To celebrate the release of the Official Witsuwit’en-English Dictionary, the Witsuwit’en Language & Culture Society is going to be holding two events where copies of the dictionary will be handed out.
The first event will be held this Friday at the Witset First Nation Multiplex, located at 205 Beaver Rd, from 1 PM to 3 PM.
As of right now, the second event has neither a date or a venue scheduled.
The first event will see members of the Hagwilget and Witset First Nations allowed to attend and the second event will allow members of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation, Ts’il Kaz Koh, Nee Tahi Buhn, and Skin Tyee to come.
For more information on these events, you can call 250 847 3166.
Celebrate Juneteenth with some of the many events and programs taking place around Seattle. From Black-owned business markets to free portraits, below you’ll find some of the many celebrations taking place this week:
Crosscut: Black Arts Legacies
Series: All Month Long Black Arts Legacies Celebration: June 16 6:30 – 8 p.m.
Crosscut launched Black Arts Legacies, a digital archive highlighting the roles Black artists have played in the Northwest’s cultural landscape. For its debut, Black Arts Legacies is featuring 26 creatives spanning decades and artistic disciplines.
Wa Na Wari is offering free portraits for the Black Community taken by Brea Wilson.
Africatown Community Land Trust: Juneteenth 2022
June 18-19 Free
June 18, 12 – 1 p.m.: Black Business Panel & Brunch
June 18, 12 – 5 p.m.: Day Party
June 19: Parade & Festival at Jimi Hendrix Park
Africatown Community Land Trust is hosting a few events in honor of Juneteenth, starting with a Black Business Panel and accumulating with a community-wide celebration at Jimi Hendrix Park.
City of Seattle: Juneteenth “The Songs of Black Folk: The Music of Resistance & Hope”
June 19, 6 – 7:30 p.m. McCaw Hall Free with RSVP
Join Mayor Bruce Harrell and the City of Seattle at the One Seattle Juneteenth concert as we celebrate the Juneteenth Federal holiday. This FREE concert celebrates and centers Negro Spirituals and the diverse musical traditions that have creatively evolved from them including gospel music, jazz, R&B, and hip hop.
LANGSTON & Friends of Waterfront Seattle: We Out Here On The Pier
June 18, 2 – 6 p.m. Pier 62
LANGSTON takes their We Out Here Festival to Pier 62 on Saturday, June 18. This is a free community-wide celebration featuring: music by JusMoni, Stas Thee Boss, Taqueet$, Larry Mizell Jr. & The Mahogany Project; spotlights on Local Black Businesses; food by Dat Creole Soul, Paparepas, All City Ice Cream, and Donut Mama; and more.
Capitol Hill EcoDistrict: Juneteenth Pop-Up Market
June 19, 11 a.m. – 3 p.m. Midtown Square Free
Join Capitol Hill EcoDistrict and community partners Arte Noir, the Central Area Collaborative, and Craft3 as they celebrate Black businesses in the heart of the Central District. Featuring music by KEXP DJ Riz, Black-owned businesses, food vendors, and resources from community organizations that specialize in uplifting thriving Black communities.
NAAM: Juneteenth Celebration – Skate to Freedom Party & Community Day
July 19, 11 a.m. – 5 p.m. Judkins Park Free
NAAM is hosting a Skate Party with a complimentary skate rental, local Black-owned vendors and food trucks, family-friendly activities, music, and more. Join us for the ultimate Juneteenth immersive experience!
Istanbul, Turkey – It is the height of spring in Turkey, and with that comes a flurry of concerts and outdoor festivals to complement the pleasant weather.
But in recent weeks, a string of events have been cancelled by cities and districts run by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party), leading critics and analysts to accuse the government of attempting to wage a “culture war” in the run-up to next year’s general elections.
The first widely publicised cancellation occurred on May 9 when the governor of the Central Anatolian province of Eskisehir banned all outdoor events for 15 days on the grounds that “terrorist groups were preparing demonstrations”. Eskisehir is known as a lively college town with brimming nightlife and while the city municipality is run by the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), the provincial governor, like all others in Turkey, was appointed by the president.
The ban effectively cancelled a large festival which was scheduled to take place in Eskisehir between May 12-15, featuring some of the country’s most popular singers.
Meanwhile, iconic Kurdish singer Aynur Dogan’s concert on May 20 in the province of Kocaeli was cancelled on the basis that the event was “not appropriate,” while folk musician Niyazi Koyuncu’s concert in the Istanbul district of Pendik scheduled for May 25 was banned on the grounds that Koyuncu – who is known for being opposed to the government – did not share the “value judgements and views” of the municipality.
