A new sign sprouted on Prince Street this morning, in front of our neighbour’s house:

The C1A 4R4 Arts District is the lucky recipient of the art and presence of artist Melissa Peter-Paul, who is mounting an installation inspired by the weeping birch on the street (a weeping birch that I have an unusually complete photographic record of).

The tree, City Tree 482 it’s called, was one of those selected for the City of Charlottetown’s Rooted in Art project:

Rooted in Art is a new tree appreciation initiative that will run from October 3rd - 17th and is intended to celebrate the importance and beauty of Charlottetown’s urban forest. Five Island artists will use some of downtown Charlottetown’s most distinctive and historic trees as inspiration for a temporary art installation. 

The tree is one I love, as it’s part of the day to day landscape of my life; I got to meet Melissa in passing this afternoon–she was sitting under the tree with her art–and I’m looking forward to seeing the piece in place.

After reading the placard I’ve learned not only that it’s a weeping birch (which I didn’t know before), but that weeping birch trees can be tapped in the spring, which makes me think that the city should organize a follow-on project to do exactly that.

I was browsing the call-for-apprentices for a Costa Rican radical queer jungle/farm sanctuary for post-capitalism exploration yesterday, and came across this, one of its goals:

Developing love, care, relationship and eroticism as practice rather than product.

This morning, driving Oliver around the city to drop off slices of birthday cake at a curated collection of influential contributors to his life, I thought for a moment, at a stoplight, “why am I taking this entire day to help my son carry out a labyrinthian questing that involves cakes, Zoom and vodka soda?” It wasn’t so much that I was struggling for a rationale, as I was wondering why it seemed like exactly what I should be doing. 

The only reasonable answer I could come up with is that I love him. So much and so effortlessly that it would never occur to me to do otherwise on this day.

I have thought a lot about love over the last year, but this revelation on North River Road was more about feeling than thinking.

And it wasn’t about the “I love you” kind of love. And it wasn’t really even about the “I have loved you since the moment you were born, will always love you, and will do anything to protect you and encourage you and to help you thrive in this life” kind of love. It was the geothermal force that begets all that. 

Love as practice, rather than product.

We had a good day together, me and Oliver.

We started off with breakfast on the patio at Receiver Coffee: rum & banana french toast for him, vegan breakfast bowl for me. It was sunny and just warm enough: the perfect knife-edge between summer and fall. 

After breakfast we walked home for Morning Birthday Zoom, held for those in Europe and points east. We were joined by Olle in Sweden, Juliane in Germany, and outliers Kali in Charlottetown, and Peter in Hampton. We had a lovely chat, sang happy birthday, and enjoyed our shared sunshines.

Next it was to Michaels, to purchase cake boxes and party decorations, and then to Sobeys, to pick up a couple of cakes.

Cake number one was a rectangular chocolate sheet cake, ultimately destined to be divided into nine for distribution; we had it iced with purple Os.

Cake number two was for the small face-to-face gathering planned for the evening; it was a round chocolate-raspberry cake, iced with “Happy 20th.”

Cakes in hand, we ducked in to Madame Vuong’s for lunch (Catherine’s voice in my head: “it’s going to be a long day, so don’t forget to eat lunch!”). Then home for cake slicing and boxing.

Cake boxing was perplexed by my inability to divide a rectangle into 9 (I started down the road to making 6 pieces, then caught myself at the last moment). Thirty minutes later we were on the road again.

Oliver’s birthday metaverse consisted of two separate but overlapping themes: “my teen years” and “change: death, retirement, gender.”

Overlapping these overlapping themes were people from nearby who would come to the house, people from nearby who would get cake delivered, and people from away.

On the “people from nearby who would get cake delivered” list were nine destinations: Prince Street School, Birchwood Intermediate School, Colonel Gray High School, UPEI, Stars for Life, the Provincial Palliative Care Centre, and three friends who’ve undergone transitions of one sort or another recently.

Our questing thus involved, among other things, negotiating the COVID regulations of the public school system, being serenaded with Happy Birthday by the administrative assistant at Prince Street from the front steps of the school, visiting Palliative Care for the first time since the night Catherine died (and getting a tour of the grounds from Blanche, who’s been so important to us over the last year), and leaving cake, anonymously, on the doorsteps of a couple of people who will, no doubt, be confused when they get home.

