During my year at Trent University I took a course in “natural language understanding by computers” from Stephen Regoczei, a course that we conjured up as a reading course so as to free me from the shackles of needing to take Computer Studies 101. And a course that, in the end, was far more free-ranging than the title suggested.

One day Stephen held up an object and asked me to sketch it from his perspective. I failed: my brain simply didn’t have the horsepower to do such a complicated reprojection.

And the third dimension has continued to be my arch nemesis in the years since.

But I’m trying to overcome that, and sketching coffee cups is good practice. I’m nowhere near there yet, but I’m making some progress.

My friend Elmine blogs about her book purchases.

I’ve found that if Elmine is interested in a book, I’m also interested in it.

To the point where I’m thinking I should simply ask Dan at The Bookmark to subscribe to Elmine’s blog and order me a copy of anything she purchases.

Whoever sent us an anonymous gift from état de choc: thank you; you are aces.

For many years Donna Glass and her capable team have been running a kayak and paddleboard rental operation out of the riverside park in Morell; construction of a new bridge in Morell, with the resulting noise and chaos, has pushed them up the shore one watershed to a new base in Midgell.

Which turns out to be not such a bad thing: the Midgell River turns out to be just as nice a river to paddle on, and is perhaps even better for the new paddler, as it’s a little gentler and more compact (Kingfisher will still shuttle you up to the headwaters of the Morell River for their longstanding bridge-to-bridge paddle, which is a trip I recommend everyone do at least once).

From Kingfisher’s base at the bridge over the river, you can paddle upriver, which quickly takes you from the noise of the highway around the bend into pleasant silence, or you can paddle downriver, under the Confederation Trail bridge and into St. Peters Bay, where you’ll find what we are told is a pleasant beach.

Olivia and I went out to Midgell yesterday afternoon–a warm, sunny, windless day–for the Pride Paddle, an event Kingfisher holds annually, with all proceeds going to Pride PEI and Peers Alliance. We’d booked a double kayak, and as we pulled into the parking lot it arrived back from its previous trip, so we were right on time.

We were paddling at low tide, so ran aground heading downriver; we levered ourselves out and went upriver instead. Unlike previous trips, where Olivia was more passenger than paddler, she figured out the mechanics of paddling and did as much of the work moving us forward as I did.

We were out on the water for about 90 minutes. It was a gentle, relaxing way to spend time on the water; it’s something that anyone can do, and especially if you’ve never explored the Island’s river systems from a kayak, I highly recommend you take advantage of the opportunity, especially this year when we’re all sticking closer to home.

From Be interested, be curious, hear what’s not said: how I learned to really listen to people by Annalisa Barbieri in The Guardian:

Listening, I discovered, wasn’t just about waiting for the other person to stop talking, or asking good questions, or even not interrupting. It was about really hearing what the other person was saying, and why they were saying it. Being interested, but also curious. Sometimes that means looking for what’s not said, what’s left out, which words are used to mask emotions that are hard to acknowledge. Likewise, good listening is about approaching what has been said as if you’ve never heard it before. Put simply, it’s about paying attention.

For the first time in more than a year our monthly Pen Night met face to face. To allow us to socially distance, and to try out a hybrid format with far-aways coming in on Zoom, we gathered in the carriage house at Beaconsfield.

The hybrid experiment failed: the latency introduced by the wireless connection to the projector meant Zoom’s echo cancellation broke down completely. We’ll try again next time with a hard-wired connection to see if that improves things.

But the face to face was a rousing success, with a dozen of us gathering to immerse ourselves in fountain pen nerdiness.

Highlights included special guest star Art, a summer resident, who brought some lovely heavy pens with intriguing nibs, an Aurora 88 passed around by Stephen, a bookbinding gift from Chantal, and a good assortment of notebooks and letters circulated for inspection. There were also some very good refreshments: Tolkien-inspired cookies and rhubarb-strawberry crumble squares.

Being back in the room with my pen friends reminded me how important the monthly pen respite was during the summer of 2019 while Catherine was sick: just being able to get away for a few hours and not think about matters of life, cancer, and death was enormously helpful for my mental health.

We’ll meet again in August.

I love this interview of Alicia Kennedy by Sarah Miller, which starts as a discussion about a pair of silver platform clogs, and migrates into an exploration of hyper-performant femininity and how “an interesting pair of shoes can throw the straight male mind into helpless orbit.”

From the introduction to Finn V. Gratton’s Supporting Transgender Autistic Youth and Adults:

Finally, language related to “functioning levels” (e.g., “high-functioning” and “low-functioning”) will not be used, unless it is part of a quote or a study. The term “autism spectrum” will not be used because it generally refers to a one-dimensional line that extends from point A (those people perceived as furthest from allistic functioning) to point B (those perceived as most like allistic people). This verbal and mental construction posits a one-dimensional view of human experience and expression that places allistic experience and behavior as superior to autistic experience and behavior. Where differences in functioning matter, for example in the case of autistic individuals with low speech abilities trying to access services, I will note the distinguishing characteristics that affect the autistic person’s life.

I hitched up my canoe to my bicycle using the Wicycle Trailer this afternoon to see how it handled on the road.

The canoe-bicycle connection is via a device Wicycle calls the “smart stick” and it turns out to be pretty smart: it mounts to the seat post of the bike and then ties up to the bow line of the canoe in a way that both keeps the canoe from flopping around and allows it to turn freely.

Out on the road, the weight of the canoe felt about the same as pulling a fully loaded trailer of groceries, albeit with more horizontal sway. It seems like a reasonable thing to expect to be able to cycle out to Andrews Pond for a first paddle. And home again.

I already have visions of getting a Brompton folding bicycle that I could carry in the canoe itself, allowing me full intermodality.