And the aged shall be blessed, saith the Lord Myrtle Jenkins-Smith
Myrtle Jenkins Smith, Queen of the Liberal Millionaires Club
Everything we need to know about living on PEI according the the Liberal Millionaires Club
By Stephen Pate, NJN Network, Charlottetown, PEI, Canada, February 20, 2009
from PEI Government Press Release
Well, it’s here. The final report on how we are going to age with grace, style and panache. Province Releases New Healthy Aging Strategy. I’m excited. Then I look down and see -WHAAT? – It’s called “Ascent Report”!
Oh God save us please. Another report for our mindless Premier Robert Ghiz prepared by the Queen of the Liberal Millionaires Club – Myrtle Jenkins Smith.
I mean is there a limit to the subjects Myrtle will pretend to be an expert on? She gave us the going-no-where Disability Services Reform Report. It’s also known as – “dust collector.”
Myrtle is the author of that best seller – “How to close rural schools and centralize PEI in Charlottetown and Summerside” or your kids don’t live here anymore, Alice.
This one is about 100 pages long so it must have cost him $100K or more. I’ll just take a peek. It’ll be chock full of new facts and stuff because Myrtle is our expert in everything.
“Effective, efficient and sustainable delivery of health care services is fundamentally important to the well being of society”
Aw, I feel better. Myrtle loves us. She wants us to be effective, efficient and sustainable. She’s a loving person, God bless her soul. I’m not very efficient anymore Myrtle as I get older but you’ll be kind to me I know. If I can rustle up $100K like Ghiz does, you’ll write me a report too. I think I’ll go have my afternoon nap and dream of Myrtle’s plans for my aging future.
But before I do, let me remind you of who is in control since the boy-king has abdicated to the “brain-trusts” around him:
Mytle Jenkins Smith, AKA Liberal Millionaires Club
joins everything
likes to run
likes to socialize and hob nob with the elite
likes to run jazz and blues festival with 5th rate white jazz and blues musicians
likes to be Premier Catherine Callbeck’s Executive Assistant
likes to be Premier Robert Ghiz’s go-to-girl at $90K per report even more than his employee
likes to run Amigo’s when she is in Callbeck’s office cause you can get the contract for government employees easier
likes to let Amigo’s go bankrupt when Callbeck is out of office, real business is too hard
likes to pretend she loves the disabled which gets her a job at PEI CPA
likes to fleece PEI for $240,00 for rich playboy wheelchair star Rick Hansen
likes to stall progress on Disability Support Program reform to please the Premier and collect another $100K
likes to run Alanis Morissette concert into the ground
likes to pour $200,000 worth of alcohol (and mix) for uppity Ottawa types
likes to collect PNP units as gifts from the Premier
likes to close down rural schools because it pleases the Premier
likes to make money even when she doesn’t know what she is talking about
likes all the patronage she can get
likes the Premier
With all her meddling in our lives, who likes her?
I must check on hubby Smith.
>>likes to run jazz and blues festival with 5th rate white jazz and blues musicians<<
That’s the best one, right there.
Still calling blacks “negroes”, Steve?
Paul Vienneau
February 20, 2009 at 3:51 PM
That would be local musicians including yourself excepted. Why do the blues musicians go to Truro for the weekend of blues. barbq’s and beer and not get invited to PEI? Even people on the committee shake their heads. It’s like they never heard of a real jazz or blues headliner.
Hard to say, old habits can come back Paul. People do remind me.
Stephen Pate
February 20, 2009 at 5:44 PM
Of course you would except me.
Musicians go to Truro because there is a venue and the money. The venue is larger than here and they can make more money, so they can get Buddy Guy or whoever.
Who do you know on the committee that”s shaking their heads?
<>
If you asked the artists who have have played here (as I have), they would be happy to tell you that PEI’s festival is run extremely well, the artists are of a very high calibre and the crowds are wonderful and attentive. I have played Montreal’s jazz fest, Toronto’s, the Stan Rogers festival and so on. This festival in Charlottetown is on PAR with any larger one, and the fact that we’ve only had it for a few years is a tribute to the folks on the committee and the volunteers.
