It was interesting to hear the Mayor of Weyburn talking about losing city employees to the oil patch. We're seeing something similar in our library region. I would say that traditionally, the bulk of our branch librarians were stay-at-home moms and housewives who were married to farmers or other people earning an average (or below-average in the case of most farmers ) income.
Now, with the booming natural resource-based economy, it's harder for us to find women wanting to supplement their family incomes because their husbands are making around six figures in "the patch". Or, if the wives do want to work, they can find higher paying employment with longer hours fairly easily since many gas stations and restaurants are offering $10-15/hr with all the hours you want just to get workers. (And lest anyone think I'm being sexist by talking only about female employees, I will mention that of the approximately 100 employees that SRL has out in its rural branch network, fully every single one of them - ie. 100% if you like easy math - are of the female persuasion. Sadly, the only males in the entire organization are the four professional librarians, our van driver and our shipping/receiving clerk.)
In related news (to the "boom", not to the issue of "who has boobs" ), Shea and I drove out to Stoughton, a town half an hour east of Weyburn for the local library's presentation on "Surface and Mineral Rights" as this is something that is of personal interest to both of us.
(I'll preface this by saying "as I understand it", since I always tend to get these things slightly wrong. But, basically, surface rights are where an oil company pays the landowner an annual fee for the right to be on your land as they explore for oil or for continued access after a well has been drilled. Mineral rights are when you earn a percentage from any producing wells that are found on your land. Mineral rights are, by far, the more lucrative although someone with a few producing wells on their land could make a decent annual wage, just from the surface rights.)
Now, a quick quiz - what's the most successful library program you've ever attended? How about 150 people in a community hall where said community has 653 people according to the last census? Of course, they'd advertised quite widely and a lot of attendees, including Shea and I, were from out of town. But still, that'd be like getting 45 000 people out to a library program in Regina! (Hmm, maybe the RPL should become the RidersPL?)
There's definitely a lesson in there about running programs that meet your community needs no matter the size of your community. Plus, the opportunity to promote the library and its services is huge, especially for a non-standard program like this. (Although it was embarrasing to hear one Government employee who was presenting ask, "Do you have Internet in the library here? I know we do in Regina but I'm not sure about here." Ouch!)
Anyhow, I'm off to sing myself to sleep...
Old dirt road,
(Saskaboom, Saskaboom)
knee deep snow
(Saskaboom, Saskaboom)
Watching the fire as we grow
(Saskaboom, Saskaboom)
o-o-o-o-old
If you're a music fan, one of the rules is that there must be one song each year that becomes your Song of Summer.
Criteria for a successful Song of Summer include originality, catchiness and general sense of fun. Ability to play the song about eight zillion times in a row, preferably in a car without a roof or at least with the windows all down is a must.
I think I've got my pick for this year...
(via PopBitch newsletter which helps me feel like I'm still living in England even though I no longer know about 98% of the people they talk about)
I heard "Sliver" by Nirvana on the Regina community radio station this morning and it made me think of Pace's current trick.
He now understands that Shea sometimes leaves the room or isn't in his line of sight. He still doesn't understand that she always come back. So as soon as it happens, he FREAKS OUT!
It's to the point that the other day, I felt obligated to tell Shea, "just so you know, I don't start beating him as soon as you leave the room" when she popped out to the kitchen to get a drink.
(Man, I hope this is a phase and that it passes quickly!)
Talking about some of the most useful sites online during the past three months mixed with my ongoing interest in online broadcasting inspired me come up with the following list:
Five Things The Internet Is Killing 1. The Music Industry - I saw a stat somewhere that 80% (!) of teens in the US hadn't bought a single CD in the last year. That's not a good sign if your (inflexible) business model is selling overpriced CD's!
2. The Movie Industry - see above. It's a bit slower death since the file sizes are bigger and it's harder for the average user to get high quality video displayed in an enjoyable format compared to outputting high quality music to a stereo or even just decent speakers from a computer.
3. Real Estate Agents - I keep hearing these commercials that slam "do it yourself" real estate sales sites while talking about all the expertise a realtor brings you. Frankly, they reek of desperation. Selling or buying a home yourself is a natural for the strengths of the Internet - many-to-many reach, incredible cost savings (realtors usually charge around 7% for their service), unlimited space for featuring photos and specifications. Plus, ultimately, who's going to care the most about selling a property - the person who sees it as a house or the person who sees it as a home?
