THE MONTHLY EH?! // January 2024
The latest highlight of FIVE things happening in the Kimberley/Cranbrook area, except we're doing the whole month of January in one go this time + FOUR other items of some locals' interests.
Hi!
Because I’m about to go mostly offline for the first half of the first month of 2024, instead of failing to keep up the weekly newsletter routine for January, I will instead be doing a one-off ‘THE MONTHLY EH?!’ before leaving the south of Denmark for the south of Spain (before eventually making it back to the East Kootenays of Canada) — and on that note:
Here’s Five Things
THING #1: Rather than listing all of the many events taking place at both the Kimberley Public Library and the Cranbrook Public Library this month (because there’s A LOT), I will instead suggest that you either jump over to the event calendars that both libraries have up on their websites (click here to visit Kimberley’s and/or click here to visit Cranbrook’s) — OR — you could also use the handy filter option on The 95EH Events Calendar and put “library” into the search bar to see ALL of the many Kimberley/Cranbrook library events listed in one place over on moun.town/events:
THING #2: And while we’re on the topic of how The 95EH Events Calendar has a handy filtering option, if you were to put the word “music” into the search bar, you will find that there is a whole bunch of live music happening around the highway 95eh area in January, especially up at Stemwinder on the ski hill (Darin Welch, Cam & Matt, Ivan Palomares, Heather Gemmel, Lennan Delaney — click here to visit Kimberley Alpine Resort’s calendar for those and more) as well as over on the Pine Box stage at Grist & Mash (Doug Robb, Oracle Jones, String Along, Robbie Burns night) + a night of thumping bass over at Bohemian Spirits & The Great Canadian Roadtrip (featuring Jason McCoy, Doc Walker, and Michelle Wright) at Key City Theatre.
THING #3: Included in that “music” filter is a show that feels worthy of getting its own separate shoutout —> 🗣️ The Sheepdogs are playing Key City Theatre on January 28th! <— as this is a band coming to town that I remember once gracing the cover of Rolling Stone magazine (which happened back in 2011, when they won a North American battle of the unsigned bands competition, a RS article that I distinctly remember to this day because the author blasphemously took a shot at The Hip with a throwaway sentence that rings even more false 22 years later, and I quote: “Blaring through the speakers is the awful yet extremely popular Canadian band the Tragically Hip…”)!
And since it’s not every month that a band that’s been on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine swings by our neck of the woods:
…it probably will not surprise anyone that this concert appears to already be sold out — SO — here is my fave The Sheepdogs track that you can listen to as a consolation prize while you try to make friends with someone who might have an extra ticket for the upcoming show:
THING #4: Also happening at Key City Theatre this month is the Banff Centre Mountain Film Festival World Tour, which is taking place on Saturday, January 6th + Sunday, January 7th (“Get off the beaten path and explore the edge of believable with captivating stories from the 48th Banff Centre Mountain Film Festival. From exploring remote landscapes to adrenaline-fuelled action sports, films selected for the 2023/2024 World Tour are sure to captivate and amaze you.”):
You can see the full list of films showing on each day over on Wildsight’s website + you can also check out this teaser video to further entice yourself into attending:
THING #5: The 24-Hour Photography Challenge from the folks over at Dirtbag Festival is back! “There are 12 spots and they are first-come-first-serve so if you would like to compete, send us a message right away. Photographers have 24 hours to shoot, edit and compile a slideshow that will be screened for the audience. There will be a First Place $500 cash prize, and a People's Choice prize of gear from our sponsor, Black Dog Cycle & Ski!”
Of course, there's always more than Five Things happening in any given week month, so don't forget you can punch “moun.town/events” into any browser window at any time and be magically taken away to THE 95EH EVENTS CALENDAR… where you can find the full gamut of Kimberley/Cranbrook area events happening this week month & beyond, all in one place (because there’s always way more going on than I can mention here, with new events added on the regular… although it will be a little less regular than usual this month, at least from January 4th to January 18th)!
