The second issue of Desired Landscapes arrived in the post today; what a lovely package.

In today’s email came a link to Grades Are Capitalism in Action. Let’s Get Them Out of Our Schools., an op-ed on Truthout, that concludes:

Meritocracy redirects the blame for capitalism’s failures onto its victims. Schools teach meritocracy, and grading is the method.

That the email with the link came from a lifelong Island educator, someone with whom I’ve enjoyed myriad conversations about education and learning, is a hopeful sign that we’re starting to move our thinking about education in the right direction.

I’ve been doing the weekly shop with my bicycle and the cannibalized cycle trailer of the Atkinson-Bateman children, with a giant plastic tub bungied to the top.

Tonight’s grocery shop ended up being too big to contain, which necessitated some creative extra-bungie.

This reminds me of the time our Nissan Sentra was squeezed on the ferry John Hamilton Gray outside the vehicle decks, in the middle of winter. We were certain that the car was going to end up at the bottom of the Northumberland Strait.

Fortunately, both Sentra and toilet roll survived their journeys.

The Province of Prince Edward Island announced a solar energy incentive program last week, one that will cover up to 40% of the cost of solar panel installation, to a maximum of $10,000, for farms, homes and businesses.

It is hard to begrudge any program that seeks to migrate our energy generation to renewable sources; but it’s hard not to despair at what a drop in the bucket this ambitious program, with $2 million of funding, will make in helping us meet our 2030 target of a 600,000 tonne annual reduction in our provincial emissions:

“Solar incentives will add to our energy mix, creating more made-in-PEI electricity,” said Transportation, Infrastructure and Energy Minister Steven Myers.  “Islanders want to help tackle climate change and they want to save money on electricity. Solar energy will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by over 500 tonnes annually while helping people become more energy independent.”

To save you the math, 500 is 0.08% of 600,000.

That’s not nothing, but it seems a lot closer to nothing than it does to something, given that 2030 is now only 11 years away.

Of course a solar incentive program, like an electric vehicle incentive program, may not be intended to actually solve the problem, but rather to stimulate the solution of the problem by the market. I’m sure the thinking goes something like “we need to build expertise and capacity in renewable energy, and to solve the chicken and egg problem of cost and market stability, we’ll kick things off with some cash.”

And solar energy is only one part of our emissions reduction strategy related to energy (in fact the word “solar” doesn’t even appear in our Climate Action Plan).

But chipping off this 600,000 tonne emissions mountain 500 tonnes at a time is going to make for a long, slow slog.

For the sixth year in a row, Reinvented was a corporate sponsor of The Island Fringe Festival, which, for my money, is about the best and most useful investment I make every year.

Oliver and I was 8 of the 9 Fringe shows; not a perfect score, but as close as we’ve ever come.

Here’s a thumbnail review of what we saw:

• The Bessie Carruthers Study Club – Produced by friends of mine, this a delightful musical rumination on the suffragettes of Prince Edward Island, circa 1919. That I enjoyed this, despite my aversion to musical theatre and, indeed, that I even joined in when prompted, singing from the provided lyrics sheet, is a testament to the compelling characters drawn by Suzanne Campbell and Jennifer King, and their musical talent at the voice and piano respectively. I love having friends whose idea of a fun summertime side-project is to self-produce a musical about women gaining the right to vote.
• Artisanal Intelligence – Two very skilled actors from British Columbia in a show about robots, artificial intelligence, relationships, love, and rejection. The show was well-polished and supported by a commendable publicity effort. I proudly sport an Artisanal Intelligence button on my lapel.
• Dead People Are Liking Things On Facebook – A lecture cum live Facebook demonstration that starts from the question “how was it that my friend ‘liked’ Coca-Cola on Facebook despite the fact that they were long dead” and goes on to explore notions of God, gay culture, loss, addiction, and whether Facebook is the new religion. The show was punctuated by my seatmate’s phone spontaneously starting to play CBC Radio in his pocket, something that felt kind of like it belonged as part of the performance.
• Magic Hour Plus – A magic show presented by two talented doofuses joined by a very talented magician “intern.” Shouldn’t work, shouldn’t be enjoyable. But somehow it is.
• Worldly Women – Almost indescribably good. A powerful dance performance, inventively choreographed, presented by a seemingly indefatigable troupe of dancers.
• How To Be A Lady – We are blessed with a another dance-focused all-woman group, in this case performing show “created using only the word ‘lady’ as the initial springboard for imagination and collaboration.” They do this with a mixture of song, story, dance and movement. The effect was mesmerizing.
• Still Looking – An unbelievable third show at this year’s Fringe that was rooted in creative movement: a brilliant montage of moments in the relationship between two people, played out in the tiny confines of the Kettle Black coffee shop.
• That’s Not How It Happened – A one-woman show from New York’s Colleen Hindsley about growing up in a complicated family. Hindsley is a skilled performer and an excellent storyteller.