Despite enjoying a surge in popularity, singer Melek Mosso’s June 3 concert at a festival in the western city of Isparta was axed by the municipality after two youth associations released a statement alleging that Mosso “encourages immorality,” urging that her show be shut down. Another Kurdish singer, Mem Ararat, had his concert in Bursa cancelled by the provincial governorate for reasons of “public safety”.
“Cancelling concerts by Kurdish singers plays into the recent surge in nationalist, anti-Kurd and xenophobic bent of a lot of the AKP’s rhetoric and policy – an outgrowth of their partnership with the [far-right] MHP – but the general idea of taking the fight to pop music is striking in a country that generally has viewed pop music as an apolitical venue,” James Ryan, Associate Director at New York University’s Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, told Al Jazeera.
“There are a lot of AKP voters who watch Eurovision, listen to [doyenne singer] Sezen Aksu, watch [the popular contest show] O Ses Turkiye, and I’m sure there were at least some AKP-aligned voters who held tickets to the concerts by Dogan, Ararat, Koyuncu and Mosso,” Ryan added.
The Directorate of Communications did not respond to a request for comment by Al Jazeera.
But Hilal Kaplan, journalist and columnist for the pro-government Sabah newspaper, said the two organisations that urged for the cancellation of Mosso’s concert in Isparta are, in fact, linked to the Felicity (Saadet) Party, which is among the six opposition parties belonging to a coalition alongside the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP).
“The Saadet Party positions itself in a more religious and more reflexive place than the AK Party. Moreover, after Melek Mosso’s concert was cancelled in Isparta, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism arranged a stage for Melek Mosso to give a concert in Istanbul. Thus by organising a concert for her in Istanbul, the government has created a much larger sphere of influence than in a small Anatolian city,” she told Al Jazeera.
“So it would be misleading to ignore these facts and claim that the events were cancelled by the government.”
Meanwhile, spring festivals take place at numerous universities throughout the country but this year live music performances at the gatherings at Middle East Technical University in the capital of Ankara and Yildiz Technical University in Istanbul were cancelled, officially because three Turkish soldiers were killed in a recent military operation targeting the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Both universities are led by rectors who have been appointed by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
“It’s hard to know the exact motivation behind [all] these cancellations, which is even more disturbing, but I think it’s related to the election climate we are about to enter,” said James Hakan Dedeoglu, a publisher of the independent music magazine Bant and long an active figure in the Istanbul music scene booking and promoting concerts.
“It seems to me it is a way for the forces in the government to show they can do whatever they want. Especially when it comes to answering the needs and requests of the conservative population. And they need to consolidate their voters, especially in this current disastrous economic downturn,” he told Al Jazeera.
Other analysts agree that the cancellations likely stem from a pre-election strategy on the part of President Erdogan, who has slipped in the polls due to Turkey’s ailing economy, with general and presidential elections set for June 2023.
“With the growth being down and inflation nearing triple digits – the highest since Erdogan came to power – and other economic indicators not looking very good, I think Erdogan is going to double down on the culture wars aspect of his brand,” Soner Cagaptay, Senior Fellow at the Washington Institute, told Al Jazeera.
The government has firmly defended its economic record and its controversial interest rate policies, arguing that lower rates will lower inflation and will boost economic growth, exports and jobs – and Erdogan said in a statement on June 6 that Turkey does not technically have a problem with inflation, but with a high cost of living.
And some argue that the cancellations are not linked to a top-down policy imposed by the ruling party.
“The decisions to cancel the concerts and festivals are definitely not the decisions of the government, they are personal decisions made by provincial or district administrators, mayors, governors and district governors,” Tulay Demir, journalist and columnist for Daily Sabah, told Al Jazeera.
“It is definitely not government policy, it is being portrayed by the opposition as if it were government policy.”
But for music publisher and promoter Dedeoglu, the wave of cancellations is deeply worrying.
“[It’s] a horrific and systematic thing the government is doing. And even if this is a temporary and stupid political act, the harm it does to society will last a long time.”
Ironically, the concert bans and ensuing outrage have probably generated a bit of the Streisand effect, in which an attempt to suppress something only brings more attention to it. Melek Mosso continues to perform for large crowds across the country, while Aynur Dogan played on May 28 to a packed house at Istanbul’s pre-eminent outdoor venue, the Cemil Topuzlu Open Air Theatre, singing Kurdish songs to thousands of fans.
“It was a dream, my heart soared from excitement and I was thunderstruck,” wrote Dogan in a heartfelt tweet featuring photos of her Istanbul performance, an indication that music can be difficult to silence when there is a dedicated audience for it.
