Mandy Patinkin:

I’m so nervous about this election I’m making my own damn campaign videos. Please get involved! Join one of these orgs and commit to volunteering. Get friends involved. Don’t have any friends? That’s ok, you can get involved twice as much! JUST GET OUT THE VOTE! 

www.swingleft.org 
www.moveon.org
www.indivisible.org
www.thelastweekends.org

The Stakes his his first video.

Remember O’Keefe Lake Provincial Park: The Park That Never Was?

Well, I was able to make it disappear, at least from Apple Maps and Google Maps, simply by using their respective “report an issue” tools.

I was able to affect its removal from OpenStreetMap all on my own, so it will gradually fade from view from OSM-derived map tiles too.

While making a place that never was disappear from the Internet is a small feat, it’s satisfying nonetheless.

I received word this morning that Ron Gaskin died in August.

This tribute to him by Rebecca Campbell makes it clear that my fondness for Ron was not something unique to me. ”Ron approached everything with resolute principle, unconditional love, and a DIY ethic,” she writes;  we should all aspire to live like that.

Nearer My God to Thee, Ron.

In case you missed it, Borgen, the well-received Danish political drama, is now streaming on Netflix. Think The West Wing but with more political parties and more Denmark. Highly recommended.

A prototype for a paper construction that’s been rambling around my head for the last couple of days. Inspired by Oliver, who had us listen to a meditation about “moving beyond grief” on the ferry sailing home on Monday, which got me thinking about focusing backward versus focusing forward.

The swooshing sound, which was accidental, is perhaps my favourite part of the mockup.

Kathleen Edwards, live from Stittsville, released her album Total Freedom in August.

She’s a big deal. And yet it seems like we used to hang out.

Three boxes of the 2021 edition of The Old Farmer’s Almanac landed at The Bookmark in Charlottetown today, and I encourage you to stop by and pick up your copy while there are still copies available.

When you buy The Old Farmer’s Almanac, not only are you getting a companion that’s “useful with a pleasant degree of humour,” but you’re also helping put food on the table of we at 100 Prince Street, as I enter my 25th year helping to maintain Almanac.com.

As a special bonus this year, you’ll also find an article by Charlottetown author (and my longtime friend) Ann Thurlow in the Canadian edition, so you’re really helping keep food in the pots of two Island households.

(Those of you from away are also encouraged to buy the 2021 edition: find retailers here).

The PEI Museum and Heritage Foundation has a podcast, the hidden island. There’s nary a fiddle nor old-timer-with-railway-story to behold.

Matt Webb writes about seizing the remote work hill:

So an ice cream van that pulls up, jingling out the MIDI version of Josh Wink’s Higher State of Consciousness at 11am, everyone on the street downing tools and heading out for a caffeine hit and to catch up with friends?

My workplace has not changed at all due the pandemic—it’s still just me and the machines in our underground church bunker—but I would welcome the chance to punctuate my day like this with all the other hidden toilers. As it stands, most days I don’t lay non-Zoom eyes on a single soul.

Postscript: Jeff Douglas (yes, That Jeff Douglas), once had a Piaggio Ape set up as a mobile espresso shop in Toronto; Machine Mobile gave up the ghost in 2018. That would have been perfect for this remit.

Oliver and I are on our last night of a week’s vacation on the eastern shore of Cape Breton Island; against traditon, I’ve maintained radio silence throughout, so as to perfect the art of doing absolutely nothing, which is a practice I do not come by honestly.

We have largely succeeded at carrying out a week of nothing but sleeping, eating, reading, sketching, watching TV, and going for walks on the beach, punctuated by a trip into Port Hawkesbury for supplies, and a run up to Judique for lunch.

Otherwise, save a lovely afternoon hosting my old friend George on Friday afternoon, we’ve been in pleasant isolation, enjoying good weather, fresh blackberries every morning, and the occasional game of Crazy 8s. 

The closest vacation I’ve ever had to this one was the week that Catherine and I spent on the shore of Lake Superior in 1992 at a remote cabin; there was more nudity on that trip, but otherwise it was similarly “let’s try to do nothing for a week.” There’s a lot to recommend it, especially when the hearty mélange that is daily life includes an awful lot of not doing nothing for both me and for Oliver.

As I write our car is up the road charging at the garage of the owner of the house where we’re staying, we’re just back from our last walk on the rocky shore, and I’m plotting how to turn the remaining food in the fridge into a last supper (what can you make from carrots, naan, heavy cream, blueberries, honey and barbecue sauce?). Tomorrow we’ll make our way to Antigonish for lunch and an EV top-up, and we’ll then catch the 4:00 p.m. ferry to Wood Islands and home.

Oliver starts a new course at the University of PEI on Tuesday–Susan Brown’s Cool Britannia–and I have my first committee meeting of the fall season on Wednesday. It’s been good to have a break.