Today was my first early morning cappuccino at Casa Mia, the new coffee shop in downtown Charlottetown next to the Bruce MacNaughton Memorial Storefront.

There was some confusion about whether they were actually open or not: there was a “Closed” sign on the front door, so I waited, then phoned, only to be told they were actually open at 9:00 a.m. (they forgot to flip the sign). Eventually they plan to open earlier, but they need to hire staff first.

The coffee — the beans come from Milano Coffee in Vancouver — was fantastic. It’s so nice to see someone treat the preparation of a coffee as an art. I’m tentatively willing to say that their cappuccino is the equal of any on the Island, and perhaps the best.

Please stop by and tell me if you agree.

Sign on the window of Norton’s Jewelers in downtown Charlottetown on Canada Day:

Their interest, or ours?

I had occasion to rent a car twice over the last month, once in Boston for my trip up to Yankee and again this weekend to get Catherine, Oliver and I around Montreal. I both cases, as is my habit, I rented from Hertz (where apparently my loyalty has earned me “5 star status,” something I know only because I heard an agent walkie-talkie “we’ve got a 5-star in here waiting for a car”).

And in both cases I selected “Toyota Camry or Similar” from the Hertz website based on its inclusion in the “Green” collection of cars rated 28 Miles or more per gallon.

When I arrived in Boston, there was a Mercury Mariner SUV waiting in my assigned space. Not only is the Mariner not in the “Green” collection (it’s rated only 17-21 mpg depending on the model in 2007), but it’s a beast of a vehicle.

So I went inside to talk to an agent to see about getting a switch. After much fussing around — the issue seemed to be that they had no cars without the NeverLost GPS navigation system, which I hadn’t ordered — another agent was brought in and she asked me if I “minded a two-door.” I said that I didn’t, and she handed me some keys and told me which stall to go to.

Waiting there for me was a Ford Mustang. Needless to say, the Ford Mustang isn’t in the “Green” collection either (it’s rated about 18 mpg). It’s also a horrible beast of a car: it’s uncomfortable, handles like a tank, has less oomph than my VW Jetta and telegraphs “I am an oaf” to all those around. Unfortunately I was in a hurry and in no mood to argue further, so I drove off in it.

By the time I’d driven down to Scituate and then back up to Keene, NH, I had already used a half tank of gasoline. Over the course of the week I used more gasoline than I’ve ever used on a trip to Yankee, and had to fill up twice.

On Friday when I arrived at Trudeau Airport in Montreal there was no car waiting for me at all, as I was 30 minutes early. There appear to have been no cars at all left at the airport for anyone without a reservation; fortunately I had one, and after a 15 minute wait I had the keys to a brand new Volvo V50 in hand:

This car is rated 27 mpg city and 40 mpg highway, and it is a veritable dream of an automobile, so different from the Mustang as to feel like an entirely different breed of machine: it was comfortable, fun to drive, well-equipped inside (the radio took some getting used to, but it turned out to be pretty simply in the end). The only thing it suffers from — like many station wagons — is lack of rear visibility.

That said, in neither case could the car I ended up with be reasonably called a “Toyota Camry or Similar,” although the Volvo was obviously somewhat closer that the Mustang.

At an impromptu dinner in Massachusetts on Sunday, Nathan questioned my Facebook aversion by suggesting that I was ignoring the one social network that actually seemed to be popular. After fumbling with some logic about how I preferred my social networks to knit me to friends I seldom saw otherwise (like those who live in Denmark), I realized there was some truth in what he was saying: if this is, to some extent, my “field,” then it’s foolhardy to ignore Facebook.

So after opting in and out several times over the past year, my Facebook account is now back in business, and I’ve jumped from having 4 “friends” to having 108 in the space of a few days (man Leo Cheverie knows everyone!).

In the process, I’ve actually re-connected with some lost souls, which has been nice. So far I think the killer feature of Facebook is simply the fact that it makes “building your network” so darned easy (that makes it the most annoying feature for some, of course, given the associated flood of friend requests the result).

