I received my copy of Robin Sloan’s Treasured Subscribers, today in the post.

The “detailed description of contents” on the USPS customs form reads “One-page work of fiction.”

Which is exactly what it is.

The best 89¢ I’ve ever spent.

Bob Newhart was 53 years old when Newhart premiered in 1982.

I turn 53 next month.

I noticed this coincidence because, watching the pilot tonight, I thought there was something strangely familiar about how he carried himself; a check on Wikipedia confirmed it.

Also, I laughed out loud more times than I can count.

The first of the publicly-funded mixed-member proportional representation referendum advertising hit PEI mailboxes today, from the No side.

MMP… Confusing, Complicated and Dangerous screams the headline, hyperbolic enough to make me wonder if it’s a parody.

The silver lining here might be that, many Islanders—most, perhaps—will see through the fearmongering and consider the referendum question in a more thoughtful manner.

Sometimes when I make an appointment for something I’m told that there’s no availability, but I’m offered the option of going on a list “in case there are any cancellations.”

I’ve always treated this option as tantamount to being told “there is no hope for you here; you might as well look elsewhere.”

But in the past month I’ve benefited twice from a real life cancellation situation, most recently just this morning.

I woke up today determined that this would be the week I took action on the vague-vertigo-like-senstation that’s afflicted me for two years, so I called Sports Centre Physiotherapy, hoping to book an appointment with the excellent Nathan, whose interventions a year ago achieved some success.

Nathan, alas, has left the building, and I was offered an appointment with Ellen instead. Except that Ellen had no appointments this week. Which would render my determination moot.

But I agreed to go on the waiting list “in case there’s a cancellation.”

And then, at 1:15 p.m., I got a call: “can you come in for 2:00 p.m.?”

You bet I can.

The excellent Ellen ushered me into the room-formerly-known-as-Nathan’s-room and led me through a familiar set of Q&A and diagnostic tests. BPPV was ruled out quickly. And “gaze stability” zeroed in on as a possibility.

I was given three exercises as homework (which I document here in part because here is the closest thing to “where I will always be able to refer to them” as I have in my life). The names are ones I made up, not official physiotherapeutic ones:

1. The Static Dot. Put a sticky note with a big dot on it about 10 feet away on the wall, about 20º below eye-line while sitting. While focusing on the dot, and looking straight ahead, move my head up and down. Vary the speed and the amplitude. Stop when it gets to be too much. Three repetitions.
2. Fingers Still, Gaze Up Down. Stretch my arms out in front of me, one on top of the other, forefingers extended, about 18 inches apart. Without moving my head, switch focus back and forth between the top and bottom finger, back and forth, back and forth, at a good clip.
3. Stare at Numbers. On the grid of numbers that I was given as a takeaway, while focusing on one number, soften my gaze to drink in the numbers around it.

I’m off traveling starting a week from today for two weeks, so I have a follow-up appointment in three weeks where I’ll get a chance to check-in and see how things are going.

Although this wasn’t a resource that Ellen gave me, I found the brief Two Modes of Visual Processing to be helpful for understanding the concepts she outlined, the working theory being, in part, that I need to offload some of the responsibility that my focal system is taking on to my ambient system. We’ll see.

I thought I knew how to play charades, but watching this 1962 appearance of The Dick Van Dyke Show cast on the Stump the Stars game show, it turns out I don’t know the half of it.

I don’t think I managed to capture the essence of what vertigo feels like in this sketch, but I like it anyway.

I’ve been surfing along the edges of a kind of “background vertigo-like sense” for the last two years: the room isn’t spinning, but everything’s not 100% in focus either.

In the summer of 2017 I consulted a physiotherapist and she walked me through the Epley manoeuvre, which proved ineffective, perhaps because it’s not BPPV that ails me.

In what appears to be an otherwise unrelated development, though, earlier this week I woke up with the room actually spinning in a whole new kind of annoying, and although that subsided as the day went on, it seemed like something new was up, so I tried the Epley manoeuvre before bed and it turns out–very, very conclusively–that in this case it was BPPV, as the kind of vertigo I experienced was a deep-down-holy-shit-what-the-hell-us-going-on kind of vertigo that I didn’t even know was possible.

Fortunately it seems like the Epley manoeuvre did exactly what it was supposed to do, and the BPPV has cleared. Leaving me with my vague, background, vertigo-like-sensation and an abject fear that what I experienced with the full-on vertigo might ever become a permanent condition.

Perhaps, like me, you’ve wondered why there is a cannon embedded in the sidewalk at the corner of Queen & Grafton in downtown Charlottetown. In Never fired in anger: the shore defences of Charlotte Town Harry Holman tells the story of how it got there, and, along the way, a lot more about how Charlottetown was defended. And not.

I read somewhere—perhaps it was “5 Tips to Instantly Up Your Instagram Game” or some such—that, when taking photos of people, you should ask them to open their mouths as wide as possible.

Interestingly, it works. It seems weird, both to them and to you, but the photos that result often have much more life in them than they would otherwise.

I received similar instructions many years ago from a CBC Radio producer: I was going into the studio to record a commentary, and she advised me to make my points so emphatically as to appear (to myself) to be raving. It was very hard to do this, and it made me very uncomfortable, but I had to agree that the result was better.

Oliver got a new phone yesterday—his first that’s not a hand-me-down—and it has a “portrait mode.” This is the “open your mouth as wide as you can” photo I took of him with it.

At the last Pen Night our newest member, Ian Scott, generously gave each of us a blank postcard of heavy Japanese paper, remnants of his crafts tour to Japan, and invited us to experiment.

Sitting in my car last Saturday on the wharf in Victoria I decided, despite my “what if I screw it up—I only have one!” reservations, to try my hand. This is the result.

I’m not entirely satisfied with how it turned out, but it wasn’t a disaster either. Fears of fountain pen ink bleeds were unfounded and the paper took kindly to watercolour paint.

I put the card in the post to Ian yesterday.

Jennifer Brown (you’ll remember her from the Japanese Bookbinding Course and its sequel, as well as from her role as Oliver’s artistic spirit guide) is holding a workshop on Saturday, March 23, 2019 called Good Mail Day! From the poster:

Good Mail Day Art Workshop

The international movement celebrating fun snail mail.

Decorate envelopes and postcards in collage and more.
Make unusual folder letters and envelopes.
Send a surprise to a grandchild, senior of friend!
Each participant works at own comfort zone.

Brown bag lunch. Teas, Coffee and Snacks Provided.

I know, both from personal experience and from watching Jennifer work with Oliver over the past two years, that she is a skilled and creative art educator. If you’ve an interest in mail art, this is your chance to get together with a great group of people in a bright, sunny Crapaud studio, on a March afternoon.

The workshop runs from 10:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. and the cost is $60. You can register by contacting Jennifer at 902-658-2354 or by email at browniferjen@gmail.com.