Naomi Alderman writes about Paul McCartney, John Lennon, The Beatles, creativity, and grief.

Wherever creativity comes from, it’s rarely “everything in my life was totally fine, yeah”.

Harry Holman’s STRAITPOST: The Early Postcards of Prince Edward Island is a heretofore undiscovered cavalcade of visual delights.

The post Fifteen Edwardian Views of Queen’s Square is of particular interest, given that I look out my front window at Queens Square, and have lived and worked within earshot of it for almost 35 years.

Our house appears in none of the 15 views, not unusual as historic photos of our house—despite being one of the oldest to face Queens Square, here since 1827—are rare. There are simply too many  interesting buildings in the neighbourhood for our simple Georgian cottage to warrant attention.

Pugh postcard #898-15. Our house does not appear, though you can imagine it behind the building on the far right.

Henrik Karlsson reflects on his first year of writing full time:

The main thing I remember, looking back, is how tired I was for the first three months after I quit my job. All through December, January, and February, I felt wrung out, empty, and sad. This came as a bit of a surprise to me. I had expected to be filled with energy now that I had reached my goal and finally had plenty of time to work on my projects.

My own experience of setting down my keyboard was similar.

Jonathan Godfrey answers the question “I love what Radical Aliveness  does for me, but how do I apply what I’m learning here to my life?”; in part:

As guests finished sharing their comments with the chefs and began wrapping up the evening, I felt an impulse. I was nervous but I’ve learned to listen to those moments. So even though I worried about whether it was “appropriate,” I stood up and asked if we could also take a moment to give the dishwashers a round of applause for their hard work, care, and support—for their part in making the evening possible.

One of the chefs went back and invited them to come out.

When they did, they were greeted with a full round of applause from everyone.

They looked stunned.

One of them said, “Wow. No one’s ever done this before. Thank you.”

I worked weekly with Jonathan for about 9 months, two years ago; that work had a lot of impact on me. Radical Aliveness might not be for everyone, but for me it was the right modality at the right time.

Mike Monteiro answers the question “How do you lovingly care for an aging parent who treated you like shit?” by writing about his own father; in part:

Speaking of which; the last thing my father told me was to go fuck myself. This happened on the phone a few years ago, during a call with my mother. I heard her turn away from the phone and ask him if he wanted to say hello. I heard him reply in the background. Tell him to go fuck himself. And that was that.

Death does not make saints, and I have neither the desire nor the power for beatification tonight.

Read the whole thing. It’s not a Hollywood script, but there is hope in it.

Monteiro closes his piece with:

Please donate to Trans Lifeline, and for fuck sake, if there is a trans kid in your life please love them. They are so so so so ready to love you back.

Please heed those words; it’s true.

This is the 2026 levee schedule for New Year’s Day, January 1, 2026 for Charlottetown and Prince Edward Island.

Include ages 19+  Include businesses  Show only Charlottetown

The levee schedule is covered under a Creative Commons Attribution, NonCommercial, ShareAlike License.

Four years ago , I wrote about Get Me Through December, with vocals by Alison Kraus, fiddle by Natalie MacMaster.

What I didn’t know at the time, but know now, thanks to MacMaster’s book I Have a Love Story (available at Bookmark), is:

• The tune is Neil Gow’s Lament for His Second Wife, a tune I first heard when Tim Chaisson played it on the piano in 2008, then later arranged by Steven Garrity, and then, most notably, when Roy Johnstone played it at Catherine’s Celebration of Life in 2020.
• The song was cowritten by Gordie Sampson (see Day Without Power from 2007, and Jesus Take The Wheel, which he also cowrote).

MacMaster’s book has contains both the sheet music to Neil Gow’s Lament, and the words to Get Me Through December.

From Gratitude knows that there is always a gift, by Annie Mueller:

Whatever it is, let me start it with gratitude.

Gratitude is fertile ground. Put in the seeds of your dreams and desires. Keep the ground watered and pull the weeds. Soon the seeds will grow.

(Conversely, worry is fertile ground for all your fears. Stay worried and you will harvest an abundance of fears.)

I’ve been historically cynical on the “practice gratitude, and your emotional state will improve” front—part of a larger pre-installed cynicism package—but empirical evidence from recent years suggests I was wrong.

