After seeing 8 years of our Netflix streaming activity day-by-day on a calendar, I got curious about what time of day we most often stream, so I used the same raw data I used yesterday to find out.

There’s a date column in the Netflix streaming activity export that looks like this:

1526177708874
1526169219659
1525735831181
1525130481740
1525043053677
1525040614148
1524960752757
1523330480349
1523145136457
1523142542204
1523142413550
1523064942413
1523058300622

That doesn’t look much like a human-readable date, mind you: that’s because it’s a numeric representation of a date, a timestamp that represents numerically the time since January 1, 1970.

Take 1526177708874, for example: if I divide that by 1,000 I get 1526177708, and if I feed that value to DuckDuckGo, which has a handy “convert a Unix timestamp to a date” featurelette, I get Sun May 13 02:15:08 2018 UTC. Which is, indeed, the time I watched the Catalina episode of the TV show Love.

What I really need for my purposes here isn’t specific dates, though: I want the hour of the day. So I paste that date column into a text file, and then load it into a spreadsheet and convert each value to a date with the formula:

=(A2/1000)/86400+date(1970,1,1)

which gives me a new column of dates, which I can format as a time:

1526177708874	02:15
1526169219659	23:53
1525735831181	23:30
1525130481740	23:21
1525043053677	23:04
1525040614148	22:23
1524960752757	00:12
1523330480349	03:21

Those values, though, are UTC times, not local times, so I need to take one more step, and do a blunt force time zone conversion (with no accounting for daylight time):

=B2-4/24

Now I have a third column, with the local time we streamed each episode:

1526177708874	02:15	22:15
1526169219659	23:53	19:53
1525735831181	23:30	19:30
1525130481740	23:21	19:21
1525043053677	23:04	19:04
1525040614148	22:23	18:23
1524960752757	00:12	20:12
1523330480349	03:21	23:21

I copy that column’s contents into a text file, times.txt, and use a text editor and a regular expression search-and-replace to end up with just the hour part of those times.

22
19
19
19
19
18
20
23

With just the hours in times.txt now, I use trusty uniq and awk to prepare a histogram-ready count of streams watch by the hour:

sort times.txt | uniq -c | awk '{ print $2 "," $1}' > histogram.csv

The result is a list of each hour of the day along with the number of Netflix streams we started during that hour, from 2010 to yesterday:

01,1
05,5
06,30
07,61
08,80
09,62
10,50
11,55
12,62
13,74
14,54
15,68
16,125
17,266
18,267
19,357
20,361
21,367
22,242
23,54

I import that into a spreadsheet and create a bar chart to visualize it:

The result maps to my expectations: we mostly watch Netflix in the evening, with the peak activity at 9:00 p.m., which is around the time Oliver’s traditionally gone to bed. We never stream between 1:00 a.m. and 5:00 a.m., and even then I suspect that the early morning streams are either time zone shifts when we watch Netflix while traveling.

Continuing on from my earlier post about Personal Netflix Analytics, I decided that I wanted to be able to visualize our Netflix streaming activity on a calendar. Here’s how I did it.

I took the Netflix viewing activity CSV file I exported earlier, loaded it up into a spreadsheet, and copied only the dateStr column into a text file called dates.txt that looked like this:

2018-05-13
2018-05-12
2018-05-07
2018-04-30
2018-04-29
2018-04-29
2018-04-29
2018-04-10
2018-04-07
2018-04-07

and continued on for 2,641 lines.

I then used the very (very) useful uniq command, along with awk, to add frequency information to a file activity.txt:

uniq -c dates.txt | awk '{ print $2 "," $1}' > activity.txt

This file contains one row per date, with a second column indicating the number of streams watched that day, like this:

2018-05-13,1
2018-05-12,1
2018-05-07,1
2018-04-30,1
2018-04-29,3
2018-04-10,1
2018-04-07,4
2018-04-06,2
2018-04-05,4
2018-04-04,4
2018-04-02,2
2018-03-18,2

Next, using Google’s Calendar Chart example as my guide, I further massaged the data so that I could paste it into a chart-generating JavaScript:

awk -F'[-,]' '{print "[ new Date(" $1 ", " $2 ", " $3 "), " $4 " ],"}' activity.txt > activity.js

