Peace Country’s First Annual Small Press Book Fair

Celebrating small and independent presses!

Register as a participating publisher or come and explore what the world of small, independent, micro and mini presses has to offer.

Featuring readings by renowned authors
Joe Blades (Fredericton, NB)
Jenna Butler (Edmonton, AB)
Vivian Demuth (New York)
and Karen Bass (Hythe, AB)

Location: Rabbit Hole Bookstore, Grande Prairie, Alberta

Date: Sunday, September 21, 2008

Time: 1 PM to 5 PM

Display Space: $10

Contact: Harrison or Henry
c/o Rabbit Hole Bookstore
10020 100 Avenue, Grande Prairie, AB T8V 0V3
Phone: 780-539-7999
Email: rabbithole@telus.net

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shirt: black Marc Edwards linen short sleeve
loc: preartopening
temp: 24 C (humidex 30 C)
sound: Gang of Four Return the Gift

Scotch Music

Two hours tonight of me spinning CDs and playing tapes for Highland Radio on CHSR 97.9 FM. Yeah. It went by so fast. I know I could have done more hours (& I will!) I'm the on-air host on the games site [51 Woodstock Rd, Fredericton, NB] as of 9 am tomorrow, Sunday, 27 July. What I played tonight is listed below. It's a real lively great mix (if I say so myself) of trad and non-trad Scotish and Celtic music, plus some Celtic-inspired folk or folk-rock and poetry.

"Scotch Music" Howie MacDonald
"Tandoori Mustache" Taxi Chain
"James Brown Ate My Bagpipe" Taxi Chain
"Road Rage" Tartan Amoebas
"New Pipe Order" Tartan Amoebas
"Weddings, Wakes & Funerals" The Rankins
"Stepdance Medley" Buddy MacMaster
"Sunburn" Gordie Sampson
"Speed the Plough" Horselips
"Signal Hill" Damhait Doyle
"The Old Sod" Spirit of the West
"An Ode" (poem) Hamish MacDonald
"Sandra: In all innocence" (poem) Janet Paisley
"Flick it up and Catch it" Jim Sutherland
"The Pipe Tunes" Shooglenifty
"Horo Ghoid Thu Nigeau (Stepping Song)" Mary Jane Lamond
"Bog Down In the Valleyo" Othodox Celts
"All For Me Grog" Othodox Celts
"Space Ceilidh" Nathalie MacMaster
"Northwest Passage" Stan Rogers
4/4 Marches: "Scotland the Brave", "Rowan Tree", "Wings" Heatherbell Girls Pipes & Drums
"Fairy (including Tullochgorum)" Ashley MacIssac
"North" Afrocelt Sound System
"Treasure of the Heart" Solstice
"The Celts" Enya
"Crantara" MacKeel

T: Highland Radio 2005 / Radio Chieftain
loc: homegame
temp: 18 C
sound: The Best of Blondie

found one!

afterwards, i spent longer walking about downtown looking for one of the posters . . . not that i want to trade landtoads . . . [sorry, oh, noble toads of the east, i don't mean to slight you, so maybe i should say, "sandturds"] but i was looking for some of the other somewhat catchy marketing campaign's info. So: 1 plunger = $100 [off a year's rent. WAhOOOO!!!]; 50 = a month's rent [what's that? $12-15 per plunger (smells like and evangelical sandturd w/ baptism by . . . )]; but 500 of these fetish objects = a year's rent [dog love the compartment!] as if anyone (singular or collective) so actually find that meny of this plungers in fredtown . . .

a few week back . . . in the same spot [beside the recyclable plastic bag bins outside the stuporstore and anbl express] i found a pet rock by, or named, "billy bob". i took it too. was it a set up, a test, a trap . . . ? i doubt it . . . if only i could find one of guy's "peanut butter cookies" [too late] or meredith's "pinkies". meet billy bob:

t:
loc: postbikeride
temp: 24 C feeli' 34 C
sound: Elvis Costello Cruel Smile's "Almost Blue"

Ashes, Papier et Beans, 22 July 2008

Tonight's show featured one Canadian poetry CD in its entirety: Shaking Hands with the Night (Pendas Productions by Katerina Fretwell.

shirt: "basket weave" Denver Hayes short sleeved shirt
loc: footsorepostartbankpostradio
temp: 22 C
sound: Kate Bush Never for Ever

Ashes, Paper & Beans, 15 July 2008

The first half of the show featured Ultraeye (Blue Orange Publishing) by Richard Rathwell.

