When my friend Cynthia launched her podcast on belonging last month, something told me that I had something to contribute.

Find out whether I was right.

And then they ask “Hello, is Michelle there?” and it all falls apart.

The first big trip I took apart from my parents and my brothers was to Thunder Bay with my grandmother Nettie, from August 19 to 26, 1971. She had been born there, in Fort William, as had my father, so it was, in part, a chance for her to take me to one of our family home places. I was 5 years old at the time, and so ready for a small measure of independence, so it was, I think, her helpful gift to enable that.

Tonight I opened a suitcase that I’d been carting around for years, a suitcase that I hadn’t opened in 30 years. Inside the suitcase, I found a blue travel journal with “My Travels” embossed in gold on the front. Here’s what she noted about our trip:

5 days sunshine, 2 days rain. Went by plne to Malton. Stayed at Royal Edward. Took bus tour up Mt. McKay and Kakabeka Falls. Took boat around Harbour. Saw oldest information centre in Canada. Had tour of “Nonsuch,” Hudson’s Bat Co. whaling ship moored in Harbour in Pt. Arthur. Visited Vickers park (beautiful flower beds, marigold bed ruined), walked past rows of very old beautiful birch trees, saw Nana’s high school, walked along Ft. William freight docks, saw polluted Kaministiquia River - snapped picture alongside tugboat. Visited Chippewa Park - Peter climbed up rocket - had rides - saw Sleeping Giant in distance - visited beautiful park in centre of city - beautiful flowers and founatins. Nestor’s for lunch, then drive to cemetery - saw Dad’s grave, visited Conservatory (beautiful tropical plants), saw Lakehead University, Peter ran elevator. Ate waffles in coffee shop. Wonderful week. Peter an angel. Flew back.

I don’t believe I’d ever read those notes until tonight, but I certainly remember almost everything she noted, down to the waffles.

When I started traveling with Oliver, I followed in her travel journal tradition; on the shelf here beside me are Moleskin’s filled with notes of our travels around the world.

From an essay by Corinne Duval in Belt:

This could have been a love story, if he was a better man and it wasn’t the Rust Belt. But I ended it—ended us—and he demanded the house. I could have fought for it. But what would I have been fighting for? Paper? Textualized plans and well-made arguments? No. I know we could have done it all so much better. All that possibility: windows to start, happiness to end. But I couldn’t keep holding us both up when he was so determined on the fall.

Coming up on Monday, April 13, 2020, the Folk On Foot Front Room Festival:

Help us to stage an amazing virtual folk festival on Easter Bank Holiday Monday – and support musicians who’ve lost their livelihoods during the coronavirus lockdown.

The Lineup: Bella Hardy, Beth Porter plus the Bookshop Band, Jon Boden, Julie Fowlis and Éamon Doorley, Karine Polwart, Kerry Andrew (You Are Wolf), Kris Drever, Lisa Knapp and Gerry Diver, Martin Simpson, Nancy Kerr and James Fagan, Peggy Seeger, Rachel Newton, Sam Lee, Seth Lakeman and Steve Knightley - all playing sets of up to 30 minutes each in their front rooms.

When: Easter Bank Holiday Monday 13th April from 2pm for over six hours of unique music.

Where: from the Folk on Foot YouTube Channel and Facebook page – direct to your front room.

That’s 2:00 p.m. GMT, which is 10:00 a.m. Atlantic Time (thanks to Jarek, in the comments, for noting British Summer Time).

(via musician Karine Polwart’s email newsletter, which is worth a subscribe; she appears on an episode of the Folk on Foot podcast in 2018)

When the PEI Council of People with Disabilities advises government of the utility of having sign language interpretation of government pandemic briefings, the correct response is to immediately secure the services of sign language interpreters.

Like Matt Webb, my childhood featured a bomb that would make the people disappear, but leave everything else intact:

I grew at the tail end of the Cold War. My unquestioned assumption was that I would probably live out my life in a nuclear wasteland.

One of the things we’d talk about was the neutron bomb. This type of bomb would leave cities buildings intact, and it had very little fallout so the city would be safe to occupy after it was dropped, but the people would all go. Not die, that wasn’t the myth of it, but somehow vapourised — raptured up to heaven, really. It was called the “clean” bomb. The mental image was of an urban Mary Celeste.

This wasn’t science fiction for me: I remember the stories on the news making it seem a very real possibility.

Webb goes on to ruminate on “key workers” and the “key economy”—what we call essential workers and essential services—and how they have been separated from the economy in a way that renders then distinct and as we could never see them before.

I’ve been wondering about what the long-term effects on those deemed non-essential of being furloughed will be: it’s bracing to be told that your role in society is a “nice to have” not a “need to have.”

Via the Institute of Island Studies newsletter, a link to the OTOK Podcast, “a podcast about and for islanders.”

The second episode features Nenad Starc discussing the impact of COVID-19 on the inhabited islands off the Croatian coast:

Nenad Starc is professor emeritus at the Institute of Economics in Zagreb, Croatia and one of Croatia’s most prominent island scholars. We talked about islands as places of refuge in the time of COVID-19; the shortcomings of public policy that doesn’t account for island specificities; and the impacts pandemic will have on tourism industry.

These are issues we on Prince Edward Island are going to confront in the weeks to come: are we going to bite the bullet and take a year off tourism? If so, what will this be like? (And what if we like it so much that we decide we don’t actually want the tourists to return after the all-clear?).