Now that we’re 56 years into the COVID social contraction, you may be finding yourself in need of a way to jazz up the weekly Family Zoom.

We’ve been at it ourselves since almost the first turn of the deadbolt, gathering Rukavina and affiliated from PEI, Quebec, Ontario and California together for everything from Zoom Pictionary to Zoom Trivia to Zoom Scattergories every Friday night. Oh how much we’ve learned about the promise, curse, and opportunities of family video-conferencing; it makes our early-aughts cacophonous Skype Christmas gatherings look primitive by compare.

But, if you’re anything like us, you’re looking for something new to inject life into the proceedings, and I’m here to recommend Breakout Rooms.

You might not even know that Breakout Rooms exist in Zoom because they’re not enabled by default: the person organizing the Zoom needs to enable them following these incantations.

Once enabled, the organizer can, at any time in the proceedings, manually or automatically, assign people to breakout rooms, which are like mini-Zooms-within-a-Zoom. And, the organizer can later, in turn, call everyone back to the Mother Zoom.

Here’s how we used this feature tonight on the Rukavina Zoom:

Oliver decided, for reasons too complex for typical people to possibly understand, that tonight’s overarching theme would involve veneration of Ethan the Dog, of December, and of Christmas. It was generously left to me to work out the details.

I came up with three small-group-friendly activities:

1. Come up with as many names of people or animals starting with “E” as you can in 2 minutes. Ethan, Enzo, etc.
2. A short 12-question Christmas Trivia quiz (“In which modern-day country was St. Nicholas born?”, for example).
3. Using any means at your disposal, name as many events other than Christmas that took place, or take place, in December.

For every round I let Zoom come up with random breakout rooms; as Oliver and I were the overlords, there remained 5 people to breakout, so one room had 3 people and the other 2 people, and the rooms were different every time.

In addition to being simply a breakout from the everyday, this format allowed people short bursts of one-on-one interaction that the usual mass family chaos doesn’t. I think those who got paired up with young Montreal nephew, flying solo, particularly appreciated the chance.

I suspect we’ll try it again.

Do you have unique Family Zoom ideas to share?

For years I’ve been carting around an old cookie tin filled with rubber stamps I’ve been collecting for more than 30 years, and I finally took it off the shelf today to see what was inside, newly-equipped with an ink pad from Denis Office Supplies.

I wonder if it’s still possible to send 1st, 2nd and 3rd class mail. I wonder why I have a rubber stamp of AMBER.

I’m sure I must have seen the cover of the July 1983 issue of 80 Micro at the time, but its whimsy was likely lost on my 17 year old self.

I especially appreciate that at the heart of the whimsical map lies Peterborough, the actual home of 80 Micro, and, for a time, the heart of the computer magazine publishing region of North America (I have more than a few colleagues, past and present, who spent time working with Wayne Green over the years).

Bruce Stephenson is credit as the illustrator for the cover.

Kiosque laverie Revolution: an outdoor laundrette in France.

From The Guardian, How you attach to people may explain a lot about your inner life:

Things get even more puzzling if you consider the sheer number of therapies on offer and the conflicting methods that they often employ. Some want you to feel more (eg, psychodynamic and emotion-focused approaches); others to feel less and think more (eg cognitive behavioural therapies, or CBT). The former see difficult emotions as something that needs to come out, be worked through and re-assimilated; the latter as something to be challenged and controlled through conscious modification of negative thoughts.

One of the things I never got to the bottom of when I was involved with Home & School was whether or not the the psychologists in Prince Edward Island schools are hired based on an attachment to a particular school of thought regarding psychology: that there are some psychologists who encourage feelings, and others who don’t, seems like a pretty significant divide to leave to chance.

Starting the second-last Sunday of July the construction industry in Quebec goes on vacation for two weeks.

Creating a Lens out of Fluids. Artists and physicists should talk more.

V.S. Naipaul about his cat (and also about grief) in The New Yorker:

The kitten was absolutely terrified. It had had an up-and-down life for many days and had no idea what was coming next. It tried now to run away, though there was no place for it to run to. It dug its little claws into the screen door and raced up to the ceiling of the utility room. That was as far as it could go, and I reached up and brought him down. Something extraordinary then happened. It was as though, feeling my hand, he felt my benignity. He became calm, then he became content; he was happy to be in my hand (not much bigger than him), so that in a few seconds, guided by a cat’s instinct alone, he moved from terror to trust. He ran up my arm to my shoulder; when I introduced him to some of my lunchtime guests, he sought to do the same with them. I knew nothing about cats. But he was easy to like.

I have had my time among the cats, and his words strike a chord. If I hadn’t suddenly become very allergic to cats in my mid-20s there might very well be a cat resident here now.

 No More Saviors, by Society If Dads:

A savior is supposed to do something no one else can, otherwise their semi-divine services wouldn’t be needed. They supposedly have more of something—faith, vision, power, expertise, authority, connections, plans—than others and therefore can do more alone than the collective they promise to rescue and redeem. They are not exactly part of the group they would deliver from peril—they stand apart in their greater capacity and knowledge and foresight: they are not quite among, they lead, speaking for, not with. The problem is that there are no such people on earth.

I came through this doorway via other means, but I agree: salvation lies in the group.

Homemade pesto (Heartbeet basil, Brighton Clover Farm pine nuts, Riverview Country Market Parmesan and garlic) with Island strawberry and basil soda. Perfect summer supper.