Step One: Look on top of the printer. Is there a cat?

The Access Guide for the 2025 Pride Fest is such a commendable document, packed with detailed, practical information for every event.

Here’s the information for a “Speed Friending” event that Olivia went to last week, for example:

• The venue has a ramp entrance.
• Gender-neutral washrooms are available on site.
• The space is air-conditioned and an air purifier will be in use.
• Attendees are welcome to move around, step outside, or take a break at any time.
• The event is not mask-mandatory but is highly encouraged.
• The venue is a scent-free space. Please avoid wearing
  scented products such as perfume, cologne, or heavily scented lotions.
• Refreshments will be provided after the event.
• Fidgets and noise-cancelling headphones will be available.
• An Access Toolkit with sensory and support supplies can be accessed by speaking with a volunteer.
• There is a parking lot with limited space at the venue, as well as street parking available.

All festivals and events should have something like this. 

Following along from my visit to the ER last week, and learning I’d broken my elbow, I had my appointment at the Fracture Clinic with Dr. Wotherspoon this morning. After a follow-up X-ray, he concluded that I likely require surgery.

Most likely this will involve a radial head replacement with titanium. It’s a simple surgery, done under anaesthetic, that takes about 30 minutes. It’s got good outcomes.

All of this is contingent on a follow-up CT scan, scheduled for Monday evening, that will give him a deeper look at things.

I have an appointment for next Friday morning to review the CT scan, and possibly roll right on into surgery. If not Friday, then likely the weekend. Recovery takes 6-8 weeks.

This is all a surprise, given that I thought this was a “simple” fracture with an “easy” recovery. But I’ve never been put off by surgery, and… TITANIUM ELBOW!!

The most immediately practical outcome of today’s appointment was that I received a new, larger sling. The one I’d been given in the ER was a “medium”, and I now have a “large.”

Otherwise it was helpful to get guidance that, in this liminal period, my best strategy is to simply let pain be my guide: I’m not in imminent danger of my arm snapping right off. 

Here’s a list of things I’ve discovered are particularly difficult to do with one hand:

• Use a pepper grinder.
• Get shampoo out of a shampoo bottle and onto my hair.
• Tie my shoelaces.
• Take a frozen pizza out of the oven.
• Use a laptop to write a blog post. Like I am right now.

I know this because, a week ago today, I fell off a box, and broke my elbow.

Here’s a blurry capture from a video taken a few minutes before it happened:

That’s me, flying through the air, jumping up onto a 20 inch high wooden box. 

I was in the gym for my regular 5 p.m. Thursday workout. We’d completed the warm-up, and the strength section, and had moved onto the “workout of the day,” described like this:

4 SETS FOR TIME
20 Box Jump Overs (20)
20 Push Press (75/55)

-Rest 1:30 b/t Sets-

(Score is Slowest Set)

To translate that into human language: the workout consisted of jumping up from the ground to a 20 inch wooden box, and stepping over the other side, 20 times, followed by lifting a barbell into the air, overhead, 20 times. Then repeating, for a total of four sets.

With the value of hindsight, I see that the possibility of an injury was heightened that afternoon: it was about 30°C out, and not much cooler in the gym. I was two weeks into an adjustment to new eyeglasses lenses. I was wearing a set of slightly-more-cushioned running shoes, that I hadn’t done box jumps in before. It was the end of a hot, busy, hectic day.

I had completed two rounds already, and had just started the third. After 55 box jumps, on number 56, my toe caught the edge of the box, and I went over hard, onto my right side. 

I don’t remember a lot of the details, but it’s not something I’d ever wish to repeat: it had elements of “falling out of an airplane” nightmares, mixed with what I imagine it to be like to get hit hard in the boxing ring.

I landed on my right arm. 

It wasn’t immediately obvious that I’d broken anything: nothing was sticking out, there was no bruising, no blood. I thought I might have gotten away with just a sprain. I was well supported by my coach, who gave me space to get my bearings, and then led me through the possibilities. She ended up driving me home, in my car, because I was pretty sure it wasn’t safe to drive, and, indeed, I don’t think I could’ve managed it anyway (driving is another thing it’s particularly hard to do with one arm).

