Much like last month (for both similar and different reasons), I don’t have much time to put together a monthly newsletter before the next calendar change —SO— how about we bring back an old reliable bit called “Hi! Here’s FIVE Things FOR Your Consideration” and see if we can’t cobble together a newsletter worthy of dinging a few inboxes with, eh?
THING #1: The 2025 Kimberley Seed Library is Now Live!
For the last couple months, through my recent “vice presidency” at the KEGG.CA community garden up in Kimberley’s Townsite neighbourhood (and through KEGG’s involvement with a network of Kimberley & Cranbrook local food security non-profits called the Kimberley Cranbrook Food Hub), I have been working with the Kimberley Public Library (along with fellow KEGG’rs and non-KEGG’rs alike) on refreshing the Kimberley Seed Library program for the 2025 growing season (fun fact: the original seed of the Kimberley Seed Library was first planted by one of the humans who first started the KEGG garden group long before I joined, Chris Vassallo, who now lives in Australia but whose son currently works at the Kimberley Library) —ANNNND— that Kimberley Seed Library refresh that we’ve been working on went live at the Kimberley Library on Thursday, March 20th!
Here are some ways to catch up with all the seedy gossip:
“The 2025 edition of the Kimberley Seed Library is made possible through the collaborative efforts of United Way British Columbia, the Kimberley Public Library, KEGG.CA, Wildsight Kimberley Cranbrook, Top Crop Too, the Kimberley Cranbrook Food Network, and… a growing community of local area neighbours who appreciate the value of planting seeds & participating in local narratives (for example, Funk Haus Craft Lab ended up “crafting up” the plain white cardboard seed rack stand that Top Crop Too donated because we said “hey neighbour! interested in a community craft project?” — AND — we’re not done with the telling of those kinds of tales #KimCranGrowTogether).”
THING #2: Oh No! The Kimberley Seed Library is Too Popular! 🙃
I don't have an official count of how many seed packets have already been "checked out" from the Kimberley Seed Library yet, BUT, according to my Google Sheets, we will have put out 380 donated seed packets into the community once whatever is out on display at the library right now is gone (ie. after restocking the seed rack about 5 times since "launching" on March 20th, we are currently out of seed packets to restock with… so I would estimate over 300 seed packets have already been "checked out" from the Kimberley Seed Library in our first 1.5 weeks of being open for seedy business)!
We are currently working on some ideas for how we can keep the Kimberley Seed Library "stocked" for longer this Spring, so, besides us trying to track down some more donated seed packets for the next few weeks, we also have been playing around with using other related "free things" to take up space in the Kimberley Seed Library (as it is quite a big stand)… such as free stickers from the library (mostly all gone), and informative ‘Grow Me Instead’ garden pamphlets from East Kootenay Invasives (which they brought more in during their last story time at the library because yes that’s a thing), AND… we even altered a row with an exacto-knife so we could nicely fit in an assortment of recipe cards & produce processing tips that Healthy Kimberley Food Recovery Depot already had printed out.
Annnnnd… I don’t want to spoil a reveal for next week, so, for now, I will just share two pictures with no extra context (and then you can follow KEGG.CA on Instagram and/or Facebook if you would like to find out more next week).
Ok, for a pinch of extra context I will also say: “@prints_matt” ↑
THING #3: The 2025 Canadian Election Is Coming!
To be honest, I think my main “political take” for right now is best summed up in stuff I randomly felt the urge to share on social media recently-ish, so I will just compost those communications over here:
🍁 A Canadian federal election has been officially called for April 28th, 2025 and, personally, I was really hoping to not have to deal with election noise until we were into the fall —BUT— I also get how it seems like a good time to call an election right now as the reality of The Apprentice becoming The President of ‘Merica again has started to make the copy cat small-c conservative movement up here in Canada feel a whole lot less appealing to almost anyone paying genuine attention to how openly farcical this whole ‘distract by forever blaming others’ grift is starting to get (especially in the face of shared realities we can all see for ourselves).
