk on your way down from Saskatoon, honey.

I was just on the site tonight being a one-person focus group, and thought the photo galleries are the best items so far. Go CBC.

Tags: saskatoon, juno awards, krista baliko, jian ghomeshi, nelly furtado, blogs

Picktonmania: Remembering the People Who Died and their Families

It's been a relief in the past couple of weeks to see media coverage shift briefly to stories about the women who went missing over the years in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.  For years, with some notable exceptions, the focus has been on the man accused of killing 26 women.

Most of the stories show that the families lost their daughter/sister/mother to drug addiction long before they disappeared.  But I didn't notice that making the loss any easier to handle for the people left behind.  It was a wrenching fight to get the police to pay attention to the large number of missing women.

Then, once there was a suspect, the pig farmer became the centre of attention.  Even when a story was about a victim, the headline generally referred to the accused murderer.

The coverage to come will include a lot of details about body parts and the depressing lifestyle of the "drug addicted prostitute".  I hope the journalists covering the case remember to talk about the victims as real people, with real families and friends.

Tags: picton, vancouver, murder, pig farm, victims, crime

My Winter Ordeal (10 Feet from the House)

Twenty minutes ago I was stumbling around in the snow, ice crystals coating my glasses, my fingers getting colder and colder inside my leather gloves. 

The car battery was dead, and I was trying to convince our mini-van to move another four feet, so I could stretch the jumper cables through the hedge from the van idling in the neighbour's driveway.

By getting both vehicles as far into the snowbanks as possible, we finally were able to stretch the cables far enough to get the engine started.

I'm sitting inside, nice and warm now, but for a few minutes I was reminded what's it's like to be out in the bitter cold, fighting with a piece of equipment, or trying to coax a vehicle out of the snow.  There's a point where you feel so damn cold and exhausted, you start to work out a survival strategy for getting to cover and staying there until someone can get you.

I was a long way from that point, plus I had a cell phone in my pocket and was 15 feet from the front door of the house.  But as I was blindly shuffling in the snowbank trying to get my hands to grasp the jumper cables correctly, I had a flashback to times I've been off the beaten path in bitterly cold conditions.

You get this intense focus on the task at hand, to keep your mind from running scenarios of sliding the car into the ditch, or missing the footpath you need to take back to safety.

When I worked as a reporter in Whitehorse, CBC Radio's Peter Carr told me about the time he was headed across a small Yukon lake on showshoes.  The ice started to open up behind him.  His frantic, exaggerated movements helped keep him moving forward in the snow, ice and water enough to get to safety. But he was one misstep away from becoming an item in the news the next day.

Every winter a few people get stuck in the snow on the Canadian or American prairies and are found dead within a mile of their car.  They cops tell us to stay with the vehicle, but something about the human mind convinces us the simpler solution is to just hike to the main road for help.  If we were young and fit, and dressed in parkas, ski pants and snowshoes like Peter was, we probably could get to the road and flag down a passing car.

You see the solution not far away.  You can't imagine how draining the cold and the wind and the snow drifts will be until you're too far away from the car to get back safely.

Last week, we couldn't believe the weather was above freezing.  This week, I'm glad I'm not on the road.  Hell, I'm glad I'm not in the driveway.

Oh, and thanks, Joan, for helping with the boost.  I owe you a nice bottle of wine.

Christmas Present Takes a Genealogical Tour

The bad news - the present that was supposed to be here for Christmas was shipped to the greater Toronto area, where it's been languishing for two days.

The good news - it's very close to my great-grandmother's birthplace of Stouffville, Ontario.

Minnie March grew up in the Whitchurch-Stouffville area, and ended up moving to Saskatchewan with her new husband David Curtis.  They ran a dry goods store in Wolseley, then moved to Findlater, southeast of Regina, where he was badly injured while working in a grain elevator.

They ended up living at 2039 Retallack Street in Regina, about seven blocks from our house.

If the package takes a short detour on the way to Regina (and why not, it's already gone far enough from here), it can swing by where the old family farm was.

The map on the right shows a red star where my package was at 3:37 this morning.

Merry Christmas to the March family relations in and from Stouffville.  I've never visited, but I'm not dead yet, so you never know.

The package will eventually go through Wolseley, which was a little different when Elsie was born there in 1903.  For one thing, it was still part of the Northwest Territories then.  Saskatchewan didn't become a province for another two years.

Here's a shot of the grain elevators in early Wolseley.  My grandparents briefly ran their store in a triangular brick building that's now a credit union branch.

My mom sometimes talks about her aunt Susan, who married into the Banbury family in Wolseley. Susan's husband Robert was related to Edwin Banbury, a co-founder of Beaver Lumber.

I've got a few March family photos from the turn of the last century on Flickr.

Thanks to the University of Saskatchewan archives for the photo.

