Event: Sudbury Water Tower Meet and Greet
Start Time: Thursday, March 4 at 8:05pm
End Time: Thursday, March 4 at 11:05pm
Where: S.R.O. 93 Durham Street

To see more details and RSVP, follow the link below:
http://www.facebook.com/n/?event.php&eid=367122433973&mid=1f745c6G5af31a9771cdG65b336G7

Call me crazy, but I want the city to keep its landmarks, the watertowers. A Sudbury artist, Joel Kimmel, wants to create awareness of the towers and is organizing an exhibit of watertower art; see his recent release below.

Save Sudbury’s Water Towers: Call for Submissions

Sudbury’s water towers are in danger of being demolished in the spring of 2010.

We want to preserve the towers and allow them to remain in downtown Sudbury as symbols of the city. We think we can show the city that the artistic community appreciates them and doesn’t want to see them destroyed. There are groups of people speaking out on the behalf of towers; we’re hoping the city’s artists can make a visual appeal to the city.

What would the city look like without them? Too often buildings and landmarks are destroyed, only to be looked back upon as great mistakes. We need to stop destroying these old buildings and preserve them to preserve the city’s history. How many great buildings in Sudbury have already been destroyed?

If you love the towers, show us. Photography, illustration, collage, sculpture, painting, animation, digital media, all types of media are accepted as long as they depict the towers (or one tower).

You do not have to be a Sudbury artist to participate. We encourage artists from all over the world to submit their artwork.

Why participate?

Your submission will be featured online and become a part of a collective of artists depicting the towers (along with your name, website, and information about your piece). The ultimate goal of this project is to come together to support the preservation of the towers. We are currently looking into venues to hold a gallery show of the work submitted, for those of you interested in participating in an exhibition.

As the towers are slated for demolition in the Spring of 2010, we need to act quickly. We are looking into holding an exhibition of the work collected in late April, 2010.

Thank you for your interest. Please encourage your friends to participate. Any help you can provide spreading the word to other artists is appreciated. Contributors do not have to be professional artists. Elementary and high school students are also encouraged to create work showing their love of the towers. We look forward to seeing your submissions! Start submitting now if you have artwork of the towers.

Visit Save the Sudbury Water Towers for more information, including submission requirements.Thank you for participating. This will be a fun and hopefully a successful project.

 Website: www.joelkimmel.com

Blog: http://joelkimmel.wordpress.com

Phone: 705-523-4397

I found this funny post on a blog/website called Welcome to My Midlife Crisis. This was posted in December 2007:

"The 2007 award for "Unecessary and Distracting Use Of Detail" has been won by a writer on staff of a little northern newspaper based out of Sudbury, Ontario ,Canada called The Northern Life. The story was written for the holidays and is titled "A Merry Little Christmas", and was written by Vicki Gilhula. It unfortunately was published, and I, unfortunately read the first paragraph, which was more then I needed to read before deciding that this particular story absolutely HAD to win this particular award...Here's why, in only eight words...."Mathew watched his Mother make CAMPBELL"S TOMATO SOUP"....(caps mine)...Branding in the form of a short story now? Did Campbell's pay her for that? Wouldn't they have chosen a more prestigious publication if that were the case? The detail does nothing to move the story forward! What was the point? Did the author feel the menton of the brand would help her story? Does she have relatives who work for that particular company?"

Hey I like Campbell's tomato soup...like Heinz ketchup , there is no substitute. And no I didn't get paid for endorsements. The boy I modelled Mathew on used Campbell's soup.

This is an email sent to me by by fans of Patricia Cano:

Hello Fans of Patricia Cano: Morning North/CBC Radio is calling for suggestions for a Northern Ontario anthem.  Well, Patty's (Cano)'shivers up my spine' original song Home Again has to be The One!
Let's start the ball rolling and everybody call in Home Again as the Northern Ontario anthem.
Here is Patty's web page, with the clip Home Again on MP3 (scroll down on the Music selection square...) to hear it.
CALL TALK BACK at  1-800-461-1138 to suggest HOME AGAIN by Patricia Cano from her CD This is The New World. This spectacular song needs to be heard. Patty's Page:  http://www.myspace.com/patriciaceciliacano
The Feature Page about her CD: http://tinyurl.com/ye9uftg

Sudbury's Jubilee Folk Ensemble presents an afternoon of music and poetry, Sunday. Jan. 31.

