From [[Olle]], a pointer to Hygge, “a short text game about the ups and downs of moving to another country, daylight, school, kids, coffee, lifting weights, learning new languages, working from home, and travelling the world.”

I’m midway in; here’s my favourite part so far, a description of the 13 year old, who’s on the autism spectrum:

She’s weird, but she’s basically not much weirder than any thirteen year old girl. She’s going through the same changes. She just gets excited about things in different ways than everyone else.

Yes.

I was coming out of Sobeys last night after shopping for the weekly groceries when I noticed some interesting weather to the north: huge clouds lighting up every 15 seconds or so with flashes of lightning.

I pull out my phone and pushed the “take a rapid succession of shots” button, and turned the result into an animated GIF.

Here’s a looping animation of one of the flashes:

Oliver made this piece of audio art by overlaying multiple TED Talks and then manipulating the audio in GarageBand on his Mac. I love this.

At the performance of Perk Up, pianist! today at the Haviland Club, Oliver and I sat beside the Heintzman piano in the back of the room (a piano only partially-working, and thus not the piano used for the performance). I took the opportunity to sketch the “Sold by Miller Bros Ltd.” label on the front:

Miller Bros Ltd. was a Charlottetown institution for decades; you’ll find more than 2,000 references to the company in The Guardian over the years, like this one, from 1915 that mentions their Heintzman business:

The summer programming in the theatre here at The Guild–a theatre located mere inches of drywall away from where I work away each day–includes Anne & Gilbert, Seussical Jr. and Dreamworks Madagascar A Musical Adventure Jr. running in repertory.

Because the managers of The Guild are frugal, the air conditioning in the building is only turned on when there are to be theatre patrons in the building for a show; otherwise we are left to sweat in squalor.

Today’s morning performance was Seussical Jr. at 11:00 a.m., and, sure enough, my temperature logger here in the Reinventorium shows the temperature starting to drop from an overnight high of 25ºC starting at 9:30 a.m., hitting a low of 20ºC almost right on the button for the 11:00 a.m. show start. Once the show was over, and the crowd dispersed, at 12:30 p.m. the temperature started to go up, and as I type this at 3:30 p.m., it’s up to 26ºC, which is only 1ºC cooler than the outside temperature.

The humidity followed a similar progression, taking a dip from 50% down to 44% starting at 9:30 a.m. and then gradually creeping back up (presumably, in part, because of the number of breathing patrons in the theatre), and then, with the air conditioning off at 12:30 p.m., taking a jump up to 52%. As I type it’s hovering around 50%.

Here’s a Humidex chart, originally from Environment Canada, that I pulled from the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety; it shows the “degree of comfort” for various combinations of temperature and humidity:

So at showtime, with a temperature of 20ºC and a humidity of 45%, the Humidex was 22, or “no discomfort.” I can attest to this: it was a very pleasant work environment.

Here at 4:00 p.m., though, with a temperature of 26ºC and humidity of 50%, the Humidex is 20, or “some discomfort.”

Now I’m not exactly exerting myself physically as I tap away at the keys here, so, even if we moved into the “great discomfort” range, I would likely be in little risk of heat stroke (even if I would feel as if in the rain forest).

The interesting aspect to all of this, however, is how I’ve developed a Pavlovian response to the presence of musical theatre in my midst.

No matter the degree of joy that the singing children bring to themselves and to the audience, you might think that you can only listen to “I like to move it, move it” so many times before you wish ill of those behind the 4th wall, but this is significantly mitigated by the improved working conditions that “I like to move it, move it” brings with it via its air conditioned comfort.

To the point where I now look forward to the stirring courses of Anne, King Julien and The Cat in the Hat.

Such is life here abreast the theatre.

I was feeling kinda down after lunch today, not particularly enthused about a trip right back to the office; not a mid-life crisis, just a dip in the shields.

I decided to swing round Brìgh Music & Tea instead of heading straight back to work, and was greeted by this new sandwich board out front:

They had me at “Yay!” and I stepped into the banjo-filled air-conditioned oasis, had myself a cool berry tea and one of Katlin’s sea-salt and caramel chocolates and a little bit of a chat (children, cellos, Go Tell Aunt Rhody, and whether a “free banjo with every 5 cups of tea” would be economically sustainable). And then I emerged into the sun, made a quick sketch of that which brung me in, and I’m back at the office with shields at full strength.

Coyotes are again in the news here in Prince Edward Island, with the CBC reporting ‘I could have lost my daughter’: Pack of coyotes stalks girl in P.E.I.

The 2001 report of the Environmental Advisory Council, Coyote Management in Prince Edward Island, is a helpful document for putting coyotes in context.

Coyotes are not native to the province; they arrived on the ice in the early 1980s:

Originally an animal of the Western Great Plains, the coyote began extending its range following European settlement of that region during the late 19th century. The extirpation or reduction of timber wolves coupled with land settlement and clearing apparently facilitated its range expansion. Coyotes arrived in New Brunswick in the 1960s, Nova Scotia in the 1970s, Prince Edward Island in 1983, Newfoundland in 1987 and the Magdalen Islands in 2001 and occur in all jurisdictions in Canada, the United States and much of Central America. They are capable of lengthy treks across ice and have been observed and photographed on ice flows far from land in the Northumberland Strait and in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The first coyote recovered in Prince Edward Island was snared near Souris in November 1983, although previous sightings of coyotes had been reported.

