Interview in the Richmond Hill Liberal
I got a surprising e-mail request the other day. The letter was from Mitchell Brown, a reporter with Richmond Hill's newspaper, The Richmond Hill Liberal. He said he had come across Urban Tapestry's website in his surfing and he was wondering, as a resident of Richmond Hill, if I would be interested in being interviewed for a newspaper article on my music group and "its interesting brand of 'filk' music.".
I made some inquiries as to whether Deb and Jodi could be involved, too, and though he was receptive, he did stress that they are mainly interested in doing profiles of people who live and work in Richmond Hill, so the article would focus on me regardless of who else was there. That's understandable, so Deb, Jodi and I have agreed I'll just go and do the interview on my own. I'll have to promote Urban Tapestry solo :). The reporter did say he could feature photos of both me and Urban Tapestry in the profile, so if that happens, it would be cool. Out of curiosity I asked the reporter how he came across Urban Tapestry's website in the first place. He said he simply put "lives in Richmond Hill" in a search engine, looking for interesting residents to profile, and, boom!, Urban Tapestry's name came up because of the Richmond Hill reference in my bio. He saw I lived and taught in the city, so he contacted me.
Being featured in such a profile will be interesting. It'll be one of those moments when my professional teaching life and my fannish music life will overlap quite prominently, which doesn't happen very often, though most of the teachers on staff are aware of Urban Tapestry at this point. The Liberal is circulated widely in Richmond Hill, a city of 150,000 people, and it's read weekly by most of the staff and parents of my school. It's not uncommon to see articles from The Liberal hanging in our front hall or in the staffroom when students from the school are featured. A profile of a teacher who spends her spare time singing science fiction songs is going to be noticed :).
So I'm amused and I'll be curious as to the response. It won't be the first time my school community has found out about UT from the media. Back in December, when UT sang at "The Gathering of The Fellowship", I came back to school to have many people tell me, "I saw you on TV! At that 'Lord of the Rings' festival! You were in a long rust skirt, playing your guitar and singing with two other women!". Um, yeah, that was me, for sure :). Seems we'd been featured on CITY-TV, one of the biggest TV stations in the Toronto area.
Mitchell Brown and I are arranging to meet for an interview sometime next week. More on this story as it develops.
I made some inquiries as to whether Deb and Jodi could be involved, too, and though he was receptive, he did stress that they are mainly interested in doing profiles of people who live and work in Richmond Hill, so the article would focus on me regardless of who else was there. That's understandable, so Deb, Jodi and I have agreed I'll just go and do the interview on my own. I'll have to promote Urban Tapestry solo :). The reporter did say he could feature photos of both me and Urban Tapestry in the profile, so if that happens, it would be cool. Out of curiosity I asked the reporter how he came across Urban Tapestry's website in the first place. He said he simply put "lives in Richmond Hill" in a search engine, looking for interesting residents to profile, and, boom!, Urban Tapestry's name came up because of the Richmond Hill reference in my bio. He saw I lived and taught in the city, so he contacted me.
Being featured in such a profile will be interesting. It'll be one of those moments when my professional teaching life and my fannish music life will overlap quite prominently, which doesn't happen very often, though most of the teachers on staff are aware of Urban Tapestry at this point. The Liberal is circulated widely in Richmond Hill, a city of 150,000 people, and it's read weekly by most of the staff and parents of my school. It's not uncommon to see articles from The Liberal hanging in our front hall or in the staffroom when students from the school are featured. A profile of a teacher who spends her spare time singing science fiction songs is going to be noticed :).
So I'm amused and I'll be curious as to the response. It won't be the first time my school community has found out about UT from the media. Back in December, when UT sang at "The Gathering of The Fellowship", I came back to school to have many people tell me, "I saw you on TV! At that 'Lord of the Rings' festival! You were in a long rust skirt, playing your guitar and singing with two other women!". Um, yeah, that was me, for sure :). Seems we'd been featured on CITY-TV, one of the biggest TV stations in the Toronto area.
Mitchell Brown and I are arranging to meet for an interview sometime next week. More on this story as it develops.