The results starts out like this:

[ new Date(2018, 05, 13), 1 ],
[ new Date(2018, 05, 12), 1 ],
[ new Date(2018, 05, 07), 1 ],
[ new Date(2018, 04, 30), 1 ],
[ new Date(2018, 04, 29), 3 ],
[ new Date(2018, 04, 10), 1 ],
[ new Date(2018, 04, 07), 4 ],
[ new Date(2018, 04, 06), 2 ],
[ new Date(2018, 04, 05), 4 ],
[ new Date(2018, 04, 04), 4 ],
[ new Date(2018, 04, 02), 2 ],
[ new Date(2018, 03, 18), 2 ],
[ new Date(2018, 03, 13), 1 ],
[ new Date(2018, 03, 11), 3 ],
[ new Date(2018, 03, 10), 2 ],

I then simply pasted this into the Google Calendar Chart example, replacing our Netflix history for the Boston Red Sox attendance data. I fiddled with the colour axis a little, and the result was this chart:

The colours in each day’s cell range from green to red; the more red, the more streams we watched that day. The minimum was 1 stream, the maximum, on June 5, 2011, was 19 streams (where someone in the family apparently watched an entire season of Running Wilde in one day).

Here’s a JSFiddle with the HTML and JavaScript so you can play with this, or use it as a basis for your own visualizations.

Via Recomendo, a pointer to the Netflix page that shows you your entire viewing history, back the the very opening of your account.

This, in turn, led me to this Chrome extension, which allows the data to be exported as CSV or JSON (in my use of the extension the CSV exported without line endings, so to get a usable CSV I had to export as JSON and then convert JSON to CSV).

Our family’s viewing history goes back to September 22, 2010 when the first thing we watched on Netflix was the 2002 Hugh Grant film About a Boy. Although, because the export also tells us where we left off, I see that we only watched the first 43 minutes of the film, likely because we’d already seen it before.

Total Hours Streamed

Since that first movie, we’ve streamed an additional 2,640 movies and TV episodes across the members of our family.

We’ve streamed a total of 1,561 hours from movies and TV shows that, had we watched all of each, would have meant watching 2,262 hours; so our “show completion rate” is 69%.

1,561 hours is 65 full days of streaming. More than two months out of 8 years, or 2% of all the hours and a shockingly high percentage of the “TV watching hours” spent outside of work and school.

The Office

It turns out that these numbers aren’t a complete picture of Netflix streaming time, as when an episode or movie has been watched more than once only the most recent viewing is displayed. As Catherine can attest, I’m an occasionally compulsive watcher of the U.S. version of The Office and I’ve watched the entire series through multiple times, but my viewing history “only” shows 192 episodes watched (all of them) once.

While this aberration means I can’t get a complete picture of the portion of our family life given over to Netflix, I can get a picture of what episodes of The Office I find the most rewatchable.

For example, I haven’t watched season 2’s “Take Your Daughter to Work Day” episode since April 17, 2014, but I watched “The Injury,” from the same season, as recently as this week.

Here’s all 192 episodes by reverse chronological order of when I last watched them, which is a rough measure of their popularity (to me):

