We had a household debrief after returning from two weeks in France, and here is our advice to our future selves about travel:

• Don’t check bags. 
• Don’t take neck pillows.
• When taking backpacks, make sure they can somehow connect to roller suitcases.
• Take fewer clothes.
• Don’t take bulky one-fine-dining-experience-only shoes; take flats instead.
• Don’t clothes shop before going, clothes shop once there.
• Take sunscreen (although European sunscreen is very good).
• One shared toothpaste is okay. 
• It’s okay — and feels like lovely magic — to take an Uber to/from airport, no matter the moral purity of figuring out transit.
• Always buy multi date transit tickets in any city: even if it doesn’t make financial sense, the convenience is priceless. 
• Getting local SIM cards in advance is worth the effort, and makes assuming European life on arrival more seamless.
• A 5 hour layover in Toronto or Montreal on return is a long slog; the ideal, to minimize waiting but minimize rushing, would be 90-120 minutes.
• Don’t eat the second meal on the return flight, save that for layover dining.

From the do you read me? newsletter, Why do we speak English in Berlin?:

In 2021, artist, researcher and curator Moshtari Hilal and political geographer Sinthujan Varatharajah held a talk on Instagram Live, where they discussed the prevalence of the English language in Berlin. Whether in cafes or restaurants, museums and art spaces, spoken on the street or in the Bürgeramt, it’s everywhere – also in our own newsletters, reviews and social media! It’s one of the things that gives Berlin its cosmopolitan shine.

But there’s another side to things, and this is what Hilal and Varatharajah bring to light in their talk, given physical form by Wirklichkeit Books in this striking blue reader.

English is international, seemingly universal – but who do we exclude, when we decide to speak and write in English? Who do we disinvite from our spaces? For those people whose languages and voices are consistently marginalised in the West, is the use of English just another barrier between them and full participation in the societies and economies that they are so often propping up with their labour?

An incident I recall from my time working with Plazes: on a trip to Berlin, at a weekly standup meeting with the new CEO, there was a long discussion of technical issues conducted entirely, and seemingly comfortably, in English. When the talk turned to deeper, subtler, more substantial issues — branding, purpose, team — the language switched to German. My impression was that one needs the breadth and depth of their native language to express things that are deeper and broader. As a result of this I was left absent from the deeper and broader conversation, and got some insight into what I imagine life is like for those living life constantly-in-translation. 

From servers, sewers, alienation:

You’d think this “independence” might drive a person toward that problematic pioneer fantasy, but it only underlines to me how self-sufficiency is a LARP. Sure, we might not be billed for sewer, but what would we do if the larger society didn’t have someone we could call to pump the septic tank?

When #vanlife — drive a converted van from Alaska to Patagonia — pivoted, due COVID, to #offgridlife — build a place with solar panels in the wilds of Panama (or Nova Scotia, or Umbria, or Massachusetts) — I ended up immersed in the YouTubed lives of young couples building privies and windmills and greenhouses.

As maya points out in her piece, though, there’s no real going “off grid”: Home Depot, the Internet, hospitals are all part of the “grid,“ regardless of where your electricity comes from.

We are interdependent, whether we like it or not. While #offgridlife might be an enjoyable (and challenging) LARP, it’s hard to see how it fits into a larger ecology (we’d all do better to live in cities, sharing infrastructure, and limiting our need to commute).

I know the urge to self-reliance, the wish to not have to rely on anyone else. It’s why I have my own electric lawnmower, one identical to those both neighbours have, for our 30 minutes a week of mowing. It’s why I am considering solar panels for the roof. It’s why I host my own website, despite the cost and complexity. It’s why I have a car in my driveway, an expensive asset that I use a few hours a week.

But I know a healthy future lies in embracing our interdependence, and that means giving up the isolationist strands of a Whole Earth redux and finding an ecology much more rooted in density and cooperation than a bunkered rural utopia.

Sterling Stratton died this week.

When I landed on Prince Edward Island for a job interview at the PEI Crafts Council in the winter of 1993, one of the first people I met was Sterling. 

Sterling was Secretary of the Council’s board of directors at the time; an active and engaged director, his membership was by virtue of his work as a pyrographer, an avocation he’d taken on with great enthusiasm.