Once I got home, I put some ice on my arm, and set out to get supper for my mother and I (I was living with her for the week, while my brother and sister-in-law were on vacation). Fortunately, the day before, I had prepared enough salad for two meals. 

Here’s a photo I took of my arm, after we’d finished eating:

As you can see, it doesn’t look particularly injured. Although, by this time, it was feeling particularly injured.

My sister-in-law, Karen, bless her heart, offered to jump out of her vacation, and drive me to the emergency room. Before I left, my mother helpfully tied my shoes (this was the first time my mother had needed to tie my shoes in more than 55 years).

The timestamp on my ER registration form shows 8:52 p.m. At the time, the estimated wait time for a non-life-threatening injury was 10 hours or more. I reconciled myself to settling in for a long night. 

After a short, wait, I was ushered into the triage room, my vitals taken, a description of what happened noted, and I was sent, immediately, for an x-ray.

The x-ray technician, while capable, seemed initially to pay little heed to the notion that my arm couldn’t move in the usual ways that arms move. Ultimately, adaptations were sought; the ER has its own x-ray suite, and it seems to have a Meccano-like flexibility.

After the x-ray, I was sent back to the waiting room, but then almost immediately called back into the triage room for a shot of Toradol, and the offer of a sling, which I accepted gratefully.

Here’s me at 9:30 p.m., slinged up, and wearing a mask (because Karen, wisely, noted that there were a lot of coughing people in the waiting room).

A few minutes later, I decided it was time to read Lisa in on the situation – she was away visiting friends in Montreal. Here’s what I texted:

I’m in the ER. I’m ok, just settled in for a long wait.

In my workout today we were doing box jumps, and around about #50, my foot caught the edge and I went down on my right side, hard.

It wasn’t clear whether I’d broken anything or just sprained. C. drove me home in my car. I put ice on my arm. Over the next hour it became clear that injury is centred on my elbow. I can’t fully extend my arm and I can’t rotate my arm to point my thumb up. Pain when sitting still is 2-3/10; pain if I move the wrong way is 7/10.

I’ve had a X-ray and the wait time is showing > 10 hours. The X-ray tech couldn’t tell me anything but I got called back to triage for pain injection and the nurse said “yeah, it’s something” and when I asked “so, if I give up go home in an hour is that a bad thing” he said “don’t go home in an hour—you’ll be back.” So it’s clearly something.

She texted me back, among other things:

At that moment, that was exactly what I needed. I felt (a little) better.

With my phone dying, and no electrical outlets obvious in the ER waiting room, I settled in for 10 hours of quiet meditation.

At some point, the triage team came out to do a roll call of patients: five or six didn’t respond when called; I assumed they’d given up and gone home. The 10+ hour weight on the status board didn’t change, though.

By some miracle, after waiting only a couple of hours, I was called into see a doctor. He told me I’d had a radial head fracture, and explained a little bit about the bones in the arm, and what had happened. 

Because the fracture wasn’t displaced – the parts of the bone were still aligned – I didn’t need a cast, or surgery, and the only treatment was to keep the arm immobilized, and let it heal.

He told me that I would be automatically contacted for an appointment with the fracture clinic, and that they would follow up with what comes next.

By 11:59 p.m., I was waiting in the parking lot for, bless her heart even more, Karen to come and pick me up and take me home:

That first night was a difficult one for sleeping: I managed to find a somewhat sustainable position on the couch, with my arm in the sling. I was still in a fair amount of pain, and I think this was made more noticeable as the shock was wearing off. In the end, I got three or four hours of sleep.

Midday on Friday, I got a text about my appointment at the fracture clinic: it’s set for tomorrow, just before lunch.

Lisa returned home late that night, and has proved a great source of emotional and practical support. The love of a strong and capable partner can work wonders, I know now more than ever.