Season 2: "The Injury"                          2018-05-07
Season 1: "Diversity Day"                       2018-04-05
Season 1: "Pilot"                               2018-04-05
Season 1: "Health Care"                         2018-04-05
Season 9: "A.A.R.M"                             2018-04-05
Season 9: "Livin' the Dream"                    2018-02-08
Season 9: "Junior Salesman"                     2018-02-07
Season 8: "Turf War"                            2018-02-05
Season 8: "Pool Party"                          2018-02-02
Season 7: "WUPHF.com"                           2018-02-02
Season 4: "The Deposition"                      2018-02-02
Season 3: "Beach Games"                         2018-01-31
Season 3: "Cocktails"                           2018-01-29
Season 3: "The Return"                          2018-01-28
Season 3: "Traveling Salesmen"                  2018-01-03
Season 3: "The Convict"                         2017-12-17
Season 3: "The Merger"                          2017-12-06
Season 3: "Branch Closing"                      2017-12-05
Season 3: "Diwali"                              2017-12-04
Season 2: "Sexual Harassment"                   2017-12-01
Season 5: "The Duel"                            2017-11-29
Season 7: "Nepotism"                            2017-11-28
Season 6: "Delivery: Part 2"                    2017-11-27
Season 6: "The Banker"                          2017-11-27
Season 5: "Michael Scott Paper Company"         2017-11-24
Season 5: "Stress Relief: Part 1"               2017-11-23
Season 5: "Casual Friday"                       2017-11-21
Season 4: "Fun Run"                             2017-11-14
Season 3: "The Job"                             2017-11-14
Season 4: "Dunder Mifflin Infinity"             2017-11-13
Season 9: "Paper Airplane"                      2017-08-10
Season 9: "Stairmageddon"                       2017-08-09
Season 9: "Promos"                              2017-08-07
Season 9: "Moving On"                           2017-08-06
Season 9: "Couple's Discount"                   2017-08-04
Season 9: "Vandalism"                           2017-08-02
Season 9: "Customer Loyalty"                    2017-07-30
Season 9: "Suit Warehouse"                      2017-07-30
Season 9: "The Whale"                           2017-07-29
Season 9: "Andy's Ancestry"                     2017-07-29
Season 9: "Roy's Wedding"                       2017-07-23
Season 9: "New Guys"                            2017-07-23
Season 8: "Free Family Portrait Studio"         2017-07-23
Season 8: "Fundraiser"                          2017-07-22
Season 8: "Angry Andy"                          2017-07-17
Season 8: "Welcome Party"                       2017-07-11
Season 8: "Lotto"                               2017-07-09
Season 8: "The Incentive"                       2017-07-09
Season 8: "The List"                            2017-07-09
Season 7: "Search Committee: Part 2"            2017-07-08
Season 7: "Dwight K. Schrute, (Acting) Manager" 2017-07-08
Season 7: "Todd Packer"                         2017-07-08
Season 7: "Threat Level Midnight"               2017-07-07
Season 7: "The Seminar"                         2017-07-06
Season 7: "Classy Christmas: Part 1"            2017-07-06
Season 7: "China"                               2017-07-06
Season 7: "Viewing Party"                       2017-07-01
Season 7: "Christening"                         2017-07-01
Season 7: "Costume Contest"                     2017-06-30
Season 7: "The Sting"                           2017-06-30
Season 7: "Sex Ed"                              2017-06-30
Season 7: "Andy's Play"                         2017-06-30
Season 7: "Counseling"                          2017-06-30
Season 6: "Whistleblower"                       2017-06-29
Season 6: "The Chump"                           2017-06-28
Season 6: "The Cover-Up"                        2017-06-28
Season 6: "Body Language"                       2017-06-28
Season 6: "Secretary's Day"                     2017-06-13
Season 6: "Happy Hour"                          2017-06-13
Season 6: "New Leads"                           2017-06-12
Season 6: "St. Patrick's Day"                   2017-06-11
Season 6: "Delivery: Part 1"                    2017-06-11
Season 6: "Manager and the Salesman"            2017-06-11
Season 6: "Sabre"                               2017-06-09
Season 6: "Secret Santa"                        2017-06-07
Season 6: "Scott's Tots"                        2017-06-07
Season 6: "Shareholder Meeting"                 2017-06-07
Season 6: "Murder"                              2017-06-05
Season 6: "Double Date"                         2017-06-02
Season 6: "Koi Pond"                            2017-06-02
Season 6: "Mafia"                               2017-05-31
Season 6: "Niagara: Part 2"                     2017-05-30
Season 6: "Niagara: Part 1"                     2017-05-30
Season 6: "The Promotion"                       2017-05-29
Season 6: "The Meeting"                         2017-05-28
Season 6: "Gossip"                              2017-05-27
Season 5: "Blood Drive"                         2017-05-27
Season 5: "Lecture Circuit: Part 2"             2017-05-26
Season 3: "Grief Counseling"                    2017-05-26
Season 3: "The Coup"                            2017-05-12
Season 2: "Conflict Resolution"                 2017-04-13
Season 2: "Valentine's Day"                     2017-04-13
Season 2: "The Carpet"                          2017-04-09
Season 2: "The Secret"                          2017-04-03
Season 1: "Basketball"                          2017-03-28
Season 1: "The Alliance"                        2017-03-06