Second half of the show featured writer members of Fredericton's BlackTop MotorCycle Gang: Biff Mitchell, emcee; Joe Blades; Todd Arsenault; Vivian Unger; Yolande House; & Biffy himself.

shirt: ratty black
loc: brokendesigndept
temp: 18 C
sound: Monty Python Sings

Found photo du jour

Found 10:48 AM, 12 July 2008 in the ground floor hallway of the Charlotte Street Arts Centre, 732 Charlotte St, Fredericton, NB before the opening of the Fredericton Small Press Fair–:Summer Edition.

Photo was taken at, or with stuff from, Gulfport Casino, City of Gulfport, Florida, USA.

T:
loc: postsmallpressfair
temp: 26 C
sound: (Nir)vana Gold

Ashes, Paper & Beans, 8 July 2008

Ashes, Paper & Beans last night featured three Canadian spoken word or poetry CDs.

The first feature was Bowen Island's Heather Haley's new "spoken word songs" CD Princess Nut (RPW Records) under the moniker Aural Heather with the tracks: "How to Remain", "Whore in the
Eddy", "Three Blocks West of Wonderland", "Window Seat", and "Habit".

Second feature was the soon-to-be-released poetry and jazz Global Warming CD collaboration by Toronto poet Sharon Singer and musician Bob Mover: "Becalmed", "Global warming", "carny Boy", "Rock-a-Bye Baby", "Degrees of Closeness", and "Sea Creatures".

Third was a sound poetry and music collaboration. SoundSpoke: Anne Anglin, Bill Gilliam, Penn Kemp, Rick Sacks CD The Late Nite Lingue Lounge, Distillery Jazz Festival, Toronto, May 2004 (Pendas Productions, 2004) with "from Bone Poem", "Side Kicks", "The Shadow", "Side Show", and "Declination".

Show ended with the short poem "When Summer Comes" by Lem Snow from Tall are the Tales: Newfoundland Stories and Recitations (Pigeon Inlet Productions).

T:
loc: postsunnyday
temp: 28 C, humidex 37 C
sound: NIN pretty hate machine

Fredericton Small Press Fair: 12 July 2008

12 July, Saturday, 12-5 pm

General public admission is free.

This location is not yet wheelchair accessible.

The Summer fair has been co-ordinated to coincide with the revived Maritime Writers' Workshop, 6--12 July. For MWW info, contact: UNB College of Extended Learning, ph (506) 452-6360, ahowells@unb.ca MWW registration: ph (506) 453-4646.

Location: Charlotte Street Arts Centre Auditorium, 732 Charlotte St, Fredericton:
Google map.

Organizers revue ellipse mag and Maritimes Arts Projects Productions.

Exhibitor fees (including HST): tables $15 (full tables only). Contact (506) 454-5127, joeblades@nb.aibn.com to reserve tables and readings. Payable, preferably in advance, to: Maritimes Arts Projects Productions, Box 596 Stn A, Fredericton NB E3B 5A6.

Free things (info, publication, calls for submissions, etc) can be mailed to the same address for distribution @ the fair. The fair itself will not undertake to sell anything for folks who can't make it, but if you can arrange for someone to represent you @ the fair that would be great!

Ashes, Paper & Beans, 1 July 2008

The Canada Day episode of Ashes, Paper & Beans started with Biff Naked's "Canadians" and ended with Verbomotorhead's "Fat Summer". The bulk of the show was a live interview-riff with Biff Mitchell on the upcoming Maritime Writers' Workshop, 6-12 July, and on things writing and arts related.

shirt: CHSR
loc: post-APB
temp: 26 C
sound: The Rolling Stones Let It Bleed

odd stuff

A real sign found loose, no longer posted, in one of the schools used to film DTTW II this past weekend. I'm afraid it says more about the elementary school's (lack of adequate) facilities than it does about the boys attending the school. Minds me of the saying in my hotel room in the Battery, in St John's, Nfld. the previous weekend.

Every room had a Newfoundland place name on the door and a Newfoundland saying on a wall with one of these large maps. Very colourful and fun; educational for peeps not exposed to Newfoundland before.

How's this one? The roadside sign for the section of the roadside motel snoring I was put up on Friday night in Saint John, NB during filming of DTTW II.

A posey of four- and five-leaf clovers found on the montel's lawn after I'd picked and eaten wild strawberries also found there.