And if you looked at the past artists you would see “real” jazz and blues artists. Miles wasn’t the only trumpet great. The people we get here are as talented and accomplished as anyone elsewhere. Don Thompson is widely acknowledged as a great on at least 3 instruments. Phil Nimmons and David Braid are doing “real” jazz, cutting edge pure improvisation.
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So, do you still call black people “negroes”?
And is Paul Cudmore *really* writing letters saying he represents the CPA?
Paul Vienneau
February 20, 2009 at 6:20 PM
I’m not revealing my sources on the committee. that wouldn’t be prudent. Stop trying to bait me with the silly black question. Be nice and we’ll have a conversation.
As a person who likes jazz and blues for 4 decades, the festival lineup is weak. The “all-Canadian” format is guaranteed to bring in a weak line-up. in the biz there are 1st tier, 2nd tier, 3rd tier artists. 1st tier artists have something special god gave them – je ne sais quoi – and they draw the crowds.
The Fredericton and Montreal festivals are running almost concurrently – we could get some of them to come.
The selection committee is stuck in a bad groove. But then all music is taste.
Stephen Pate
February 20, 2009 at 6:44 PM
I’m with you on this one, Stephen. I have been lucky enough to see greats like Otis Spann, Sonny & Terry, Hendrix, Clapton, Willie Dixon and others – but also wonderful journeymen like Mighty Joe Young. Many of the best blues guys (including some of the afore-mentioned greats and definitely including many great female performers) were playing a small club for love and a few bucks. You don’t have to pay the big bucks to hear great blues.
The Jazz and Blues Festival has been – for me – a dud of homogenized pap, too heavily oriented to “jazz”. Why can’t we have Matt Anderson with a decent band, instead of bobbleheads? Why can’t we persuade JP Cormier to put the celtic stuff aside for an evening and boogie on down? Can we not entice Nanette Newman to wander into town? Does no one know Liz Tansey’s number? Why not do something with the wonderful and almost local Glamourpuss Blues Band?
BTW, I am sufficiently old that, when I was a nipper, “negro” was the correct and polite way to refer to a person of colour. Times change; vocabularies change; unfortunately political correctness seems to grind on forever.
BluesFan
February 21, 2009 at 7:32 AM
On man, now you’re talking. Sonny Boy Williamson and BB King – I saw him once in Toronto. He was the best. I still have Live at the Regal on vinyl. We have tons of great blues musicians in the Maritimes but they can’t get passed the bizarre white-bread tastes of the panel. I love Joe Murphy from Halifax – he’s got the blues and cajun – I wasted many a night at Bearly’s with that dude. You can go to Toronto and get Colin Linden or Colin James to come here. I checked with Colin Linden’s manager FTLG, made all the contacts, tentative dates – they never returned his phone calls. A friend who is “on the committee” told me it’s a waste of time to talk. He and I share blues tastes – he goes to the States to hear the real thing. He can’t get anywhere.
It’s so funny to have self-righteous people tell me off about “negro” and “black”. I was a civil rights marcher in the 1960’s. I did my time on the line as they say. Sang the songs, did the posters. Heard Stokely Carmichael speak once and joined SNCC after that. Black was Black Panthers and considered too radical until the death of Dr. King and it all went to hell in a hand basket. Negro does grate when you hear that long southern drawl like “neeeego”. But it slips out every once in awhile. Sammy Davis Jr. made fun of the name thing in Clifford Odet’s “Golden Boy”. “I like Black, it goes with everything you see. I like Black, it’s basic, Black is me.”
Thanks for the nice comment.
Stephen Pate
February 21, 2009 at 8:16 AM
Here I go! I took my salesman from PEI to Chicago for a computer conference one year in the early 90’s. So there were two missions – baseball and blues. When there was a game at Comiskey Park ( Sunday and Tuesday) I walked him from McCormack Place through the projects in South Central to the ball park. Scared the whoodunkers out of him
. The ball park was the oldest park in the states with real dugouts. You stared right into the pitchers eyes from the third base line seats.
After that I took him north south everywhere in cabs hunting down small blues clubs. It was the best time. I’d just ask the cabbie, before they changed from Black to Iranian, where’s the best blues man? Off we’d go to some obscure hole in the wall with my salesman shaking his head “I don’t know. We should go back to the hotel.” It wasn’t long before he was tapping and grooving with everyone. The blues man…it’s a groove.