My pain has gradually subsided to the point where, when my arm is in the sling, or resting beside me, I don’t feel pain at all. I still can’t rotate my wrist, and any attempt to do so brings immediate feedback. I’m not even trying.

While, there are, as I wrote to begin, a whole bunch of things I’m discovering are a lot harder, or impossible, with just one arm, one hand, it turns out that there’s a lot that I can do. Being in good shape means that it’s pretty easy to squat down and pick things up, for example. My core is in pretty good form, so I can get myself up out of bed without two arms.

Things like getting dressed and undressed, having a shower, really anything that requires previously-simple gymnastics, have become an exercise in careful patience. 

It’s not the pain, or even the discomfort of the sling, that’s the biggest impact of the injury: it’s the hyper-awareness required to walk through every day life, always mindful that  a bump or a reach could make things a lot worse. 

My friend Dave, no stranger to the broken elbow, sent me some really helpful advice, which has stood me in good stead so far:

Also, do the physio. You’re already in the habit of working out, which is good. But every minute of physio pays off, because your elbow won’t be the same for a long time, unfortunately. Accept the help. Do the physio.

OH! Also! Because we both grew up in the broken bone=cast era, I found I took my break much less seriously because I didn’t have a cast. Take it seriously. It ain’t a sprain. A fracture is a break. You have a broken bone, and you need to treat it like one.

I’m doing exactly that. Trying really hard.

Lisa arrived back from Montreal with reports of all manner of interesting conversations with old friends. One advised that, confronted with some discouraging new circumstance, like, say, breaking your elbow, you can be angry, pissed off, resentful, and mope around, or you can see it as a gift, a set of new experiences, a way of building empathy with others, a kind of adventure. 

I still have my angry, pissed off, resentful, mopey times, but it’s also a kind of adventure. Not the one I would’ve chosen for this summer, but an adventure nonetheless.

I’m grateful to the volunteer in the ER who got me a pillow, to the triage nurse who was kind and compassionate, to Dr. Twiddy for answering all my questions, and sending me on my way. 

I’m grateful that I live in a country where I didn’t have to think at all about money before heading to the emergency room, because of public healthcare.

I’m grateful to my sister-in-law, Karen, for love and support and logistics, to my brother Mike, for love and support and logistics, to my mother for love and support and tying my shoes when I needed it.

I’m grateful to Lisa’s mother for dropping off a chicken, and to Lisa’s father for dropping off a book.

I’m grateful to Lisa for all the extra driving and shopping and bed-making and cat-feeding and schedule-arranging and washing machine fixing, for the care she takes to not bump my arm in bed, and for simply, lovingly, steadfastly, being here. 

In An app can be a home-cooked meal, Robin Sloan wrote about “home cooked” apps:

I made a messaging app for, and with, my family. It is ruthlessly simple; we love it; no one else will ever use it. 

I am spending this week at “CatCamp,” the label Lisa and I have for staying at the house shared by my brother Mike, my sister-in-law Karen, and my mother, while Mike and Karen are away. I’m here to care for their cats, and to care for Mom.

Mike, every inch the documenter that our father was, prepared a detailed Word document outlining what needs to be done every day; things like this, about Elsie the cat:

She will have wet food first thing around 8am, and then maybe every 3 or 4 hours thereafter.

Because I’m taking most of this CatCamp solo, while Lisa and L. are away, I wanted to make sure I didn’t miss anything, so I had Claude cook up an app for me, with this prompt:

This is a Microsoft Word file that my brother Mike sent me today. They are away for a week, and I am staying in their apartment, taking care of their cats, Rover and Elsie, and taking care of my mother, who lives in the apartment downstairs. You will see that, in the Microsoft Word file, there are a variety of things that need to happen every day. Mom needs to take her medication in the morning, and at supper, the cats need to be fed, the plants need to be watered, etc. I would like you to create a simple web app – HTML, CSS, and JavaScript – that I can use, every day, to keep track of whether I’ve done these things. I would like to open up the app every day, and have the status of that days task to be presented to me. I’d like to be able to check off the tasks and have them visually displayed as having been completed, I would like the status of each task on each day to be recorded somehow in a file. I would like to be able to move back-and-forth between the days using some kind of navigation in the header.