None of this made any sense at all to my neurotypical brain, but it made a heap of sense to Oliver and, of course, Oliver was right by any measure that involves human connection: we saw people and places we hadn’t seen in a long time, brought smiles to faces, and spent a couple of hours on an adventure together.

Besides, having to phone an elementary school office and explain how it is important to your son, who turns 20 today, to drop off a piece of cake at the school he once attended, and to have people get that, and agreed to meet him at the front door for the cake handover: that’s the kind of thing that makes the world seem right.

Deliveries complete, we rushed home so that Oliver could take in his British History lecture at 4:00 p.m., stopping at Hearts & Flowers for balloons and at Upstreet for party beer en route.

While Oliver learned about the 1906 Labour Manifesto on Zoom, I decorated the back deck, and then headed off to the liquor store to buy wine, and the corner store for chocolate milk.

The wine and chocolate milk were in service of two last-minute additions from Oliver, drink specials:

• “The 19” – wine, peppermint iced tea, soda water.
• “The Lunch” – chocolate milk and peppermint iced tea.

Thus a drink menu was in order:

Upon my return home, and the finish of the lecture, Oliver added some additional quests to the list: Oliver Trivia, “Ton-style Questions,” and Oliver’s Interests, each of which required some attention by me and some typing by Oliver. We finished those up, hooked the Google Home up as a playlist speaker in the back yard and had a few minutes to relax before our first guests arrived.

Under the letter of “the new normal” COVID dictates released today, we were allowed a wild socially distanced rager of 20 people; I opted to limit things to 9 people, as otherwise we’d run out of chairs and plates and social distancing space. The question was then “which 9 people” (remembering that this is a young man who had 50 people at his 18th birthday). Oliver rose to the occasion, not an insignificant feat given his challenges with winnowing: he opted to celebrate “the teen years” by inviting important people from his education. 

And so gathered in our back yard after 6:00 p.m. were his grade 7 and grade 9 home room teachers, his two educational assistants from high school, his current UPEI professor, and two of our closest friends. We were a motley bunch, but we were united in our connection to Oliver. We drank “The 19” and “The Lunch.” We played Oliver Trivia, told Oliver stories, answered Ton-style questions, and caught up on the months or years since we’d last seen each other.

I almost forgot to bring the cake out; fortunately Oliver reminded me. And so we sang the second Happy Birthday of the day, and enjoyed a (surprisingly very good) cake. As we said our goodbyes, darkness had fallen and the Full Moon was just starting to rise.

As I cleaned up the deck, Oliver was warming up Birthday Zoom Two, the North American edition. This included Oliver and Cheryl in Portland,  Johnny and Kae, and nieces A. and M., in California, my mother, Mike and Karen in Burlington, Steve and Monique, and nephews V. and E., in Montreal, Marina in Napanee, and Sandy here in Charlottetown. We all got a chance to hold Oliver in high regard, got a chance to make (or renew) ties (“oh, you’re Riley and Bailey’s mother: we met you at Rainbow Valley when Oliver was little”), and enjoyed Happy Birthday Mark 3.

During early planning sessions with Oliver for this day, on a lark I added “father and son drink at Upstreet” at the end of the schedule, not realizing that at the end of the day I would be exhausted. But once something’s on the list, well, it’s on the list. And, besides, we needed to have supper (I forgot to listen to Catherine’s voice in my head telling me to not forget to have supper). So we got take-out chicken wings and a veggie burger from Hopyard, ate them on the patio at the Jean Canfield, and then looped back to Upstreet for a vodka soda (Oliver) and a kombucha (me).

As we rolled home the Moon was high overhead, we were in a fine mood, and were in agreement that it had been a day well-spent.

Happy Birthday, my son.

If the inter-library loan system can get this book to me, from Edmonton, it means modern civilization has not yet completely crumbled.

Taking guidance from my friend Thelma to heart, I searched for all instances of Mi’kmaq (spelled with an apostrophe) here on the the blog, and replaced with Miꞌkmaq (spelled, properly, with a saltillo):

Oliver woke up this morning and, once we’d sorted out that he didn’t have COVID-19, his biggest concern was that he didn’t have an orange shirt.

