Here’s a Spotify playlist of 25 songs that prompted me to hit “like” this spring and summer.

Here are the songs on the playlist:

• Goodbye Rain - Hush Kids - Hush Kids
• Yo Mae Leh - Invisible Minds - Make up Your Own Stories
• Trying - The Staves - Trying
• Nothing’s Gonna Happen (Demo) - The Staves
• By Your Side - Ane Brun - Leave Me Breathless
• What You Want - May Erlewine - Mother Lion
• Moon Song - Phoebe Bridgers - Punisher
• Julianna Calm Down - The Chicks - Gaslighter
• A Feeling Felt or a Feeling Made - Siv Jakobsen - A Feeling Felt or a Feeling Made
• Is There Something in the Movies? - Samia - The Baby
• Rest - Leif Vollebekk - Twin Solitude
• Darcy’s Song - Sierra Eagleson - Darcy’s Song
• Sad Girl Summer - Maisie Peters - Sad Girl Summer
• Slow Burn - Kacey Musgraves - Golden Hour
• Soft Line - Lucy Wainwright Roche - Little Beast
• Elergy for the Present - Philip Glass, Dennis Russell Davies
• Options Open - Kathleen Edwards - Total Freedom
• Spiracles - COMA - Voyage Voyage
• Warped Window - Anna Mieke - Idle Mind
• Tourism (feat. Fenne Lily) - Henry Jamison, Fenne Lily
• Wild - May Erlewine - Mother Lion
• I Burn but I Am Not Consumed - Karine Polwart - Laws of Motion
• Zona Rosa - Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh, Thomas Bartlett
• Salters Road - Karine Polwart - Traces
• Killer + The Sound - Phoebe Bridgers, Noah Gundersen, Abby Gundersen

Twenty years ago today on the radio I talked to Matt Rainnie about the cats of Marion Island. It was, I think, the high point of my erstwhile side hustle as a broadcaster.

With Hurricane Teddy on the way, it seemed like a good afternoon to pick the apples. And as I was picking the apples, I realized the plum tree was filled with the most wonderful ripe plums. So I picked some plums too. And then made apple plum sauce.

A joke from my childhood:

What’s the difference between elephants and plums?

They’re different colours.

What did the man say when he saw the elephants coming over the hill?

Here come the plums!

(He was colour blind).

These two raised almost more than $800 for cancer research today with their homebrew Terry Fox Run.

Ever since we installed a video projector in our living room a few months ago, Oliver and I have had a movie night every Saturday.

Oliver came up with a system for selecting what movie we watch: one week it’s a film released during his teenage years, the next week during my teenage years. Oliver picks the theme, I pick the movie.

Here’s what we’ve watched so far:

• Raiders of the Lost Ark
• The In-Laws
• Carrie Pilby
• Volunteers
• The Best Offer
• Peggy Sue Got Married
• A Star is Born (2018)

This week I secured special dispensation to extend my pool of eligible films back to my pre-teen years; the themes Oliver selected were death, Canadian history, animals, running, and autumn.

Could there be a better week for 1978’s Heaven Can Wait, directed by Warren Beatty and Buck Henry with the stellar cast of Beatty, Henry, James Mason, Julie Christie, Charles Grodin, Dyan Cannon, Vincent Gardenia, and Jack Warden.

It may lack animals and Canadian history, but it’s got death, running and autumn in spades. It’s also my very most favourite film.

And it was as good in 2020 as it was when I saw it in a theatre 42 years ago.

Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman are back on their motorcycles, this time riding from Argentina to LA in Long Way Up, premiering tonight in Apple TV+. They rode electric Harleys, supported by a team driving an electric truck.

Boorman is interviewed about the project by Robert Llewellyn on an episode of Fully Charged.

I ate Jackson for lunch.

Or at least one of Jackson’s tomatoes. It took 107 days from planting Jackson’s seedling to harvesting Jackson’s first tomato.

I sliced the tomato up, toasted a St. Viateur bagel, spread some ADL butter, added some COWS 1 year old cheddar, and enjoyed a very tasty lunch. The plate is by Michael Stanley.

Because it’s not easy to find otherwise, here’s the easy to remember link for live-streaming from the City of Charlottetown (council and committee meetings):

https://www.charlottetown.ca/video

On that page you’ll be able to watch whatever is being broadcast live, in real time, and you’ll also find a link to the City’s YouTube channel, where all past meetings are archived, which is at:

https://www.youtube.com/CityofCharlottetown

My Kia Soul EV needed a software upgrade, a recall that automatically applies the parking brake when the car is shifted into “park.”

My last parking brake-related automobile repair was that time in the early 1990s when Catherine handcrafted a lovely silver “Y” bracket for our aging Nissan Sentra wagon at her jewellers bench.

My how things have changed.

This left me with an hour to kill uptown.

Killing hours is harder during COVID: after being laughed away from the burger truck across the street when I asked what they had for vegetarians (nothing), I convinced myself that it was okay to hang out in Tim Hortons, at least until a choir arrived. So I hunkered down for a grilled cheese sandwich. And was never less than 20 feet from anyone else.

The Soul was ready in 45 minutes and, as promised, there’s no longer a need for me to manually apply the parking brake (it’s going to take a while for my muscle memory to forget that action).

Discover Kia is about to open a brand new showroom and service department on the old Reliable Motors property on Allen Street, moving them into my neighbourhood, give or take, and an easy walk after a service drop-off.

The U.S. citizen part of my dual-nationality received email notification today that my ballot for the November 2020 U.S. elections was ready for download.

The process started with sending a ballot request form through the mail to the Monroe County Board of Elections; that triggered today’s email, which gets me a ZIP file with the ballot, instructions, and a printable envelope for returning it.

I vote, as I always have, at my last residential address in the USA, the apartment I lived in when I was born in Rochester, New York. Because I’m a non-resident elector I’m eligible to vote for President and for Representative in the New York 25th.

Never has voting-by-mail been such a topic of public conversation as this year; I’ll be sending my ballot off in the mail tonight to ensure it gets to Rochester in plenty of time. My envelope sports two stamps from the Canada Post Medical Groundbreakers series: the James Till and Ernest McCulloch stamp and the Julio Montaner stamp. Because, you know, science.