It did exactly what I asked, on the first try:

I wanted to run the app on my iPhone, not my laptop, and so I needed a place to host it. I could have self-hosted, but Claude recommended Netlify, so I decided to try that out, as it’s free. 

Using “Netlify Drop,” I simply dropped the HTML file that Claude provided into a browser window, and was given a URL to run it from. Presto.

Perhaps this isn’t as much as a “home cooked” app, in the Sloan sense, as much as a “catered” app, inasmuch as I didn’t spend much time in front of the stove. 

I still believe in the intrinsic good of learning to use the tools, that all the good learning takes place in the iterations, the smashing your head against the wall when things are working, and figuring out why. I did that, millions of times, over a 40 year career as a coder. 

In this case, I was willing to let the robots do the work, so I could get on with washing the cats’ water bowls.

Some months ago I discovered Incline Press, a fine press publisher in the UK, and its founder Graham Moss, who found his way to printing through the same Adana press that I did:

Spine labels are the unlikely start point for what is probably the finest maker of books in Britain. Graham Moss’ background in teaching History led to paper conservation, turning in to a book repair business. Understanding how a book comes together meant a short step to binding, and binding needs those tiny printed slips — labels, book-plated, binders’ tickets. Graham got hold of a small Adana press in 1990 to print these components of the books he bound and repaired.

Later joined by librarian Kathy Whalen, Incline Press grew to become an estimable printer and publisher of lovely editions.

The press attracted my attention when I read, in a late 2024 blog post, of its plan to move to Scotland:

Incline Press has been working for the last 30 years in Oldham, England; and housed in a former cotton mill in Bow Street since 2001. We now have an opportunity to live the dream and move to beautiful, rural Scotland.  As well as printing, we will be able to develop a practice teaching the whole craft of book making, and open a seasonal gallery space which the current building cannot accommodate. But we need help to make it happen.

Having some experience with the challenges of moving printing presses, I felt a kinship. 

I felt even more kinship when I learned of the book that Graham crafted, following Kathryn’s death in 2020, Memento Mori : Memento Vivere. 

It is a heart-livening memorial-in-print, stunning in its detail and craftsmanship:

I was so moved by it that, in mid-May, I sent Graham an email:

Hello Graham,

We don’t know each other; I’m a printer in Prince Edward Island, Canada. I came across your Instagram, and then followed that to your website.

You and I, it turns out, are members of a very small club, that of letterpress printers whose longtime partners died from metastatic breast cancer in early 2020, who subsequently published a book in memoriam.

In my case, my late partner Catherine, a textile artist, died in January 2020 after living with cancer for 6 years. The next year I published Using Her Marbles, a chronology of her illness and death that had started as a series of email updates to friends and family.

I am in awe, in this light, of your Memento Mori : Memento Vivere, perhaps because I can imagine some of the topsy-turvyness that led you to create it.

This email is simply a tip of the hat your way, a small act of solidarity.

Peter

PS: Having now moved my behemoth Golding Jobber No. 8 twice in 14 years, at great expense, complexity, and with several unintended acts of damage to property, I also share not inconsiderable awe at the logistics of your recent move. 

I never received a reply from Graham. 

Today, in an Instagram post, sadly, I learned why:

Graham died today at 12.30pm in Dumfries hospital.  Kidney cancer, out of the blue. This photo is only 6 weeks ago.

No regrets, he said.

Memento Mori : Memento Vivere.

I have been listening to the audiobook of Shattered, by Hanif Kureishi, over the past few months, titrating it out on longer car trips.

