I’ve spent hundreds of hours in the Union Bank Building at the corner of Great George and Richmond in Charlottetown; it’s one of my favourite buildings in the city, and although I haven’t been inside in several years, I still walk by it, to and from work, at least twice a day.

When I first moved to the Island in 1993 the building was home to the PEI Council of the Arts. And so my first step inside the door was to drop off an arts funding application (it wasn’t accepted; if memory serves the project was called Mobile Logic Welders; I cannot recall anything other than that title).

Later in the 1990s, when I first started working with Elections PEI, its offices were on the second floor (except during general elections, when they temporarily moved downstairs), and I spent many hours plotting elections websites (and maps and lists and databases) on both floors; several years later the offices moved downstairs permanently, and the servers we were then maintaining moved into the d two-level bank vault in the back corner of the first floor. In later years, once the need for a large public site on election night was obviated by the Internet, all of the election action happened in this building too: a lot of election results flowed through my fingers as they came in from the 27 electoral districts over the phone and got entered into our digital system.

But that’s not all.

For a time the IslandCam was based in the fourth-floor “crow’s nest” of the building, pointed at Province House across the street; because it was a flaky system strung together with masking tape and baling wire (and an Apple QuickTake camera), I spent a lot of time in that crow’s nest fiddling.

And, years later, when I was involved in a project to put the statutes and regulations of the province online, Leona Nicholson’s door, at the Legislative Counsel’s Office, was a regular stop.

The building will forever be “180 Richmond” in my mind, because that was the door that I used during the early years; the other door, the front door to Elections PEI once it moved downstairs, was “94 Great George,” but I never completely embraced that address.

I sat on a picnic bench tonight and sketched the building and saw things I hadn’t noticed before despite my intimacy with the building over the years; that’s one of the joys of putting pen to paper.

For the month of July, you can use your membership card from one government department (the Public Library Service) to obtain a pass for free admission to the sites of another government department (the PEI Museum and Heritage Foundation), thus affording you, through extra-special double-bureaucracy, admission to sites that you, by virtue of being a citizen and taxpayer, already own and should be entitled to free admission to regardless.

This program is well-intentioned, no doubt: an effort to get more Islanders to visit our museums.

But, rather than doing the obvious–removing the admission fees and throwing open the doors–the result is a more complicated, time-limited impediment to visitation.

A better solution, should universal free admission not be financially viable:

For the month of July, show your library card to get free admission to our museums.

Let’s do that instead.

Catherine is upstairs. She yells down to me; I’m sitting in the living room.

“Can you bring me my light saber?” she asks.

“What!?” I reply, wondering if she is delirious and channeling Princess Leia.

“In my purse…,” she replies.

The noise of the air conditioner is muffling her voice, so it’s possible I’m not hearing her clearly.

I walk upstairs to the bedroom.

“Why do you want a light saber?” I ask, trying not to appear judgmental.

“My lifesavers! The buttered rum lifesavers from my purse,” she pleads, with a hint of annoyance tempered by her cheery good nature.

Upon reflection, lifesavers made more sense.

Yesterday afternoon there were Canada Day celebrations in Victoria Park, and Oliver and I went along, primarily so that Oliver could grill the new host of Compass, Louise Martin, on fake news, real news, and the role of social media.

Once those duties were despatched, we ordered up a couple of Saj from a kiosk, and retired to the relative calm of the ball diamond to enjoy them.

Shortly after we sat down, a reckless dog owner looking for fun arrived at the diamond, let their dog of its leash, and started throwing the ball for it. This drove Ethan the service dog crazy, and, as I didn’t have complete hold on to him, he managed to dart off into the bushes, with me in hot pursuit. I cornered him in the lead up to the Fanningbank fence, and relative calm returned.

We finished up our Saj and left the park, chastened by the experience.

Our next stop was The Guild, where we found Evin Collis, from the Winnipeg Art Gallery, animating a go-ahead-make-art workshop.

So we decided to turn our recent pain into art, and made a stop-motion animation about The Incident at the Ball Diamond.

Oliver, of course, is a stop-motion veteran–his Frosty the Snowman animation sports more than 32,000 views on YouTube–and so I was in good hands.

Here’s the movie that resulted:

Evin, by the way, was a model facilitator: he told us what we needed to know, made it clear we could ask questions, and then got out of the way.

I am so prepared for the post-apocalyptic non-digital era soon to be upon us. We’ll sketch the highlights of our days, and pass our sketches from house to house. It will be awesome. Happy Dominion.

Last year, around this time, I screwed up my courage and introduced myself to David MacDonald at the Charlottetown Farmers’ Market. It was one of the best decisions I made all year, and directly from that chance meeting sprang the Dr. Helen MacDonald Collaboration and Facilitation Scholarship, an initiative of the PEI Home and School Federation (of which Dr. MacDonald, David’s mother, was the founding president ).

