Bookseller Dan pointed me to a documentary about facsimile printing presses, which, in turn, led me to learn of The Library Company of Philadelphia:

The Library Company was founded in 1731 by Benjamin Franklin as a subscription library. Members pooled their financial resources so they would be able to afford a larger and finer library than any one of them could have amassed individually.

I spend my days supporting a publication that sports a rendering of Franklin on its cover, so I take some comfort that, 289 years later, Franklin’s library continues to serve its shareholders.

Singer-songwriter Stephen Fearing and luthier Linda Manzer, hosted by Tom Allen, spend 90 minutes talking about the guitar Manzer made for Fearing 30 years ago.

I use K-9 Mail on my Android phone as my email client. It’s ugly, inelegant, and quirky, but it works, and has all the functionality I need.

One of its quirks is that if, under Account Settings > Folders > Sent folder, the folder is set to “Sent”, I end up with duplicate copies of every email I send in that folder. I’ve been using K-9 long enough that I’ve ended up with thousands of duplicates like this.

Fortunately Fastmail, my email service provider, has an easy way to address this:

https://www.fastmail.com/go/cleanfolders

This is a utilitarian feature that allows duplicates in a selected folder to be eliminated. I did this yesterday, and it worked like a charm.

Oliver has been growing his “Peter Bevan-Baker beard” throughout the pandemic.

There will come a time when I don’t document every trip to Sobeys for groceries like it’s a polar expedition. We’re not there yet.

Yesterday, 14 days since my last visit, I made my way up Prince Street midday; I could have taken my bicycle, but I’m not quite ready for that yet, so I took the car.

On arrival I found a line of about six people waiting to get in the store; the line moved quickly: it wasn’t more than 5 minutes until I was inside.

Perhaps because it was the first day of “Phase 1” of the province’s Everything Will Be Okay, Eventually, Really plan, there was a disquieting devil-may-care attitude in the air, with some of the social distancing rigour I’d seen in previous weeks now missing. I was very disciplined, waiting my turn and not passing anyone in the aisles; more than once I heard people piling up behind me whispering “I think he’s waiting for the person in front of him.”

That said, I witnessed many more people wearing masks—about 15% of shoppers, I’d guess—than my previous visit.

Witnessing several incidents of clear distancing protocol breaches, against type I finally broke down and told the oblivious person coming the wrong way down the pizza & juice aisle “you’re going the wrong way.” They’d had no idea, and quickly wheeled themselves around with an apology.

The home-baking trend is obviously still on, as the store was empty of all but Speerville whole wheat flour; everything else was in stock, though.

The rest of the shop was uneventful. I should have taken a list, as the background panic vibe, combined with a feeling that doubling back was ill-advised, caused me to forget a few things. We’ll do without.

Lori Jaworski has refashioned her perogie dealership for pick-up: order by Tuesday, pick up Thursday, at the Charlottetown Farmers’ Market, between 5:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m.

It was the warmest sunniest day today, so we donned our bicycles for our perogie run. It should have been a harder cycle, what with the winter kinks still in place, but it wasn’t: we glided up the Confederation Trail on a cloud of spring moxie.

We arrived much too early, but that afforded us a chance to have a 2 metre conversation with Market Bernie—talking, with other people, face to face, imagine!–and a chance to rest up for the coast home.

Once we’d retrieved our bag of potato, onion, cheese and our bag of potato, onion, sauerkraut, handed over the 5 twonies, and bid our farewell, we did, indeed, coast home. At least as far as Orlebar Park, where we detoured east for a trip to the credit union, and ran into a quintet of Atkinson-Batemans out for a walk, thus giving us another unexpected chance at a face to face commiseration.

The mood on the roads was decidedly more frenetic than it has been of late: there were too many cars on the roads with too much pent up energy (want to drive a car crazy with rage? ride two-abreast down Upper Prince Street with a “the cars will understand that we’re doing God’s work” halo over your head).

The reward for our travails was half a dozen POS perogies and some leek kimchi for supper.

Sushi rice topped with steamed carrots and kale (both from Heart Beet Organics).

Remind me again why we need restaurants?

May Erlewine and orchestra warm up with her song Wild before a 2017 Beethoven & Banjos. A lovely song and a lovely rendition.

I’m ahead by two games in the pandemic tourney.

I am not one for pithy life advice, but Kevin Kelly’s pithy life advice is better than most. My favourites:

Everyone is shy. Other people are waiting for you to introduce yourself to them, they are waiting for you to send them an email, they are waiting for you to ask them on a date. Go ahead.

Friends are better than money. Almost anything money can do, friends can do better. In so many ways a friend with a boat is better than owning a boat.

When you get an invitation to do something in the future, ask yourself: would you accept this if it was scheduled for tomorrow? Not too many promises will pass that immediacy filter.

That last one is particularly useful as we “ease back” to some semblance of a normal life: having experienced The Great Silence, I am hoping to be much more selective in what noise I take on.

Twenty-five years ago, on a radio panel discussion with the selfsame Kevin Kelly I said much the same thing:

Me: I wonder if we should maybe just all calm down a little bit… ah, not us here specifically, but society in general…

Gzowski: Ah, the voice of Prince Edward Island… calm down!