Travel writer Wayne Bernhardson on the challenges of being a travel guide writer during the pandemic:

Even if the travel and tourism sector re-opens, there’s another obstacle for me (and many other US citizens). Everybody knows, of course, about the notorious vanity wall under construction at the Mexican border, but now the current White House occupant’s minions are taking it to another level entirely. My US passport expires in early September, and I recently learned that the State Department is not processing either new or renewal applications so that, even if Argentina and Chile open up for tourism, it’s uncertain (at best) when we’ll be able to return.

It is impossible not to seek out a film The Guardian calls “a sultry Bosnian summer road trip.”

Update: streaming on MUBI.

How do I set goals if I don’t want anything?:

I said that I didn’t have the answers, and I don’t. I don’t want to goad you into further despair or paralysis, or load you up with all of my considerable anxieties, quite the opposite. It’s not that you have to solve all the scary things in the world before you’re allowed to want a different a job or that you’re not allowed to manage your own daily intake of scariness before you can have nice things. It’s that possibly everything you’ve ever learned about “how to career” told you to tune out the noise of the world and focus on perfecting yourself, and there is a certain point where pretending things in the outside world are not affecting you or that there exists an optimal amount you can perfect yourself that makes those outside forces irrelevant creates a cognitive dissonance so great that it is actually destructive.

(via University of Winds)

Coming from a long line of well-informed rule followers, I was dutifully waiting my turn in the pasta aisle at Sobeys while the person in front of me did their spaghetti shopping. After two or three minutes they turned to me and said “Oh, you’re doing that social distancing thing?” and rolled on.

Oliver and I decided to celebrate the launch of Phase 2 of the It’s Okay to Go Outside plan to go for a walk and order up some Chatime iced tea, following the instructions we saw on the window the other night:

We placed our order (which felt like filling in a mortgage application), and were told to show up 20 minutes later. So we kept walking, up Prince Street, across Fitzroy, down Great George, right on Kent, left on Queen, and were at Chatime 5 minutes early.

While we were waiting, the fellow next to us realized that he needed a credit card to place an order, and he didn’t have one, so he asked me if I would order for him, and he would Interac me the money. The second time ordering was a lot easier because I’d checked the “remember my details” box on my first email.  Their Chatime order was way more adventurous than ours:

On the walk home I got my Interac e-transfer email, for $2 more than I was owed.

Other than cash-for-perogies, twice over the last month, I haven’t paid cash for a single thing since early March. I haven’t been to an ATM since February.

My friend Andrea recommended the 2013 documentary film Spring & Arnaud to me, and I watched it on Apple TV last night ($2.99 to “rent” for 30 days; the first time I’ve done this).

It is a delightful film, filled with light and life and hope, despite (or because of) the impending death of one of our heroes. A helpful guide for how to live now.

In his May newsletter, Robin Sloan describes the mechanism by which his book Sourdough was published in Iran:

I am permitted neither to sign a contract with an Iranian business nor receive payment from one; no publication in Iran of any U.S. book can be official. Instead, what happens is that an Iranian publisher says, “…can we just translate this?” and you say “uh, sure!” because, what’s the alternative? You can either (1) earn zero dollars and (2) not have a Persian edition, or (1) earn zero dollars and (2) have a Persian edition. Pretty clear choice!

This is similar to the way I got the Publisher of the Peterborough Examiner to allow me to move up from apprentice to journeyman: I agreed to resign immediately upon receiving my new status. This allowed him to avoid the inconvenience of having to double my salary, and allowed me formal recognition of my skills, without the inconvenience of working in the composing room until I died (or was replaced by a Mac, something that, as it turned out, would have happened within a year).

I was saddened to read of the death of former Member of Parliament, Member of the Legislative Assembly, and Speaker Wilbur Macdonald this morning.

I could not help but think back to the warm summer afternoon of June 27, 2006 when, from the public gallery in Province House, I witnessed him hold forth at some length so as to keep the Legislative Assembly busy while, behind the scenes, the Pat Binns government sought to put the finishing touches on its electoral redistricting plan, An Act to Amend the Electoral Boundaries Act (the “Cletus Dunn map,” as it had come to be known).

With the introduction from the Speaker, “The hon. Member from Belfast-Pownal Bay,” he began (you can follow along in the day’s Hansard, starting on page 3,304):

I rise to speak on the budget which we had brought in in the spring. It’s an opportunity for me to talk about my riding and about what is taking place in the province.

One of the things that has really happened in this province in the last number of years is the expansion of the economy. I think it all started with the industrial malls a number of years ago and is continuing over the last number of years. The federal government has also contributed to that in Charlottetown and in Summerside.

At this point he departed from his prepared notes to address the issue of the lawnmower making noise outside, clearly audible in the background, something that had been on my mind as well:

I must say every time that this House opens that lawn mower seems to be going outside. Is the guy going over and over the lawn or what is he doing out there? If it’s under the department of public works, I wish the minister would tell him to take off. Go someplace else. He can cut the grass in the morning, then we can hear one another. But he’s been going for the last two hours and I don’t know where the lawn is. But anyway.

From there he continued for more than 4,200 words and 30 minutes, covered topics ranging from the lobster fishery to the Northumberland Strait to Lord Selkirk to wind power to the quality of the roads in his district to the life expectancy of males and females.

Eventually the Act to Amend the Electoral Boundaries Act was ready for introduction, and so Macdonald got the nod and finished off with the same good humour he started with:

Mr. Speaker, I could go on for a little longer, but I think I have spoke long enough. I will adjourn the debate.

While Macdonald was simply doing his loyal best to keep the puck in play, his speech, looking back 14 years, is a thorough survey of Prince Edward Island through his eyes, and we are the better for it, and for his years of service as a legislator.

(Audio from the Legislative Assembly of PEI Video Archive).

In today’s mail were non-surgical masks for me and for Oliver, courtesy of Catherine’s mother Marina. And so I dodge the “I need to learn how to sew” bullet once more! They are lovely.