THE WEEKLY EH?! // August 22nd, 2023
This week's highlight of FIVE things happening in the Kimberley/Cranbrook area + FOUR other items of some locals' interests.
Hi!
Welcome to the 4th edition of THE WEEKLY EH?! newsletter — which I am writing you after getting back from turning the compost piles up at the KEGG.CA community garden (so… apologies for any smell)!
Here’s Five Things
Since The 95EH Events Calendar gets updated with new Kimberley AND Cranbrook events on the regular (and it’s FREE for anybody to get their local events listed in this calendar, just create a public Facebook event OR hit the ‘Submit Event’ button over on moun.town/events), I like to do a weekly HIGHlight of FIVE things happening FOR the current week, EVERY Tuesday — as sometimes it’s nice to get a reminder of what’s going on before ‘the week ahead’ becomes another week that’s flown by:
• THING #1: Black Spur Ultra — an ultra marathon “wrought from the winding, technical single track that trail runners dream about; no pavement, big climbs through rugged terrain, and stunning scenery” — returns to Kimberley August 26th + 27th (hosted by Kimberley Alpine Resort). The race has 108km and 54km distance options, which people can either run solo or run on a team… OR, if you are like me, there is also a 0km option that just involves being aware of why there are so many long-distance runners in town this weekend and hoping they all have a good time with their crazy life choices (and 🤞 we don’t have another week of ‘event cancelled due to smoke’ :)
• THING #2: As is often the case, Grist & Mash has live music on this Thursday — this time it’s Bastards and the Buzzards coming all the way to Kimberley from Ontario on their cross Canada tour. “Dan Rae, a saw blade handed, six string pickin', chest pounding percussionist with dark, dirty, soulful vocals sits beside Asjia Papineau on violin, bringing heavy hearted, harmonic tiffs of life to a deadly, well oiled machine drenched in blood, sweat and twang” — or have a listen to their 2022 album ‘Heels Up’ on Bandcamp to get an audio description of their sound:
• THING #3: Also on Thursday night in Kimberley (as well as the next night on Friday, August 25th), a former NHL player turned musician, Kraig Nienhuis, is playing Pars & Guitars at Trickle Creek Golf Resort. But what does a former ‘NHL player turned musician’ sound like? Well, besides seeing if you can still grab a ticket and checking things out for yourself in person, you can also do some audio research over on Kraig’s Spotify page:
THING #4: This Saturday, August 26th, is the ‘Summer Reading Club Wrap Up Party!’ at Kimberley Public Library (from 11am - 1pm) — which also means that this Tuesday is the last ‘Summer Reading Club’ for kids aged 5-9 (theme: Future; Robo Reading & Sci Fi Cyber Goggles) and this Wednesday is the last day for kids aged 10-14 (theme: Future; Book Club “The Boundless” & A Tinkercad Mini Workshop). Also this Saturday at the Kimberley library, right after ‘Summer Reding Club Wrap Up Party’, the animated movie “The Magician’s Elephant” will be getting shown (from 1:30pm - 3:30pm). So, basically… “party” at the library all week!
THING #5: The Rotary Club of Cranbrook is putting on their ‘1st Annual Chili Cook Off!’ this Saturday, August 26th, from 4pm to 8pm, down at Rotary Park in Cranbrook. And if you want to make it a real chill(i) day down at Rotary Park this Saturday, head over there a bit earlier in the day so you can also check out the Cranbrook Farmers’ Market from 10am - 1pm (maybe even buy something locally grown/made to pair with your chilli later in the day)!
Of course, there's always more than Five Things happening in any given week, including this week, so don't forget you can always punch -> moun.town/events <- into any browser window at any time and be magically taken to THE 95EH EVENTS CALENDAR to see all the other events happening this week and beyond (and you can always reach out via email to 'hey@95eh.ca' if you have something of local area interest/intrigue that you think would be a good fit for a HWY 95EH signal boost) 👍
+ Four Ehs
And because there’s always more going on than just the local area events that get added to The 95EH Events Calendar, here’s 4 other things that are proving to be top of mind for at least one local area person (ie. myself):
EH #1: You may have heard and/or seen me talking about a ‘blog monetization idea’ called “Mutually Beneficial Employment” recently —WELL — I’ve since put together a blog post to (hopefully) better explain this ‘MBE’ idea and how I aim to use it to work with local businesses/organizations AND also have that working relationship help support the effort that goes into running a local events calendar / blog (and all the interconnected parts that go into that). READ MORE HERE.