I’m still conflicted about whether there’s any long-term value in the whole “continuous partial attention” thing, but I’m suspending my disbelief long enough to hang around for a while.

I saw the movie Paris je t’aime last night at The Colonial Theatre in Keene (it’s a fantastic place to see movies, but they could use a more skilled projectionist).

The film, which is really 18 short films spliced together, was the cinematic equivalent of having tapas for dinner: some segments were beguilingly, others were self-indulgent and out of place. On balance, though, the film is at least slightly more than the sum of its parts, and I’d recommend it (my favourite of the 18 was Place des fêtes, directed by Oliver Schmitz, starring Aïssa Maïga and Seydou Boro).

If you’ve arrived here because Mio Adilman told you to come here on Q this afternoon on CBC Radio, here’s the story you’re looking for. Enjoy.

It seems that I am destined, at every turn, to bump up against Rudolph Steiner these days.

It all started on my last visit to Yankee. I was updating the biographies of the editors of The Old Farmer’s Almanac and noticed a reference to The Education of a Yankee: An American Memoir, a book by Jud Hale.

I asked around about the book, and within minutes I had a copy in hand, generously autographed by Jud. I’m now halfway through the book — Jud is in his teens — and it is a fascinating tale of how a Yankee family got the Steiner religion and reinvented their lives to follow.

The next week I was in Copenhagen in a bar with Olle and Luisa and they’re telling me about a new apartment they’re purchasing and how they need to switch banks because their current bank — somehow, it seems, a “Rudolph Steiner bank” — won’t do.

The next week I was in Berlin in an Italian restaurant with Stefan and he’s telling me how he went to a vaguely Steiner-inspired school in Austria as a youth (I can’t recall whether it was more Steiner than Steiner or Steiner lite).

And so here I am back at Yankee for another visit and having a conversation with one of the editors about how her daughter has been thriving in a Waldorf School.

To top it off, it turns out that Steiner was born in Donji Kraljevec in Croatia, which is less than two hours from where my Rukavina ancestors eventually settled after leaving the interior of the country.

Flipping through the channels on my hotel room television over the last few days I was bombarded with images of Paris Hilton being released from jail.

Perhaps the most absurd aspect of this all is watching reporters, on several networks, camped out in front of the jail making comments like “In addition to traditional media like us, Bob, the place is crawling with paparazzi.”

Cue footage of crowds of media outside the jail. And photographers chasing Paris Hilton’s SUV. And helicopter footage of the newly-release Paris Hilton playing with her dog at home. Etc.

Any line that may have existed between “paparazzi” and “coverage of paparazzi” has disappeared, and that the irony of this is lost of “traditional media” is depressing.

And by watching, I become part of the spectacle. I turn away, but then turn back.

The truly sad thing is that when coverage of her antics pushes coverage of actually important news down the schedule (“and on a more somber note, Bob, 13 soldiers were killed in Iraq this morning”)

I think it might be time to turn off the TV.

Catherine and Oliver are visiting her parents in Kingston this week, and are due to take the train on Friday, June 29 up to Montreal to rendezvous with me. However Friday, June 29 is also the First Nations National Day of Action and, possibly, a related rail or road blockade between Belleville and Kingston.

We’re currently looking for alternative ways to get Catherine and Oliver up to Quebec. Unfortunately VIA Rail provides no information about the possible implications of the blockade nor proposed alternative travel arrangements.

I noticed last night that the sun in Keene, NH where I’m staying seemed to go down much earlier than I expected for early days of summer. It turns out that I was right: sunset last night was 8:32 p.m.

Back in Charlottetown it didn’t set until 9:09 p.m.. And even up at my parents’ place, which is in the same time zone as Keene and seems “close,” there was an extra 30 minutes of daylight as the sun set at 9:05 p.m..

Go even further east and they get even less of an evening: in Cape Cod the sun set at 8:20 p.m.

Go north and west to the western extremes of eastern time in Thunder Bay and the sun set at 10:03 p.m.

Amazing.