T: CHSR
loc: MAPP catch-up
temp: 28 C
sound: Elvis Costello Cruel Smile

Found Photo du jour

Found 7:58 pm, 28 June 2008, in a storage room in the basement of Saint Patrick's School, City Line Road, Saint John, NB, while I was moving stuff around my Art Dept materials and tools during the filming of Dead to the World II. Photo was talken in the adjacent student lunch room.

T: black
loc: M●A●P●P
temp: 16°C
sound:

Ashes, Paper & Beans, 24 Jun 2008

Ashes, Paper & Beans tonight was mainly a mix of tributes and selections from new material received. Started with James Reaney & "The Ducks", followed by "Filthy Words" & "Occupation: Foole" by George Carlin; "Beat the Drum" by Christoher Stewart; "Sin Tax" by Penn Kemp; "Howl" & "Invisible Wings II" by Geode Music + Poetry; "Pome Poem" by bpNichol; "WISH (for bp)" by Gerry Shikatani; and, from Ultraeye by Richard Rathwell, "The Whale" & "Revelations from the Whale".

T: Smooth Rock Falls ● Canada
loc: post-APB Art Dept
temp: 21°C
sound: Jale Dreamcake

Ashes, Paper & Beans, 17 June 2008

The Grey Islands (Rattling Books) by John Steffler (ISBN 978-0-9737586-0-3). Narrated by John Steffler and (in order of appearance) Frank Holden, Janis Spence, Deidre Gillard-Rowlings and Darryl Hopkins.

"Support the Poet" song by Mark Kozub.

T- quod nos non necat, etiam maxime laedit
loc: MAPP Art Dept
temp: 15 C
sound: In Goth Daze v.a.

[post #666]

APB, 10 June 2008

The first half of last night's Ashes, Paper & Beans was Side B of my recording of the Writing Home Reading of 2 Feb 2008 featuring Faye Heavyshield, Alma Brooks, Biff Mitchell, Elaine Mercier, Carol Collicutt, Nela Rio w/ her poem "Paix" (Peace), Jo-Anne Elder and Faye King.

Second half of the show started with "Oh, What a Life", by Ivan Coyote & Rae Spoon, followed by a run of poem tracks off the Unheard of . . . Tupperware Sandpiper Spoken Word CD: "Wouldn't You Like to fly" by Noelle Trkulja, "Word From the Girl at the Bus Stop" & "Job" by Monica S. Kuebler, "The Physical World" by Bruce McRae, "The Edge of Night" by Jeanette Lynes.

t:
loc: M●A●P●P Art Department
temp: 14 C
sound: Neil Young & Crazy Horse Zuma

Ashes, Paper & Beans, 3 June 08

3 June, 7–8 pm. The Grey Islands (Rattling Books) by John Steffler (ISBN 978-0-9737586-0-3). Narrated by John Steffler and (in order of appearance) Frank Holden, Janis Spence, Deidre Gillard-Rowlings and Darryl Hopkins.

shirt: burgundy dress shirt
loc: lock-install day
temp: 17 C
sound: Hawksley Workman (Last Night We Were) The Delicious Wolves

Ashes, Paper & Beans, 27 May 08

"Ghetto Defendant" by Allen Ginsberg & The Clash, on vinyl.
"Big Sky Alberta" by Sheri-D Wilson.
"Berlin Suite" by reg e. gaines.
"The Healing Poem" by Michael Lally.
"Adventures of Ralph Melish"
& "The Cheese Shop" by Monty Python.
"149th & 3rd" by reg e. gaines.
"The Phone-in" by Monty Python.

shirt: camouflage (contract-1834421)
loc: MAPP Art Dept
temp: 10 C
sound: Neil Young MIrror Ball

So Many Film Projects . . .

so much art department work
so little time . . .

hindu gods and goddesses
sandbag walls and guard towers
beer can and rye bottle labels
cigarette packs and cabbie licence
school student photo IDs
uniforms as real as used today
japa beads and things pink
mouth blood and army crates
cots sleeping bags knapsacks
rations glass bottles and canteens
doctor's certificates and degrees
diplomas photo with wife
colourful liquor bottles
headsets and command post radios
tripwires fake money and coke
purses wallets and a blotter
nameplates and licence plates
resume and numbered key fob
bank signage and an ultrasound
fishbowl and six goldfish
couch coffee table bed television
radio handwritten letter . . .

T: Tidal Wave Film Festival 2002
loc: friafternoon
temp: 14 C
sound: The the Soul Mining

Ashes, Paper & Beans, 20 May 2008

Full moon Tuesday, the Vagabond Trust howled on Ashes, Paper & Beans!