If a Present Is Still in a Truck, It's not Really Present, Is It?

Every year there's something in transit for Christmas.

 

This year it's a big ticket electronics item, ordered from a "Canadian" website.

 

The package shipped December 19, and thanks to online tracking, I'm able to watch it wend its way east.  Should I mention to UPS that I live in Western Canada?

 

The package originated in Illinois, which is not in Canada.  This would have been good information to know before I ordered.  Does this mean I'll get dinged for import duties?

Fortunately, Illinois is only a few states and an international border away from Saskatchewan. 

Watching UPS track my package into Michigan and then Ontario doesn't fill me with confidence.  It's heading east!

 

The last tracking point was Windsor.  That's a good sign, I think.  At first it looked like it would end up in Toronto for sortation, but if it was headed for Toronto it would have got there long ago.  I guess UPS popped it on a truck heading to western Canada.  Either that, or it's still sitting in customs.  Life was easier when you couldn't track the progress.  You just had to pray to the postal gods.

If I knew it had to cross borders to get here I would have paid extra for faster shipping.  Just because there's a Canadian flag on the web page, doesn't mean the company has its warehouses in the country.

I'm pretty sure UPS doesn't deliver on weekends in Regina, so if it's not here by Friday afternoon, I doubt we'll get it for Christmas.  One of the presents in the house is going to be represented by a print-out from an online catalogue.

If you see a UPS truck heading west on the Trans Canada Highway, let me know!

Saskatchewan Bloggers Featured

A feature article about Saskatchewan bloggers gave a peek at some of the province's blogs Monday morning.

Being one of the only Regina bloggers interviewed, I was fodder for a photo and a couple of quotes.  That's me poking up at the top of the front page of the Regina Leader-Post.  I was going for the serious, professional look, but photographer Don Healy wanted the grinning enthusiast look, so I obliged.

I commented about the interactivity of blogs, and that editorial rules for bloggers vary much more than they do for journalists.

A companion article focused on political blogs and how the parties approach social media.

In addition to the usual suspects Kate McMillan, Lance Levsen, John Murney and Saskboy, the L-P talked to Prince Albert pastor Randall Friesen and political strategists Mike Stefaniuk and Reg Downs.

For a look at most of the active blogs in the province, visit the Saskatchewan Blogs Aggregator.

Did I get a spike in traffic from the Leader-Post story?  A bit, but not as much as from a link this week on Laura's Playground Transgender and Transsexual News site.  Goes to show that a mention in electronic format that has a link built in leads to more visits than a mention in a print publication that doesn't include a URL.

And congrats to Saskboy for his Off the Grid being voted best science/tech blogger from the Canadian Blog Awards.  He also came third in the best progressive blog category.  Kate McMillan's Small Dead Animals and Schmutzie's Milkmoney or Not Here I Come were in the top three for best conservative blog and best Canadian blog, respectively.

Tags:  saskatchewan, socialmedia, promotion, blogs, saskblogs, regina

Giving Thanks

Why are the forces of political correctness in this world so often strident and humourless bores who act like they never get laid?

I would argue many politically correct folks are witty and quite willing to acknowledge other points of view.  But the ones who lecture the rest of us on what we should be doing, how we should be speaking, and - most importantly - what we shouldn't be doing and saying, tend to be strident, humourless bores.

When the Barenaked Ladies make a point about world peace or environmentalism, we don't boo them off the stage.  They do it with humour, self awareness and respect for your right to disagree.

 

John Wagner, one of my favourite bloggers, likes to act as a bit of a contrarian.  He calls out the political correctness bullies who use outrage and spin to try to force their views on the rest of society.

This week, he's asking whether the grumbling about the origins of American Thanksgiving justify a reshaping of the holiday to reflect the exploitation of aboriginal people.  His point is that the symbolism of the pilgrims depending on the generosity of the local Indian tribe for survival has long since given way to a holiday that's all about getting together with family.

Of the politicization of Thanksgiving, he asks:

"So aside from political gain or media visibility, what's the point of turning something like Thanksgiving into a finger-pointing exercise?

"Is the third-grade teacher in the AP story above -- who walks into his classroom and steals things from his students to educate them about the European settlers -- really doing any good? Or is he simply creating another cariacture?"

I left a long, boring comment on his blog.  The short version is that I think it's quite possible to have a discussion about aboriginal rights, European colonialism and past injustices without giving up our right to celebrate the good things in life.

Europeans did some pretty horrific things on this soil in the name of God, progress and civilization.  I don't think it's too much for us to look back on the atrocities of the past and acknowledge them.  Even today, being born in a First Nations reserve in Canada automatically knocks years off your life expectancy.  I'm happy to talk about that with my kids on a day like Thanksgiving or Canada Day.  It doesn't make me any less thankful, or any less proud to be Canadian.

Image courtesy of RedKid.net