EH #2: While talking about ‘Mutually Beneficial Employment’ with potential “employers”, I often mention that creating content for your own website can be worth the effort, especially if you have something genuine to say, simply because something like ‘a quality blog post on a topic that people often google’ can have a way longer shelf life if it lives on your own website rather than so much of the stuff we’re posting into the void on social media each day (often irrelevant within 48 hours, especially if you don’t pay a billionaire to have it shown to more of your own followers). And one of the main reasons a blog post can maintain value for so much longer than a social media post is SEO (which is an acronym for “search engine optimization”). And the example I often give for this is a story about how I started to notice how much website traffic I was getting from people googling about video games, even though I’m actually a “music blog” that run a local events calendar (all because I wrote an informative article on how I learned how to hack my Sega Mini that started drawing in visitors long after I shared the post on social media). So, since I had developed an interest in the topic of ‘retro video games’ + I also like the process of curating subjective lists, I put together a bunch of ‘personal fave video games’ blog posts (based on how I had previously searched Google for video game recommendations) – AND NOW — all of my ‘video game posts’ collectively bring in 3-5 thousand website visitors from Google EVERY month. Organically, thru SEO. And it’s been steady like that for a couple years now. Which is not to say that the secret to SEO is writing posts about video games, but rather… if more of us create useful/engaging content for our own websites (on topics we’re interested in), instead of giving all of our creativity & attention to algorithm’d social media apps, more people will get to experience the weird joy that is seeing 1000+ people coming to visit your little website, month after month, all because they searched some variation of “best underrated ps1 games” or “whatever your SEO thing might be” :)
EH #3: Which reminds me that back when 95EH.CA was a paid Squarespace website and not a free Tumblr site, the Google search term that surprisingly showed up again & again in my ‘search traffic’ results was… “train for sale” ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I guess because Sarah Stupar wrote a blog post about an interesting person in the area who had a caboose for sale for 95EH — and I guess also because people often google stuff like “train for sale”. Month after month. And since I can’t currently link to that ‘train seo blog post’ for more context, I’m reminded that I also have a bunch of other old 95EH content currently MIA from SEO action, as I haven’t had time to re-format / repurpose old blog posts since shutting down the 95EH Squarespace account :( Oh well, I guess that’s just another thing for me to work on the next time we have another ‘dangerously smokey’ day out in the outside world (as long as the power doesn’t go out in the inside world again).
EH #4: In related news: it sure has been smokey lately, eh? Like, ‘high health risk on the air quality index’ smokey. Like, ‘outdoor events get cancelled’ smokey. Like… ‘Jeremy has to wait a few days before performing his usual Saturday compost turning duties’ smokey. And, apparently, the reason is because… EVERYWHERE is on fire since May and it’s +30 every day. Again. Anyways, as illustrated in the above newsletter, I’m probably not the right brain to talk intelligently about this concerning climate matter (personally, I just think we should stop doing all the bad stuff centred around greed and start doing more of the good stuff that we know is collectively better for us individually), so I would just like to give a shout out and say that I’ve gotten ‘local value’ from following RDEK on Facebook and Instagram for informative fire updates during this time, City Councillor Sue Cairns on Facebook for continued attempts at engaging the community on important matters (because the ‘Marysville McDonalds’ situation was just one of many interconnected issues in need of addressing), and Top Crop on Facebook for frequent reminders that there are a lot of good-hearted people around our neck of the woods! And possibly more importantly… how do you stay informed and motivated (and sane) about what’s going on locally?
Of course, there’s always more ‘eh?!’ to share than the 4 Ehs that came to my mind while putting together this week’s newsletter, so please make sure to follow 95EH on the Facebook & Instagram & Tumblr, especially if you frequent the highway 95/a/eh area where these signals are getting relayed from.
And for more Jeremy/HI54-specific stuff, you can also follow @HI54LOFI on the Instagram & Twitter & Facebook (and since I’m just one person, be warned that there’s sometimes cross-over and self-collaboration between all my HI54+95EH social media accounts as I attempt to manage them all while also trying to think of ways to use social media less and/or more efficiently/intently).
Because, hey… there’s a lot of stuff going on out there, eh?!
Until next week…
Please feel free to reach out to ‘hey@95eh.ca’ if you have any questions, comments, ideas and/or schemes — and if you think you know anybody else that might enjoy receiving this weekly newsletter about “some locals’ interests” in the highway 95/a/eh area, please feel warmly encouraged to send them a link so they can have a think about signing up too!
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Jeremy // HI54LOFI