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Interesting post by Colin Peddle over at nlphotogs.com about photos and the photographer’s right to be credited in blogs. It was spurred on by an originally uncredited photo posted here on Signal, which at first appeared to be anonymous but was later claimed by photographer Ryan Strickland.

You can read Colin’s post, along with my response, here.

colin peddle, credit, photo, ryan strickland

Below is a snippet from the Montreal Gazette on May 10, 1973, regarding the changing St. John’s skyline.

Fast forward almost thirty years later and St. John’s is faced with a similar problem (or opportunity). It’s also interesting to see the mention of two mega-projects that the Newfoundland & Labrador Government like to tell us are right around the corner (second oil refinery at Come-by-Chance and the Lower Churchill Fall hydro electrical dam).

[ Image Source ]

come-by-chance, Development, hydro electricity, lower churchill, montreal gazette, oil refinery, st. john's, urban development

The City of St. John’s has its largest tax base and lowest level of unemployment in recent history (most likely ever), and city services continue to do a terrible job of patching up roads that have not been properly serviced since Joey was fighting for confederation.

[photo by Ryan Strickland]

city services, infrastrucutre, potholes, st. john's

If last month was punctuated by making music, this month ought to be all about listening to it.  The latest report from The Scope, this neck of the woods’ intrepid RMP Challenge host, puts the total number of local RPM albums produced at 75. That’s a vast ocean of music to dive into.

I decided to dip my toe in with Other People’s sophomore RPM entry, Shady People, and I’ve been swimming in their blissful, melodic seas ever since.

Other People are the combined efforts of Amy Joy and Grant King (with the occasional backup vocal from Debi Keith). Their songs are, as the band name implies, all about other people. Specific people. Like Shady People’s Phoebe, which Joy tells me is about a woman she met at her grandmother’s retirement home:

She had Alzheimer’s and would repeat the same things over and over. She was a very sweet lady when we met her and she had this little toy accordion that she’d always play. So one day when we went to visit nan, we took a notebook and wrote down all of Phoebe’s sayings. Most of (what’s in the song) is actually word for word.

The song is a tender, beautifully realized homage to a woman you or I might otherwise never have known.

Other People have been playing together, away from the public eye, for just over a year. They released their first album, I’ll Never Tell, under the RPM umbrella last year. With their second album now snugly under their collective belt, they’ve decided to venture outside of the recording booth and will soon be making their first public appearance.

Look for Other People at a bar or pub near you, Joy hopes, by May or June of this year.

amy joy, Grant King, other people, rmp, shady people

The MUSE, Memorial University of Newfoundland’s student newspaper, is the least funded student newspaper in all of Canada.

In order to help the MUSE in its ongoing efforts to bring you top quality student journalism and bring that journalism into the 21st century (hello online and interactive, goodbye paper), they are seeking an increase of two dollars in student fees.

Two bucks. For a semester’s worth of top quality, necessary to the existence of a healthy and informed student body, journalism.

This is like a multiple choice exam with only one question and a clear answer.

On March 16th and 17th, vote YES!

MUN, student fees, the muse, toonie, vote

Today’s story on CBC.ca about the plague of dealer-on-dealer drug crime in Gotham City St. John’s reeks of PR-serving, headline-grabbing BS.

It contains no actual news, no story, just a bunch of quotes from cops and lawyers about how out-of-whack the illegale drug trade is getting now that dealers have started turning on each other en masse.

I mean, get a load of their weapons!

If this had followed a report on something that actually happened, an instance of such a case that the CBC themselves had investigated, I would see the need. But the entire report is in response to nothing other than whatever information the RCMP and RNC have decided to disseminate. A lot of which amounts to, “well, crimes like these are rarely reported, but we know.”

It’s like ambulance chasing without the actual ambulance. Just reports on how loud the sirens were.

cbc, Crime, dealers, drugs, rcmp, rnc