Show started with "Poetry And All That Jazz" by Jack Kerouac & United Future Organization.

I was joined live on air by Vagabond Trust writers' group members Katie Brown, Ryan Griffith, Corenski Nowlan and Jordan Trethewey for a lively roundtable interview and reading of poetry and fiction by the members present.


Show ended with "Winter" by Kevin Matthews.

shirt: Denver Hayes basket weave, # WEC720
loc: postpostradio
temp: 9 C
sound: NCIS

Ashes, Paper & Beans, 13 May 08

Tonight's SOCAN-monitored Ashes, Paper & Beans featured an interview by Joe Blades with performing songwriter Thom Swift that was recorded during Harvest Jazz & Blues Festival 2007. It was followed by a partial recording of a Fredericton reading by Alberta poet Yvonne Trainer, and the show ended with "Airplane Paula" by Sheri-D Wilson w/ Russell Broom.

shirt: yellow, ribbed (by Covington)
loc: postradio
temp: 15 C
sound NCIS

Gallery Connexion flooded

1:11 pm, Wednesday, 30 April: Supply & Services had two small electric pumps working in the storm sewer depression below York Parking Lot level in front of their yard machinery doors and the entrance to Gallery ConneXion. End of the previous week, I'd helped raise and pack stuff in the gallery while hoping that it didn't flood.

11:55 pm, Wednesday, 30 April: Saint John River flood waters near midnight, against the back of the Justice Building Annex, at the top of the sandbag wall. Clearly not build high enough, but nothing more to be done. I was surprised at how fast the river rose during the afternoon, trapping some cars in the armouries end of the parking lot. S&S workers were in the higher parking lot beside the open boiler room doors with pumps aworking there.

I caught an Acadian bus to Nova Scotia on Thursday morning heading to my remaining grandmother's 89th birthday and a feed of Eastern Shore lobsters.

The galley, adjacent artist studios, and some of the Justice Building was flooded with about two and a half to three feet of water. On Wednesday, 7 May, I got a phone message from Meredith saying the gallery was lost and everything good or salvageable had to be moved out by the end of Thursday. After working an Art Bank emergency I went over. Supply & Services and contractors they brought in had already started cutting out the floor to get at the water and to prevent the buildup of mould.

Artists Lucy Robichaud and Carol Collicutt lost plenty of stuff in their studios: soaked supplies and artworks. This is some of the pile of now garbage pulled from their studios. They were in shock, grieving, when I was there packing and hauling ConneXion stuff for 10 intense hours on Thursday. I was driven to get the good furniture and books, and archives and admim materials out of the gallery.

For Friday, the Art Bank booked a truck, and called me in to work to collect art (only dry, not damaged work) from ConneXion and its artists and to take it to the NB Art Bank's storage space in the Heritage Collection Centre at King's Landing. Even with my assistant, Heather Wilkinson, it took us all day to load, pack, tranport and unload the work: over a hundred pieces of art.

ConneXion and its artists had been there 24 years [and I've been active at ConneXion since the summer of 1988]. Lots of history in this place, Fredericton's only artist-run centre.

Rick Burns was one of the founders. The main gallery in ConneXion was named in his memory last year. Now it's gone, gutted to the cement floor and brick walls that ConneXion members worked so many years to renovate and cover with sturdy Sheetrock-covered plywood for a better exhibition space. It will likely cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for the cleanup and rebuilding of this whole basement space, to bring it up to building code, with no certainty that it won't get flooded again next year or five years from now.

Worse, there's no guarantee that Supply and Services will let ConneXion back in the government building. ConneXion is its artists and what happens at the gallery. Now, ConneXion needs a home—temporary or new remains to be seen—to continue its almost 25 years of artist activities in downtown Fredericton. A new space will almost certainly cost more to rent, and it would need renovations to make it work as an exhibition, presentation, performance and workshop space. And that doesn't address the need for artist studios . . .

The currently scheduled exhibition then and now by Robert A. van de Peer, Master Printmaker was crated up and removed before the flood. It opened, had an artist talk and a workshop but its run has been cut short. The summer artist residency, "Familiar Territory" by Lois Schklar, is now up in the air. ConneXion needs space, a home.

Show your support!

Gallery ConneXion
Box 696
Fredericton NB E3B 5B4
Tel (506) 454-1433
connex@nbnet.nb.ca
www.galleryconnexion.ca

shirt: Taproom Mug Club '06
loc: sundaymorning
temp: 7 C
sound: Johnny Cash American III: Solitary Man