“Every beautiful word that could be uttered lost its meaning at that moment. Your eyes and faces were more beautiful than a thousand roses and you became thousands of hearts.”
Bir rüyaydı,heyecandan kalbim uçtu, dilim tutuldu.Söylenecek her güzel kelime anlamını yitirdi o an.Siz, gözleri, yüzleri bin gülden güzel, binlerce yürek oldunuz. Beni yalnız bırakmayan sizler, büyük bir inanç ve emek gösteren @gergedanyapim ve @bgstorg binlerce kez teşekkürler pic.twitter.com/3SNvUVcnWy
DENVER (CBS4) – Celebrate Colorado starts Friday, May 6! It’s a three-day weekend of free and discounted events across the state.
There are more than 200 events planned to showcase Colorado’s arts, culture and businesses in all parts of the state.
The Celebrate Colorado weekend is also meant to thank Coloradans for their resiliency during the pandemic.
“We wanted to make sure that we were getting this out to all four corners of the state and making sure that all cities, counties and communities can participate,” said Danielle Oliveto, Deputy Chief of Staff for the governor’s office. “You may be here in Denver and thinking, ‘I want to go down to Colorado Springs for the weekend,’ or you know, ‘I might wanna go to Lamar.’ They’re doing a kickoff down in Lamar. We’ve got main streets across the whole state. … Maybe you are thinking you want to get somewhere different and see what Colorado has to offer.”
All nine of History Colorado’s community museums will be free for the weekend.
The History Colorado Center on Broadway in Denver will also be hosting an AAPI wellness day Saturday for a fee, with acupuncture, reiki healing and sound baths.
There will be a food truck fest at the Pueblo fairgrounds, the Aurora Reservoir will be free for the weekend and all the Denver recreation centers will be open free to Coloradans as well.
Here’s a sampling of some of the other ways to celebrate Colorado:
Museums: Museo de las Americas – Denver Center For Colorado Women’s History – Denver Museum of Art – Fort Collins History Colorado – Denver Denver Art Museum Golda Meir House Museum Colorado Governor’s Art Show – Loveland Avenir Museum of Design and Merchandising at Colorado State University – Fort Collins Gregory Allicar Museum of Art – Fort Collins Aurora History Museum Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum El Pueblo History Museum – Pueblo
Performances: Harmony: A Colorado Chorale – Denver Estes Park Rotary Duck Festival
Freebies: Aurora Libraries – Saturday is Free Comic Book Day Denver Recreation Centers Aurora Reservoir AFA Spring Volksmarch Hikes
Discounted Admissions Pikes Peak Space Foundation Discovery Center – Colorado Springs Cheyenne Mountain Zoo
“You’re going to see a really cool interactive Google Map, and you can scroll into any part of the state in your neighborhood to see what events are happening,” said Oliveto. “So you scroll in Palisade, you might see a winery that’s doing a discount for the weekend, in Fort Collins you might see the trail gardens at CSU or even the governor’s art show in Loveland, so there really is something for everyone indoors and outdoors.”
Langley’s young people have been at the forefront this week as celebrations for the 2022 Youth Week head into the final days.
Acknowledging the accomplishments and diversity of youth, BC Youth Week is celebrated annually during the first week of May. Locally, the Langley City and Langley City Youth have collaborated to bring a series of events for youth aged 12 to 24.
Upcoming events are as follows:
1. Youth Art Gallery
Coming up on May 5, a gallery will celebrate young artists by hosting an art exhibition that is open to everyone. Langley City is inviting the public to Timms Community Centre from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m, as art pieces of students in Grade 6 to 12 are showcased.
There will be more than 25 pieces displayed.
“We know youth love to create and make art so we are celebrating young artists by hosting an art gallery to show their pieces. Anyone can come to Timms and see the amazing talent that youth in our community have,” said Taran Kingsbury, recreation programmer at the city.
There is no registration required, and the event is free for everyone. Timms Community Centre is located at 20399 Douglas Cres.
2. Movie Night
A comfy seat and a big screen at the Timms Community Center – Langley City is inviting youth in Grade 6 to 12 to watch Encanto, a 2021 animated movie.
The event planned for Friday, May 6, will run from 5 to 8 p.m. The entry is free for all youth. Attendees can bring snacks.
“It’s just like the theatre. Relax and watch in the mini movie theatre.” said Kingsbury.
3. Youth Week Festival
For the final day, celebrations will be held at Douglas Park. Activities such as button making, art station, raffle, cultural shows, crafts, goodies bag distribution, and more are planned to mark the end of 2022 youth week.
Drop-in is free for ages 12 to 24 for the Saturday, May 7 event, which runs from noon to 4 p.m.
