Wednesday September 19, 2007 ◆ PARRY SOUND NORTH STAR - 17

World music and cuisine at the StockeyPARRY SOUND - The Charles W. Stockey Centre has decided to conduct an experiment.

The World Music Series has been building a reputation for introducing audiences to foreign music and culture by bringing groups from a variety of cultural backgrounds to Parry Sound.

The Stockey Centre, no longer content with simply introducing audiences to the artistic expression of these cultures through the performing arts, is now offering its audience an opportunity to experience the cuisine of one of these cultures.

Importing the Dhoad Gypsies from the wild and magnificent Thar Desert in the northwestern

Indian province of Rajasthan and enlisting the help of the Sharma family, the Stockey Centre is offering a night of mystical and exotic proportions.

The Sharma family of the Traveler Hotel and Quality Inn will be preparing an authentic Indian meal to precede the performance of the Dhoad Gypsies of Rajasthan.

Audience members can opt to enjoy a dinner of traditional Indian cuisine before witnessing the rhythms, music, dance and mysticism that will transport the Charles W. Stockey festival performance hall to a far off distant land.

The Dhoad Gypsies come from a land of ancient

music and spiritual tradition, the birthplace of a wealth of cultural traditions and know-how that has been passed down through the ages, from generation to generation, by poets, musicians, dancers and fakirs (Hindu wanderers or holy men).

The heritage they have been bequeathed is spiritual, artistic and musical, and has inspired a way of life in which love, happiness, suffering and death are all expressed through song.

Dhoad brings together several talented musicians, all Rajasthani, but from different communities, religions (Muslim and Hindu), and

different artistic castes; they comprise the sapera-kalbelya (fakirs, dancers, and snake charmers), the langas (poets), the manganyar (troubadours) and musicians.

Together, these artists create an atmosphere of magical enchantment, an extravaganza of sound expressed through a whirlwind of glittering, shimmering colours and dance…

Come and experience India at the Charles W. Stockey Centre on Wednesday, September 26. Dinner starts at 6:30, the show at 8 p.m.

(Article provided by the Charles W. Stockey Centre for Performing Arts.)

Be part of cultural and recreation plan talkscontinued from page 16

Towns and cities that provide facilities and programming for their residents to participate in arts, heritage, cultural, sports and recreational activities are providing the community with an essential service – a service that vastly improves the quality of life for all of us.

Three of our local municipal governments – the Town of Parry Sound, the Township of McDougall and the Township of Seguin – have recognized the importance of such services by joining together to develop a joint Parry Sound area culture and recreation master plan for the region.

A series of public consultations will be held this week and next about what our region needs in terms of facilities and programs as the population in the area grows and changes over the next ten years.

Three public meetings are planned, one in each municipality, and you are invited to attend any of these meetings to express your views on what Culture and Recreation services the region needs to provide over the next decade.

The first meeting is today, Wednesday, September 19 from 7 to 10 p.m., at the Children’s Aid Society in Parry Sound; the second meeting is on Saturday, September 29 from 9 to 11 a.m. at the

Humphrey Community Centre; and the third is also on Saturday, September 29, from 1 to 3 p.m. at the municipal office in Nobel.

If you can’t make any of these meetings, your voice can still be heard. From October 1 to 19 there will be an online survey you can fill out. Just log onto one of the following three municipal web sites www.mcdougalltownship.on.ca, www.townofparrysound.com, and www.twp.seguin.on.ca from any Internet site and look for Parry Sound Area Culture and Recreation Master Plan. Each site will post the same survey, so you can visit any of the three sites.

Clicking on the link will take you directly to the survey, which will take about five minutes to complete.

This is your opportunity to have a say in what kinds of facilities and services should be included in the Parry Sound Area Culture and Recreation Master Plan.

Think about your needs and your family’s needs, as well as the needs of our community overall to ‘live in the moment’ and to find the respite for our minds and our bodies which is so essential to our health as individuals and as a society.

Elvis! J. Cash! Jerry Lee!Good Rockin’ Tonight:

“The Sun Records Story”An amazing-but-true musical play featuring the music of:

Elvis Presley Johnny Cash

Jerry Lee Lewis Carl PerkinsRoy Orbison

Saturday, Oct. 13, 20078 pm

Charles W. Stockey Centre, Parry SoundLimited Seating Tickets $25

1-877-746-4466www.stockeycentre.com

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Novel a bittersweet 1960s tale

continued from page 16Janice Kulyk Keefer says "It wasn't

difficult to imagine the lives of the girls and women of Kalyna Beach being shaped by the books they read and the films they saw: for me, imagination has always been as important a realm as ‘the real world’ – reality is a kaleidoscopic fusion of what is and what might be. I can't imagine living through any experience without the company of imagined worlds, people, and places to guide and encourage me."

