A recent update to the SMS app on my Android phone gives it a new power to recognize two-factor authentication codes in text messages and to present a handy “copy” button. Nice.

My friend Jonas was visiting this weekend, his first time on the Island in the 13 years I’ve known him.

It was a lovely visit and we managed to pack a lot into his 36 hours here, including a night in the print shop where he learned to set type and run the press.

Chef Brooks Headley, of Superiority Burger, on the agony and ecstacy of constraints:

The spacial limitations are completely frustrating and effect every single second of every day. But at the same time they’re also kind of exhilarating, especially when you’re able to try to nail a salad or dessert or sandwich. So I’m both completely frustrated and totally into the limitations of the space and they definitely affect how we do things. I think having constraints is a good thing… until it’s a very bad thing.

He’s talking about the challenges of running a 270 square foot restaurant; the same thing applies, in my experience, to running a print shop with 8 fonts of type and two colours of ink.

A bold anti-hydration stance from Northumberland Ferries.

Classic PEI move: missed the 6:00 p.m. ferry home at Caribou by 10 minutes. Enjoyed fish & chips in Pictou in recompense. And then got to see the sunset over the 9:00 p.m. ferry.

Ethan went visiting today. Piccolo the lab is 12 weeks old. There was much suspicion but, ultimately, détente.

Gaudet Optical in Halifax comes through for our family again. By happenstance (or fate), Catherine selected frames from Anne & Valentine, who made the frames I bought here three years ago. Service was, as then, top-flight.

The CBC is reporting that the Island’s two daily newspapers will be printed in Halifax starting this summer.

With printing moving to Halifax, the papers will have to be transported across the Confederation Bridge — which is at times closed to high-sided vehicles, particularly in the winter.

Cameron said both high-sided and low-sided vehicles will be “deployed to alleviate the challenges of winter conditions.”

One can imagine an emergency wagon train of specially equipped El Caminos plowing across the bridge to save the Island the indignity of going without (what the spokesperson identifies as) the paper’s “thoroughness, resonance and permanence” due to weather.

Prince Edward Island has a glorious printing tradition stretching back hundreds of years.

Back in November 1904, The Guardian reported that “Chas S. McDonald, Covehead, was in the city yesterday. He visited The Guardian office and saw the new press.”

That new press, a Duplex Web Perfecting Press, had been installed earlier that fall with great fanfare, with the entire front page of the September 28, 1904 edition devoted to the press, under the headline “The Guardian Newspaper Leading the March of Island Progress”:

That story continued onto page 2, where the history of the newspaper’s presses to that point was included. When the paper was founded in 1891 it was printed on “an old Fairhaven Press imported many years previously.” In 1896 it was replaced with a Cottrell Press; that press was quickly fitted with an electric motor, “the first application of electricity for power purposes in P.E. Island,” the paper reported. The was the press replaced in 1904; an invitation to “all subscribers, patrons and the general public” was extended to come and visit it.

You can sense similar pride emanating from The Guardian when, in 1929, it told the story of its own  brand new Duplex Tubular Plate Rotary Press. The installation, the paper reported, “marks a period in the printing annals of Prince Edward Island.”

As, alas, does this latest move to expatriate the printing offshore. It’s sad to see the efficiencies of the Fixed Link claim another victim.

Taken through a glass water bottle at EDNA. A satisfying supper had just been enjoyed by all.

On the same day that The Guardian reports on the plight of mobile home owners about to lose their rental real estate, the 99% Invisible podcast reports on a very similar situation in Utah that was ultimately resolved when the residents, with external support, united in a cooperative and acquired the land themselves.

Shirlene and the other residents of Applewood fought for several years to stay in their homes. There were a lot of twists and turns, late nights and a whole lot of emails, but eventually, after a lot of public pressure, the development company gave up on the project, and decided to put Applewood up for sale, so Shirlene called ROC USA.

“R O C stands for resident-owned communities,” explains Paul Bradley, the President of ROC USA, “and we help homeowners in mobile home parks buy their communities as a co-op.” Bradley has been organizing mobile home co-ops since the 1980s. In New Hampshire, where ROC is based, they even got legislation passed that gives mobile home owners a first option to purchase the land whenever a park goes up for sale. Today, over 25% of mobile home parks in the state are resident-owned.

If there is any place in Canada primed for a movement like this to take hold, surely it’s Prince Edward Island, one of the cradles of the cooperative movement in the country.