I’m still waiting for the job of making me a window here in my subterranean office to rise to the top of the to-do list, so unless there’s a hurricane going on, I have no way of knowing what the weather is like outside.

As a proxy for this I can connect to the “live view” of my Ring Video Doorbell, across the street. It’s fuzzy, but clear enough to let me know if I need an umbrella or not.

Although the races for the New York 25th congressional seat and for New York Senate are not expected to be close (Kirsten Gillibrand is given a 99.9% chance of winning for the Democrats in the Senate), I am, like many, particularly motivated to vote in the US midterm elections this year.

So I filled in my absentee ballot this morning, well in advance of the deadline, and it’s going out in the mail today, complete with a beaver stamp, as befits a dual national.

I got to know George Guimond many years ago, both through his work as an architect here in Charlottetown and by virtue of his family being neighbours, in a country sense, when we lived out on the Kingston Road in the mid-1990s.

George retired from architecture some years ago, he and his wife Sherrill moved to Forest City, New Brunswick, and George found a second career as a woodworker:

After working 30 years as an architect, it came time for a change. A few years ago a work colleague loaned me a copy of  the book, “The Soul of a Tree” by George Nakashima and I immediately knew that  fine woodworking would become my new career.  The interest in wood follows a tradition of woodworkers with both my father and grand father being accomplished  woodworkers. I now see those years of experience as a design architect have served as a training ground for designing my original pieces. The furniture is constructed using traditional joinery and assembly, using solid woods, something not found in today’s mass produced furniture. Joinery includes hand cut dovetails, finger joints, mortise and tenon, wedged through tenons, etc…

You can see samples of his work on his Applewood Studio website.

“A dual purpose cabinet, a stair for a loved pet and storage cubbies,” by George Guimond.

I’ve been going through my back issues of Whole Earth Review lately; I’d forgotten what a healthy classified section the magazine had, and that you needed to be a subscriber to place an ad, which seems an excellent idea.

I have known Catherine Hennessey for 25 years, and I’ve always delighted in the numerical twist that unites us: she was born in 1933, I was born in 1966. So when I turned 33, she turned 66; when I turned 44, she turned 77.

And so when I turn 66, she will turn 99.

This year Catherine turned 85, and I wanted to make something to mark the occasion, so I combined my love of letterpress with my newfound love of bookbinding and made the guest book for her birthday party.

The covers are heavy green Saint Armand paper covered book board. I printed Catherine’s name on the front cover before affixing the paper to the book board. It’s set in 30 point Futura Bold. For the endpapers I used orange Japanese paper from a pack I purchased in Halifax in March from The Ikebana Shop.

The inside signatures are of cream-coloured Saint Armand tag paper which was a joy to work with: more a living thing than something manufactured. I printed Catherine’s name at the top of each page, along with her birthday date, in a casual script that Sarah Saunders left a font of on my doorstep one day several years ago.

I bound the cover and signatures together using a coptic stitch, something well-suited to a book that’s meant to lay open flat. My stitching needs work, as it’s something completely new to me, but it did the job and held everything together: as I wrote to Catherine in my colophon at the back, “the book feels like it’s improbably held together, but, somehow, it stays bound–like Ms. Hennessey.”

I was very happy to see the book well-used on the evening of Catherine’s party.

The Cadre published a store last week on the impending application of Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy (FOIPP) legislation to the University of Prince Edward Island, Taking Care of Our Own: What the Amended FOIPP Legislation Holds for UPEI.

From the newspaper’s reporting I learned that my own access request (detailed in my post I Paid $166 for Data about Parked Cars) was one of only 8 requests received so far under the university’s existing self-managed access system.

I’m hopeful that a simpler, unified regime for access will lower barriers and encourage others to take advantage of this powerful capability.

The impact of mailing a letter (photo taken 9 years ago at the postal museum in Copenhagen).

Lotic, interviewed on starting from scratch:

A lot of artists have this fantasy of pulling up stakes, getting rid of all their stuff, and running away to a new city to reboot and recreate themselves—which is basically what you did when you moved to Berlin. How was that experience?

It took a long time to find my footing here, to be honest. I moved here with my husband, who was my first boyfriend ever. We’re not together anymore. I knew one person here who would book me for gigs. Luckily I met basically everybody that I know now—or about half the people I know now—during that first week. That helped a little bit, but it was fucking crazy and stupid and when anyone has asked me if they should do it too, I say no. No.

I had never even been to Berlin before. Why did I do this? What was I expecting? I don’t know. For me, it wasn’t about coming someplace new as much as it was about getting away from someplace else. It was about leaving the States. I was in the suburbs of Houston, which is nothing like being here. Given what was happening in America, I just felt like I had to leave. It was less about running towards something than it was about running away from something else. Now that I’m here and things are good—and I’m really good now—it’s hard to talk about, but it honestly did take four or five years to get my life together here. Also, I still don’t speak the language.

See also France, by the Ceedees.

From Euan Semple, Your phone doesn’t have to be your enemy. In part:

Don’t let the media convince you that it is inevitable that you are a victim of technology, and make the effort to ensure that you are not. I’ve made my phone my friend. You can too.

He’s written what amounts to, unintentionally, a very good ad for the iPhone.

This short film about the Irish border written by Clare Dwyer Hogg and performed by Stephen Rea, has singlehandedly convinced me that poetry can change the world.