I suspect that all of us who were readers as young children – having the ability to read an adult novel, but lacking the maturity to understand it – will relate to the children in this novel.

I remember sneaking off with The Carpetbaggers in 1961 and thinking it was a bore – I was just too young to get it. Janice Kulyk Keefer told an interviewer "I simply had to recall the books I found by snooping through my mother's bedside table circa 1963, and by comparing the titles with those of the books found by my friends in their mothers' hiding places! I did have a puzzling experience with one notorious book about which there was a buzz that reached the ears even of 11-year-olds like me, and that was Fanny Hill, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure. I was thrilled to find a copy of it in, of all places, a kitchen cupboard.

Cookbook discovery

When I sneaked it up to the bathroom (the only room in our open-plan suburban house with a lock on the door) and sat down to read I discovered, however, that it was not Fanny Hill but the Fanny Farmer Cookbook that I'd absconded with."

As our own summer comes to an end, we can especially relate to the words of Janice Kulyk Keefer: "The rhythm

of summer itself involves a loss of innocence, or at least, a diminishment of the joy we feel at the beginning of this most luxuriant of seasons as the weeks go by, and August approaches and then, all too quickly, ends, the way a ride on a Ferris wheel ends in that sad glide into ground-level stillness."

•••••Treat yourself to a very special

evening as this summer ends when you join other readers and book lovers at the Charles W. Stockey Centre next Tuesday evening.

Charlotte Stein

Elvis Had It... Roy Had It... Mike Mulligan Has It!!Direct From London England’s West End

FoR onE nIgHt only...

The RoyoRbisonsToRyStarring: Mike Mulligan aS RoyoRbiSonwith

ThelaS VegaS legendSin ConCeRTband

“The Shades ofyesterday”

Live in ConCert

SaTuRday,oCTobeR 27Th 8 pMaTThe

www.stockeycentre.com

Call 877-746-4466 to reserveTickets are selling Fast!!!!

MasterCard

back by

popular demand

with full live

stage band.

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Last year Oakville teen and Killbear Provincial Park camper Julie Harmgardt began compiling her memories and those of other campers and putting them into a book called, Killbear, Thanks for the Memories. Now complete, the book has raised $8,500 for the Friends of Killbear volunteer group. Julie said sales have been so successful that she is now working on a second book due out the summer of 2010, in time to celebrate Killbear’s 50th anniversary. The book can be purchased at Killbear’s Nature Shoppe and through the website www.scriptreaction.com/killbear. Campers are invited to contact Julie to share memories of the park. She can be reached at: jharmgardt@gmail.com. Julie Harmgardt, right, is pictured with Killbear park superintendent Tom Wilson.

AT THE PARRY SOUND CURLING CLUBOktoberfest – Germany’s grand celebration – opens

simultaneously in Munich and Parry Sound. So if you can’t make Munich celebrate in Parry Sound.

Saturday, September 22nd11:00am-6:00pm Country market featuring everything

handcrafted, from woodwork & jewelry to smoked meats & homemade breads.

11:00am-6:00pm Kids activities: These will include a root beer tent, face painting, games and a special appearance from Daisy the Clown (12:00pm-4:00pm).

1:30pm, 5:30pm, Don’t miss the spectacular entertainment& 9:00pm performed by authentic Bavarian

Dancers with roots to Germany!

3:30pm-5:30pm From the very fi rst Oompah,7:00pm-9:00pm our Oktoberfest band will 10:00pm-12:00am have you smiling, toe tapping and rushing

to the dance fl oor. Oktoberfest is your time to polish your fancy foot steps with our Kitchener-Waterloo dance band.

10:00pm Grand prize draw for $5,000 Travel Voucher. Choose your dream vacation!

AT THEAT THE PARRY SOUND CURLING CLUBPARRY SOUND CURLING CLUBOktoberfest

*Must be 19 years of age or older to enter Oktoberfest after 8pm*

BIERGARTEN throughout the day & night with many more activities

including PRIZE DRAWS, RAFFLES and TRIVIA!German food so true to its ancestry

it’s created by a gal in her dirndl!

Admittance is only $2 per person, $1 for children 3-12,

children 3 and under are free.

Come during the day, come for dinner. Guter Appetit!

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B.P. FLIGHT TRAININGoffers

Private Pilot Ground School14 weeks

Thursdays 18:30 - 21:30starts sept. 27/07

from the parry sound airportJunction of Hwy 141 & Hwy 400, 10 minutes South of Parry Sound

Call (705) 378-0981229679

Camper working on follow-up book

Janice Kulyk Keefer to read at Stockey Centre next Tuesday

Submitted photo