I got the job, and, over the years that followed, Sterling popped in and out of my life at regular intervals.

Our worlds overlapped again when I was President of PEI Home and School Federation: Sterling was an educator through and through, and knew the world of education from the inside out, having worked as a teacher, principal, school superintendent, and union representative (I remember him telling me once that the reason that PEI teachers don’t have the right to strike is because of a deal he and former Premier Alex Campbell worked out when Sterling was tasked with developing a collective agreement at the birth of the PEI Teachers Federation).

Sterling didn’t set aside his deep interest in education after retirement, and he was a frequent source of wise counsel to me at Home and School, offering advice on everything from the right size of a school board (he maintained that the perfect size was small enough to have parents connected to education in their communities, but large enough that individual families couldn’t rally to have a teacher dismissed) to how to cultivate relationships among parents, students, teachers, and administrators. Sterling had very strong ideas about the best way to elect school trustees, and that we returned to elected school boards last year is something that, behind the scenes, he played an important advisory role in.

Outside of education, Sterling was a talented artist, and a skilled pitchman: he transitioned from working in wood burning to working with pen and ink, and he sketched more than his fair share of Prince Edward Island churches, important buildings, and houses (including our own), self-publishing a series of books that will serve history well.

Sterling was a man of great humour, incisive wit, uncommon frankness, bold imagination.

He spoke up.

I will miss him.

In advance of our trip to Europe I ordered three prepaid SIM cards from Orange—the Orange Holiday Europe 20GB package. This included 20GB of data, 1,000 international SMS, and two hours of international voice, and cost €40.

I’ve no doubt we could have done better with a prepaid SIM bought locally once we landed, but knowing we’d be connected as soon as we landed was a comfort, as was having our French telephone numbers in-hand before leaving.

Here at the departure gate, after 14 days travel, where I didn’t give a second thought to my data budget and promiscuously streamed videos and music, I end the trip with 12GB leftover, meaning I used just over ½GB a day on average.

I am left with 996 SMS to my credit, and 90 minutes of talk time. For what it’s worth, the three of us went through one tube of shared toothpaste in the same two weeks and did laundry three times (once in a laundromat and twice in apartments).

My “flights climbed” count went from an average of 17/day to 81/day while on vacation. Yes, climbing the Eiffel Tower bumped up the average, but there’s a lot of stairs climbing in regular everyday city navigation.

We squeezed in an extra day in Lyon over the weekend, which was lovely, as Lyon is a lovely walkable city and our hotel — the Pilo in Croix-Rousse — was in a lovely walkable neighbourhood.

On Sunday afternoon we jetted north on an Italian Frecciarossa train to Paris at 300 km/h, door to door in just over 2 hours.

Sunday evening was a quick supper at the wonderfully chaotic playground that is Ground Control—bars, restaurants, video arcade, bookstore, thrift shop, all to a pulsing backbeat—followed by a walk up the Eiffel Tower at sunset (it was a lot easier to walk up when Olivia and I did it 14 years ago).

Amidst all the epic to and fro, the things I’ll remember the most are those like breakfast with Lisa and L this morning in our tiny apartment, eating muesli with yoghurt and clementine slices and making up combination words (like birdbowl, a new game involving specially trained pigeons, and footcase, an iPhone case with toes).

Our trip comes to an end tomorrow: we fly home via Montréal. This trip has been delightful; being on the road has been a much-delayed, much-needed break.

I left L&L to adventure on my own this afternoon, heading to Bois de Vincennes by bus, and then grabbing a Vélib’ to cycle through the park. The Vélib’ system was very easy to use: I downloaded the app to my iPhone, signed up for a 1 day subscription for €3, entered my ID and PIN on the keypad of an electric bicycle, and I was off. I covered a lot of ground—almost 10 km—and it felt like I had the entire forest to myself most of the time. I love cycling so much: it feels like flying, especially when riding electric-assisted. The weather was perfect for a ride today. I’m so glad I took the time.

Out for a morning walk in Lyon with L&L. Warm. Sunny. Found a market. Had coffee.

La Basilique Notre Dame de Fourvière and La Tour métallique de Fourvière in Lyon, through a passageway that runs through the corner of a building.