Season 4: "Dinner Party"                        2017-02-09
Season 5: "Employee Transfer"                   2017-02-09
Season 5: "Baby Shower"                         2017-02-08
Season 5: "Business Ethics"                     2017-02-07
Season 5: "Weight Loss: Part 2"                 2017-02-03
Season 5: "Weight Loss: Part 1"                 2017-02-01
Season 4: "Goodbye, Toby"                       2017-01-24
Season 4: "Job Fair"                            2017-01-24
Season 4: "Did I Stutter"                       2017-01-18
Season 3: "Women's Appreciation"                2017-01-18
Season 3: "Product Recall"                      2017-01-17
Season 3: "Safety Training"                     2017-01-16
Season 3: "The Negotiation"                     2017-01-16
Season 3: "Business School"                     2017-01-16
Season 3: "Phyllis's Wedding"                   2017-01-14
Season 3: "Ben Franklin"                        2017-01-14
Season 3: "Initiation"                          2017-01-13
Season 2: "Casino Night"                        2017-01-13
Season 4: "Night Out"                           2017-01-08
Season 4: "Branch Wars"                         2017-01-02
Season 4: "Money"                               2016-12-23
Season 4: "Launch Party"                        2016-12-22
Season 2: "Boys and Girls"                      2016-12-15
Season 9: "Finale"                              2016-12-08
Season 9: "The Target"                          2016-12-05
Season 9: "The Boat"                            2016-12-04
Season 9: "Here Comes Treble"                   2016-12-04
Season 9: "Work Bus"                            2016-12-04
Season 8: "Test the Store"                      2016-11-30
Season 8: "After Hours"                         2016-11-30
Season 8: "Special Project"                     2016-11-29
Season 8: "Jury Duty"                           2016-11-28
Season 8: "Trivia"                              2016-11-21
Season 8: "Spooked"                             2016-11-21
Season 8: "Garden Party"                        2016-11-21
Season 7: "Search Committee: Part 1"            2016-11-19
Season 7: "The Inner Circle"                    2016-11-13
Season 7: "Michael's Last Dundies"              2016-11-11
Season 7: "Training Day"                        2016-11-11
Season 7: "Garage Sale"                         2016-11-09
Season 7: "PDA"                                 2016-11-07
Season 7: "The Search"                          2016-11-06
Season 7: "Ultimatum"                           2016-11-06
Season 7: "Classy Christmas: Part 2"            2016-11-06
Season 5: "The Surplus"                         2016-10-29
Season 5: "Frame Toby"                          2016-10-28
Season 5: "Business Trip"                       2016-10-28
Season 5: "Customer Survey"                     2016-10-26
Season 5: "Crime Aid"                           2016-10-24
Season 4: "The Chair Model"                     2016-10-18
Season 4: "Local Ad"                            2016-10-17
Season 3: "Back from Vacation"                  2016-09-16
Season 3: "A Benihana Christmas"                2016-09-16
Season 3: "The Convention"                      2016-09-11
Season 3: "Gay Witch Hunt"                      2016-09-11
Season 2: "Performance Review"                  2016-09-10
Season 2: "The Client"                          2016-09-10
Season 2: "The Fight"                           2016-09-10
Season 2: "Halloween"                           2016-09-10
Season 2: "The Fire"                            2016-09-09
Season 2: "Office Olympics"                     2016-09-07
Season 2: "The Dundies"                         2016-09-06
Season 1: "Hot Girl"                            2016-09-04
Season 8: "Christmas Wishes"                    2016-08-22
Season 8: "Mrs. California"                     2016-08-21
Season 8: "Gettysburg"                          2016-08-20
Season 8: "Pam's Replacement"                   2016-08-15
Season 8: "Doomsday"                            2016-08-11
Season 2: "Email Surveillance"                  2016-06-25
Season 6: "The Lover"                           2016-05-24
Season 8: "Last Day in Florida"                 2016-01-23
Season 8: "Tallahassee"                         2016-01-12
Season 9: "The Farm"                            2015-11-24
Season 9: "Lice"                                2015-11-22
Season 9: "Dwight Christmas"                    2015-11-22
Season 7: "Goodbye, Michael"                    2015-11-09
Season 5: "Moroccan Christmas"                  2015-10-04
Season 2: "Drug Testing"                        2015-09-28
Season 2: "Michael's Birthday"                  2015-09-27
Season 2: "Dwight's Speech"                     2015-09-21
Season 2: "Booze Cruise"                        2015-09-17
Season 2: "Christmas Party"                     2015-09-15
Season 5: "Company Picnic"                      2015-09-04
Season 5: "Cafe Disco"                          2015-09-04
Season 5: "Broke"                               2015-09-01
Season 5: "Heavy Competition"                   2015-09-01
Season 5: "Dream Team"                          2015-08-30
Season 5: "Two Weeks"                           2015-08-28
Season 5: "New Boss"                            2015-08-28
Season 5: "Golden Ticket"                       2015-08-28
Season 5: "Lecture Circuit: Part 1"             2015-08-26
Season 5: "Stress Relief: Part 2"               2015-08-26
Season 5: "Prince Family Paper"                 2015-08-26
Season 4: "Survivor Man"                        2015-08-18
Season 8: "Get the Girl"                        2015-07-10
Season 2: "Take Your Daughter to Work Day"      2014-04-17

