Oliver, in the spring of 2005, outside the wonderful Médiathèques d’Orléans. We were passing through on our way south.

The night before, our first night in France, Oliver was fascinated by what, if memory serves, but blog post left out, was his first observation of a drug deal going down.

This is why we travel.

I was fêted with pre-birthday blueberry pancakes this morning by a dear friend. Among the greatest honours I’ve ever received is a place in her birthday book.

In an ad for a proof press I noticed this reference:

currently located in a basement with 7 stairs to up and out bilco style doors

I’d never heard of “bilco doors,” and that’s because, as it turns out, it’s a regional expression in parts of the US, the “Kleenex” of basement doors, named for the Bilco company known for making them.

Given that I have a 50 year old boiler in my basement that cannot fit up the inside basement stairs, I could use a good set of Bilco doors here at 100 Prince.

Jessica Spengler, on spring loneliness:

It was lonely, sitting at that table by myself, but it was also…tranquil? It was a loneliness I embraced—and undoubtedly somewhat romanticized, as one is wont to do when one is the type to have gloomy Kafka quotes and the final stanza of Dover Beach tacked to the walls of her room. But by embracing the loneliness, I made it mine. It was a choice I was making for myself. I chose to sit out there in the evenings, and I chose when to go inside, and maybe ideally I would have chosen to be sitting there with someone else—but sometimes you have to just sit with yourself. The stillness of those early spring evenings imprinted itself on me, and it has imprinted itself on every early spring evening since then. I welcome these evenings and enjoy them, but always with a certain pensiveness, with the memory of being young and on the brink of many exciting, life-changing days just ahead, but also of being alone and very far away from anything I could call home.

This resonates with me. I’ve not reached her level of peace with the lonely, but I’ve at reached an understanding with it, and sanded off many of its more desperate rough edges.

That’s the thing I’ve found about loneliness: if I run from it, like an marauding plague, it will cut me down. If I breathe, turn, pause, face it, breathe, its power over me is greatly diminished. Which, pleasantly and, in retrospect, ironically, leads to a pathway home.

In the liner notes to Tiny Beautiful Things, the song by May Erlewine, is a pointer to tiny beautiful things, the book by Cheryl Strayed.

Rule number one for a successful life: always follow the lateral connections.

A copy, it turned out, was on the shelf at the Cornwall Public Library. So I immediately hopped in the car and drove to Cornwall to pick it up.

The book is a compendium of pieces Strayed wrote, using the pseudonym Sugar, as an advice columnist.

Of the highest, most passionately engaged order, as it turns out.

From the first chapter, a reply to “Johnny,” who is prevaricating about saying “I love you” to the woman he’s been dating for four months:

I suppose you think this has nothing to do with your question, Johnny, but it has everything to do with my answer. It has everything to do with every answer I have ever given to anyone. It’s Sugar’s genesis story. And it’s the thing my mind kept swirling back to over these five weeks since you wrote to me and said you didn’t know the definition of “love.”

It is not so incomprehensible as you pretend, sweet pea. Love is the feeling we have for those we care deeply about and hold in high regard. It can be light as the hug we give a friend or heavy as the sacrifices we make for our children. It can be romantic, platonic, familial, fleeting, everlasting, conditional, unconditional, imbued with sorrow, stoked by sullied by abuse, amplified by kindness, twisted by betrayal, deepened by time, darkened by difficulty, leavened by generosity, nourished by humor, and “loaded with promises and commitments” that we may or may not want or keep. The best thing you can possibly do with your life is to tackle the motherfucking shit out of love. And, Johnny, on this front, I think you have some work to

But before we get to that, I want to say this, darling: I sort of love you.

The book only gets better from there.

For reasons I can’t fathom, the band Stars completely escaped my attention until very recently. Despite the band having been around for 20 years, being Montréal-based, and having a Patreon that states, in part:

We don’t believe if you have more money you should have more access. We are socialists. The meek are getting ready. We love you equally so we have one price to open the passenger door. 

Also, their Are You With Me? melts my insides a little every time I listen to it.

In Midnight Chicken, Ella Risbridger concludes a recipe:

A trivet on the table. Get someone else to pour the wine, put out knives and forks, and maybe make a salad (I mean, empty a bag of leaves in a bowl, maybe whisk up a little olive oil with lemon juice and balsamic vinegar: this is a lazy meal, remember.)

That was all I needed to take me to salad town: for some reason I’d always been daunted, and also kind of thought of salad as essentially non-essential. By lowering the bar, Risbridger won me over, and now I’ll toss a salad together on a whim a few times a week.

Tonight’s: lettuce, carrots, grape tomatoes, mushrooms, Parmesan cheese.

Fifteen years ago my entire family descended on Charlottetown to surprise me for my 40th birthday. 

I will never ever forgot how good that felt. 

Not only can May Erlewine cover Taylor Swift, she can also tell you how to make a good cup of coffee.

A true sign of spring: Receiver Brass Shop Thursday night pizza-pasta is over for the season. So it was back to the yeast bin at 100 Prince, re-re-realizing that making pizza dough from scratch is easy and takes only 15 minutes.