It is, after all, Orange Shirt Day:

Orange Shirt Day is an opportunity for Islanders to listen, learn and reflect about the history of residential schools in Canada, and honour the thousands of survivors, their families, and passed loved ones. It is also a day to come together in the spirit of reconciliation and hope for a more inclusive and fair future for all. 

Fortunately, this was one problem I could solve right away: my parish-mate enterprise, Miꞌkmaq Printing & Design, was selling orange shirts from a table at 101 Prince Street, about 50 paces from our front door. I popped across the street, picked up an orange shirt, and Oliver was clothed and ready a few minutes later.

If only all parenting was so easy.

I suggested to Oliver that he post something on Facebook about Orange Shirt Day, and he did exactly that:

Oliver understands, at a visceral level, that the colonialism and racism that gave rise to residential schools shares roots with that from which Black Lives Matter springs. I’m proud of him.

Just before lunch yesterday, Oliver’s support worker reported to me that he hadn’t been feeling well: headache, sore throat, stuffy nose, aches. In other words, enough boxes ticked on the COVID-19 symptoms list that I was concerned.

As it happened, The Dr. Heather Morrison Show aired its weekly episode yesterday morning, so I was well-primed with instructions for action.

My first call was to 811, where I was shunted into the “our nurses are occupied right now — someone will call you back within 3 hours” queue.

My second call was to our family doctor, but his office was closed.

A careful reading of the COVID-19 testing page suggested that it was actually okay to simply drop in for a test, so, after a quick bite of lunch, fortified for the prospect of spending the afternoon in one of the long testing lines that have been much-evident in the media from elsewhere of late, we got in the car and drove to the old Government Garage on Park Street.

As it turned out, there was no line at all. We were in and out in 10 efficient minutes. The test didn’t hurt (Oliver reported). The staff were friendly. It was less of a hassle than picking up a burger at the Wendy’s next door.

We were given a sheet with a URL for picking up the results, available, we were told, within 24 to 48 hours; Oliver was told to self-isolate, but I was free, I was told, to move about, albeit with more-than-usual masking (and I’m wearing a mask whenever I’m indoors anyway, so no change for me).

Unsatisfied with the need to hit reload for 24 to 48 hours, and feeling icky about the Google, Facebook, and other advertising trackers on the results pickup page, I threw together a little Node-RED flow to scrape the page for Oliver’s test results every 30 minutes and email me the response.

This flow takes advantage of the fact that the government’s system consists of a simply HTTP POST of the health card number and expiration date, along with the date of birth and test date, as JSON, and returns JSON with either “No Results Found” or “COVID-19 (Coronavirus) Test Result.”

All of which was easily observable from Firefox’s Developer Tools, which allows the request to be copied as a cURL command:

curl 'https://wdf.princeedwardisland.ca/workflow' -H 'User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.15; rv:81.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/81.0' -H 'Accept: application/json' -H 'Accept-Language: en' --compressed -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -H 'Origin: https://www.princeedwardisland.ca' -H 'DNT: 1' -H 'Connection: keep-alive' -H 'Referer: https://www.princeedwardisland.ca/en/feature/search-my-covid-19-test-results' -H 'Pragma: no-cache' -H 'Cache-Control: no-cache' --data-raw '{"featureName":"CovidNegativeResults","metaVars":{"service_id":null,"save_location":null},"queryVars":{"phn":"XXXXXXXX","card_expiry_month":"XXX","card_expiry_year":"XXXX","birth_date":"XXXX-XX-XX","test_date":"XXXX-XX-XX","wdf_prevent_query_string":"true","sid":null,"page_num":"1","page_count":"1","finished":"0"}}'

(I’ve replaced Oliver’s actual data with Xs).

