Today’s Weekly Learning Seminar at 100 Prince Street consisted of an attempt to represent the shifting membership of the band Kansas, in its many forms over the years from 1973 to present, in visual form.

From the information we found in Wikipedia, here’s what we ended up with (click the image for a larger version):

It was a good lesson in visualizing relationships, and in understanding that when we think of venerable, unchanged institutions, the reality is often quite different.

Remember traffic light bird?

Well, the traffic lights that were once its home have been disassembled, and the parts for their replacements delivered. Soon the intersection of Prince & Kent will sport shiny new signals.

It appears, though, that the new horizontal poles have sealed ends, meaning that there will be no place for birds to roost. Perhaps not the most egregious habitat loss, but, still, a small change to note in the natural life of the city.

Over the last month, due the pandemic, I have not paid for a single thing with cash, meaning that I have a complete record of all my discretionary spending.

I exported my Mastercard statement, manually added the two Interac transfers I made, and produced this pie chart:

I’m happy to see how much of my spending, 32%, goes to local food–Heartbeet Organics, Receiver Coffee, Gallant’s, Purity Dairy. That’s a big improvement.

I’ve been buying more music directly from artists on Bandcamp, which explains that 2%.

Streaming services are Netflix, Disney+ and Crave right now.

Books came from The Bookmark.

Charitable donations went to Folk on Foot, The Mackenzie Boys, and the Green Party of PEI.

Flowers were from Hearts & Flowers which, yes, is still open and making deliveries.

I have levelled up to the carrot muffins level of single fatherhood.

Oliver and I had waffles and coffee with our friends Lars and Valerie in Vermont this morning. I brought my wide-angle Logitech webcam over from the office, mounted it on a tripod, and fussed with the lighting, all in service of better simulating having them across the table from us. I think it worked.

This Storm, a great musical gift to the world from Tara MacLean and Catherine MacLellan.

We held our second “Pen Night in the Clouds” tonight, in Zoom. We maxed out at 15 participants: 14 with video, and one person who dialed in by telephone.

For a Zoom meeting it was pleasantly non-chaotic, as was last month’s inaugural edition.

We had nothing on the agenda, which was convenient because “everyone introduce yourself and tell us what you’ve been up to” took 90 minutes. Lots of pen and ink and paper talk, but useful for many of us, I think, as a social-isolation-buster.

Some things for me to follow up on:

• Step Forward-brand tree-free paper was highly reviewed.
• Nock pen cases
• Lamy Safari 2020 in mango (with mango ink!).
• Melt wax (candle or sealing wax) into a Chapstick tube for a handy “prevent envelopes addresses with a fountain pen from running if they get wet” tool.

Our next meeting, again on Zoom, will be May 23, 2020, at an earlier start time of 4:00 p.m. Atlantic to provide interested Europeans with an easier way of attending.

I took my bicycle off the road 138 days ago. Making my cycling season 227 days long, 62% of the year.

My friends Darcie and Peter cycled to the New Years Levees, so they’ve got me beat. But at almost two thirds of the year, that’s still a pretty long season, and it’s a lot longer than the “well, for six months of the year, you can’t bicycle” reasoning that automobile enthusiasts bring out.

For the first time this year, I did some basic spring maintenance myself: MacQueen’s has a backlog of 70 bicycles to get to before they could get to mine, and I wasn’t patient enough to wait. I oiled the chain, tightened the bolts, and even trued the back wheel, with the help of a spoke-tightening tool loaned to me by my friend Cynthia.

Oliver’s bike, and my bike, are now ready for the season. We’re about to head off on our first ride.

Part of the hold that the process of dying has on us is that we shy from talking about it, sharing images of it. It remains, thus, a more powerful, frightening mystery than it need be.

Looking through Catherine’s photos this morning, I found this one, which I took with her phone on January 1, 2020, the day she moved from the emergency room of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital into the PEI Palliative Care Centre.

This is the room in which Catherine died, although in this photo she’s still very much alive. Still in thrall of morphine toxicity (which explains the position of her hands, which were weaving patterns of delirium for several days), but on her way out of it and back, for a time, to us.

The chair Oliver is sitting in was the chair I slept in for the last week of her life, moved up against her bed. It’s the chair I was sitting in at the moment she died; I was holding her hand.

The sunshine coming through the window is sunshine that arrived every afternoon, through the large windows in Catherine’s room, windows that overlooked a forest, and a bird feeder.

On the shelf behind Oliver is a photo we brought from home, a photo of the happy three of us taken when Oliver was little.

You would think that, looking at this photo three months after Catherine died, I would find it depressing, that I would wish to avert my eyes.

But it’s not. And I don’t.

This is the place we said goodbye to Catherine. Where I had my last conversations with her. Where she got to say goodbye to her nieces. And her brother and sister-in-law. And my mother. And her mother. And her son.

There is so much love in that room.