I mean… WTF in the Elong Donald DOGE is going on down there?!
Thankfully, this Daily Show clip provides a nice, digestible update of some of the more recent madness (so bless Jon Stewart for what he continues to do, even though I bet he’s long grown tired of having to point out the same old jokes & jokers of American empire over & over again):
Or there is also this one from all the way back a few weeks ago (which sure makes one realize how dangerously stupid & long the next 4 years are going to be):
In other words: it would appear that the people who base their entire political identity around always publicly blaming others have started to get confused around who they’re supposed to blame out loud and who they’re not supposed to blame out loud anymore (as the overt contradictions continue to get harder for stubborn hardliners to keep arguing against/for).
And in a "first-past-the-post" system like we still have up here in Canada (because Carney chopped that carbon tax but he did not do a last-minute introduction of a proportional representation voting system), once again in my adult voting life I’ll be heading into another democratic Canadian election where the "progressive" vote gets split multiple ways, leaving the lone party way over on the right always 'in with a chance' to form a majority government, even though they always have less than 50% of the overall votes (with openly regressive & oppressive intentions) — which makes for an election process I never get all that excited about participating in, even though I participate every time because I believe in ‘non-attachment’ and not ‘detachment’, so… I guess it's best we just get this whole toxic election cycle over & done with before the garden beds are thawed out in May, eh ✌️
Besides, I definitely know who I am NOT voting for — the rest of my one-vote decision just comes down to voting for who I think has the best vision & policies for a version of society that I would prefer to be living in rather than whatever the heck version of society we seem to keep getting pulled further & further "right" towards (despite all logic & rationality and compassion & sustainability suggesting we shift that Overton Window over to the “left” a whole bunch more than where it currently is).
“I think so many people have gotten so bought in to a manufactured "us vs them" mindset that they've started to lose sight of who exactly qualifies as their "us" or their "them" (and it's usually a bunch of fluid "it's ok if 'my side' does it" arguments… which are becoming harder to stay on top of as the grift gets more & more 'masks off'). Especially when so many people have hardly anything to say beyond the same repeated 'talking head talking points' that continue to never talk about the most obvious root causes of almost all of our collective problems (ie. I'm not an economist, but I think there might be a direct correlation to individuals and corporations declaring BILLIONS in yearly "profits" while the majority of the planet is left to chase unsustainable infinite growth fantasies on a finite planet with a not-so-mysterious 'always rising living costs & never rising wages' problem).”
Now, some people will probably call me a “socialist-commie” for saying stuff like that, but, as I mentioned in my previous newsletter, those people are not making good points (and they are engaging insincerely).
In fact, they are just making groundless points that involve throwing out their self-defined boogeyman words like “socialism” because they somehow think that everyone else is also working with their willfully ignorant definition of “socialism = everything I think is bad with society (which is also communism)” instead of Albert Einstein’s definition of socialism, found in his ‘Why Socialism’ essay, which states:
“I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child. The education of the individual, in addition to promoting his own innate abilities, would attempt to develop in him a sense of responsibility for his fellow men in place of the glorification of power and success in our present society.”
Because public healthcare is socialism. Public education is socialism. Roads are socialism. Firefighters are socialism. Industry subsidies are socialism. Non-profit funding is socialism. Weekends are socialism. Pretty much EVERYTHING that we consider great about our society, the stuff that make our communities enjoyable to live in (ie. all the stuff that people complain about how there is never enough funding to properly provide the necessary services) — ALL THOSE THINGS — are all examples of socialist thinking applied to a society (you know, it’s almost like community is not the only word connected by ‘commune’ at the roots).