It returns JSON that looks, in part, like this:

[
  {
     "id":"10f659b6-8d21-465d-a243-e72e1acd603f",
     "classes":null,
     "type":"Heading",
     "data":{
        "text":"No Results Found",
        "size":2
     },
     "children":[
        
     ]
  },
  {
     "id":"50ce2982-167b-41e6-a979-decaaea1bb97",
     "classes":null,
     "type":"Paragraph",
     "data":{
        "text":"Check that the information you entered is correct and retry. If your results do not appear 72 hours after testing, please contact mytestresults@gov.pe.ca or 1-833-533-9333 and Press 1 for health information and leave a voicemail to receive a call back."
     },
     "children":[
        
     ]
  }
]

when the results aren’t available yet, and:

[
   {
      "id":"9ccb8479-4eae-4177-a3fb-267358ddb910",
      "classes":null,
      "type":"Heading",
      "data":{
         "text":"COVID-19 (Coronavirus) Test Result",
         "size":2
      },
      "children":[
         
      ]
   },
   {
      "id":"12c25d77-c03b-4582-8f40-be82e1b0ec09",
      "classes":null,
      "type":"KeyValueTable",
      "data":{
         "keyValuePairs":{
            "Health Card Number Ending In":"XXXX",
            "Test Date":"XXXX-XX-XX",
            "Test Result":"NEGATIVE (A negative result means that you did not have COVID-19 when you were tested.)"
         }
      },
      "children":[
         
      ]
   }
]

when a negative test result comes back (positive results aren’t delivered through the online system: I presume they’re communicated with a phone call).

My Node-RED flow simply grabbed the ”No Results Found” or “COVID-19 (Coronavirus) Test Result” and emailed that to me every 30 minutes.

Which is how I got this email at 7:00 a.m. this morning:

Whew!

The 811 nurse phoned back yesterday at 4:30 p.m., four hours after I first called, and three hours after Oliver had already been tested.

If you want a simple way of checking your own results, and you have access to a machine with cURL (like any Mac with the Terminal app), a stripped down version of the cURL command will get you what you need:

curl 'https://wdf.princeedwardisland.ca/workflow' -H 'Content-Type: application/json' --data-raw '{"featureName":"CovidNegativeResults","metaVars":{"service_id":null,"save_location":null},"queryVars":{"phn":"XXXXXXXX","card_expiry_month":"XXX","card_expiry_year":"YYYY","birth_date":"YYYY-MM-DD","test_date":"YYYY-MM-DD","wdf_prevent_query_string":"true","sid":null,"page_num":"1","page_count":"1","finished":"0"}}'

where:

• phn is you Provincial Health Card number
• card_expiry_month is the month your health card expires, as a three-letter month abbreviation (JAN, FEB, etc.)
• card_expired_year is the four digit year your health card expires.
• birth_date is your birth date, YYYY-MM-DD
• test_date is the date you had the test, YYYY-MM-DD

(All you’re doing when you do this is acting a web browser of a different sort; it’s a completely legitimate way of obtaining your results and you’re not doing anything nefarious, as you only have access to your results this way).

Needless to say, both Oliver and I are relieved that he doesn’t have COVID. He’s still got his traditional fall cold, but that, relative to the alternative, is manageable.

Lost in the discussion of the new Sherwood Elementary School’s construction as a “net zero ready” building has been that the catalyst for this move was MLA Ole Hammarlund’s successful Net Zero Now motion in the Legislative Assembly:

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the Legislative Assembly urge government to with immediate effect design, build and fund only buildings the Net Zero or beyond building standards.

The original tender call for the new school went out in the summer of 2019; Ole’s motion passed in November 2019, prompting a change of plans, and a re-issue of the tender this month, closing in late October.

In the original tender there was a brief mention under the heading “Energy Efficiency”:

It is the intent of this project to meet or exceed the National Energy code for Buildings 2011.

In the revised tender this is significantly expanded:

The PEI Department of Transportation, Infrastructure and Energy (TIE) is working closely with both efficiencyPEI and the PEI Climate Change Secretariat to address mandated requirements of the current PEI Energy Strategy, as well as the Climate Change Action Plan for PEI, 2018-2023, to reduce the production of greenhouse gases and improve energy efficiency for all government building construction projects. To achieve these goals, building construction must begin to meet far more stringent energy use requirements. Design approaches will include enhancements to building controls, envelopes and durability; the integration of the most efficient energy sources — with the lowest overall impact on the province’s carbon emissions footprint — as practical; effective building siting, the potential for geothermal systems, and for on-site energy production.