A passage struck me this week, in a section about the writing of The Buddha of Suburbia (emphasis mine):

I considered myself to be a nervous, if not uptight, and repressed person. I could speak onstage, but found it difficult to be intimate with others. In the suburbs, where I was brought up, silence, if not shyness, was a virtue.

I wanted to use a freer voice, not unlike that of Henry Miller, writing the words that were somehow getting stuck or jammed up in my head. I wondered whether the restrained part of me might contain some of my most interesting ideas.

That idea—that beyond restraint lies something more—is something that’s been on my mind a lot of late.

Every therapist I’ve ever worked has pointed out that I have very strong “thinking parts” that interfere with my “feeling parts.” In any situation, it’s generally “thinking” that’s running point.

In a session this morning, I was particularly aware of this, as was my therapist, who has developed a sixth sense for when the thinking engine is running particularly hot.

“Restraint” is of the thinking domain, and I, like Kureishi, wonder what I might find if I can get it to soften back.

Shattered is available for listening with a Spotify subscription. You can also get the audiobook from Libro.fm (and support local bookstores). The ebook is currently on sale for $1.99 CDN from Amazon and Apple.

Did you know there’s an open map of memorial benches? There weren’t any added on PEI yet, so I added Catherine’s bench in the Gardens of Hope, and the bench in Victoria Park in memory of Lisa’s Grandfather George and Uncle Ron.

I encourage you to add more.

As I neared the go-no-go point outside of Truro, Nova Scotia, where I needed to decide “ferry or bridge,” I placed a call to the ferry booking line to check on load status of the 1:30 p.m. from Caribou. 

“There aren’t that many big trucks,” said the friendly agent, “so you’ll probably get on. And, if you don’t, you’ll get on the 3:15 p.m. for sure.”

So, go.

Every time I take the ferry, I think of Harry Baglole.

Many years ago I ran into Harry in the cafeteria in Caribou. At that point—and maybe until he died?—Harry had never taken the Confederation Bridge to Nova Scotia, his Friends of the Island blood still running as hot as ever. That left him with the ferry.

We had a lovely chat; I always enjoyed chatting with Harry, whether it was in the ferry terminal, over the breakfast service at the Bonshaw Hall, or concerning matters large and small at Island Studies Press.

And so I can’t take the ferry and not think of him.

My reservationist was on the money for the 1:30 p.m.: I got a space on the big truck deck, and was one of the last vehicles to load on what ended up as a full vessel.

On the drive from Truro to Caribou I listened to an old Radiolab episode, Desperately Seeking Symmetry, that was music to my lateral-thinking ears.

I love the way the episode starts:

And do you ever wonder what actually happens when two people click, when the halves kind of meet?

Meaning what?

You know, you go in through your day, maybe you’re at a party, you meet people and you’re like, hey, how are you? How are you? And they say something, they try and be interesting, you try and be interesting back, but in the end, you’re like, I don’t need to remember that name.

Right, of course.

Gone.

And then comes along somebody.

Yeah, every hundred times, the stars align, the world falls away, things narrow, and you just click.

I know that.

But do you ever wonder what actually happens in that moment?

Like when you meet someone that you really get, I just, I don’t think that there’s anything that really feels better than that.

That’s Lauren Silbert, she’s a neuroscientist at Princeton. She wonders. She’s been wondering for a while.

From there they jump to functional MRIs, Alice in Wonderland, Neil deGrasse Tyson, chirality, electrons spin, and all manner of other things. 

Fascinating. Lateral (very lateral).

I started the day at the Just Us! Café in Grand-Pré, which serves up excellent coffee. So excellent I had a cortado, a pause, and then an espresso. They also make a good cinnamon bun.

Once I hit the road for the 380 km drive home, I thought about dropping into Halifax. I was set to bump up against the edge Halifax anyway, en route to Truro, so why not. But the magnetic pull of Big City Living was overwhelmed by the magnetic pull of Getting Back to the Island, and so I bumped up against Halifax and slingshotted right back out the highway toward home.

I’ve had the idea, for years, to assemble a book of stories about the PEI ferries, titled Just Ferry Stories. There are so many of them.

