From Analog Office, Mess Up Your Good, Premium, Luxury Notebooks:

What about those fifth-generation stationers who go to great lengths to source wonderful paper, to find skilled craftspeople who will bind it just right, so that the binding lies flat when you open that notebook?

What if you were the notebook maker? If you went to all that work to design and manufacture a notebook you thought would be totally awesome for someone to use, what would be cooler to you, five or twenty or fifty years from now…

I’ve been this maker. Not of premium luxury notebooks, but of handmade notebooks for friends and family, where the primary special sauce is love, not craft. “Oh, I can’t write in that, it’s too precious!” isn’t the preferred response to such a gift; use it, write in it, mess it up. I can always make you another.

There is a disquieting swell of transphobia here on Prince Edward Island this month, a movement by a small group of parents targeting the Guidelines for Respecting, Accommodating and Supporting Gender Identity, Gender Expression and Sexual Orientation in our Schools.

Gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation are challenging concepts for cisgender heterosexual people like me to confront: I was raised by atypically progressive gay-positive parents, but I grew up in a culture that was completely unaccepting and incurious of anything related to the life of 2SLGBTQIA+ people, and frequently dismissive of, and injurious and violent toward, anyone with the tenacity to express their true self publicly.

I am not a model of solidarity; I am an imperfect ally. But I am trying, I am listening, I am reflecting on my own biases, and my part in spreading a cis- and hetero-normative worldview.

I am the proud father of Olivia, an autistic trans-woman. Olivia has worked so hard to find her way toward a way of being in the world that is true to herself, against tremendous pressure to not do so. The intersectional challenges of being trans and neurodivergent are formidable, and the very notion that an autistic person is fully and completely capable of agency over her gender expression, gender identify, and sexual orientation is something she receives pushback on from almost every direction.

When people rally against guidelines that call for my daughter and her peers to be respected, accommodated, and supported, they are engaged in an act of intolerance. They are tacitly saying “we don’t accept you, Olivia.” They are piling on to the mountain of hatred, violence, rejection that makes living life as a trans person so arbitrarily, unnecessarily difficult. 

When we choose intolerance over love, ignorance over education, we are not only building prisons for others, we are imprisoning ourselves, cutting ourselves off from the liberating notion that we can all be freed from expectations that how our gender and sexuality manifest should exist in a restrictive narrow band. 

Former Prince Edward Island Premier Wade MacLauchlan frequently called Islanders to look to our “better nature,” and this is clearly a time we should heed that call: let us all seek to love all our neighbours, even if—especially if—we are frightened by parts of them we struggle to identify with, to understand. Through dialog, curiosity, courage, openness, we can stanch that fear, that ignorance, and march forward together. 

I love my daughter, all the parts of her, all of who she is and is becoming. Please join me. 

I was happy to be a source for the article The curious history of 219½ Hunter, Peterborough’s itsy bitsy storefront in Peterborough Currents. 219½ played an outsized role in my life, and it’s nice to see the history of the storefront documented so thoroughly.

We made Ella Risbridger’s Stuck in a Bookshop Salmon and Sticky Rice for supper last night. I’d resolved to make something outside my typical flavour palette and this certainly was: marinated grilled salmon over chorizo- and garlic-infused Thai black rice, a smooth-vs-nutty contrast. It’s from her Midnight Chicken cookbook.

The Saturday “feels like” temperature in Charlottetown is forecast to be -45°C. Oh my.

We lost two wise, compassionate Islanders this week, both dedicated to service.

John Andrew died on Tuesday. I met John when he ran for the Green Party following the death of Josh Underhay, and found him a shy, intelligent, thoughtful person. His eyes lit up when, standing in his front yard, overlooking Andrew’s Pond, he talked about the history—human and natural—of the area. I’d always hoped, in the years since, to catch John’s eye as I canoed that pond; I’d have welcomed the opportunity to thank him for his dedication to enhancing such a brilliant and storied natural area within the city limits.

Two days later Mait MacIsaac died. I met Mait only a few times, through PEI Home and School Federation, an organization he held dear, and to which he devoted much effort. Mait was a legendary educator; I was a direct recipient of the spirit described in his obituary: “Mait was genuinely curious, could connect with anybody of any background and possessed a knack of asking just the right question or spending whatever time it took to listen.”  We are blessed to live in a province where so many educators, after retirement, take what they’ve learned from their formal careers and devote their lives thereafter to sharing, reflecting, discussing, improving; Mait was at the head of that class.

John, Mait, you will be missed.

I am entering week two of the Mother Of All Chest Colds.

Things started off slowly, a week ago Wednesday, with a fever of 38.6ºC for about 12 hours; the fever broke, all was well. I made English muffins. I cleaned up the back yard.

Friday was fine. Bullet dodged!

On Saturday, though,I developed a sore throat, a cough, and ever-worsening congestion; my time since then has focused primarily on phlegm management. Bonus symptoms: headache, fatigue, lethargy. The congestion’s risen up into my sinuses a few times, then settled back into my chest.

A trip to the nurse practitioner on Thursday showed my vitals are good, I’ve not got pneumonia, and, as it’s likely a virus at play, I’ve no choice but to wait it out. She reported that she’s seeing cases last as long as three weeks. Ugg.

For those of you similarly stricken, some tips from the field:

• Cepacol lozenges are the best I’ve found. They’re also less popular, so more likely to be in stock when brands like Halls are missing from store shelves.
• Mucinex was a help when I needed to loosen things up, and clear my most-congested chest. The only downside was that my nose ran for hours and hours.
• I’ve never been a taker of pain-relievers, but Advil has been my friend this week; I wouldn’t have been able to sleep without it.
• Secaris is a nasal lubricant I picked up on the recommendation of a clerk at Murphy’s Parkdale Pharmacy (it’s on the back wall near the cough drops); it really help when long nights of nose-blowing resulted in a raw nose.
• Head-over-boiling-water-in-a-bowl has really helped, a couple of times a day.

Every time I think I’m clear of this beast, it rears its head again; fortunately for the past three nights I’ve been able to sleep clear-through, which has been a big help (before then I was spending long stretches of the night on the couch, coughing).

This is the longest I’ve been sick in years, and compared to COVID, which, for me, was a walk in the park, this virus packs a wallop.

Wish me luck.

The Dating After Death episode of the Widow We Do Now? podcast covers a lot of terrain that’s very familiar to me. Anita and Mel interview the host of the datingafterdeath podcast.

In this Facebook thread kicked off by a friend and co-conspirator from the Peterborough days, Clifford Maynes, much is said about guitar solos, from people who know. Starting with:

A message about solos and fills for all guitar players, myself included:

• play fewer notes - mix in some long slow notes and bends - make it sing
• play melodic solos — the tune is a good place for inspiration - talk to the people - say something that needs saying
• don’t rush to go nuts in upper register in  the second verse - build slowly, keep something in reserve\

I appreciate the comment from Richard Connolly: “Stop chasing notes. The right notes in the right place are what works best. That is the quest.” It mirrors what Laurie Murphy tells us all the time when crafting improv scenes: the answer is right there.

My friend and improv teacher Laurie Murphy took a turn as the Spin Time DJ on CBC Mainstreet this afternoon, talking about her return to PEI, how she first got involved in improv, and what she’s up to now, with an eclectic trio of tunes (I know from experience that boiling a life-so-far down to 3 songs is a Herculean task).

Laurie was very kind to tip her hat to me and my improv experience to date; as I’ve written here before, it’s her skill as a teacher that is so responsible for so much of that.