My Thoughts and musings.
Belliveau Charles-In loving memory of Charles Joseph Belliveau who left us three very long years ago on February 19th 2000. You touched and helped so many people who it has become impossible to forget you. Your hand was always extended to the children and your heart to the beauties of nature. Wife Renee, Nephew Charles Originally printed in the Saint John Telegraph Journal (February 19th, 2003)
Note: This article was originally written for Journalism 2023 Journalistic Writing in November 2002. The 50th Annual Saint John Santa Claus Parade comes around for another year. This was a difficult production for producer Don Ferguson to organize volunteers. In addition, the float list was only available late on Friday afternoon. Three hours before the parade was to begin, we headed down the hill to set up the equipment. On arrival, we realized the taped introduction had the old TVNB logo and Parade 2001 on it. It was determined that we could just cover it up with graphics, but at about the time the parade was about to start to come down the hill the tape got jammed in the machine and I had about 2 minutes to come up with an alternative. Then the parade went really well until the floats stopped coming down the hill in order of the list and then it was a scramble of; What float is it, type it in, bring it up and take it down and repeat for about forty or so floats. After a hard day of work, after the family dinner, many families sit down to feed their brains with…
This was my first day reading the news on CHSR at noon. I made a whole bunch of mistakes. My biggest problem is that I don’t talk very clear.
Trying to make sense out of studies on the topic of the Economic Effects of Drunk Driving is starting to make my head spin as I try to make sence of the formulas that some economist must have thought up as he had nothing better to do. One of these formulas are to determine the effectiveness of regulations on drunk driving, R=ƒ(Q,P(S), P(A|S), P(C|A), E(SV|C), E(SV|NC), N, SA, T)
Today was Remembrance Day. This was the first ceremony I have been to in six years. Before that I used to be forced go every year. I first went with scouting about 12 years ago, always froze my hands off carrying the New Brunswick flag at the Jarvis Bay Memorial in East Saint John, and then in 1996 was my last one with Air Cadets.
This past Thursday I was elected News Director of CHSR. This is kind of shock since I have no idea on how to run a news department.
The Saint John Kiwanis Club held their TV Auction today. The highlight of the auction was the visit by the local Member of Parliament Elsie Wayne. She auctioned off a Christmas Frame and a Decorative Snowman.
Today was my mother’s birthday, on which I thought five years, was long enough to pretend to forget it by not sending a card or even calling her.
Tap Tap Tap, the sounds of little pink fingers tapping on computer keyboards fill the air, as I am in the process of finalizing my news story that is due in measly eighty-five minutes. After a few minutes, it will just become a disconcerting background sound like a buzz from a fluorescent light, or the fans of an air exchange system.
The beautiful white snow is setting softly on the ground. As the first significant snowfall bestows upon us for another year, the gentle little flakes are gliding effortlessly through the air, occasionally moved along by the light winds in the courtyard. The people are stumbling around some not sure, whether or not their next step will be one where their foot hits possible hidden ice beneath the snow.
Today I am reworking my website the people at Tripod.ca sent out a letter on Hallowe’en that they were going to drop their service. This resulted in a bigger furry than the New Year’s dilemma the plagues all webmasters year after year, the changing of copyright last year to copyright this year. Thus, I had to change the entire site’s internal links from enterprise17.tripod.ca to enterprise17.tripod.com. With the larger size of my site that resulted in over 2,300 changes that took about 5 hours to finish moving. At least now, it’s completed.
Today was the annual Fredericton Rotary Club TV Auction at the Sheraton. This year a computer system ran auction. Instead of having, large boards for the bidding, the operators put the bids into the computer and they were displayed on large 36″ TV’s. My job was to bring up the information on the TV behind one of the auctioneer.
Because I was in class during the time, the June Callwood was speaking in the Ted Daigle Auditorium at St. Thomas University I was originally not going to bother with this assignment. When I went to class, I started hearing all the other stories on this particular guest speaker I decided to do it anyway. On the evening of November 1st, I sat down and listened to the rebroadcast lecture on the program “Ideas” on CBC Radio One. I turned on the radio to listen but there was very poor reception on my little cheap radio. After spending about five minutes trying to clear up the reception I gave up. Then later I had an insight that I could pick up the signal on CBC Radio One’s web broadcast so after missing fifteen minutes of the broadcast I began listening. Once I first heard the words coming out I became intrigued. I started to take notes but shortly stopped in awe of the remarkable voice of inspiration and experience. I cannot recall anything in part that she said but the words all appeared well-chosen and magical.
Today I did not feel like getting up after spending last night at class lounge playing the game of Risk until late in wee hours of the morning. Looking at my watch in bed it reads, “08:26,” and rolling through my head goes why in the world I signed up for an 8:30 in the morning class.
Tonight I was filming a hockey game at the Aitken Centre. One thing I noticed is that people will stash their trash into any hole or crevice. Next to the press box, there is a hole in the cement for us to use to feed our camera cables and audio snake through. When I opened the trap door to feed the cables, a pile of trash fell out, enough to fill up two large garbage bags. There were cups from all the big restaurants like Wendy’s, McDonald’s, Burger King, and Tim Horton’s. There were napkins, 6-month-old decomposing food, and several other decomposing goods.
It is a typical Friday morning in Uptown Saint John. There are a few people sitting around casually chatting to one another. The big issues on peoples minds are focused on what cuts the Mayor and City Council are going to make in their budget, that the one time great Saint John Flames hockey team are having their season opener later tonight, or that tomorrow is the first day of the long-awaited Thanksgiving Day long weekend. In all there is not much thought being given to the fact that in a small city an hour and a half to the north the queen is arriving. Earlier as I waited what seemed to be an eternity for the bank to open, an elderly man slowly entered and joined me in the wait. Casually I asked him what was his thoughts about the queen. “She is not of great concern,” he said gasping for air, “There are worse ways for the government to waste money, but I like things the way they are, and I would miss it if it was gone. She (the queen) is a magnificent person.” After leaving my table in Market Square, I took a stroll out on…
I have a plant decaying on my desk. It has been there since I moved here in September. It has probably been about three to four weeks since it has last watered. I should water it now but I have too much to do and there is not much point since it looks like it is gone for good. Note: The plant has long since passed on
Tonight at the Students’ Union meeting, the Vice President of Finance presented the University’s Budget. Although somewhat informative, it really lacked much detail. After an hour and forty minutes when I had to leave, it turned into a debate on buying the old Lieutenant-Governor’s house and trying to find out the large corporations that donated money to the University or the companies the University invests its Endowment Funds in to see if they all have good human rights records.
Today I rearranged my dorm room. Now I have my computer next to my bed so I do not have to see my annoying roommate.
Some of the cafeteria food at the Forrest Hill Cafeteria is tasteless. Today there was the corn, I love corn, but this corn was like chewing newspaper (after everyone has read the intellectual articles). And the chicken was really good except for the fact that they had some awful coating on it.