+ Four Ehs
And because there’s also way 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:
EH #1: When it comes to ‘New Years greetings’, besides the obvious wish of “I hope this year is a good one / better than the last, et cetera etc” that we all tend to post at the changing of another calendar year, the message that I read on the 1st that resonated the most with how I’ve been feeling heading into 2024 was a tweet thread from George Monbiot pointing out the harsh reality that “those of us who want a better world will have to work even harder than before”:
So here’s screenshots of the rest of his 9-tweet thread below for those that don’t want to click over to “x” to read (although the text might be a bit bigger over on Twitter if anyone is finding the pics a bit squinty to read clearly)…
Because his message about a lack of open-mindedness in a large majority of us, shown in our inability to discuss controversial topics without immediately blowing one’s top at the slightest push back and/or just a total avoidance of expressing any opinions publicly that may go against the status-quo confirming “I’m an always agreeable member of consumerism & western values” posts that tend to fill social media from most ‘regular citizens’ day-after-day (even with all of the seriously alarming things going on day-after-day), was a message that rang really true to me & my experience of wishing more people were more willing to publicly speak up on what’s going on in the world. Before even more alarming things of the present become even more shameful inactions of the past (as I don’t think we change any of the things we claim to care about if we keep publicly signalling that we’re incapable/unwilling to take part in any of these uncomfortable & inconvenient conversations):
Love and courage to all indeed.
EH #2: On a related note, last month I started working on a blog post tentatively titled ‘HOW I CHANGE MY WORLD IS HOW YOU CHANGE YOUR WORLD IS HOW WE CHANGE OUR WORLD’ (which attempts to expand upon Christmas Birthday Boy’s wise saying, “We have to be in this world, but we don’t have to be of this world” in some hopefully actionable/approachable ways) — BUT — that is proving to be a far too involved topic to attempt to write on my laptop while on a ‘Christmas Vacation meets European Vacation’, so I’ve tabled that task until I get back home to my desktop computer (where I can dive into a heady writing project and not feel anti-social while family games of Yahtzee and Hearts are going on in the background). Which I mainly mention in this newsletter now as a way to hold myself accountable to not abandon the ‘part 1’ of that blog post that is sitting in my drafts folder, as I know how easy it is to give up on a hard-to-write blog post topic once the initial push to pick up the pen has yielded itself over to some well-reasoned procrastination points (so check back with me if I still haven’t posted about that blog post by March-ish).
EH #3: In end-of-the-year news, I have not put together my annual ‘20x Current Year’ playlist extravaganza for 2023 yet (chalk that up to another thing I am planning to do once I get back to my desktop computer in February + my plans to cancel my Spotify subscription when I get home has also complicated how I will approach this yearly playlist task) — BUT — one thing I did do in 2023 was keep track of EVERY movie that I watched & then loosely rank them on Letterbox, so, if you fancy seeing how the 114 films that I watched in 2023 stack up against each other, you can click over here to do just that.
EH #4: As for how we rang in the new year in Svendborg, it was a relatively quiet evening of playing Yahtzee with a recently turned 72 year old Dane until a few minutes before the clock struck midnight (and then we all stood on chairs in order to ‘jump into the new year’, as is the tradition over in Denmark). Although, because of Denmark’s surprising obsession with fireworks, it was not that quiet of an evening in regards to explosions happening outside of the house, as fireworks were being lit off from just about every other yard and street corner in the entire town/country. But I guess that’s what happens when you tell a bunch of former vikings that they can only set off ‘sky explosions’ for one week in the year (ie. fireworks are only legal in Denmark from December 27th to January 1st, which seems to lead to a bunch of people trying to get in as much ‘bang for their bucks’ as they can while they can… prompting many posts on Reddit asking “why are the Danes so crazy about fireworks?”). I would show you a picture of some of the many fireworks we watched from the backyard, but fireworks pictures taken on iPhones don’t really turn out that great, so here’s a picture of me bowling from the 72nd birthday party that happened the night prior instead (as the fireworks featured a lot of the same colours, so same same).
And happy new years to anyone who has read this far + I hope this year is a good one / better than the last, et cetera etc 🍻
And that’ll be that from me for not only this week, but for this entire month of January (again, I’ll be mostly offline while in Spain for 2 weeks, so I’m just going to wait until I’m back on my desktop computer in Canada in February before getting back into making this newsletter a weekly thang again).
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/frequent 95EH on the Facebook & Instagram & Tumblr (as I share “ehs” on the daily). And for more Jeremy/HI54-specific stuff, you can also follow @HI54LOFI on the Instagram & Twitter & Facebook.
Because, hey… there’s a lot of stuff going on out there, eh?!
And until next week month…
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 area, please feel warmly encouraged to send them a link so they can have a think about signing up & supporting too!
And I’ll see you out on the URLs and/or IRLs… whichever comes first 🤘
🍻
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Jeremy // HI54LOFI