It is therefore TIE’s intention to build a fully electric building to minimize greenhouse gases which are generated due to the operation of this building. TIE is also requiring enhanced building efficiency. The project is intended to be a ‘Net Zero’ building to be designed to minimize annual energy consumption. By targeting a 50% reduction in energy usage over the NECB 2017, and having a maximum targeted Energy Use Intensity (EUI) of 110 kWh/sq.m, this highly energy-efficient building will have the capability of having on site or on-grid clean energy used by this building to offset any GHG from its operations. 

TIE is also interested in reviewing the financial analysis for a roof mounted installation of a new 100 kW Photo Voltaic (PV) array for this building. The building roof design should be optimized to maximize the output of the PV array.

The building design is to be remodeled utilizing anticipated real world schedules, and actual design elements to develop a financial review of the various energy efficiency options. The designer will work with TIE and the End User Group to develop an anticipated real world operational schedule for this model.

The design team is to work with TIE and the End User to assess building improvements and operational requirements, which are beyond the minimum NECB standards, to ensure the energy reduction options as a whole project (architectural, structural, mechanical, electrical enhancements and PV) has a simple payback target of fifteen (15) years or less.

The individual energy saving options to get to an EUI of 110 kWh/sq.m. are to be costed with net present value considerations included for review by TIE before proceeding to the design phase.
Additional Comments:

(a) TIE does not want the Design Team exploring “high capital cost” options that would have lengthy paybacks when considered through financial analysis.
(b) Appendix ‘B’ outlines a number of building related requirements that have been identified by the end user that will need to be vetted and confirmed during the schematic design process.
(c) The cost required for reinforcing the roof for PV installation should be included during the financial analysis review.

Government sees this project as a flagship initiative that will lead to other projects across the province also decreasing their GHG emissions.

Government, as well as the school board’s, goal is to create a comfortable learning environment and to provide an exemplary building for students that could also be used as a learning tool that can be incorporated as part of the curriculum of the school.

While Ole’s motion was non-binding, it obviously set wheels in motion, and government deserves credit to stopping the new school in its tracks, reconsidering, and coming up with a new net-zero building plan.

Minority parliament for the win!

My friend Jamie has an opinion piece in yesterday’s USA Today about his two month stint working as a census worker in Hawaii.

Our Saturday started with our new-usual one-two of smoked salmon bagel pickup from Gallant’s, followed by a loop or two around the still-outdoor Charlottetown Farmers’ Market. Next, in a radical departure from our local food trail, we headed west to Kinkora in search of dilly bars.

In May I wrote about a disappointing Dilly Bar experience at Dairy Queen; my friend Thelma responded, later in the summer, with a suggestion that we visit the Somerset Ice Cream Bar to try their take. Reasoning that, with summer’s end, they will soon be closed, that’s what we did. We were not disappointed: it’s worth the drive to Kinkora (and, as of this writing, they’re still open daily).

Our dilly bars consumed, I realized we were within spitting distance of The Handpie Company in Albany, so we headed there for lunch, enjoyed under the shade of a tree on the grounds. The handpies we had were light and flaky and just wonderful, and this precipitated an email thread with Sarah, personable owner of the enterprise, about how to achieve this when I heat frozen handpies at home (she advised to give a “light egg-wash first to get that golden top crust,” something that’s right on the instructions but a step I’d been skipping).

From The Handpie Company we took the back route, through downtown Albany (a lovely village; my first visit) into Borden-Carleton, where we topped up the Kia Soul EV at the new Flo charger behind the gas station. We then drove along the south shore, through Cape Traverse and Tryon, to Victoria where, what with the sugar-dam already having burst, we stopped for Factory Coffee and hot chocolate on the patio.

Fortified with caffeine and sugar, we headed toward home for afternoon chores.

Our house at 100 Prince Street shares a 24 inch “alley” with our neighbours at 104 Prince Street, an alley that, despite living here for 20 years, I’d never looked inside until a few weeks ago, when I took a look with a insulation contractor. Once of the mysteries unveiled to me on that visit was that the vents for our range fume hood, our bathroom fans and our clothes dryer were in need of repair, their flaps no longer flapping open and closed. Attending to that was my Saturday project.

