I had a lovely time this morning talking to a local chapter of the PROBUS social club. Whereas I’m usually call to present on matters technical or policy, this morning I was given the chance to speak about my blog, and I used the opportunity to do a kind of single-person “songwriters’ circle,” reading from selected blog posts I’ve made over the last 20 years, and then chatting about the context that gave rise to them, and answering questions.

Here are the posts I selected, in the order I read them:

• How to talk to people about cancer
• So rested he by the Tumtum tree, And stood awhile in thought.
• The Great Under the Protection of the Small
• I Rode my Bicycle to Montreal (Not Really)
• Barry Hicken’s Green Pen
• Gifts from the Past
• Beautiful Woman

This format could have gone horribly wrong–reading blog posts in front of an audience? what folly is that!–but I think it worked out okay. I realized that when I write and revise I more often than not read posts aloud to myself, and try to inject a musicality into them, so they translate to the stage better than I thought they might.

The proceedings were also aided greatly by the curiosity of those present: they asked good questions. As it happened, I knew more than a few of those in the room, and, indeed, had written blog posts about more than a few of them as well (fortunately in a generally positive light).

Beyond anything else, I was happy for the opportunity to reflect on why and how and about what I write; it reconfirmed for me that I love this place, that’s it’s become integral to how I process my life. Who knew that the simple act of writing could be so powerful.

I was in Peterborough, New Hampshire in September and, as is my habit, I checked out the community notice board that’s located between Toadstool Books and Twelve Pine.

Peterborough is an active, progressive community, and there’s always a lot going on, so the notice board never disappoints (it’s where I saw the notice for Cafeteria Man, which inspired me to see the film and then invite its subject to visit PEI, which helped to move the school food project ahead here).

On the notice board in September I saw a poster for a screening of a film called MOTHERLOAD that looked intriguing: what’s not to love about a film about parenting and cargo bikes. When I got back to my motel I watched the trailer and read the reviews, and when I got back to PEI I proposed to my colleagues on the Mayor’s Task Force on Active Transportation that we sponsor a screening.

I’m happy to report that they agreed, that the city came forward with funding to support this, and that a free public screening of MOTHERLOAD will be held Sunday, January 12, 2020 at 2:00 p.m. at City Cinema.

It’s a remarkable film–I previewed it last month–and if you’re interested in learning about the intersection of cycling, family, cargo bikes, urban planning, and the human spirit, I encourage you to save the date.

If you’d rather consume this blog by email, a reminder that you can sign up for a daily digest of posts.

The digest gets sent daily at 6:00 a.m. (a shift forward at the suggestion of my friend Ray, my trusted source for all things early-morning-related).

Here’s what it will look like in your inbox:

There are 62 subscribers as I type. All you receive is what I post here (no ads or other promotions), and I don’t share the list of subscribers with anyone.

I’ve been going to meetings of the PEI Electric Vehicle Association since the spring, and always find them interesting. The PEIEVA is an informal mix of EV owners, EV-aspirants, and the EV-curious, and the meetings are casual and conversational and a great place to ask and answer questions.

The December meeting promises to be a more-than-usually-interesting one, as it’s being hosted by Maritime Electric and, in addition to the regular program, the company will provide a brief presentation on its “technology roadmap.”

The meeting is Wednesday, December 18, 2019 at 6:30 p.m. in the boardroom at Maritime Electric headquarters, 180 Kent Street in Charlottetown.

All are welcome to attend: you need not own an EV; indeed you need not know anything about electric vehicles. There is step-free access to the boardroom by elevator.

Nearest EV chargers are in the underground parking garage of the Delta Prince Edward. T3 Transit Route № 1 stops nearby at the corner of Great George and Fitzroy and has service until 10:00 p.m.

Here’s a poster suitable for printing; here’s an image suitable for sharing.

In case you missed it, season one of Слуга народу (Servant of the People) is available on Netflix in Canada. It’s a sitcom starring Volodymyr Zelensky, who plays a humble school teacher who accidentally becomes President of Ukraine.

Zelensky, of course, went on to become the actual President of Ukraine, running for a party called Слуга народу (Servant of the People).

More recently he’s been embroiled in the impeachment drama of another TV-star-turned-President.

You might assume this means Zelensky, like his American counterpart, is an untalented blowhard; on the contrary: he’s a talented actor, and the sitcom is well-produced and entertaining.

We had a holiday party to go to in Victoria last night, presenting us with the first opportunity to, at least relatively speaking, engage in long distance travel in our Kia Soul EV: Victoria is 39 km from our house, meaning the round trip journey would be just under 80 km.

We left the house with a fully charged battery, with the “guess-o-meter” on the Soul’s dash showing 137 km of range (it was -5ºC outside, hence the reduced figure over the 158 km we’ve seen when it’s warmer). After clearing the windows with the defroster, we kept the heat off for the journey out, relying on the heated seats and heated steering wheel to keep us warm (upon reflection, we should have told our guest passenger that he could have turned on his heated seat!).

When we arrived in Victoria the car showed 89 km of range remaining; when we arrived back home after the return journey we had 34 km of range.