And for a great example of how some people are walking around avoiding certain boogeyman thoughts & figures from the “scary left” (for fear they might get indoctrinated out of their current indoctrination), I hereby challenge anyone who wants to throw around conspiracy talk about how “the government is corrupt (except when it’s the party I stubbornly support blindly)” or “all media except the media I consume is telling fake news” to please watch the very insightful Noam Chomsky documentary ‘Requiem For The American Dream’ (which can be watched for FREE on Tubi in Canada, so no ‘good excuses’ for not watching) — and you can check the trailer below to get a sense of some of what gets communicated during the tight 1 hour and 12 minute runtime:
Because if someone wants to talk your ear off about the corrupt government/media but they also are too scared to openly engage with the ideas of the guy who literally wrote the book on ‘manufacturing consent’ (ie. because Noam Chomsky is a ‘leftist boogeyman’ to be avoided at all costs in certain anti-intellectual bubbles) — asking politically-opinionated people to watch this FREE doc on Tubi is a good litmus test for finding out how bubbled off their brain really is (especially when it comes to openly talking about ideas other than the ones certain people have learned to parrot unquestionably over the years).
And then please vote according to YOUR foundational values as a human living in the country called “Canada” this April (and then don’t forget that you also have to continue trying to live your life while continuing to practice those foundational values via your everyday actions before and after you place your 1 vote into the ballot box every 4 years) 🗳
THING #4: Someone Else Has Started Compiling Kimberley, BC Event Info
As some of you probably know, I have been on-again/off-again running a Kimberley AND Cranbrook area events calendar called ‘The 95EH Events Calendar’ for quite some time (a local events calendar that is still currently in ‘off/basic’ mode over at moun.town/events after I discontinued most of my ‘local events effort’ around this time last year).
Well, a nice chap named AJ has recently picked up the diy ‘Kimberley event compiling’ baton with a weekly newsletter called “Hey Kimberley” that highlights what’s going on in Kimberley each week (with updates happening on the Hey Kimberley Instagram and Facebook as well) —AND— that locally-sourced newsletter gets sent out on Sundays & you can check things out + consider subscribing and/or supporting below:
Again, this ‘Hey Kimberley’ thing is not me, it is a local guy named AJ who also uses Substack —BUT— if you’re looking for a nice way to find out about more things happening in Kimberley, what AJ is doing with ‘Hey Kimberley’ makes for a nice way to find out about those things 👍
In case anyone is wondering how the ol' HI54.BLOG website (also sometimes domain'd as MOUN.TOWN) is still doing out on the internets since I "officially" pulled the plug on being a "music blog" / "music blogger" back in February 2024 (after first pulling the plug on accepting music submissions back around February 2022) — WELL — even though I haven't created any new blog posts in the last few months (although I continue to update the mixtape rotation over at moun.town/radio, fyi), EVERY MONTH WITHOUT FAIL FOR THE LAST FEW YEARS, the people out there using Google for their online wonderings keep coming over to visit HI54.BLOG at a monthly rate of about 5k-7k unique visits… and lately those visit numbers have been quickly climbing towards 12k monthly visitors from Google’rs! #HI54DIYSEO
Anyways, long story short, I will now be updating my theoretical resume to also include "SEO expert" — which I will include next to all my other cv skills/experience that I've acquired while successfully running unsuccessful blogs of my own making (whether it be for HI54.BLOG or MOUN.TOWN or 95EH.CA or KEGG.CA or whatever dot.idea comes next).
Because the #BlahgLife may not be much, but it can make for a decent living if you keep at it (ie. I'm still somehow living pretty decently all the years later, despite all the dead-end blogging I keep plugging away at) 🤙
Until next time…
I’ve started posting more on the socials since the end of February, so if you use the Facebook and/or Instagram (because f*ck Twitter and I’m not sure if I can be bothered investing time into Bluesky or Threads atm):
And please feel warmly encouraged to sign-up for future monthly newsletters of MOUNTOWN SIGNALS for FREE below (if you’d fancy something like that):
And if you resonated with this newsletter enough to want to pass it on to someone else who you think might get some value out of receiving something like this on a once-a-month basis, please feel warmly encouraged to do just that (oh look, here comes a ‘share’ button now) 👇
