Bloganagan

New Book Launch: Gifts of the Okanagan

I'm so excited about my latest project Gifts of the Okanagan - in bookstores now! For this photo essay of the Okanagan Valley, I teamed up with my husband Bruce Kemp, who I have to credit with the stunning cover photo. We hope that our images will reveal the deep connection we feel with our home and our true pleasure in sharing the beauty and wonders that surround us every day. Take a preview peek. Now available in bookstores or order direct.

Ivory Express on Kobo and Amazon

Grandma isn't just a travel writer. Check out my novel Ivory Express. A little mystery, a little romance and, OK, lots of travel. Set in Vancouver and Taiwan, eBook editions are available online at Amazon.com and Kobo Books. Read the Prologue and Chapter One.

Reporter Taylor Kerrick's discovery of ivory smugglers is pure coincidence. Her determination to discover the source of the contraband and raise public awareness of endangered elephants is pure madness—or so her editor Ben Palasco fears when the story heads for Taiwan.

Travel With a Challenge Okanagan Story

Check out the July/August 2011 issue of Travel with a Challenge web magazine, showcasing Grandma Wears Hiking Boots and the Okanagan Valley. The magazine focuses on alternative travel: ecological, educational and cultural/historical travel, distinctive cuisine and volunteer vacations worldwide. Travel with a Challenge is a nine-year-old globally popular travel information website largely addressing the interests and agendas of the educated, proactive mature traveler, aged 45 to 80 years old.  About 65% of readers are women, and 74% of all readers have at least one post-graduate degree.  The TWAC website attracts 1.6 million readers a year, 74% Americans and Canadians, 20% British and Europeans, the rest Australians, New Zealanders and others. 

 

Grandma Wears Hiking Boots – Preview

Many Hats Theatre Company

Yesterday I posted a review  that I did for Okanagan Life's Best Restaurants issue on The Can Coffee Company, home of the Cannery Stage where the Many Hats Theatre Company performs. Ed Schneider has just let me know that The Can has closed, but Many Hats is alive and well. Next performance Same Time Next Year, July 8, 2010.

Nk’Mip Desert Cultural Centre

Why did the biologist paint the rattler’s tail yellow? Who cares – I hate snakes – well, more like love/hate. The fact is, I actually wanted to see a rattler, but they’re getting so scarce in BC’s southern Okanagan Valley that my best chance for a sighting was the Nk’Mip Desert Cultural Centre in Osoyoos.

The Commonage

Here's a book title for you - Where the Grass is Always Browner on the Other Side of the Fence: A History of the Okanagan Commonage...

It may sound a little tongue-in-cheek and it's certainly a tongue-twister, but this book by retired veterinarian turned historian and author, D. John Price, should be in the library of every Okanagan history buff.

I met Dr. Price one sunny summer day and we sat on the deck of his stunning log home overlooking Kalamalka Lake, with the brown grasslands of the Commonage all around us. Behind the house, several horses loafed around in corrals next to the bright red barn that centres the cover of his book. A big black dog, lounged at our feet.

Here's a bit of what he had to say.

Kettle Valley Railway - History/Archaeology Tour

Since my first-year university Classics course (Ancient Egypt, Greek pots ...) I've wanted to visit a dig. Notice I didn't say I wanted to take part in one - all that meticulous sifting and dust-brushing, not so much - but I really have wanted to see the process in action. I never suspected that my chance would come right here in the Okanagan.

OK, so the 12 UBC Okanagan students working under the direction of associate professor and archaeologist  Rick Garvin aren't going to stumble on a Tutankamen's tomb - but they are turning up the detritus of the humble working men who laboured in the 1910s to build the Myra Canyon section of the Kettle Valley Railway (now the popular KVR Trail).

Toe-tappin’, Train Talkin' Troubadour – Jack Godwin

You've likely gathered that I'm quite a history buff and I don't much mind the shape my history lessons come in: museums, castles, interpreters, roadside plaques, recreated villages,  even the History Channel. But I know that lots of you would rather eat raw eggs; shave your legs with an emery board; listen to a thumbnail scraping a blackboard - well, maybe not that. But you're really not into the history thing.

Jack Godwin understands. This retired history teacher learned in the classroom that “the way to get students involved is to hook them emotionally with a question or a story.”

In his second career as chief engineer of the folksy, bluegrass Kettle Valley Brakemen, he uses the same technique, drawing audiences into the performance with tales from the railway days, stories about how he came to write the songs and lots of humour. Every concert is a rollicking history lesson with special emphasis on the Kettle Valley line.

Socially conscious songwriter - Ryan Donn

What if good ol' Rapunzel, let down her hair

But the extensions gave way on the climb?

What if Little Bo-peep never had any sheep?

and she was really just losing her mind
…
What if life didn't work out as you thought it would sometimes?

Kelowna singer/songwriter Ryan Donn makes his point in three verses of Nursery Rhyme, a song with roots in a local classroom (where the kids spent a lot of time on the classic rhymes) and his day job as a Certified Education Assistant. Working for months on exercises to teach an autistic child the alphabet, he realized the kid had picked up the capitals but not the small letters. Life doesn’t always work out as you thought it would.