And a fascinating project it was: I learned a lot about vent assemblies–a 4 inch aluminum tube attached to the flappy part–at Home Hardware, and, in sliding the existing dryer vent out, I learned just how thick the walls of our house are (from shingles to plaster is about 15 inches), and that there actually is some insulation in the walls. The job ended up extending over two days, as I wasn’t satisfied with my first go at bodging the existing dryer vent together with some replacement parts on Saturday, so I ripped everything out on Sunday and did a much cleaner job. I ended up spending a lot of time in that little alley, and thus extended my dominion of comfort to a whole new region of the house.

As the afternoon drew to a close, I pressed pause on chores, made a quick supper, and prepared for Fountain Pen Night on Zoom.

Because both Oliver and I were going to attend, I decided to try an experiment in projecting the Zoom on the living room wall with our screen projector while, at the same time, capturing Oliver and I on a standalone Logitech webcam mounted on a tripod. The ergonomics and image quality left something to be desired (it was a delicate balance to get the room dark enough to see the projected Zoom clearly while light enough to allow others to see me and Oliver).

Special guest star at Pen Night this week was my friend Bill, a medical physicist with a particular research interest in optics. Bill uses fountain pen ink to approximate blood in his lab, and he walked is through spectral analysis of various ink samples. It was an interesting deep dive into colour theory, light, reflection, and absorption, and Bill, left without a webcam by circumstances beyond his control, gamely rose to the occasion of conducting the entire seminar with his iPhone.

Pen Night drew to a close around 9:30 p.m., and, in the normal course of affairs this would have been the time to start getting ready for bed, but it was also Saturday Movie Night and Oliver would have none of suspending that routine, Pen Night or not.

It was the week I was commanded to pick a movie from Oliver’s teen years and, further, I was told the film had to be on the theme either of Google or Oliver. There was really only one clear choice: The Internship, the 2013 film starring Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson that was set on the Google campus. Not a great film, but not a horrible film, and really the only one eligible given Oliver’s dictates.

It was thus almost midnight by the time Oliver started his playlist playing and went off to bed.

Sunday was a two-breakfasts-no-lunch day.

We started the day with our habitual waffles, then, at noon, went down to the waterfront to enjoy Sunday pancakes with Catherine Hennessey and G. We emerged into the early afternoon again caffeine-filled (this time on Catherine’s black tea), and headed to Home Depot to pick up supplies for day two of the dryer vent odyssey. 

Home Depot was positively hopping, and it took a lot of social distancing gymnastics to manoeuvre ourselves into the right aisle for long enough to pick the parts I needed for the job (I set on the flappy part, a 3 foot length of 4 inch aluminum tubing, a 4 inch pipe clamp, and a small length of flexible 4 inch conduit to allow the final connection to the dryer some flex). With Saturday’s experience already under my belt, I made short work of the job, and I’m very pleased with how it all turned out.

As I already had the extension ladder up out of the basement, I used the opportunity to pick the remaining apples and plums from the trees in the back yard. I managed to pick all but the very highest ones; the apples were tiny, but plentiful, and I ended up with three dozen.

Apples and plums picked, I set the plums aside to pass along to a friend, and set out to make another batch of applesauce. The Instant Pot was almost-overflowing by the time I’d filled it with apples; 8 minutes of pressure, and 30 minutes of mashing about, and I had a quart in the fridge ready for this week’s breakfast.

I was on a roll, so I just kept going after supper and made another batch of pasta sauce, using two pounds of Roma tomatoes purchased at the market from Sam at Cranbush Farms, along with carrots and zucchini from Trudy White, leeks from Paul Offer, and the single pepper I grew this summer, Fiero (who turned out to not be fiery at all). We’re now set for at least three weeks of pasta eating with a couple of quarts in the freezer.

I finished the evening by running up to Sobeys for weekly groceries and then, on my return, clearing out the kitchen cupboards around the dishwasher, as a new one is set to be delivered this morning from MacArthur’s, continuing the season of appliance replacement due to breakdowns (in this case the Whirlpool dishwasher, purchased only 4 years and one Premier ago, needed a $300 motor replacement; on the advice of our repairman, and brother Johnny, the replacement is a Bosch). Here’s the old one on its last morning in place, for posterity:

All and all a satisfying and productive weekend.

Today’s How we met feature in The Guardian: “I was trying to rent a flat from him – but then there was a murder”. Heds like that don’t come along every day.