Vancouver Folk Music Festival 2010

A few weekends ago I had the great pleasure to volunteer at VFMF 2010. Vancouver is only about a four to five hour drive north of my hometown and I've been there a few times, mainly to see my favorite band in concert. (Paperboys!! Woohoo!) I went to VFMF last year primarily to see the Paperboys and had so much fun I wanted to go again this year even though they weren't playing. I had a fantastic time, and this card pretty much explains why.



The artwork is by Tony Bosley, and shows basically what the festival is all about: dancing to all kinds of lovely music, surrounded by other people doing the same thing and beautiful scenery. In addition to listening to a ton of music (none of it by artists I'd ever heard before), I also volunteered at the festival booth selling t-shirts and other festival merchandise. As far as I'm concerned, volunteering is an integral part of the festival. I got to meet people, which was key since I didn't already know anyone who was going to be there; they feed their volunteers two meals a day, as well as giving us free weekend passes, which more than halved the cost of the trip for me; plus, I just got to be a tiny part of what makes the festival happen.

Naturally, I perused Canada Post's website before I left, and decided exactly which commemorative stamps I was going to use to send myself a card. I chose this Marine Life joint issue between Canada and Sweden, featuring two marine mammals. On the left you have the harbour porpoise, one of the smallest oceanic cetaceans. On the right is my personal favorite animal (and the reason I chose this set of stamps :), the sea otter, the heaviest of the weasels, making its home in the waters of the North American Pacific coast.


The post office was my first stop out of the bus station in Vancouver, and when I asked the clerk for the sea otter stamps, he had no idea what I was talking about. I had to take him over to the display on the wall and show him, and then he told me you could only buy these stamps in a book of 8, they're the wrong denomination for postcards to the U.S., and so on and so forth. Mister, I don't care about any of that. I want these stamps for my collection and I don't give a damn about overpaying for postage.