Greetings Netizens, Welcome to JD's Home Page

Greetings Netizens, Welcome to JD's info page. Please drop me an e-mail if it's not commercial advertising.

Look for some more updates Summer 08. You bet! Meanwhile consider some stuff uptodate and others, not.

I'm interested in:

• Morris dancing with the Quicksbottom Morris a Border Morris side. This was formerly Victoria Not-For-Joes, which was formerly the Island Thyme Morris men's side, one half of Joint side (not a Mixed side!). We renamed ourselves as QBM in Jan 2007 after having gone through a one year separation from ITM which is now a womens side, vice the other half of our former joint side. All rather simple actually;
• English Country Dance, or "Playford" as the Brits call it. It is delightful, the people, music and movement make it magical. Think of some of the dancing you may have seen in movies of Jane Austen's stories. I've been Calling occasionally for this for about one and half seasons now, with the Victoria ECD Society. That is, instructing the dance and giving calls during it that participants may follow them.;
• Some folks think ECD is not as energetic as Contra dance which I participate in as well, however I think ECD has more variety and may be more challenging. Contra however does have more partner swings in it and is fun to blow off steam with. Good evenings also involve some Traditional Square dances. Not the Modern Western Square Dance some of you may think you know about, the older stuff. Called, like Contra, with a few basic patterns a lot of good social fun may be had.;
• I also used to be quite active with Scottish Country Dance More here.;
• For three years I was very active, both on call and doing crew scheduling with Canadian Coast Guard Auxiliary - Unit 35(Victoria) / Victoria Marine Rescue Society. This is volunteer marine rescue.;
• Before that, while living in snowier climes, I spent a combined seven years volunteering with the CSPS, the Canadian Ski Patrol System. Five years in the Superior Zone when in Thunder Bay where I was a Nordic Patroller (cross country) and later two years in the Calgary Zone where I was a dual Patroller, Nordic and Alpine. The latter in the near city areas, i.e. no Mountain Rating for toboggan handling or skiing. The Nordic was what they called "wicked", working with the Ranger Service in Kananaskis Country, also messing about with avalanche awareness. Through this time I worked as Patroller (always), Nordic Training Officer, Zone VP Nordic, First Aid instructor/examiner, CPR instructor, nordic training workshop co-ordinator. Created early nordic workshops, created or changed protocols, locally at the Zone level and also at Divisional and National levels and instituted a public education component beyond simple PR.
• Amateur Radio is a staple that changes flavour and intensity as time allows;
• Folk music of many kinds, including most Celtic("Keltic") and
• especially in sea shanties and sea songs with the Victoria Nautical Song Circle;
• performing for a couple of years as part of a quartette called Fisherman's Friends, with Nancy, Harry, Mike, Mike and Braden. I know, that's more than four people.
• With the folk music also came 'organising' folk music, including helping start Island Folk and Vancouver Island and neighbouring islands folk music e-mail listserve, participating in an ad hoc folk club steering committee, later the program committee and co-ordinating the hosting/MCs for a year and a half.
• Now, with the dancing mentioned above, I'm in the throws of starting a similar list for Island(s) networking for folk and country dance and likely a web site supporting that similar to Seattle Dance.
• Sailing of all kinds, including about a quarter of the year for the previous four years on board the schooner MAPLE LEAF, built in Vancouver in 1904. Some eco-tourism and most of the youth sail training or "torturing teenagers with a boat" as my friends Ben and Tyson call it;
• and most kinds of outdoor activities.

I hosted a Folk Music show from Dec 1997 to Oct 2000, called "Coastal Ceilidh"("Kay-lee", Scot's Gaelic ("Gal-ick") for party) on CFUV FM102 in Victoria, BC. It was heard Friday mornings 0800-1000 over a fairly large area, west to Sooke, north up the Saanich Penninsula and farther on Vancouver Island, on the Gulf and San Juan Islands and on the Olympic Penninsula on 101.9 MHz, also all over Vancouver Island, the Sunshine Coast and parts of the Fraser Valley often on 104.3 MHz on cable systems, check with your local service. CFUV now has folks shows M-Th & Sa from 8 to 10 a.m. and a great Hawaiian show, "Aloha From Victoria", on Thursday following the folk music show.

CFUV has streaming audio on the internet as well as MySpace, Facebook and Flickr sites and the ubiquitous blog.

I finally broke (down?) and started a LiveJournal blog. Though I've not written much I'm tempted to try one with Tumblr right here on this Victoria Freenet server if it's allowed.

May I recommend to you The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard. It's worth the time spent both downloading and viewing it (20:40). I think it's a great way to assist one in communicating much to friends who haven't read as much as you have. ;)
My download on baby-ADSL (Telus HighSpeed Lite) was fitful and I never found the flash (FLV) file on my machine for repeat offline viewing. I'd recommend one proceed to the Downloads page and grab the 50 MB .mov version for that purpose.

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John D. Erskine "JD"

sailargh@AUNTIESPAMvictoria.tc.ca
Updated 2008/06/10.

What American accent do you have? Your Result: North Central   "North Central" is what professional linguists call the Minnesota accent. If you saw "Fargo" you probably didn't think the characters sounded very out of the ordinary. Outsiders probably mistake you for a Canadian, a lot.
The West
Boston
The Midland
The Inland North
The Northeast
The South
Philadelphia
What American accent do you have?

I thought that was funny, eh.

Wow, up from a 64% rating last autumn.

Digital Doomsday Clock