Following their arrival, the coyote population increased rapidly, particularly during the late 1980s and early 1990s, almost doubling annually, a pattern similar to that observed in other jurisdictions. They dispersed to all available habitat and by 1998 the population showed signs of reaching peak numbers according to harvest records collected by the Fish and Wildlife Division. Similarly, coyote populations in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia reportedly showed signs of leveling off approximately 15 years after the first specimens were recovered. Coyotes currently occupy habitat throughout the Island.

As with attempts to eradicate cats in (the other) Prince Edward Islands, attempts by humans to eradicate coyotes elsewhere have proved costly and unsatisfying:

There is no practical way of preventing the natural increase in coyotes. History has shown that poisoning, trapping, shooting from snowmobiles and aircraft, hunting with hounds, and bounty incentives, have consistently failed to reduce their numbers. Nova Scotia’s experience with a $50 bounty during the 1980s emphasizes the futility of coyote control. In spite of the bounty, the coyote population continued to expand at the same rate in Nova Scotia as it had in New Brunswick where there had been no bounty, practically doubling every year. The total cost of bounties paid for coyotes went from $2,250 to $22,100 in four years before Nova Scotia eliminated its bounty.

Since most coyotes are not problem animals, it makes sense to direct efforts at controlling those coyotes that prey on livestock or, even better, preventing the problems from occurring in the first place. A program aimed at reducing the whole coyote population might actually increase livestock predation by stimulating females to have larger litters. This, in turn, would increase the demand for food by these animals during spring and summer, at a time when livestock are most vulnerable (Sabean, 1989).

In other words, coyotes are here to stay, and there’s not much we can do other than learn to share the Island with them; the recommendations of the Environmental Advisory Council echoed this, emphasizing, in its 12 recommendations, adaptations and monitoring over eradication.

That report, by the way, is a model of clarity: it provides context, solid research, and well-worded recommendations. All such efforts should turn to it as a template for how to conduct their work.

My favourite part of the report, by the way, is the summary of the telephone calls that came in to the “Nuisance Wildlife Hotline Response” that were coyote-related, a list that includes:

• Date: 07/25
• Nature: Around dwelling
• Description: Neighbour’s cats are disappearing
• Location: York
• Action Requested: What can we do?

In addition to its diagnostic utility, this report could also be optioned as the basis for the next hit Netflix miniseries.

William Denton conducts a thorough and helpful review of paper-for-writing. He begins:

I use fountain pens. I’m going to start posting about that, but first I’m going to examine paper. Fountain pen users take a great interest in paper, because the ink can easily smear, feather or bleed through to the other side.

I remain unsure exactly how to describe House Industries (which I think is kind of the point of House Industries), but I enjoyed the Cool Tools interview with co-founder Rich Roat, and especially his recommendation of French Paper Co.:

“In the old days of graphic design, premium printing paper was a B to B thing and you had to buy the stuff through a print shop who had to buy it through their local distributor. When Andy and I first started House Industries, we were in Delaware and no Delaware distributors carried French, we posed as a print shop so we could order their paper direct from a Baltimore distributor and have it shipped to another printer, sort of like the CIA set up a shell corporation to buy titanium that they needed to build the SR71 blackbird from the Russians during the cold war. We were friends with fourth-generation owner Jerry French, but, at the time, it was verboten for paper mills to sell direct to designers. Still, Jerry would see that some “fell off a truck” every once in a while to fuel early House Industries font catalogs. Then the internet came along and fucked a bunch of shit up, but also eventually made it okay for French to sell direct to consumers. Anyway, about the paper itself: unbeatable color palette and delicious textures, mostly attributed to hero graphic designer Charles S. Anderson. Their swatch books are more valuable than a PMS chart and if you have a pernickety printer who doesn’t feel like doing a little sourcing, you just get out your credit card and order it yourself. French is also a really cool company, surviving as an independent mill in a time when most other such businesses are long gone. And they were generating their own hydroelectric power, recycling and being environmentally-friendly before those kind of things were cool, like almost 100 years ago.”

From a recent interview in Nautilus with biologist Jason Munshi-South:

Is the history of New York City inscribed in the genes of mice?

Partially, yes. We can imagine before Europeans the mice were everywhere, moving around. As Europeans developed New York City and southern Manhattan, and then agricultural areas everywhere else, the mice were probably still moving around for the most part through agricultural areas. But once you got to heavy urbanization of Manhattan about 150 years ago, and of the other boroughs about 120 years ago, in a matter of a few decades these parks were developed and became quite isolated.

We can use the genetics to date when populations became isolated. The dates are rough because we have to make some assumptions, but they do coincide with the history of urbanization in New York City. So that history is written into the genes of some of these animals.

My friend Mark pointed me to Nautilus–”a different kind of science magazine” is how it describes itself–and, based on his recommendation, I subscribed to the print and RSS.

If evolutionary rodent biology is your thing, be sure to also read Randy Dibblee’s The Beaver on Prince Edward Island: Seeking a Balance, from Island Magazine. It’s a gripping tale: beavers were extirpated here by the late 1800s, and then reintroduced in 1908. We’ve had a fractious relationship with them ever since:

Not everyone considers the beaver a benefactor. From a human perspective, the ability to create valuable wetlands can also cause destruction. Like most wildlife, beavers are perceived as prob- lems when their activities are at odds with human objectives. Their ability to block water flow, plug culverts, and flood cultivated land, plantations, high- ways, and access roads — not to mention their woodcutting acumen — puts beavers at the top of the “problem wildlife” list for North America.