“We are trying to bring out multi-culturalism through this activity. Meet new people and hang out with friends and staff,” Kingsbury added. “It is something they deserve.”
The idea to acknowledge the contributions of youth was first shared in 1995 by a small group of local municipal planners and youth recreation leaders in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia.
Initially, discussions revolved around the idea of organizing a Youth Day.
Later the group decided to dedicate a full week focused on youth, and Youth Week was born. More than 20 years later, Youth Week has become a provincial celebration to promote awareness of youth.
For more information, people can contact Langley City Youth at 604-514-2999.
LANGLEY TOWNSHIP
The Township is celebrating Youth Week by hosting Active Youth Swims at Township pools and an Active Youth Skate at George Preston Recreation Centre.
Youth, 13 to 18 years old, are invited to come out to swim and skate during a youth-only designated time where they can enjoy fun activities and music.
Choose from these Active Youth activities still to come:
• Active Youth Skate
Location: George Preston Recreation Centre
Date: Thursday, May 5
Time: 4 to 5:30 p.m.
• Active Youth Swim
Location: W.C. Blair Recreation Centre
Date: Friday, May 6
Time: 7:30 to 9 p.m.
• Active Youth Swim
Location: Aldergrove Credit Union Community Centre
Date: Saturday, May 7
Time: 7 to 8:30 p.m.
Admission is $4.26 for each activity.
All activities require advance registration. Register now at tol.ca/recregister.
Tomorrow is Red Dress Day, and residents of the Terrace area have a few ways to honour the day.
There will be three events taking place in Terrace, each hosted by the Tears to Hope Society.
In the morning, individuals can meet at the Chill Soda Shop at 8:00 to take part in the Red Dress Run.
A walk will also be held in the evening, beginning at 6:30, with participants also meeting at the Chill Soda Shop.
In addition, there will be a Hidden Red Dress display event running throughout the day, which will see red dresses hidden around Terrace, along with a message of hope and action.
Red Dress Day is held annually on May 5th to honour missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, and to educate people on the crisis.
The Saskatchewan government is raising the cost for people who want to attend big events or experience entertainment in the province.
A sweeping expansion of the provincial sales tax base was announced Wednesday with the release of the 2022-23 budget.
The changes come into effect in October 2022 and will see people paying an extra six per cent on ticket prices for big sporting events, concerts and professional theatre.
The tax is also being added to movie theatres, museums, zoos and historical sites, as well as tickets for fairs, rodeos, trade shows and arts and crafts shows. Furthermore, it will be extended to people buying memberships to the gyms, golf courses and curling clubs.
It will also be tacked on to hunting and fishing guide fees and outfitter services.
Finance Minister Donna Harpauer said the expansion will generate about $21 million annually. She said it targets events and services already taxed under the federal goods and services tax (GST).
The government did not consult with venues regarding these changes. Harpauer told reporters the expansion would not affect small groups hit hard by the pandemic.
“It doesn’t apply to your small town rodeos or events,” Harpauer said.” This is going to be bigger concert events, your Roughrider tickets. It’s your larger events.”
Opposition finance critic Trent Wotherspoon disagreed and said this tax expansion was another blow to Saskatchewan people and industries struggling because of the pandemic.
He called the government out of touch with working families, saying it didn’t make any sense for the government to add a tax onto “Rider games and concerts and rodeos and Agribition — on the things that will allow us to come together after the time we’ve had to be apart.”
Saskatchewan’s government is expanding the provincial sales tax. (CBC)
The government said exemptions apply to tickets for school, university or minor league sports, amateur theatre productions that do not pay the artists and events put on by a public sector body.
Exemptions also extend to fees for youth programming, like hockey, dance and music, if the activities are run by a school or a non-profit.
Fundraisers where part of the cost of admission can reasonably be considered a donation to a charity are also exempt.
Don’t care much for the constant mid-March ritual of moving our clocks ahead one hour? According to Beth Ann Malow, a professor of neurology and pediatrics at Vanderbilt University, 63% of Americans would like to see it eliminated.
The thing is, daylight saving time represents much more than a disruption to daily routines. Given the stresses heaped upon us in our world of uncertainties, it could be the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.
“Beyond simple inconvenience,” writes Malow on TheConversation.com, “Researchers are discovering that ‘springing ahead’ each March is connected with serious negative health effects.”
“In a 2020 commentary for the journal JAMA Neurology, my co-authors and I reviewed the evidence linking the annual transition to daylight saving time to increased strokes, heart attacks and teen sleep deprivation,” she says.
