Things you wouldn’t know if you weren’t reading this

THE ARMCHAIR MAYOR COLUMN — Things you wouldn’t know about this past week if you weren’t reading The Armchair Mayor right now:

At Monday’s primer for parents on what to do about their kids’ fascination with social media, a show of hands indicated that about 95 per cent (by the Armchair Mayor’s estimation) of the adults in the room had smartphones. As the speaker said, why are we surprised our kids are fascinated by technology?

Lianne Milobar, that is, Mrs. Mayor, was in the public gallery at a  hearing in council chambers for a bunch of rezoning applications Tuesday night while hubbie chaired the meeting. Now that, people, is wifely dedication.

Coun. Tina Lange, by her own admission, uses her garage for storing junk rather than parking her car.

There is a cure for insomnia, and it is called the TRU Senate meeting. However, I hasten to add that important stuff is quite often boring. Just ask the mayor, who is making a virtue of it with his somewhat wordy campaign confessional-type slogan that he’s not earth-shattering.

John Cooper died. You might not have heard of him because he was a quiet, gentle soul who kept to himself. John came to Kamloops from a Calgary TV station in the mid-1970s to establish the very first journalism program at TRU, which was then called Cariboo College. And the program wasn’t called Journalism, it was Communications Media. Cancer claimed him this week.

The video of Dr. Jill Calder’s presentation a couple of Sundays ago on the potential health effects of the Ajax mine is now available for viewing on YouTube from here.

After 38 years, the Kamloops Ridge Runners are in danger of folding if somebody doesn’t step up, quickly, to be president and vice.

Lunching with a client at the Doubletree this week was former City administrator Randy Diehl, who now does consulting work.

In Media Coaching 101, I teach that the main objective of a press release is to get the media to call you. When they call, you respond promptly. That’s a good thing. Cicada Ventures hasn’t attended the course. When I called this week to follow up on a press release Cicada had issued about Ajax, nobody was available to talk. I asked for someone to call me back. Someone would, a man said, “maybe tomorrow.” Two days later I called again. “I’ll pass along the message,” someone said when I named two principals of the company I’d like to speak with. Nobody called. Meanwhile, KHGM wasn’t wanting to talk about it either. Sometimes, you can only do your best when trying to get information.

Kamloops must be the only city in Canada that loves Robbie Burns so much it holds two Burns Nights, on two different weekends. Twice the bagpipe music. Twice the haggis.

After I don’t know how many episodes, maybe 75 or so, CBC radio’s Thursday morning verbal slugfest known as Josh and the Armchair Mayor, also known as JAM, is no more. Josh Pagé worked his last day in Kamloops on Thursday, after which we all retired to the Noble Pig to wish him well. Yesterday (Friday) he was driving a 23-ft. U-haul with all his worldly possessions to Kelowna, where he’ll take over as producer of the afternoon show Radio West. I will miss that guy. Next week, I carry on alone in a revised format called Coffee with the Armchair Mayor. First coffee guest is assistant professor Shawn Thompson from TRU’s J-school.

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