We (Catherine, Oliver and I) will be in Tokyo for 12 hours in late February, and welcome suggestions for interesting activities that we might throw ourselves into for that short stay.

Much has been written about being a twin. There are entire sub-branches of several scientific disciplines devoted to twin studies. Books about twins. Movies about twins.

But nothing at all about being the brother of twins.

My little brothers Steve and Johnny are now 29 years old. They will be 30 years old in October, a scant 4 days after wee Oliver turns 2. Their collective has gone through several namings: when they were born we called them “the babies.” Later it was “the twins.” And finally they have settled in to being “my little brothers.” They will be my little brothers even when I am 66 and they are 60.

There is, in addition, a complex scheme having to do with “brother” and “brothers.” When I refer to “my brother,” I mean my brother Mike, 1-1/2 years my junior (and without website to link to, alas). When I refer to my brothers, it is to Johnny, Steve and Mike. When I want to talk about Johnny or Steve individually, they always get the “my brother Johnny” or “my brother Steve.” Catherine will never understand this system.

In any case, for all of you twin researcher readers, please refer to this article (on Steve’s website) and this article (on Johnny’s website). They were written completely independently of each other. Johnny and Steve live in different cities, thousands of miles apart.

It is my role, as big brother of twins, to point these things out.

Although our Provincial Library System has been automated for several years (automated in a non-steam-powered fashion at least), they’ve continued, for various arcane technical reasons, to cling to the regular postal mail for sending out “your hold is in” notices.

But no longer! I received the following email tonight:

RUKAVINA, PETER

***** AUTOMATICALLY GENERATED MESSAGE,
PLEASE DO NOT REPLY TO IT *****

Confederation Centre Public Library (902)368-4642 www.library.pe.ca

***** HOLD NOTICE *****
The following material is now available for you and will be held at
this Library, until the date shown ON THE LINE BELOW. Please collect
it at your earliest convenience (or kindly notify us if it is
no longer required), resolving any outstanding balances beforehand.

ANF 915.93 MCD 2 The National Geographic traveler.02
ANF 915.93 CUM 1 Thailand

Wonderful!

Sandy Griswold died on Sunday. I didn’t know Sandy well, but he was, in large part, responsible for creating the conditions which brought us to the Island 9 years ago, and for keeping us here.

I first met Sandy back in 1994. I was working at the PEI Crafts Council on what had become an Internet project, and needed some funding to attend a Community Networking conference in California. I didn’t need much funding — just $400 if I recall correctly. Sandy was working with ACOA at the time, and when I made a request to ACOA for funding, my request ended up on his desk.

And so it came to pass that one winter day I made my way up to ACOA for a meeting with Sandy and Gerry O’Connell. The problem with my request, as it turned out, was largely that it was for too little money. ACOA was well set up to handle funding million dollar business expansions, but to fund $400 was difficult.

An additional problem, Sandy relayed, was related to the location of the conference: it would be much easier for them to fund my attendance at a conference in, say, Lower Musquodoboit Harbour than in San Jose, California.

But Sandy was wily, and figured out a way of funding my travel under the Cooperation Agreement for Rural Economic Development. I was off to California. Learned a lot. And a lot of what I learned lives on in the www.gov.pe.ca website.

It was ACOA, again under the Cooperation Agreement, that originally funded the project I was working under at the Crafts Council, and Sandy was involved in later years helping to get the mapping project on the PEI website underway. And the funding that originally brought the Internet to PEI in the first place — first through CA*Net and later PEINet — passed through Sandy too.

Outside of formal (or informal — Sandy never seemed very formal) meetings with Government, I met Sandy only one other time, and that was on Queen Street, one fine fall day. Sandy had an interest in old DeForest Radios, and we stood on the street corner for 15 minutes talking about the Internet and mailing lists, and where and how he could pursue this radio passion online.

Sandy Griswold wasn’t a public person — you never heard him on the radio or saw him on television or saw his name in print. He was a dedicated public servant, working in the background, with a sense of humour and knowledge of the Island that sometimes seems rare in such circles. At 58, he died too young. And so last week we lost two good people, Peter Gzowski and Sandy Griswold. Both will be missed.

All the things I imagined — and a little more — were in place this morning when I went through security at Logan Airport here in Boston: I had to take my laptop out of its case (although I didn’t have to turn it on which I did in Charlottetown), remove my jacket, get scanned two or three times with the wand, and take my shoes off for inspection.

In addition I got patted down, my belt buckle examined, and my wallet was examined closely.

I have no problem with any of this: I’ll give up most any civil liberty you want to esnure safer skies.

Brother Johnny and I had a pleasant week at Yankee in southern New Hamphire, followed by a day of rest in Boston. I my usual pattern, I have arrived at thye airport about 2 hours too early, but this gives me lots of time to write and think and eat sushi, so it’s not all bad.

Looking oddly forward to arriving back on Island soil tonight.

I do not have many heroes, but Peter Gzowski was one.

I count as one of the highlights of my life being interviewed by him — about technology, along with Kevin Kelly and Gerri Sinclair — while standing in a meadow at UPEI in the early summer of 1995.

