North by Northwest is one of my favourite films of all time, and tonight I get to share it with Oliver, as it’s showing, for one night only, at the Cineplex.

I purchased my first fountain pen in May of 2000 from Fountain Pen Hospital in New York City, a Waterman Hémisphère.

My first use of the pen was to write a letter to the editor of Saturday Night magazine. They didn’t run the letter, but they did run the envelope.

In the years since, my tastes have run to the cheaper end of the fountain pen universe, and I am especially fond of those made by Lamy; I own three of them, and I don’t believe I paid more than $30 for any of them.

I’ve always used cartridges in my fountain pens, mostly for fear of ink spills (as Catherine will attest, fear-of-spills runs strong in me). Many years ago my friend Catherine Hennessey generously gave me a bottle of Quink (which might be the most elegantly-named product ever). I was terrified of spilling the bottle, and I handled it like one might handle an atomic bomb. This fear prevented me from ever actually using the ink, and, as far as I know, it still languishes in some spill-proof corner of our attic.

All the talk of the joys of using dip pens when sketching, though, got me thinking that it might be time to break out of my ink shell, and that The Bookmark, our independent bookstore here in Charlottetown, has developed a helpful sideline in pens and inks and related supplies proved to be all that was needed to push me all they way.

Oliver and I took a walk up last night after supper and picked up a “converter” for my yellow Lamy Safari pen, along with a bottle of waterproof Noodler’s Ink (a laudable brand, but one with packaging seemingly designed on a Commodore 64 by someone who’s just figured out that you can stretch letters).

This morning at the office, I flushed the blue cartridge ink out of the pen, using this helpful video and a newly-acquired nose-aspirator-bulb, and then carefully dipped the converter into the ink bottle and used its twisting suction mechanism to slurp up some ink.

I pulled a Fabriano notebook from the reserve shelf, and took the newly-equipped pen for a ride:

The ink is beautiful, especially on the Fabriano paper. And it is, indeed, waterproof:

And now I’ve got no more cartridge-anxiety and can write and sketch with carefree abandon.

I’ve been coming to Hon. David MacDonald’s breakfast seminar all summer long. So far the “breakfast” has consisted solely of high-fructose-corn-syrup-based Chartwells fare.

Until this morning.

When one of our number brought a loaf of bread he baked this morning. Which means that while I got up at 7:00 a.m., he got up at 5:00 a.m.

So, apparently, it takes 8 weeks to achieve sentience as a group.

After I successfully decamped from Twitter and Facebook earlier this year, I continued to hang around Instagram.

It was casual at first, but then I started posting sketches, and I found myself a nice little community of sketchers along with a generous bunch of friends ready to hit the “like” more often than deserved.

What poisoned me on Instagram, though, was the advertising, which I find more insidious than elsewhere because it just pops up in the timeline exactly like everything else, leveraging my openness of mind and spirit to the photos of my friends and familiars to insert commercial messages. That hurts my brain. Every single time.

As I need to keep reminding myself, we built a decentralized web, and nurturing it requires that we use it.

So that’s what I’ll continue to do. Here.

That I need to keep rediscovering this impulse is a testament to the allure of the centralized, and of the need to examine what’s missing from the independent web that makes straying so easy.

There’s a new coffee place, Java Moose, floating at Quartermaster Marine at Peake’s Wharf. It’s got a pleasant, sunny deck that’s arguably the most scenic place to get coffee in town.

I sat there this afternoon and sketched the boat tours booth next door, a booth that went through a bright orange retrofit last year.

On Sunday afternoon at Cloggeroo I was sitting just behind Leo Cheverie, who’d set down his lawn chair and tucked in for some excellent Island folk music. I’m very happy with the Leoness of the result.

Oliver finished the second of his two shifts as photographer at the Cloggeroo folk festival today; he was warmly embraced by the Cloggeroo family, and it all went swimmingly.

My badge said “Assistant Photographer,” and that’s what I was; it was a nice way to be at the festival, helping Oliver excel at something new.

