THE BI-WEEKLY(ISH) EH?! -> September Twentieth, Twenty Twenty-Four
As part of my new "bi-weekly-ish" guarantee, here's the 2nd newsletter of the month, specifically sent on September 20th because September 21st is the last voting day for the Kimberley By-Election!
Hi!
It’s a-me, Jeremy 🙃
As some of you may remember, there was a period in the not-too-distant past when I was sending out a newsletter called “THE WEEKLY EH?!” on a weekly basis. As some of you may also remember, the weekly-ness of that newsletter came to an end around May 2024 (which was around the same time that I officially stopped putting work into keeping The 95EH Events Calendar up & running).
Well, once I pushed pause on all those interconnected tasks, and with me having already pulled the last of the plugs on all my “music blogging” responsibilities earlier in 2024, I soon came to the conclusion that it would probably be a good time for me to also just take a break from actively participating in the cyclical content churn of social media for a while too, AND… I guess that lasted for most of the summer (which went well with me being a part of TWO garden locations this year).
Time flies, innit?
Anyways, during my break from spending time on the many tasks related to attempting to keep my “HI54.BLOG / MOUN.TOWN + 95EH.CA” domain equation up in the air, I focused a good chunk of my finite energy on an online job that I recently stumbled into. One where I help train AI chatbots (yes, the very AI chatbots who will one day replace me and my already-hard-to-bill-for skillset). AI chatbots like this. And this. It’s a weird job — BUT — it can be quite interesting work and it also pays my Canadian ass in American cash (ie. every payout currently comes with a nice USD-to-CDN exchange bonus when I move my earnings from PayPal to my Canadian bank account), which is nice.
It is also the kind of ‘work whenever from home’ job that allows one like me to start wondering (again) about whether there is a sustainable version of my former #BlahgLife that might still be worth exploring (given the known realities).
This is especially true when my online ‘AI Chatbot Trainer’ job rolls into a month-plus project drought, turning a gig job that was once providing as many hours as one could ever have the focus to work on in a day/week (ie. part-time to full-time hours if you want it) into something where all the other gig workers are hoping all the other gig workers don’t take the limited amount of available work before they can even enter “work mode” (a common posting topic in the unofficial Reddit group).
Fortunately, the recent project drought at the online ‘AI Chatbot Trainer’ factory didn’t reach me until more recently — AND — by that time, I had already run into a locally engaged local on my way back from turning compost at the KEGG community garden, which had led to a conversation about local area politics and whether I’d have any interest in trying to engage the local conversation with my online platforms, a conversation that got me thinking about how #LocalAreaElectionSeason (which includes the Kimberley, BC By-Election in September and the British Columbia Provincial election in October) might be a good time to fire up my blog/s & socials for another mountown test run — SO — one might even say that the slowdown at the online ‘AI Chatbot Trainer’ factory job came at a good time for me and my current situation & headspace.
And I guess that more/less catches us right back up from the last time we spoke over newsletter technology, eh?
So… how about we get into some more recent stuff now:
FIVE things FOR your bi-weekly-ish consideration
Out of the comfort of familiarity, I have dusted off an old “high five for” bit and put together a list of FIVE things FOR your consideration below:
• THING #1: The final voting day for ‘Kimberley By-Election 2024’ — where local voters will choose one (1) new city councillor for the next two (2) years — is THIS Saturday, September 21st, 2024.
As part of my own preparation to be a more informed voter for this upcoming municipal vote, I put together a list of questions to ask the seven (7) candidates running. So far, three (3) candidates have sent me back their answers (at the time of me typing out this sentence) and you can find all their Q&As over here: MOUN.TOWN/BY-ELECTION
The Q&A asks important questions like “who are you?” and “what are you even like?” to try and get a better sense of the local humans vying to represent other local humans at city hall for the next couple of years — AND — it even brings up that hot topic Marysville McDonalds council decision from the previous year:
Again, CLICK HERE to see all the “MEET A LOCAL CANDIDATE Q&As”, or, if you prefer jumping to a specific candidate Q&A, here are the links for the Diana Fox, Craig Janzen, and Cody Courtenay Q&As.
However, since only three (3) candidates completed my Q&A before the final voting day, I also recommend checking out the video from the September 9th All-Candidates Forum that the Kimberley Chamber posted to their Youtube (and the city also posted candidate profiles on their website if you’re looking for more candidate context):
Other than that, I think the only other thing you need to know is that the final voting day for the Kimberley, BC By-Election of 2024 is THIS Saturday, September 21st, from 8 am to 8 pm at Centennial Hall (CLICK HERE for ALL the official voting info). And then don’t forget to vote!
• THING #2: Up until now, I’ve stayed pretty neutral in regard to publicly expressing my opinion on which candidate I feel would best represent MY voice/vote at city council meetings for the next two years. This was mostly because I didn’t want to discourage any candidates from participating in my Q&A by “campaigning” for another, as I am genuinely curious to hear anyone's answers to each of the “MEET A LOCAL CANDIDATE Q&A” questions, regardless of who I may or may not be casting my one (1) personal vote toward.
However, now that we’ve almost reached the last day to vote, I think it is safe to say that the candidates who have sent me back their Q&As have, and those who have not, are not going to.
So, since some people have asked me who I am voting for when talking shop locally, and since I will literally be going into the voting booth in less than 24hrs to place my vote (so I need to come to a final decision anyway), when I factor in all the information that I have available to help make my mind up (which includes the “Meet a Local Candidate” Q&As + the Chamber’s All-Candidates Forum + the city’s profiles + personal interactions & experiences from living in Kimberley), as a voting resident of the highway 95a area, I can say with confidence that I will be going into the voting booth tomorrow to put a checkmark beside Diana Fox’s name.