The community orchestra, conducted by Oryst Sawchuk, will perform and complement the words of poets Robert Burns, Pablo Neruda, Taras Shevchenko and Walt Whitman. I am delighted to be involved with this event and work with these talented people.

The afternoon performance, which will start at 2 pm will be hosted by Sudbury poet Roger Nash. Poets will be performed by Ron Tough (Burns), Alex Martinez (Neruda), Wilfred Szczesny (Shevchenko) and John Lindsay (Whitman).

The poets selected for this special event are well known for their contributions to their homelands and the world.

Tickets for Four Poets Who Changed the World are $10. There will be complimentary refreshments.  (I am in charge of refreshments.) Tickets will be available at the door at the Jubilee Centre on Applegrove St.

This is a copy of an email I sent to the mayor this morning.

Dear Mr. Mayor,

As a big booster of the City of Greater Sudbury, as well as a patron of the arts, and an advocate for saving the city's few remaining heritage buildings, I am disappointed in your comments on CTV. You said, "Absolutely not," when asked about saving the Pearl St. watertower.

When I moved to this city in 1986, the watertowers (the Ash St. one as well) are something I thought gave the city's landscape character.

As Bruce Mau has said so elegantly, many of us do not want to live in a city that is all parking lots and big box stores....this progress means the city looks like everywhere else.

I am attaching a letter that appeared in Northern Life in the Tuesday, Jan. 12 issue from artist Irvin Marshall, and I hope you will reconsider, and champion this issue:

Mural should be painted on water tower - Irvin Elwood Marshall

It is with great concern and urgency that I write this letter to you. My concern is the state of appearance of the Pine Street Water tower, and my urgency is that I have heard rumours of demolition.

Those water towers have been a part of the Sudbury landscape for many years, and have served the city well. They should indeed be considered a heritage site as much as the Flour Mill silos. The one on Pine Street, which is owned by the city, is a definite eyesore and has been left in the state of disrepair for some years.

I am a long-time resident and artist, and have created many landmark murals within the city. I would like to propose that this sculptural piece of our history be given a new cultural life. I would transform it into a piece of creative genius that could be seen by all as a source of pride instead of the aura it now presents.

Whatever the cost of demolition, I would accept as payment for my creative transformation. Thousands are spent every year in other cities to either preserve or create public pieces of art.

We have been innovators and leaders in the past, and we can be that today. You be the leader and I the innovator, and (together we can) will that diamond in the rough into a sparkling gem that will grace the landscape and give credence to our re-greening transformation.

They have raped the landscape we have worked so hard to restore by flattening our green hills in order to build high end housing. The Mountain Street hill and the Copper Street hill have all but disappeared, and beautiful, young pine trees are being cut down to accommodate bricks.

When we can no longer run free on our hilltops, I no longer want to be here. A view from the Pine Street Water Tower is magnificent, and when that view disappears, a lot of our heritage goes with it. Give me this creative opportunity, and I will give you back a gem of a tourist attraction.

Irvin Elwood Marshall
Greater Sudbury

This is a note I sent to Canadian Press this morning.

I listened with interest to your discussion with CBC Radio North's Markus Schwabe today regarding CP capitalization policy on Northern Ontario (northern Ontario).

As a reporter, and later an editor in Sudbury, I capitalize Northern Ontario--but not northeastern Ontario or northwestern.

I believe when I first started writing for Northern Ontario Business in 1986, CP capitalized Northern Ontario but not southern or southwestern. Then a few years ago, the new style book came out...and lowercased northern Ontario!

My reasons for capitalizing it is that it is a region like the Maritimes or the Prairies. For years, the federal government has had a FEDNOR program with programs just for Northern Ontario. At one time this was north of the French River; then it became Parry Sound, and now I believe includes Muskoka.

The Ontario government has a ministry that looks after just Northern Ontario--the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines.

And, as you say, for the people who live in Northern Ontario, it is a state of mind, a place very different than the rest of the province for many reasons including landscape, natural resources, scattered population, and until very recently two-lane highways. The 400 series used to stop just north of Barrie, and still hasn't made its way to Sudbury.

