During my year at Trent University I made the acquaintance of a fellow student, David Kennedy, impressive for his intellect, his creativity, and his well-resourced shoulder bag.

David set out to direct a production of Antigone in the spring of 1986, and I offered to make this poster, using a concept he came up with. This is what resulted, the first piece of real design work I ever did:

It was an arresting production, if memory serves, and the first piece of theatre I’d ever voluntarily attended. It was reviewed in Arthur (the Trent student newspaper) the following week, something I was able to find thanks to the diligent work of archivists at Trent:

There are many names in that review that I recall; Marsh Cobden, for example, went on to own 425 Stewart Street in the years after it was occupied by a rabbit’s nest of friends of my acquaintance. I lost track of David Kennedy over the years; I wonder what became of him.

I loved making that poster; it’s not an exaggeration to say that inspiration I got from crafting it led me to cultivate an interest in the graphic arts, which led me to work in newspapers and, ultimately, on the web.

Joe Schlesinger on life as a patient:

But I refuse to let all that affect my taste for life: I still have so much to engross the heart and engage the brain.

Schlesinger died today; he may have been Canada’s most thoughtful journalist.

Oliver is forever misplacing his headphones. Generally they end up under the sofa, or inside the sofa, or on the side table, or under a pile of books. Sometimes space aliens take them for awhile. Headphones locating has been a substantial source of stress in our daily life.

So we installed a headphones hook.

Problem solved.

It’s been 20 years now since Island Tel began its brand transition to Aliant, and 16 years since Aliant completely retired the brand names of its merged component regional telcos, yet vestiges of the old name remain.

Like this telephone booth in the Atlantic Superstore in Charlottetown (located, ironically, just a few hundred metres from Island Tel’s former headquarters). The logo is one that existed during the transition between Island Tel and full-on Aliant, designed in that regrettable era of globes and a swoops.

I was reading The New Yorker profile of Glenn Greenwald this morning, and read, just before I put it down to go across the street to the office, this characterization of the relationship between Greenwald and Edward Snowden:

On Instagram, Greenwald posted a photograph of Snowden eating an ice-cream cone. Snowden had told me, “We’re not like buddy-buddy. There’s a distance. We don’t talk about our personal lives. We don’t call every Wednesday and say, ‘Hey, you want to play bingo online?’ ”

Five minutes later I walked outside and, frozen in the ice between the sidewalk and the road, I spotted this cast-off bingo card (not a winner):

I have not said the word “bingo,” nor thought of bingo, in a long time; now it’s everywhere.

Also, how would you play bingo online with someone?

Every Saturday afternoon, en route to Crapaud, Oliver and I have lunch at A&W followed by a drink at Starbucks.

The drive-thru line at Starbucks today was really long, so we opted to go inside to order, and I was asked for my name by the order-taker.

“Pete,” I told her, using the pseudonym I fall back on for such purposes.

Seeing through my charade—he’s obviously not a Pete, she realized—my cup was labeled BEET.

I was hopeful that I would be able to tap into the free wifi at the Crapaud Public Library this afternoon to watch the speeches at the PC leadership convention.

But the library was closed, the wifi locked down, and I was out of luck (why all Islanders don’t simply have automatic wifi access at all Island libraries, without bureaucratic rigmarole, I do not understand).

My consolation prize was the opportunity to sketch the library entrance from my position in the driver’s seat of my (increasingly freezing cold) Jetta.

Today seems like an opportune time to resurface the email I got from Jeff Bezos in 1995 after I sent a suggestion to Amazon customer support. Back then he and I were both mere mortals; I still am.

The blog of the Architect of the Capitol in Washington, DC is an interesting new find for me; I found today’s post, Cast in a New Light: The Capitol Bronze Shop particularly interesting:

Additional workers hired for the Capitol Bronze Shop included founders, chasers, bronze filers, finishers and laborers. They initially cast ornamentation and small works of art and later produced more practical fixtures such as hat hooks, hinges, heat registers and keys.

If the maintenance and restoration of national capital infrastructure is your jam, you may also be interested in the ongoing work to rehabilitate Centre Block in Ottawa.

The shrouded exoskeleton around the western end of Province House was lit up last night like a large scale art installation. Tetris!