Two of my favourite artists have released versions of The Parting Glass recently, Henry Jamison and Karine Polwart.

They are as different as different can be, but they are both lovely in their own way.

Of all the money that e’er I had
I spent it in good company
And all the harm I’ve ever done
Alas it was to none but me
And all I’ve done for want of wit
To mem’ry now I can’t recall
So fill to me the parting glass
Good night and joy be to you all

While The Parting Glass is “often sung at the end of a gathering of friends,” the song Wild Mountain Thyme is one of three songs traditionally played to close out the Winnipeg Folk Festival.

And, at least in my mid-1980s teen dance experience, Stairway to Heaven was always the last dance of the night.

From The Guardian, 105 years ago today. I’m feeling connected to the little surge of joy that the editor who wrote that hed must have felt: alliterative opportunities like that don’t come along every day.

When you figure something tricky out, write a blog post about it. Maybe a decade later it will help someone out of a jam:

You are f*cking amazing. I was pulling my hair out in Germany trying to figure this out. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

See alsoe A Triumph for Blogging.

A rendering over coffee today of a useful piece of advice offered by a fellow widower in the Widow Wives Club on Facebook.

You’re Not Alone, from Our Native Daughters, is a good way to start the week.

Rhiannon Giddens, Amythyst Kiah, Leyla McCalla, and Allison Russell reinterpret and create new works from old ones, shining light on African-American women’s stories of struggle, resistance, and hope

I have been listening to Bruce Cockburn’s 1996 album The Charity of Night today, and remembering how much I love it.

The album opens with Night Train, a song that, as Cockburn explains in this live set, was written under the influence of absinthe. It is among my favourite of his canon.

My personal experience with absinthe, somewhat predictably, lies in Olle’s kitchen in Copenhagen. Unlike Cockburn, I didn’t get a song out of it, but it was a good day.

Pomplamoose’s Extreme Ways ft. MOBY takes ft. to a whole new level of recursive minimalism.

From the liner notes:

There’s nothing quite so surreal as covering a Moby song WITH Moby.

For reasons I don’t completely understand, Centennial Nissan in Charlottetown has just opened an on-premises carwash. And it’s not one of those new-age touchless ones, either: it has real 1976-style spinning brushes that attack the dirt off your vehicle.

By far the biggest innovation, though, is that the vacuums beside the carwash—vacuums that have the power of a jet engine—are free to use, on the honour system.

I now have a very clean car.

Floyd Buell, who died last week, sold us our first house, in 1994, on the Kingston Road.

I originally found Floyd because he was the realtor for a house on the Colville Road with an asking price of $33,000, a price that, even back then, seemed impossibly affordable. That house—which turned out to have been built from the rubble of the old house next door—turned out not to suit us, but Floyd became our realtor in the process.

He was a kind and patient man, and showed us scores of houses in the $30K to $50K range, most of which—no fault of his—were desperately horrible houses: basements filled with water, walls smashed, hyper-pink bedrooms; we saw it all, from Emyvale to Donaldston to Mount Buchanan and all points between. Floyd never faltered, despite knowing his commission wasn’t likely to top $1,000.

Eventually we looked at 1360 Kingston Road, and we were ready to buy. And even then it was a multi-back-and-forth offer-counter process followed by an unexpected Supreme Court Quieting of the Title. Floyd was in for the duration.

We loved that house for the six years we lived in it

Floyd will be missed.

The Guardian published my Letter to the Editor this morning:

The Charlottetown area has benefited greatly over the last year from improvements to active transportation infrastructure: there is still much work to be done, but it has never been easier to safely move about the city by foot, wheelchair, or bicycle.

One area that needs much more attention, however, is the last 50 feet of the journey: there’s no point in having a lovely, modern, paved, separated, shared pathway connecting home and destination if the destination isn’t itself barrier-free.

Which means not only bicycle racks, but also includes power doors, step-free access, clear wayfinding, and accessible washrooms.

This is one realm where we citizens can act directly, spending our dollars at businesses that are welcoming to everyone, and reminding those that aren’t that we’re no longer willing to stand idle while some of us are excluded on the other side of needless barriers.