Series Watched

We’ve watched at least part of 351 TV series on Netflix over the years, alphabetically from A Bit of Fry and Laurie to You Bet Your Life. The top 25 series, by number of episodes watched, are:

 192 The Office (U.S.)
 122 The West Wing
  75 Community
  69 iCarly
  66 Weeds
  49 Shark Tank
  38 White Collar
  34 Love
  34 Episodes
  28 Portlandia
  28 Mad Men
  26 The Big C
  26 Life Unexpected
  21 The Fairly OddParents
  21 Monarch of the Glen
  21 Doc Martin
  20 Wreck Trek
  20 The Crown
  20 Master of None
  20 Cuckoo
  19 Orange Is the New Black
  19 Black Mirror
  18 Kingdom
  18 Boss
  18 Black Books

As you can tell from browsing that list, some of these are my obsessions (The Office, The West Wing, Weeds, Mad Men), some of them are Oliver’s, and some are Catherine’s. I take no responsibility for the presence of Monarch of the Glen on the list.

Netflix Country Switching

Back in the good old days, it was possible to “country switch” your Netflix by using a VPN-like service, increasing the breadth of the content available to include that from other countries. We haven’t been able to do this since 2016, but we did it a lot before Netflix made this effectively impossible. Here’s a breakdown by “Netflix service country” of streams watched (the two letter country code is the second column):

1243 CA
1051 US
 151 GB
  54 NO
  36 IE
  24 NL
  21 SE
  19 BR
  12 DK
   9 MX
   4 ZZ
   4 AR
   3 JP
   3 AU
   2 NZ
   1 IN
   1 FR
   1 CO
   1 CH
   1 BE

Back in the day I watched a lot of Norwegian crime dramas, which is why it gets the 4th position; not being able to do that is the thing I miss the most about the country-switching powers we once had.

Device Type

The export includes a “device type” column, which I haven’t been able to find a dictionary for, but which I assume reflects what device–computer, phone, set-top box, etc.–the stream was watched on; our breakdown is (streams watched following by device type code):

2083 345
 325 272
  67 447
  31 419
  28 1812
  22 -1
  17 14
  11 1725
  11 1222
   9 169
   8 769
   6 1080
   5 1476
   4 770
   4 245
   3 273
   2 198
   2 1008
   1 714
   1 1416
   1 1224

I’m certain that device code “345” is “Nintendo Wii app,” as that’s where we watch the majority of our streams; code “272” is likely the web-based player for Mac or the iPad app, as those would be the two next-most-popular methods in our family.

What does this mean?

There’s no doubt that Netflix has dramatically changed our family’s video-viewing life. It’s freed us from the tyranny of the fixed TV schedule, and dramatically increased the depth and breadth of movies and TV we have available to us.