The title of the book (and this post) is an homage to Just Mary Stories, a CBC Radio program that my mother listened to as a child; sufficient connection might exist only in my head to make it a marketable title (see also Mom Jokes, a This American Life segment I also listened to on the drive).

(Mary was Mary Grannan: go and read her Wikipedia page; she was a Great Canadian.)

To my surprise, in a published anthology of the stories, I found The Gift of Lady Moon, which starts (emphasis mine):

Peter Lawrence really went to the moon. It’s a queer story, and it’s not my fault that it begins: “It is.” “It is not.” “It is!”

“Well, then, we’ll see if it’s real snow,” and Dottie Dawson threw the beautiful green glassy into the fireplace. The flames sputtered and spat and licked at the green globe, and the two children stood there in surprise at what Dottie had done. They looked at each other, and then they stared unhappily into the grate.

“Oh, Peter! Oh, Peter! I’m sorry,” said Dottie. “Oh, Peter! I didn’t mean to … I …” 

Peter didn’t answer. His lips were tight. His hands were clenched. He stood very, very still. Dottie ran from the room.

My mother has never been able to explain how I came to have the middle name Lawrence. Maybe this was the source?

That story also contains the word heckadoodle, so I’m clearly on Team Just Mary.

L. and I headed to the Annapolis Valley today to drop her at a week-long overnight camp (Lisa is in Montreal, on assignment).

Every time I go to the Valley I am reminded how very far away it is. You look at a map, and it seems like it should be close; it’s only 160 km as the crow flies:

When you factor in all the hither and yon necessitated by bodies of water and terrain, though, you end up driving more than double that, about 380 km. The quickest route involves going to Halifax, and then bouncing back; confounding if, like me, you are averse to doubling back:

We made it—left the shore at 9:00 a.m., and pulled into camp at 4:00 p.m.—and it was a beautiful day for a drive. We shared the Bluetooth on the drive, and thus alternated between intense teen music and esoteric NPR podcast interviews.

Having dropped L. at camp, it seemed folly to drive back the 380 km to PEI on the same day, so I booked myself a room, and am staying in Wolfville for the night.

The summer I turned 18, I bought myself a train pass and travelled east, ending up in Halifax, where I stayed for three nights in the residence at Dalhousie University.

How 1984 me knew that such a thing was possible, pre-Internet, I have no recollection, but it was a helpful, mind-expanding stay for someone whose lodging on the road theretofore had consisted of Holiday Inns and Howard Johnsons. 

Staying at Dal was cheap, clean, and central; I paid $25 a night for my room, which included breakfast.

Tonight, echo of that, I’m overnight at Acadia University in Wolfville. 

It’s $85 a night, no breakfast included. But it’s relatively cheap, mostly clean, and certainly central.

I brought my Brompton folding bicycle with me, determined to build activity into the end of a day which otherwise involved staring at highways. 

Looking at the map, I found that there’s a cycleway that runs along the old rail bed, through Wolfville and along the edge of  Grand-Pré. I found myself a restaurant a reasonable 7 km cycle from my dorm and headed off to supper.

The cycleway proved a stunning way to travel; I cannot imagine a better way to experience the Grand-Pré dyke system up close:

It took me about 25 minutes to make it to the restaurant. The meal was, alas, forgettable. But the location was lovely, and the weather on the patio was perfect.

On the ride home I diverted into the Grand-Pré National Historic Site. I’d visited before, a decade ago, but a visit at sunset was a whole different experience: I had the entire site to myself, and the golden hour made everything pop into resplendence.

The ride home was slightly more downhill-feeling than the ride there, and so I was more relaxed. 

I stopped on the edge of Wolfville to look at the mud flats:

On Main Street, I perched on the steps of the old MT&T building, and sketched the Acadia Cinema opposite:

The ride up to my dorm was a lot more effort than the ride down; I pulled in about 9:00 p.m., two hours, and 14 km of cycling after I left.

A very large day.