In other words, the car’s prediction was ambitious: we arrived home with 23 km less range than predicted. That can likely be accounted for by two factors: the range estimate is based on previous driving habits, and all of our driving to that point had been stop-and-go city driving with a lot of regenerative braking, and on the way home we used the heater for about 10 minutes to warm up the car.

While there are no public EV chargers in central Queens County, our friend–and PEI EV pioneer–Harry Smith has a charger in South Melville that he’s generous with, so had we got stuck that would have been a backup. As it turned out we had no need.

When we returned home, we plugged the car into the regular 110V outlet in our driveway (our level 2 charger is being wired up this coming week); here’s what the charge looked like:

The charge started at 8:30 p.m. Saturday night and finished at 1:30 p.m. on Sunday afternoon, running 17 hours (on the chart the Y-axis is watts and the X-axis is time).

A late afternoon, late fall walk to buy a battery for my car’s key fob before heading into Central Queens for an evening event.

The sun seemed to be complaining about being forced to set at such an early hour.

Our friend and neighbour Carl Phillis has died.

I couldn’t tell you how I came to know Carl: I just kind of woke up one day and he was ever-present in my life; we would often find ourselves walking along Richmond Street together from our neighbourhood toward Queen Street, and would chat about whatever was on his mind that day. Reading others’ messages of condolence, I realized that I was but one of hundreds of people he had a similar relationship with: having a regular chat with Carl was something, it seems, many of us shared.

I also knew him as a potter, of course. And as an activist. And as enthusiastic Green Party volunteer (the last time I saw him was when we sat beside each other at the federal candidates debate at UPEI in October where we cheered for Darcie together; he had his sketchbook at the ready, as he always seemed to, and sketched throughout).

Carl was opinionated, passionate, an enormously talented artist, and the kind of person you treasure as a neighbour.

I will miss him.

I came home from a late nite work session around 11:00 p.m. and went to empty the dishwasher before going to bed, as is my habit.

Except the dishwasher hadn’t drained, and no amount of pushing “drain” and wishing hard would make it do so.

My father was nothing if not up for a daunting home maintenance challenge and so, despite the hour, I got out the toolbox and set to work in his image.

An hour later I’d found the problem: a tiny piece of plastic, smaller than a nickel, lodged in the first hose along from the sump. It took a lot of clamp-undoing and manual-water-draining and tube-sucking and tube-blowing to unearth this as the cause of my woe.

Thirty minutes later I had the dishwasher back together and now we’re back in business.

I’m happy to have inherited a little of my father’s indefatigability.

Prince Edward Island’s motto, since 1769, has been Parva sub ingenti, Latin for “the small under the protection of the great.”

Former Premier J. Walter Jones described the origin of the motto, in a speech to the Empire Club in 1952, like this:

When King George III proclaimed a seal for “The Island of St. John in America” in the year 1769, he decreed a motto taken from Virgil’s Georgics, Verse 19, namely, “Parva Sub Ingenti”. The Island of St. John became in 1799 “Prince Edward Island”—named after the father of Queen Victoria and “Parva Sub Ingenti” was pictured as three saplings growing under a large tree, and was symbolic of the three counties of Prince Edward Island under the great British Empire. Later, when Prince Edward Island became part of Canada in 1873, the symbolism was taken as of the three counties of Prince Edward Island under Canada.

Jones went on to put the “small” in a not-entirely-positive light, but he did admit that smallness has its virtues:

I should not like to leave the impression that to be small in a federation of large states is always a bad condition. The small size makes for a government close to the people and public opinion easily influences every part of the administration. The goodness or the badness of politicians, clergy, civil servants, teachers—can be easily transmitted. Government “of the people—by the people” gets a better chance than in a larger area.

On Prince Edward Island there are concentrations of effort impossible of accomplishment in any large area. At the Royal Winter Fair—before our people got into the hog-growing game—I have seen Ontario running off for a number of years with all the prizes. We got into it, and of the ten first prizes in hogs, nine of them went to Prince Edward Island this year.

I don’t believe I’ve ever met an Island politician or activist who has not, at some point, used what former Premier Wade MacLauchlan refers to as the “gift of jurisdiction” to make an argument. Many times a year one hears “we’re so small that we can test things here that can then be scaled up to the rest of the world.”

I have long been suspicious of this approach. I don’t doubt that our small size and interconnectedness makes it easier to grow prize hogs; I’ve wondered, though, whether something that’s achieved at small scale necessarily upscales as easily as everyone thinks it will.

A crack appeared in my suspicious nature this week, however, when it was announced by Sobeys, Canada’s second-largest food retailer, that it is spreading its sensory-friendly shopping hours program, which started at a single store in Summerside, Prince Edward Island to all of its stores across the country.

What a great example of how people with autism and their carers, along with organizations like Autism Society of PEI, can work together to dramatically improve the lives of thousands of autistic people. And, indeed, to all of us who benefit from less stimulation while shopping. Sobeys too deserves credit for being a company with a nature that affords viral spreading of good ideas; it’s not every company that has the capacity to do this.

And it all started on Prince Edward Island.

Maybe there’s something to this after all.

Ingenti sub parva!