But there’s also no doubt that it’s increased the amount of time that we spend in front of screens, it’s changed our viewing practice from a social to an individual activity, and, perhaps, made us more isolated from each other in the process. Television viewing used to be about social compromise; now it’s not.

The availability of personal viewing analytics like this from Netflix, even if you do have to do a little hacking to export and analyze them, provides a way to step back and take a deep breath and ponder the degree to which Netflix improves and degrades our life. And it’s not a simple calculus: do I need to watch The Office pilot again? Wouldn’t that time be better spent learning Chinese, teaching Oliver to ride a bike, or volunteering for Greenpeace? But, then again, watching The Office pilot again can help me wind down for the day, get my mind off of swirling complexities for a time; it can be well-worn comfort in a storm.

YouTube introduced a new “Remind me to take a break” feature in its Android app this week:

The feature allows me to have the app remind me after an amount of time of my choosing to take a break.

I think this kind of feature will be something we see increasingly necessary to help us mediate our relationships with our digital devices; they need not be hard limits: simple elements to help us gain a peripheral awareness of what we’re spending time doing (and, by implication, not doing) will, I think, prove invaluable.

Having access to our own analytics, in the way that Netflix’s platform affords, gives us the freedom to develop these elements ourselves, to cater to our own desires to mitigate and not simply to content providers’ interest in maintaining our gaze.

My friend Martin returned to Prince Edward Island from his winter nesting grounds this month, and he came bearing the gift of a freshly-cast sample of printing type from the Musée de l’imprimerie in Nantes, France.

Examining the sample this morning, it turned out to be a random selection of type, ruuudl (given that Martin’s last name is Rutte, randomness dealt him a alphabetic coincidence, albeit an incomplete one).

I thought I might try to use Martin’s letters to print something for him, but then I recalled something about European “type high” vs. North American “type high” and thought to compare Martin’s type to a sample of my own. Here’s a capital M from my 14 point Bodoni (left) with Martin’s letters (right):

Sure enough, they’re different.

“Type high” is the measure of the height of a single piece of type, and, as you might imagine, it’s important, when you’re setting type for printing, that all the pieces of type are exactly the same height.

The North American standard is 0.918 inches; the French standard is 23.556 mm, or 0.927 inches; a difference of 0.009 inches, or a fraction of a millimetre.

But that’s an important enough fraction to mean that, without some complex gymnastics to raise the height of the North American type, one cannot mix and match.

This post on Briarpress elaborates:

This differs in many countries from the .918” American-British standards, to the .928” used in many countries in Europe and the Medians standard of .934” used in Belgium. What was used around the world was based on what country controlled or influenced that area. For example India and Australia use .918” because of Great Britain. Cuba, and most of Central America use .918” because of America’s influence. The African countries tended to use .928” because at one time they were colonies of European countries. Some countries had multiple type height standards as their politics changed. Some countries developed their own standards such as Russia at .938” and .990”. When I made replacement letters for a printer in Israel, he had to pick since they use both .918” and .928”.

It seems that, like which side of the road you drive on, the height of printing type is a map of our history of colonialism.

I’ve been a regular, loyal Sobeys customer for years. But a chance encounter with Rolling Meadow Dairy yogurt at Superstore a few weeks ago has led me to tentatively switch my allegiance: I’ve done our weekly shop there two weeks in a row.

The Rolling Meadow yogurt has proved an excellent starter for my own homemade yogurt making; it’s worked out much better than other brands.

A small window into the challenges of building grocery chain market share: a multi-year relationship dashed by a single product preference.

It’s early days yet, and it’s quite possible that the 3 mile hike from bread to milk at Superstore will wear me down and see me returning to the comforts of Allen Street.

I learned a lot about music, and about orchestration, by watching this video of Ben Folds composing live with the National Symphony Orchestra.

Scotty Allen found the source of all the world’s consumer goods at a wholesale market in Yiwu, China. Watch.

Julia Evans blogs about technology, and today’s post Batch editing files with ed is an excellent example of her clear-headed style.

Like Julia, I’ve had a longtime aversion to the Unix ed editor, based purely on ignorance. The magic key that Julia’s blog post unlocked for me is that ed is just like vi, but without a visual interface.

As I have vi burned into my muscle memory, this was a powerful revelation.