Cloggeroo, meanwhile, has proved a revelation: we saw some amazing bands there over the last two days, bands I never would have expected. As we heard echo from the stage, just as we were leaving, “this ain’t no ceilidh.” And it ain’t.

Day three is tomorrow: no volunteering for us, just civilian audience life. If you’re looking for a pleasant way to spend Sunday afternoon, please join us.

I needed to get some cash to pay Oliver’s support worker, so I stopped at the ATM in The Guild on my way out the door today.

It’s been a long day, and I’ve worked hard on multiple projects; my brain isn’t at 100%. And so I put my MasterCard in the ATM instead of my credit union account card.

Because the PIN number is the same for both, I was able to blithely proceed with a withdrawal before I noticed what I’d done.

So what I got was a “cash advance” on my credit card.

I had a vague memory of reading that interest applies immediately to cash advances, so I called my credit card issuer to confirm this, and to find out how I could put the money back.

Long story short: I can’t.

Well, I can, but credit card payments work on a “last out, last in” basis, so to pay back the $200 cash advance I received means first paying back my entire outstanding credit card balance of $1800; only then do I start paying back the cash advance.

And even if I do this, I’m still out the $2 fee the ATM charged me, the $4 that my credit card issuer charges up front for cash advances, and a few days worth of interest on the $200.

Fortunately the ATM only allows withdrawals of $200 at a time, so the damage was limited.

But it’s a cautionary tale, one that will make me pay more attention the next time I groggily withdraw cash.

From the Dictionary of Canadian Biography entry on Theophilus Desbrisay (emphasis mine):

Theophilus Desbrisay’s appointment as governor’s chaplain for St John’s (Prince Edward) Island was obtained for him in 1774 by his father, the lieutenant governor. A student at Trinity College, Dublin, Theophilus was already in deacon’s orders. He was ordained to the priesthood by the bishop of Waterford on 3 July 1775, although he was not yet of canonical age, and he then set out for Charlottetown. In the Strait of Canso the vessel on which he was a passenger was captured by American privateers who had just plundered Charlottetown. Following his release, he arrived late in the year at the capital only to discover that there were no funds for his support and the £3,000 allocated by the crown in 1772 for construction of a church, court-house, and jail had been appropriated by Governor Walter Patterson to pay government salaries.

You’re on your way to Charlottetown when your ship is captured by pirates who had just plundered Charlottetown.

What are the odds!

It was on that same plundering trip that the original Great Seal of Prince Edward Island was stolen, never to be returned, a tale summarized well in Canadian Symbols of Authority: Maces, Chains, and Rods of Office:

During the American War of Independence, two American schooners, the Hancock and the Franklin, sailed into Charlottetown Harbour. On 17 November 1775, the Island’s administrator (acting governor), Phillips Callbeck, along with the surveyor general, Thomas Wright, immediately went down to the beach to meet what they assumed were two fishing vessels. To their surprise they were promptly taken prisoner by Captain John Selman and Charlottetown was sacked by the Americans.” Everything ofvalue was purloined, including the island’s massive Great Seal, which was made of sterling silver. Callbeck and Wright were released in January 1776, and George Washington apologized for their ordeal.” The Great Seal, however, was never returned.

Callbeck and Wright’s letter to George Washington provides a complete account of the attack; Washington wrote to John Hancock about it as well.

If you are an American reader of the blog, and have privateers in your family history, could you please check your attic for the Great Seal.

My first sketch in a Paper-oh A4 sketchbook, I started over lunch on the patio at Casa Mia with the right side of the COWS building. I added the former Henderson & Cudmore storefront on my way home, and finished the rest of the COWS building, running up Queen Street, after Oliver was off to bed (working from photos).

It’s an entirely different experience sketching on A4 after four months of the much smaller A6: having the extra room both allows more detail and allows for more material.

I’m happy with the result, although I have a list of things I wish I’d done better for the next time.