On Thursday morning I was immersed in a video conference, with the personable Josh MacFadyen, when I got a text message:

As Oliver was across the street, at home, and “five machine” sounds a lot like “fire machine,” which is something someone might say when the house is burning down and they are panicking, I immediately ran across the street to rescue Oliver.

Oliver was fine.

The buzzer on the clothes dryer had gone off, and Oliver was simply, helpfully, letting me know.

Here’s how the text message got to me:

Oliver was upstairs in bed.

The dryer’s buzzer went off.

Oliver has a Google Home in his bedroom, so he asked it to call me:

OK Google, call Peter.

The Google Home dutifully called my office number.

But my officer number automatically goes to voicemail, so Oliver left a voicemail (the one you can listen to above).

The voicemail went to my voicemail system, which is set to automatically speech-to-text transcribe voicemails and email them to me.

Which is how I got the text message “Five machine went off at home.”

Lower shields.

Our friend Frances volunteered to deliver a box of handpies from The Handpie Company to our vestibule, as she was driving out to Albany to pick up her own.

And so, on our return from our walk, we were greeted by this lovely box waiting for us.

Oliver and I went out to enjoy the afternoon sun; we walked by our friend Catherine Hennessey’s house and enjoyed a socially-distant pop-in. She benefits from having a veranda custom-tailored for this age.

The Bookmark, Prince Edward Island’s bookstore, remains at our service, despite capitalism seemingly otherwise being on hiatus:

If you need books or a puzzle to get you through this unprecedented time, you can order online here, or call us at 902-566-4888 or email at charlottetown@bookmarkreads.ca and we will deliver your order to you the same day for FREE in the Charlottetown area. If you live outside Charlottetown, give us a call and we will let you know how we can deliver to you.

Robin Sloan recommended a couple of books in his newsletter a few weeks ago, The Westing Game and Sea of Poppies; I had The Bookmark order them both. They arrived in my vestibule today. As if by magic.

The great thing is that, as a special bonus, I get to help ensure that I still have a local independent bookstore at the end of all this.

Please join me if you can; and remember that The Bookmark can also delivery you fountain pens, notebooks, pencils, erasers, and socks featuring Justin Trudeau’s face.

Yuval Noah Harari, writing for the Financial Times in The world after coronavirus:

It is crucial to remember that anger, joy, boredom and love are biological phenomena just like fever and a cough. The same technology that identifies coughs could also identify laughs. If corporations and governments start harvesting our biometric data en masse, they can get to know us far better than we know ourselves, and they can then not just predict our feelings but also manipulate our feelings and sell us anything they want — be it a product or a politician.

Linked from Frank.

Suzanne Vega at NPR’s Tiny Desk, in 2014, with Gerry Leonard on guitar.

Mary Chapin Carpenter has an adorable dog named Angus. She’s playing beautiful songs from her kitchen, every day.

Our long provincial nightmare is over: today we were able to see our Premier in luscious landscape after weeks of awkward portrait.

From Stephanie Booth, Le dimanche perpétuel:

Je viens de faire un petit tour dans le quartier avec mes jambes et mes bâtons. Peu de monde, beaucoup de calme. J’ai toujours aimé les dimanches et les jours fériés, ici, où tout est fermé et rien ne bouge.

Cette période c’est comme un dimanche, mais tous les jours.

C’est trompeur, pourtant. En fait, cette crise n’est pas également distribuée. Elle nous touche tous, nous bouleverse tous, mais alors que certains se trouvent ralentis voire arrêtés, d’autres ne savent plus où donner de la tête. Je pense aux soignants évidemment, mais aussi aux parents télétravailleurs, aux employés des supermarchés, aux profs qui doivent du jour au lendemain apprendre à enseigner à distance (si possible autrement que “je donne des exercices, ils font, je corriger”), à tous ceux dont le revenu est en train de s’évaporer et qui doivent dare-dare trouver des solutions pour payer les employés et les charges, ou simplement remplir le frigo.

On commence à le lire, femmes et hommes ne sont pas non plus frappés équitablement. Les femmes assument la plus grande part des soins et de l’aide à autrui. (Oui je sais qu’il y a des hommes aidants, mais regardons les choses à l’échelle de la population.)

It does feel like perpetual Sunday, these pandemic days, and the particular kind of Sunday is different for every person, every family.