A separate post on TheConversation.com co-authored by Deepa Burman, co-director of the Pediatric Sleep Evaluation Center at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, and Hiren Muzumdar, director of the Pediatric Sleep Evaluation Center, notes that sleep deprivation can result in increases of workplace injuries and automobile accidents. One individual’s sleep deprivation can affect an entire family.
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“You may notice more frequent meltdowns, irritability and loss of attention and focus,” they say.
I wonder, could uncontrolled anger be far behind?
Now, watching a devastating war unfold on social media is also hammering away at our collective mental health. We’re all being heightened by graphic and disturbing images that fill our feeds, writes Time magazine reporter Jamie Ducharme.
“Tracking up-to-the-minute developments can come at a cost. … Footage and photos from Ukraine flooding social media and misinformation spreading rampantly (has) implications for public health,” she reports.
It has long been the responsibility of traditional media outlets for editors to decide which content is too graphic to show, or to label disturbing images with warnings. As pointed out by Roxane Cohen Silver, a professor of psychological science at the University of California, Irvine, today anyone “can take pictures and videos and immediately distribute that (on social media) without warning, potentially without thinking about it.”
Jason Steinhauer, founder of the History Communication Institute, says, “Russia has been waging a social media and misinformation war for the past 10 to 12 years.” This has only gotten worse since its invasion of Ukraine.
We should not be surprised at all that studies now suggest that news coverage of the pandemic has contributed to our mental distress. “Adding yet another difficult topic to the mix can worsen those feelings,” Cohen Silver says.
Yet the war is hardly the only attack on our senses. At a time when we are most vulnerable, the Federal Trade Commission reports that predatory fraudsters bilked consumers of an estimated $5.8 billion last year. According to the agency, it represents a 70% increase over 2020. “Almost 2.8 million people filed a fraud complaint, an annual record” and “the highest number on record dating back to 2001,” reports the FTC. “Imposter scams were most prevalent, but investment scams cost the typical victim the most money.”
“Those figures also don’t include reports of identity theft and other categories,” the report points out. “More than 1.4 million Americans also reported being a victim of identity theft in 2021; another 1.5 million filed complaints related to ‘other’ categories (including credit reporting companies failing to investigate disputed information, or debt collectors falsely representing the amount or status of debt).”
The mounting stresses placed upon us are now posing a threat to not just our mental and financial health but our physical well-being.
According to a working paper from researchers at the Naval Postgraduate School and the University of Pennsylvania, “In 2020, the risk of outdoor street crimes initially rose by more than 40% and was consistently between 10-15% higher than it had been in 2019 through the remainder of the year.” Researchers also believe that the finding “points to the potential for other crimes to surge the way homicides have as cities reopen and people return to the streets,” says the report.
Adds Megan McArdle commenting on the report in an op-ed for the Washington Post, “community trust in the police might have plummeted, possibly making people more likely to settle scores on their own. Or police might have reacted to public anger by pulling back from active policing, creating more opportunities for crime.”
Hans Steiner is a professor emeritus of Stanford’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences who has logged decades of work studying anger and aggression. In an interview posted on the Stanford University website, he says he believes that “the coronavirus pandemic, with its extreme disruption of normal daily life and uncertainty for the future, compounded by several other crises (economic distress, racial tension, social inequities, political and ideological conflicts) puts us all to the test: we find ourselves immersed in a pool of negative emotions: fear, sadness, contempt, and yes, anger. What do we do with this forceful emotion?”
“Anger signals that we are being threatened, injured, deprived, robbed of rewards and expectancies,” Steiner says. It should be “one of our adaptive tools to deal with the most difficult circumstances. Sometimes it becomes an obstacle to our struggles, especially when it derails into aggression and even violence.”
Anger problems are now spilling over into record accounts of hate crimes. It seems that today’s circumstances, with anger management and rule of law seemingly at an all-time low, have caused many individuals to become ticking time bombs. Reports CBS News, “the total number of hate crimes nationwide has increased every year but one since 2014, according to FBI data, which includes statistics through 2020.”
Steiner says that “maladaptive anger and aggression has the following characteristics: 1. It arises without any trigger, seemingly out of the blue; 2. it is disproportionate to its trigger in its frequency, intensity, duration and strength; 3. it does not subside after the offending person has apologized; 4. it occurs in a social context which does not sanction anger and aggression.”
Who among us has not seen or maybe even experienced some, maybe all, of these behavior characteristics?
“In such conflicts we need to remind ourselves that diatribes, lies and accusations will not move us forward; compassion, empathy and the reminder that we are all in this horrible situation together (needs to) inspire us,” Steiner advises.
Write to Chuck Norris at info@creators.com with questions about health and fitness.
