Fire and Ice
(this entry is brought to you by SoundXchange guest host, Brett Bradshaw)
Time is a funny thing.
For years summers have come and gone, and where can i buy just a cell phone have missed out on taking in home equity loans california Ness Creek Music Festival.
Festivals are really what define a Saskatchewan summer for me, and I never miss the ones closer to home…but Ness has always been elusive.
Work…next time…next year. And then summer summer is here, again. (I write this as I huddle around my computer and a cup of tea–painfully aware it’s an icy minus 24 outside…colder I’m sure with the wind chill.)
So it was a treat to have Shauna Powers (the classical and new music producer here at SoundXchange) brings us a taste of her Ness experience this week.
And Galitcha wasn’t anything I would have imagined seeing at Ness.
The Hindi-fusion group usually plays concert halls, a perfect back drop for the range and precision of their harmonium, tabla, dohl, jazz flute, and intricate Indian melodies.
But they got a huge response from the crowd at Ness, and I can see why. Galitcha moves from making you dance to simply mesmerizing.
I’m listening again now, already feeling warmer.
They write that Galitcha is “perhaps the only Indian music band to feature a white tabla player and a white harmonium player/vocalist.”
I’m smiling, knowingly. I am part of a middle eastern dance group…eight white women. We’ve embraced the history, music, and of course the costumes that have influenced our tribal-style belly dance, grateful to be able to borrow such dynamic colour, sounds and stories.
With their fusion style, Galitcha is definitely music that would move us. Their pieces have that timeless quality, where you suddenly realize you don’t know how long you’ve been listening.
I like that.
It’s what I like about short stories too.
This week you’ll hear “His Daughter’s Eyes”. It was written by Saskatoon’s Regine Haensel and read by the great R.H. Thompson.
This short story does what all great short stories do…teleports you inside a character so deeply (and quickly) you’d never guess you’d been with them only a few minutes, as opposed to the hours that would be spent had you found them in a novel.
The story is about a father and a teenage daughter.
The both feel like aliens to each other.
It’s a pretty universal theme. I just think of how much suffering we cause ourselves by thinking we’re alone, separate; that nobody “gets” us. Or, the people that should don’t. Sigh.
It takes one cold, humbling day for this father to realize is daughter isn’t so different from him after all.
A good lesson, and a good story brought to us by your regular host, Kelley Jo Burke.
She’ll be back at the helm in two weeks week…join us next week as my colleague Krista Baliko takes on the guest hosting role, with a show that celebrates CBC’s National Poetry Face-Off. As for me, I’m be eagerly anticipating a return visit to the host chair at SoundXchange.
Until then, happy listening.
Brett
People love personal blogs because blogs help connect the dots between one faceless personality on the internet to another. Personal blogs are writings on someone’s personal lives, the ups and downs, the trivial concerns, advice for friends and family members. Blogs is a popular medium whereby people update others on things happening around them and about the decisions they made.
Blogs are popular??? and rightfully so.
Ever since the use of blogs exploded from here to the next galaxy, businesses have started making use of this convenient method of connecting with their customers or potential ones. And once again, I will say rightfully so. And here’s why.
PUTTING A NAME AND FACE TO THE WEBSITE
No, it’s GREAT that you have a website. You have an incredibly informative and well-designed one at one (one that you paid a truckload of money for, I presume) but it won’t bring in the business unless you update it and make it visit-worthy. People connect with people???people and websites???.yeah too but???.erm, there’s this invisible divide. There’s a voice inside the reader’s head that goes, ??? Yeah, so you say. You’re a website and you clark howards credit card debt be a pre-programmed software writing this thing out. Or you could be a hired copywriter with magical writing skills. You could be a chimpanzee slapping at a keyboard too???who’s to know ????
Things will change when you have a business blog and when you do, put a name and a face to the blog. Now, it’s one thing to be anonymous with a personal blog, it would explode your sales and website traffic if you had a picture, a name and a designation in your business blog. Take my word for it. So what if there’s a huge staff turnover? Publish THAT and write on it. So what? People reading it will feel more connected to the blog.
SEARCH ENGINES WILL LOVE YOU AND YOUR BLOG
Yes, I will say it???.search engine love words! Words words words???.well, they might appreciate the fact that you have a few illustrious pictures in your business blog too but that’s secondary. The more important fact is that your business blog is consistently updated and there are people finding your blog interesting. Search engines have gotten much smarter these days and their spiders can track just about any change you make to your blog or website. so, the moment they see that you business blog is consistently updated, the spiders come in a little bit more often and check the content out.
so, the more interesting the search engines think you blog is, the higher your search engine ranking, hence, more people coming into your blog.
CONVERSION RATE IS HIGHER WHEN YOU USE A BLOG
Using a website or a simple webpage to sell something is so old. Older than the keyboard that I am typing on right now. That’s what they always see. Well, here’s an idea. How about placing the product and sales pitch on the WEBSITE somewhere on your website but then blog about it in a way that says, ???Hey, you know what? I thought this was really cool. If I were you, I’d check it out too. Love, Pat???.
Ok, Pat. If you say I should, maybe I should cause I kinda like you.
Marsha Maung is a freelance writer with more than 8 years of experience in the freelance writing business. She independently manages, publishes, markets and promotes business blogs for her clients. For details, visit http://www.marshamaung.com