Gzowski was a masterful interviewer (it helped, of course, that I was playing the role of the techno-sceptic, which meshed with his own views nicely), and a perfect gentleman. He had that ever so rare ability to appear curious about pretty well anything, and anyone who has ever been interviewed can tell you that this is like gold to the interviewee.

I have never been a strong Canadian nationalist, and consider most of what we call “truly Canadian” to be either boring or appropriated. By Peter Gzowski was, I think, Canadian through and through, one of those people who just couldn’t be considered American (or anything else). Not because he was a strong nationalist (he was), or made false attempts at “reflecting the regions” (he didn’t), but because, in his endearing, rumpled, pondering, avuncular way, he was someone we all had in common — a nextdoor neighbour for the nation.

My fondest memory of Peter comes from an episode in Peterborough in the late 1980s. The local CBC affiliate, CHEX-TV, wasn’t a bona fide CBC station, and therefore wasn’t obligated to air the entire CBC schedule. The result was that we local viewers got Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy in place of shows like Adrienne Clarkson Presents and Friday Night.

For some reason the irked me strongly, and so I mounted a small rebellion involving letters to the editor, to local politicians and so on. I also wrote a letter to anyone else who I thought might share my concern.

Peter Gzowski was one of those I wrote to, and he wrote back a very nice note of support from his home on Lake Simcoe. For him to do that, amidst his life of Morningside and book writing and who knows what else, meant a tremendous amount to me.

I’ve since misplaced his note, but will never forget that, nor the endless hours of wonderful radio I listened to over the years.

I will miss Peter Gzowski.

It appears that in my absence a small highly-focused cabal has started to [e]meet about starting some sort of radio enterprise on PEI. You can participate in this discussion group.

I’m always amazed when I travel how it’s possible to pack so much into one day.

Monday morning, as outlined below in some detail, I headed to the airport for the early morning flight to Boston. After the initial folly of the empty airport, the balance of the trip went surprisingly well: our plane landed at about 9:20 a.m. and I was on the highway in my rental car by 9:45 a.m. Total customs interaction: hand customs guy my (US) passport. He scans it in, and says “okay, thanks.” My luggage was waiting for me when I got to the carousel.

A trusty Subaru was waiting for me curbside at the Hertz location, and by 12:30 noon I was in the valet parking line at Mohegan Sun, the large casino in south-eastern Connecticut that is home to the new The Old Farmer’s Almanac General Store. There is no way to properly do justice to Mohegan Sun in words: it was simply larger than life.

By 2:30 p.m. I was back on the road, north on the I-395 toward Worchester, Mass, where I stopped in briefly at a Target store, just to get an update on their Michael Graves-designed line of products.

I ended up getting lost in downtown Boston around supper time: I tried in vain to find the Ted Williams tunnel, and finally gave up and parked the car and phoned brother Johnny, just landed at Logan Airport, and asked him to hoof it to the subway and meet me downtown.

After a brief dinner at Legal Sea Foods we headed north to New Hampshire in the Subaru, spending a frustrating 45 minutes in a mobious loop of intersections in and around Nashua, NH. Finally, about 11:00 p.m. we arrived in Keene, New Hampshire at our hotel and went right to sleep.

Two countries, two provinces, four states, 18 hours. Too much activity for one day.

4:45 a.m. - Previously arranged Coop Taxi arrives at the door. They have never missed an early call. Day starting well.
4:50 a.m. - Remember that it doesn’t take long to get to the Charlottetown Airport. Happy that I have heeded all of the advice from CNN to arrive at airport very early. Expecting huge lines, rigorous bag checks, chaos, etc.
4:51 a.m. - Enter airport. Find I am the only person in the airport. I don’t mean this is some exagerated ironic sense: I was the only one in the airport. No other passengers. No gate agents. No security people. Nobody. Have fears that I have woken up in Quiet Earth-like scenario.
4:53 a.m. - Another passenger arrives. Feel relieved. Then remember that the man in Quiet Earth found two other people left on earth.
4:54 a.m. - Security guy emerges. Says Air Canada people usually “show up around 5”. Another passenger arrives. Things are looking up.
5:03 a.m. - Now 8 people in line. Quiet Earth fears gone. Still no gate agent. Wondering whether CNN has it all wrong. Thinking I could have gotten 30 minutes more sleep.
5:05 a.m. - Guy who removes chocks from under plane wheels and uses glowing baton to guide plane out of parking space arrives.
5:06 a.m. - Luggage handler arrives. He looks like Matt Rainnie. Wonder if CBC pays Matt too little and he must work at airport to afford to feed family.
5:09 a.m. - No gate agent yet.
5:13 a.m. - Offer to check other passengers in myself. No humour in this found by other passengers.
5:14 a.m. - Gate agent arrives. Finally! Checks me in. Oops, boarding pass printer is broken. Brief delay. Move to another terminal. Get boarding pass.
5:15 a.m. - Try to use Aliant’s World Class Business Centre to get on Internet, but room is locked. Reminds me of other dealings with Aliant.
5:18 a.m. - Find Tourism PEI Internet kiosk is operational.
5:27 a.m. - Security call. Must run to plane. Mind still foggy. More later.

Order your Starbucks in advance, over the phone, 3-4 minutes before you arrive.