Hope you reconsider.

I am not superstitious about most things, but I don't like black cats (aka bad luck) to cross my path.
And I have also always considered 13 to be an unlucky number, although I have no reason to think so, other than the old wives' tales. I haven't had a lot of bad luck in life...well except for with men.
I was only a little distressed to note that I was sitting in seat number 13 at my university graduation. But the number 13 keeps crossing my path. When I awake in the middle of the night, more often than not, the digital clock reads 2:13 or 3:13.
How worried am I about 13? I ask to be reassigned if I am sitting in row 13 on an airplane, and I prefer not to stay in a hotel room with the number 13. Maybe for me, 13 is a lucky number. I sure hope so. I attended the New Year's Eve dance at the Navy League Hall, and you guessed it, I was seated at Table 13! Here's wishing readers a happy 2010. I can't wait for 2013.

Last night (Dec. 13) I attended an excellent Christmas pageant at Sudbury Secondary School. A dramatic reading of a Christmas Carol and music was presented as a benefit for the Joan Mantle Music Trust.

Joan Mantle was an educator and music instructor with the Rainbow Board of Education for many years. She died in 2009.

The trust fund was established in her name to help improve high school music programs in the English public school board.

There were outstanding performances by the Lo-Ellen Park Secondary School Woodwind Ensemble, the Lasalle Bluegrass Duo, the Sudbury Secondary Brass Ensemble, as well as by story readers CBC Radio host Markus Schwabe, Sudbury Living publisher Patricia Mills, police chief Frank Elsner, Laurentian University president Dominic Giroux, and director of the Rainbow Board of Education, Jean Hanson.

It was a great show for a great cause. Ideal for putting even a Scrooge in the Christmas spirit.

One of the country's top architects, whose masterpiece is the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Gatineau, Que., says there are many things the aboriginal community can teach conventional Western thinkers when it comes to designing buildings and planning communities.

Douglas Cardinal, who is of Métis and aboriginal heritage, told an audience at Sudbury Theatre Centre in November that native communities are maternal and communal while Western societies are masculine and hierarchical. Each have a different world view, but they can complement each other, he said.

"You can grow larger by embracing other cultures, he said.

Cardinal has done imaginative work with native communities and designed the Museum of the Native American in Washington, D.C. as well as the The Meno-Ya-Win Health Centre in Sault Lookout, and the First Nations University of Canada in Regina, Sask.

He told the audience that communities and buildings should be planned in harmony with nature and the environment.

"A building should speak to you," and is a piece of art, he said.

His visit was intended to inspire the community about the possibilities of having a school of architecture located in downtown Sudbury. Cardinal was the guest of the Humanities MA program at Laurentian University and the Northern School of Architecture (NOSA). He was one of the judges of the NOSA's first international Ideas competition.

There will several other prominent speakers visiting the city in the next few weeks who will also challenge people to imagine a different Sudbury. Avi Friedman, a professor of Architecture and director of the Affordable Homes Program with McGill University School of Architecture will speak at a Healthy Community forum Thursday, Nov. 5 at Bryston's on the Park, and later the same day at the Rainbow Routes annual meeting at 7 pm at St. Andrew's Place.

Design guru Bruce Mau will speak in Sudbury Tuesday, Nov. 10 at a free session at the Cambrian College student centre. This event is sponsored by the City of Greater Sudbury, Imagine Sudbury, the Downtown Village Development Corporation, and Downtown Sudbury as well as other community partners including Northern Life.

Vicki Gilhula is the editor of Sudbury Living.

The Winter issue of Sudbury Living, to be released the second week of November, features a story on HINI virus. Everyone is talking about it.

Whether you get a vaccine is up to you...I plan on getting HINI and regular flu vaccines when they are available.

The experts say that washing your hands is still a primary defence against flu infection.

A survey conducted by Harris/Decima found 89 percent of Canadians wash their hands to protect their family's health. However, 92 percent of women say they are more likely to wash their hands than men (85 percent).

Hand washing, when done correctly, is the single most effective way to prevent the spread of communicable diseases, and faced with the threat of H1N1, taking the proper precautions has never been more important.