If Lisa and I are in a funk at bedtime, focusing on things we’re worried about, things that went wrong that day, switching gears and simply sharing 5 things we’re grateful for has proved a helpful system reboot, time after time.

When you’re a younger architect, starting out, you’re seeking some kind of impossible perfection. You can spend your life thinking about this ephermal building that would be great to do, it would be the capstone of my career. And you realize as you mature that there’s no there. You aren’t gonna get there  

Words of the late Frank Gehry, from an interview with Sydney Pollack, in his film Sketches of Frank Gehry.

(Photos from a visit to the Gehry pavilion at Vitra in 2015.)

When we were in Mexico City last month we wanted to visit the pyramids at Teotihuacan, but we didn’t want to take an organized tour, mostly because we were staying far away from the city centre, in San Ángel, and we didn’t want to face the transit and/or traffic challenges of getting to a central rendezvous point for an early departure. 

So we got ourselves there and back. Here’s how, with hopes that others in the same situation will be emboldened to try the same.

Getting There

We used the DiDi app to arrange for a driver to take us by car to Teotihuacan. It took a few minutes to connect us with a driver, but the app found us José, with a fee of $593 MXN (about $45 Canadian).

José picked us up at 8:55 a.m., and the drive there took just over 90 minutes, through relatively mild traffic by Mexico City standards.

Arranging a Ride Back

During the drive out, Lisa (who speaks journeyman Spanish) and José negotiated an off-app return journey: $100 MXN an hour for waiting and $500 MXN for the return trip, to be paid in cash at the end of the trip home.

This was  helpful: we didn’t need to stress about getting a ride home, and paying José for the waiting meant we didn’t need to rush back for a scheduled return trip.

One thing to note: it seems generally accepted (and reasonable) that passengers cover the cost of road tolls there and back, about $100 MXN each way.

Arriving

José dropped us at Puerta 1 at Teotihuacan at 10:35 a.m. We choose the drop-off location simply because, well, it was the first entrance; it made sense. We paid the parking fee ($60 MXN). The entrance wasn’t busy at all, and there were small shops selling souvenirs and sundries, and clean, spacious washrooms.

Finding a Guide

The single best thing we did is finding a guide to give us an hour-long tour of the site. 

Lisa found Lorenzo inside the entrance gate, and they negotiated a price of $50 CDN. Lorenzo proved a knowledgeable, engaging guide, and he gave us just the right amount of information about the site, its history, its “rediscovery” in modern times, and he sent us off toward the Pirámide del Sol and Pirámide de la Luna on our own.

Food and Water

While many of the organized bus tours include a meal at one of the tourist-focused restaurants that ring the site, just outside the gates, we were on our own.

We were organized enough to have packed a lunch and snacks, and we sat down to eat before we headed out on the tour. Nipping possible grumpiness in the bud really served us well.

The Big Error

The one big logistical error we made is in not arranging for José to meet us at Puerta 3, where we ended up our tour of the site. If we’d thought ahead to get his mobile number we could have asked him to pick us up there, but we forgot to do that. This left us with a 30 minute walk back to where we’d left him.

We opted to walk outside the site proper, on the ring-road Circuito Pirámides, which had well-maintained sidewalks and let us avoid the more challenging ground of retracing our steps inside.

The Ride Home

José was waiting for us back at Puerta 1 when we arrived back.

Traffic on the ride home wasn’t horrible, but it was certainly busier than on the way home. We left Teotihuacan about 2:00 p.m. and we were home before 4:00 p.m.

Final Notes

If you’re in Mexico City, Teotihuacan is definitely worth a visit, especially if, like me, you’ve never had any exposure to pre-Colonial architecture and culture.

We have no regrets about taking a DiDi there and back: it was easy, inexpensive, seamless, especially compared to what we imagine would have been an early morning dash to get to the centre of Mexico City to join an organized tour.

The Edificios Superpuestos, which we likely would have skipped over without Lorenzo our guide, were the most interesting part of the visit: we were able to walk down inside ruins of the housing that was part of the site.

Climbing up the Pirámide de la Luna—you can get about halfway up—is worth the effort: you get a good overview of the entire site, and a visceral sense of the true massiveness of everything.

Bring more water than you think you’ll need.