True, Diana was one of the three (3) candidates that sent back their answers to my Q&A questions (which does factor into my decision, but only because that Q&A reveals more about a person than someone not doing the Q&A does) — HOWEVER — more than anything, and I suppose it’s an unfair advantage to the other candidates, Diana Fox (and Mountain Grass Glass) has been a longtime supporter of the stuff that I’ve tried doing with 95EH, from the very beginning. Whether it was taking the time to participate in a ‘Meet a Local Q&A’ or agreeing to put money down on one of my dumb ideas for trying to make the work I do have some “mutually beneficial” financial backing, Diana has always been a returner-of-emails and a think-out-loud in-person face for me and my local projects/ideas.
Through our interactions, we’ve had the kind of conversations that jump between small talk and politics and culture (local & beyond), the kind of conversations that leave me knowing that Diana would be an excellent representative for my voice/vote on Kimberley’s next city council.
I detect that Diana has the kind of sharp ‘BS/Hypocrisy Detector’ that one needs for making real-world decisions that address the actual reality of the world that we currently live in (and why it is the way it is), and I sense that Diana knows how to also keep a finger pointed at the just & rationale world a lot of us want to be living in instead (which is not all cake & roses, but it’s also not all doom & gloom).
But don’t just take my subjective word/experience!
After you read Diana’s Q&A (as well as the others), and before or after you watch Diana’s performance at the All-Candidates Forum (as well as the others), jump on over to the blog that Diana started up to better communicate her candidacy and decide for yourself.
Besides, the most important thing with local politics is for more people to get personally engaged enough to want to participate in the process the best they can, so… shoutout to everyone who put forth that effort this year!
• THING # 3: As part of the blogging exploratory committee that I will be running during #LocalAreaElectionSeason, and partly out of habitual 95EH social media tendencies built-up over the years, I have decided to put together a very basic version of The 95EH Events Calendar over at MOUN.TOWN/EVENTS for anyone looking for a basic way to find a better overall look at the happenings happening in the Kimberley AND Cranbrook area (in one place).
The way to get your local area events added works the same as before, you just need to create a public Facebook event or message 95EH for more details (the main difference is that the current calendar is not as nice to look at nor as functional to use as the previous version, but it also requires much less of my limited human time to keep it updated, so… swings & roundabouts, eh).
• THING #4: Every Wednesday(ish), for the next handful of months, I will once again be updating the starting digital mixes for the Mix Tape Radio players over at Moun.Town/Radio (and all you need is an internet connection to listen for FREE):
You’ll also be able to find individual blog posts for each mix that gets featured — which come with extra links and embeds and context for further musical exploring — over on the recently-renovated HI54 homepage and/or over on the #blahg!
• THING #5: I will just finish “things” off by giving a general rundown of some of the DIY blogger tasks that I will be aiming to try and take care of over the next few months of #LocalAreaElectionSeason (for those who may want to follow along):
I will be sending out two (2) newsletter emails each month (ie. “bi-weekly-ish”) from September to November. This newsletter is FREE for anyone to subscribe to. I might look into opening up ways that people can support the work financially, but I haven’t had time to look into that again. So, please feel strongly encouraged to sign up to start receiving this Bi-Weekly(ish) mountown newsletter in your inbox (if you’re not already)… and please pass things on to anyone else who might enjoy 🙏
I will try to share at least one (1) “The Daily Eh?!” over on the 95EH Facebook each day for the next few months (and whenever I update the blog, I will share those posts on the 95EH Facebook too). So, if you use Facebook, you might find following/visiting the 95EH Facebook worth the clicks.
Screenshot: facebook.com/95EHdotCA Over on the 95EH Instagram, I will be aiming to share 5-9 “EH”s per day in 95EH’s Instagram Stories (ie. this is where I share Instagram posts featuring “some locals’ interests” for anyone that happens to view 95EH’s daily InstaStory). Also, I post on 95EH’s main Instagram feed when there’s new stuff on the blog or when I cat-sit a #CatsOfKimberley and/or ETC. So, if you use Instagram too, you might find the 95EH Instagram worth a follow/visit.
Screenshot: instagram.com/95ehdotca The easy-to-remember URL “95eh.ca” is currently set up to offer an infinite scroll Tumblr-site of assorted “Some Locals’ Interests”, which will be getting updated on a “One Eh?! A Day” ambition-level for the next couple months. This website contains easy-to-find links to quickly visit stuff like The 95EH Events Calendar, this Bi-Weekly(ish) newsletter, Moun.Town/Radio, social media links, and more — SO — it might not be a bad local website to bookmark, if you’re into that sort of thing ;)
Screenshot: 95eh.ca On a related ‘websites worth bookmarking’ note: the main home base for most of the blogging content that I share, as either 95EH or HI54LOFI, will often be found over at the domains “HI54.BLOG” and/or “MOUN.TOWN” (both domains are connected to the same Squarespace website, “hi54.blog” is just the front-facing URL that shows up in the web address bar).
Screenshot: HI54.BLOG / MOUN.TOWN So, if you ever find yourself wondering what the latest mountown signals being sent out from my neck of the woods are, wherever you are, just remember that you can simply punch either “HI54.BLOG” or “MOUN.TOWN” (whichever one you remember) into your fave browser and be magically taken away to a good place to find some of what you might be looking for 👍
And that’ll be that for my “Hi! Five For” things this time around!
Please feel warmly encouraged to sign-up to the “bi-weekly-ish” return of this FREE mountown Substack newsletter below (if you haven’t already):
And if you liked this newsletter enough to want to pass it on to someone else who you think might also get some value out of it, please feel warmly encouraged to do just that ✌️
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Cheers,
Jeremy / HI54LOFI
(95EH’s Temp Intern)