June 2011 -CHASE NETWORKS: THE COMING BRAND!

The effect of the Internet in my life has been, over the last ten years, to both accelerate and compress the possibilities of connection - both personally and commercially. Several weeks ago, I had occasion to advertise on the Internet for a new web designer for Grab News. The responses poured in - some from as far away as Hong Kong and Singapore. However, not being a total virtuoso of virtual reality, I was seeking an associate closer to home - someone within SkyTrain and coffee-drinking distance of New Westminster.

Contained within the dozens of responses was one from Brandon Chase - just across the river in Delta. He seemed perfect. What's more, he seemed very un-geek-like: while some of the offshore candidates wanted to convert my pages to the very latest software and design languages, Brandon simply said, "If it's not broke, don't fix it!"

PUTTING ON (AND TAKING OFF!) EMILY DICKINSON'S CLOTHES

It has been said that someone once surprised the "White Nun of Amherst", American poet Emily Dickinson (1830 -- 1886), sitting on a male knee in the parlour of her father's house in Amherst, Mass.

This vignette of Dickinson likely may not appear in long time New York Shakespearean actress Renee Bucciarelli's performance of William Luce's "The Belle of Amherst." However that does not mean that the play, which runs from May 10th to 21st at North Vancouver's Presentation House, is any less interesting
or revealing"...

BCPWA's 25th Anniversary

I found another little boutique in Vancouver, BC. It is called Polli and Esther's Closet at 1107 Seymour Street.

I recently attended the BCPWA Red Ribbon Circle Tour at the society office on Seymour Street in Vancouver,BC. A welcoming team of dignified and articulate men and women showed a group of us guests around the premises. The search engines of democracy run slowly in this group because every voice counts, and thoroughness takes time.

BCPWA is a self-empowering society supporting individuals with Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome and Human Immunodeficiency Virus...

Review by Rod Drown

Debut Vancouver novelist Ron Prasad’s Paradox & Rebirth is being stocked for the Christmas season at Langley Chapters outlet – news which thrills him to no end. He is equally thrilled by something else: USA Book News, to which Prasad had submitted his book in their Best Novels of 2010 contest recently placed his book under the heading, "What's hot, new, and noteworthy in the world of books!"

The narrative of eventual renewal in Paradox & Rebirth begins, for a main character called Cirrus Jacobs,on a Christmas Day in Vancouver. To my mind, what transpires over the next several days is "Christmassy" mostly in the sense that there is snow on the ground...

Fiona's Secret World: ZipTrek

On a detour from shopping tours I went on an ecotour. What this really means is that I went dangling across Robson Square on the Zip Line, and then read the sustainability pages on the Ziptrek Ecotours website. Grab News is devoted to music and the arts. I thought I'd write about the art of letting go of the fear of heights...

Life in Storage

Enjoy the latest installments of Life in Storage, provided to Grab News courtesy of its creators, Artist Jon Dugay and writer R Daniel Lester. This nicely crafted strip can also be seen at its own website www.lifeinstorage.com where you can learn more about DuGuay and Lester, and their creation, through their blogs....

The New Westminster Frasers

Some dreams of youth took shape one summer 35 years ago on the fields of New Westminster’s Queen’s Park Stadium. The year 1974 was a time when professional baseball had departed the Lower Mainland. Vancouver’s Nat Bailey Stadium had said goodbye to the second (and final version) of the Vancouver Mounties in 1969 and the Vancouver Canadians...

Could New Westminster become Stratford West? Could the oldest city on the country's Pacific Coast some day rival Ontario's Niagara on the Lake in cultural cachet as the Mecca for things stage in Canada? Could a new city theatre organization...

The Cat in the Back in the Hat

From the Cap to the Nat (or How Editing Ken McIntosh's History of Professional Baseball in Vancouver Made Me a Fan). One of my life's singular glory days unfolded during a lunch hour when I was about ten, back in Golden, BC...

Simma Holt: Rosie the Riveter of Canadian Journalism

The history of journalism is Canada in built on a foundation of people with strong ideals who paved the way for the journalists of today. The birthplace of Canadian journalism was in Halifax where the first newspaper, Halifax Gazette...

"So I was going somewhere on a Sunday morning"...
Check out our new comic art feature by Anya Vetrova...

Ideas Bravely Expressed in Jennica Harper's Poetry

Jennica Harper’s What It Feels Like for a Girl is a book length poem that takes us through the teenage life of a 13-year-old girl. The poem navigates the reader through the friendship between two girls as they stumble their way through...