Julia closes the deal with a pointer to the book Ed Mastery, which I’ve just purchased based solely on the strength of her recommendation.

I’m so looking forward to taking my new-found text-unmangling skills out for a ride.

If you find yourself in need of an even broader approach to Ed, may I humbly recommend the biography of my great-grandfather Big Ed Caswell. It won’t help you edit text files, but it will teach you something about steely determination.

By virtue of my dual US-Canadian nationality, I’ve been voting in U.S. elections for as long as I’ve known I’ve had that right (that I voted for Ralph Nader means that, essentially, it’s my fault that George Bush became President).

When you register to vote in the USA, at least in New York, you have the option of declaring a party affiliation, and if you take this option you’re allowed to vote in the primary elections, held in advance of the general elections to allow parties to select their candidate. As I’ve never been a joiner, I’ve always checked the “Independent” box when registering, but this year I decided I would declare as a Democrat because, well, if there was ever a year when every Democratic vote counted, this is it.

In all general elections for New York’s 25th Congressional district to this point I’ve voted for Louise Slaughter, a well-regarded progressive feminist Democrat who was elected to serve the district 16 times, from 1986 to 2016; it was a no-brainer.

For this fall’s election, however, given Slaughter’s death in March, the Democrats are looking for a new candidate, and because I’ve registered as a Democrat, I’m eligible to vote in the June 26, 2018 New York primary. To this end, my ballot arrived today, and there are four candidates plus the option to write-in:

I have my work cut out for me, as it seems, on first blush, like there are four excellent candidates to choose between; from their own websites:

Joe Morelle

I am inspired by the promise of a future that is as strong, as resilient, and as bold as the people who call this great community home. I believe that, together, we can pick up Louise Slaughter’s mantle and fight to protect the fundamental ideals we all share: the need to ensure universal healthcare for all; to protect a woman’s right to choose; to keep our streets and children safe from the terror of gun violence; to create stronger economic opportunities for our working families; to fight against the opioid epidemic plaguing communities across our nation; and to dismantle the racial inequities that keep us all from achieving our full potential.

Adam McFadden

Adam McFadden, a native of Rochester, NY. Currently, serves as the Vice-President of the Rochester City Council representing the south district of the City of Rochester. He is the Chair of the Finance committee and past president of the National Black Caucus of Local Elected Officials where he helped to establish national initiatives that are implemented at the local level of government by black officials across the United States. Adam, also serves as the Executive Director of Quad A for Kids a not for profit organization committed to breaking the cycle of childhood poverty in the City of Rochester.

Robin Wilt

I’m Robin Wilt, a native to the Rochester area who has lived in Brighton with my husband, Nick, and our three sons since 2003. Having lived in other parts of the country, we chose to reside in this region because we believe it is the best region to raise a family. My 13-year-old son is a student in public schools, while my two older sons attend college at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and Bard College of Simon’s Rock.

In addition to my work as a real estate professional, I have spent my entire adult life advocating for grassroots involvement and political engagement. In my role on the Brighton Town Board, I consistently offer a diversity of perspective that aligns with our community’s core values of education, equity and environmental justice.

Rachel Barnhart

A lifelong Democrat, Rachel has the skills and experience to fight the Trump administration’s corrosive policies and major ethical lapses. She has a proven track record of holding the powerful accountable and fighting for transparent and ethical government.

Rachel started speaking truth to power at Rochester’s John Marshall High School. She showed courage by publishing an underground newspaper about educational inequality that resulted in her suspension. Rachel went on to graduate from Cornell University, where she was the editor of an alternative newspaper, The Cornell Perspective.

I have a few weeks to educate myself; it’s good to be reminded that there are progressives still at work in America, despite (or because of) the Trump-related chaos.

One of the things I learned in the process, from Robin Wilt’s campaign video, is that two great figures of American history, Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony, were neighbours and friends in Rochester. The two are memorialized in statue in a downtown park and in the Frederick Douglass–Susan B. Anthony Memorial Bridge over the Genesee River.

There’s no doubt that Thursday Pizza Pasta at Receiver Coffee Brass Shop is, in large part, how we survived the winter. Every Thursday until the end of May. Come while you can.