4. Traditional Software - increasingly, people are using online applications that they don't need to buy, install or update instead of their more traditional cousins. MS-Office is the most obvious example of software that Google and others are trying to replicate online but I don't think it'll be long before pretty much everything you do locally on your computer is available online and the only piece of software you'll need is a web browser.
5. Newspapers - I think classified ad revenue is down something like 20%, subscribers are down 15% in the last few years (disclaimer: all stats quoted in this and any other post I do - are usually from memory. Don't quote them in your academic papers without verifying them!) Online competitors now provide news that is interactive, has alternative perspectives and is more timely. Some newspapers are migrating online but still use old school subscription models or pay-per-article (boo G&M after what, a week?) The New York Times gets it right - all their content is available as soon as it's published, its archived, searchable and free.
Bonus: One Thing The Internet Is Not Killing Books - outside of music, more ink (real and digital) is spilled proclaiming the death of the book than anything else. To paraphrase Twain, "the rumours of [the book's] death are greatly exaggerated." I'll always remember going to a national publishers' conference in 2000 where the e-book was all the talk and one presenter said that by 2005, more than half of readers would be using e-books over regular books. Really? Even most of the tech-types I know don't use e-books yet. I don't think e-books aren't without their merits and we're heading to more of a Movie-Television relationship. When TV first came out in the 1940's-50's, commentators warned about the death of the movie theatre. Instead, they developed a symbiotic relationship. I think that's what will happen with "real" books and e-books. E-books will continue to gain traction with users but also continue to co-exist with traditional books.
(Here's an article I found on this topic which discusses many of the same ideas I'm talking about.)
This song is one of my favourites and this version by an Australian shadow puppeteer guesting on the David Letterman show is unbelievable. The baby's hand brought tears to my eyes.
I best knew Willie as the sideman for Fred Eaglesmith whose band he played in for over 22 years. But Willie was also widely known for being part of an early wave of Canadian folk music along with artists like Bruce Cockburn and Stan Rogers. Although he never achieved their level of acclaim, his mentorship of younger folk artists was widely respected. In fact, a super-group consisting of Tom Wilson, Colin Linden and Stephen Fearing named themselves "Blackie and the Rodeo Kings" after a Willie P. Bennett song.
Here's a clip of Willie P. solo at the Fred Eaglesmith Southern Picnic in Alymer, ON that Shea and I were lucky enough to attend while we were in London a couple years ago...
After his first heart attack last year, a benefit concert was held in his hometown of Peterborough and many former and current members of the Fred Eaglesmith band were able to join Fred and Willie on stage for the encore...
Finally, I wasn't able to find a clip of the Fred song, "Codeine" where Willie especially shone with his mandolin playing and harmony vocals. But here's Fred doing one of his favourite end-of-show songs, "49 Tons" where every band member gets a brief introduction and solo (2:20 for the start of the hilarious intro of Willie or 3:40 if you just want to hear Willie play)...
[Edit: a friend from Ontario posted this tribute video...]
The vocal-only track of David Lee Roth singing "Running With The Devil" has been making the rounds of the Internets but this is the funniest mash-up I've seen - what if Diamond Dave took his act to the American Idol audition room?
(I have no problem using the "humour" tag on this post but am somewhat reluctant to use the "music" one! )
Nothing says romance like going to see an awesome independent country-rock artist like Roger Marin Jr. Check him out on February 14 if you're reading this in London (or click the link to see his other dates around SW Ontario.)
I was going to link to a list of the symptoms of severe food poisoning and leave off at that. But after sleeping sixteen hours out of the last twenty-four (I won't get too graphic about how I spent the other eight hours but you can imagine...
...I'm feeling a bit better so I decided to do a regular Friday Fun Link, if one day late.)
During a public session a couple weeks ago, I got asked if there was a web site where a person could type in a song and have it play automatically. My best suggestion was MeeMix. But I forgot about a couple interfaces I'd seen which use Google's advanced search to find MP3's that people have uploaded to their web sites. Then a recent MetaFilter thread unveiled a couple more - Songza and Songerize. So here's a list of all of them that I know about ( should also mention QTrax that was launched recently but down for the time being due to overwhelming interest):
) income. 
), Shea and I drove out to Stoughton, a town half an hour east of Weyburn for the local library's presentation on "Surface and Mineral Rights" as this is something that is of personal interest to both of us. 
)