Things finished up with the “Awards and Wrap-Up Party”  at The Haviland Club on Sunday evening: Worldly Women won the “Patron’s Pick,” while L’asexualité des abeilles–alas the only show we didn’t see–won both the “Staff Pick” and the “Artists’ Pick.”

This was, without a doubt, the best Island Fringe yet: the random fates of the lottery that chose the artists shone well upon us this year, and there was not a dud in the lot.

I’ve already got the cheque made out for my 2020 sponsorship.

The Experimental Farm, Charlottetown, from the Confederation Trail

Here’s a photo of Oliver on his bike riding to the Charlottetown Farmers’ Market yesterday along the Confederation Trail:

You may see that photo and think “oh, riding to the market, what a nice idea.”

I look at the photo and see years of effort culminating in extreme bravery: it was an amazing feat, especially given that Oliver only started cycling in earnest a week ago.

The tricycle he’s riding is a Fiori Parklane that we purchased on Friday from MacQueen’s after renting it the previous weekend for a try-before-you-buy. It’s stable enough that Oliver’s skittishness about “tippiness” is mitigated. It’s easy enough to pedal that the 6 km round trip from home to the market was reasonable. It’s got a generous basket in the back that allowed Oliver to bear the brunt of getting our market purchases back home.

Along the way we realized that our regular Saturday local food trail is almost 100% accessible by bicycle: we can ride up the Confederation Trail to the Farmers’ Market, then back down to the Kensington Road-Fitzroy-Escher intersection and take the multi-use path up to Riverview Country Market, then come back around and stop at Purity Dairy and, finally, continue on to Receiver Coffee along the Event Grounds trail:

We didn’t hit all the stops this week, just the market and Purity Dairy (where we had a nice chat with personable owner Tom Cullen); we’ll expand the footprint as comfort level increases in the weeks and months to come.

I am planning a trip to New Hampshire in September and I want to travel with the lowest carbon emissions possible.

According to the our Climate Change Action Plan:

Transportation accounts for almost half of our GHG emissions. Many of these emissions come from passenger vehicles, such as cars, trucks, and SUVs. Transport trucks, airplanes, boats, and recreational vehicles also produce emissions.

Given that Efficiency PEI, is the provincial agency that “offers programs and information for Islanders who are interested in reducing energy consumption,” they were my first call.

“I’m looking at reducing my footprint from transportation, can you connect me with someone who can advise me?”

“Oh, we’ve never had that question before…”

That’s not a good sign, on two fronts. Why aren’t people calling for advice? And why isn’t the agency charged with informing us about reducing our energy consumption concerned with reducing our most GHG-contributing energy consumption?

Efficiency PEI wasn’t able to help me, and so transferred me to the main number for the Department of Transportation, Infrastructure and Energy.

They too weren’t able to help me directly, and so transferred me to the PEI Energy Corporation.

It appeared they might be able to help me, but that “the woman who knows all about that is out this week.”

This woman turned out to be Heather MacLeod, someone I’ve known for a long time, in various capacities; Heather came to the monthly meeting of the PEI Electric Vehicle Association last week and she is, indeed, on the ball.

I’m sure that when Heather returns to the office next week she’ll be able to give me some advice.

But, boy oh boy, do we need to get better at the front-facing advice-giving part of carbon emissions reduction. A call like mine, to Efficiency PEI, should have been greeted warmly and with enthusiasm I was at their front door, ready for action. But all they could do was transfer my call with the hopes that someone else could help.

With our new climate target of a 600,000 tonne reduction in yearly emissions by 2030, I’ve got 11 years to knock 4 tonnes off my personal contribution.

I need help. And I need help helping others.

We can do better than this.

Oliver was dismayed to learn that the 2019 Island Fringe Festival wasn’t going to include any audience-participation activities in its launch event, as it had in previous years.

“For every problem, there is a solution,” I am forever telling Oliver.

So he reached out to Fringe officials and, to their eminent credit, the decided to correct this oversight, and added something:

DRAMATIC READING OF YOUR FAVOURITE SONG
Come on down and give a truly dramatic reading of your favourite song… channel your best Liam Neeson as you woo the audience with your rendition of Janelle Monáe’s ‘PYNK’… or pretend you’re Viola Davis as you wow the crowd reading the lyrics of Maroon 5’s ‘Moves Like Jagger’!

Of course this parry required a thrust. And Oliver decided that I needed to participate too.

So I gave a dramatic reading of Kim Mitchell’s iconic Patio Lanterns, and Oliver recited Blackbird, by The Beatles, in his take on a Liverpudlian accent.

There is no extant recording of my performance. But I recorded Oliver’s.

I’ll be doing a dramatic reading of Kim Mitchell’s iconic Patio Lanterns tonight after 8:00 p.m. at The Haviland Club, as part of the launch of Island Fringe.

Oliver put me up to it.