Stephen Pate
February 21, 2009 at 8:25 AM
so..back to the report…
seems they recommend closing many facilities…
so…you would expect new ones to be built…as we are all aging and there will be more of us….
who will build these? let me see….APM/Mclean construction?…that’d be my guess…go Tim, go…
this report was presented in March 2008…where has it been?
mark
February 21, 2009 at 10:37 AM
I’m not trying to “bait” you, dear Kettle. You spend your days trying to incite people into reaction, and when they do you throw up this front that you’re somehow being unfairly challenged and attacked. Anyone who reads your bits knows you get what you give, Steve.
You would jump down someone’s throat if you thought they were using hurtful or unwanted terms for people with disabilities. I merely find your use of the word negro to be strange, given your self-inflation about marching in civil rights protests, as if no one here has done the same thing.
I played with Joe Murphy steadily from when I was 17 until I moved to Toronto when I was 21. Do you consider him “first tier”?
I played with Matt Andersen (notice the spelling) from the first day he moved to Halifax for 3 or so years.
You’ll forgive me if I don’t lend a lot of credibility to your lecture on the many tiers of “good music”, and why the festival in Charlottetown fails in so many ways. What happened, did you try to get a gig for the festival and get turned down? Is this why you hate Myrtle so much?
And this snobbery of Canadian musicians being sub-par is a real hoot, dear Musicologist.
But for someone who “writes” in a manner befitting the pages of Frank Magazine (proud subscriber for many years, BTW), you do a great job! Lots of things thrown at the wall, ignore challenges for facts.
Paul Vienneau
February 21, 2009 at 8:34 PM
Joe Murphy would be less than 2nd tier but he is a great regional artist.
Want to talk music? Send me an email. Want to talk race, forget about it. This thread is about the Queen of the Liberal Millionaires.I never applied to perform at any festival.
We are way off the thread here which is the stupid patronage report the province paid Myrtle Jenkins Smith to concoct. She’s not an honest consultant. The honest ones don’t write policy background reports if they don’t have the credentials or experience. This is all lies meant to pacify Islanders.
Myrtle is now an expert – rock show promoter, cocktail waitress, gerontologist, social worker, physical medicine whatever, disability wunderkind, educator, demographer, cartographer, dance queen and you name it. Step right up, it’s the Myrtle Jenkins Smith money making patronage machine. Hooray hooray. get your tickets.
Cheers.
Stephen Pate
February 21, 2009 at 8:51 PM
Actually, I don’t need to talk music with you. You seem to know it all.
Do you have any proof you can publish publicly on MJS, or are you just going to continue to do the Frank-style job on it?
Paul Vienneau
February 21, 2009 at 10:50 PM
Using the handy dandy search feature, you can find 38 stories with references to MJS.
Search – after pages, posts and before categories.
Stephen Pate
February 22, 2009 at 7:37 AM
Let me rephrase that:
Do you have any proof you can furnish, except for your own “writing”?
You’ll forgive me if I don’t accept your Frank-style attack blurbs as “evidence”.
Paul Vienneau
February 22, 2009 at 12:15 PM
Read the articles, do your research. We write what we can and never divulge sources under pain of death.
Stephen Pate
February 22, 2009 at 1:33 PM
Paul,it was me who screwed up the spelling of Matt’s surname. And I am not saying he has never played with a decent band – just not the times I have seen him. Sad, because he’s a phenomenon and I would love to hear him with a first rate blues band behind him. JP Cormier came close to being that on his own when they played the Confed, but unfortunately one great song really nicely performed did not make up for an evening of unfulfilled potential. IMHO of course.
BluesFan
February 22, 2009 at 4:56 PM
Paul, the consultancy contracts are surely public record and the PNP investment showed up in Ruk’s Open
Corporations (based on original Attorney General data – ie, primary source). The same source showed the
relationship to the Alanis fiasco (plus a few people were naturally involved enough to know and tell). Ask anyone in the bike community if she and her partner are known to be applying their expertise to creating a bike rally.
Ubiquitous and multi-talented indeed.
Of course the outcomes are also a matter of public record. How you read those outcomes is totally up to you.
MJS Watcher
February 22, 2009 at 5:23 PM