David is back on the Island this summer and is hosting a breakfast discussion series at UPEI; the eight weekly topics constitute something of a “masterclass in humanity” led by someone with an abundance of it.

The sessions are being held at 618 University Avenue (née Marks Work Wearhouse) on Tuesday mornings from 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. They are free (as is parking). You need to preregister by emailing climate@upei.ca or calling (902) 894-2852.

The weekly topics are:

1. bJuly 4, 2017 - Are Oceans Us? The Climate/Ocean Crisis: How can we end the global ‘addiction’ to fossil fuels?

2. July 11, 2017 - Is Politics the Art of the Deal? What is indispensable about Politics in our Global Village?

3. July 18, 2017 - How can we create a habitable, thriving and just future?

4. July 25, 2017 - Who’s Speaking, Who’s Listening, Who Cares? Why is The Medium really the Message?

5. August 1, 2017 - Is Capitalism Over? What are healthy Models for a Caring Economy?

6. August 8, 2017 - Why does our culture depend on Violence? If we love this Planet, can we Live in an age of Mass Destruction?

7. August 15, 2017 - Why Racism? – its roots and branches. ‘The African Condition’ meets ‘Black Lives Matter’

8. August 22, 2017 - Is Reconciliation Possible? Why do we need to unsettle the settler?

You need not attend all, although I can’t imagine which you’d choose to skip. I’ll see you there.

Remember Pie Man? Last night for supper we ate his larger, more filling cousins, after picking up 9 of them from The Handpie Company in Borden on our way back from Sackville on Monday. They made for a tasty supper for me and Oliver.

I rarely get to see my old friend Dave Moses now that he’s on the west coast making it big. So it extra-especially nice to get to go to lunch with him at the Charlottetown Farmer’s Market on Wednesday. I’m happy that we’re both still alive and kicking in our 50s.

Often, when I’m chatting to my friends and neighbours these days, I’ll find myself asking “did you read Allan Rankin’s column in The Graphic this week?” by way of introducing something that I’ve been pondering; because Allan’s given me an intellectual kick.

I’ve known Allan for more than 20 years, and over those years he’s become a friend. He is a passionate, talented Islander, and a passionate, talented writer. He also happens to know, by virtue of his many years of public service, where many of the bodies are buried, and some of his more entertaining and illustrative columns are those where he runs up to–and sometimes crosses a titch–the line to telling tales out of school.

Of course he also knows that skillful rabble-rousing sells newspapers, and he fulfills his duties in this regard admirably and provocatively.

I don’t agree with Allan’s take on every issue: it was difficult to be a Rankin-confederate this spring when he was tearing strips out of PEI Home and School Federation regularly for the way we chose to confront the prospect of school change. But Allan doesn’t lie, and even when I don’t agree with his take, I recognize that his take represents an important chord of opinion that needs to be aired.

Last week Allan wrote of rural vs. urban Prince Edward Island, in part:

And speaking of driving, have you ever noticed that Charlottetown people find it difficult to leave their metropolis. The distance to any rural location seems intimidating and formidable, almost like a cross Canada expedition. “Drop the sweater off when you’re in town,” is the city dwellers expectation, not “I’ll drive out and pick up the sweater.” The highways connecting rural Prince Edward Island to the capital city seem to go in only one direction, and our government has encouraged that one-way traffic with policies that make it increasingly difficult to live in rural communities east and west.

As someone whose day to day spine of existence runs the short distance from Prince & Richmond to Queen & Richmond, I know the truth of what Allan expresses there, and when I’ve run this paragraph by those that live outside the Charlottetown orbit they breath a sigh of knowing realization. If you want to get someone from West Prince started, try explaining to them how Charlottetown is the “halfway point” for a provincial meeting of any sort; it is demonstrably not the case, and, for those from Greater Miminegash, life in provincial affairs is a constant battle to explain that fact.

This week Allan turns his sights on the Confederation Centre of the Arts, writing, in part:

But given the vapid thinking and huckster approach of the current Confederation Centre of the Arts board and management, I doubt very much if either Anne or Belinda would make the Festival cut today. Both scripts would be looked upon as risky commercial propositions, possessing too much local cultural content, and unlikely to draw an audience.

I am compelled to say this in light of the Centre’s decision this year, marking the 150th Anniversary of Canadian Confederation, to produce Million Dollar Quartet, a jukebox musical featuring the songs of three dead and one almost dead American musician.

Propriety and proximity dictates I withhold expressing my own take on the Centre as strongly as Allan has opted to, but, again, the truth is easily mined from his rhetoric, and that truth is something that we owe ourselves to pick up and examine carefully: somebody has to point these things out, and good on Allan for being that person.

Allan’s column is served up several ways: you can read it on The Island Heartbeat, his own blog,  you can read it online in The Eastern Graphic, which is a more annoying and advertisey and “you’ve read X of Y articles this monthy,” but also pays the bills. Or you can subscribe to the real live physical Graphic, which is probably the very best way of all because it both pays the bills and helps to keep print alive.

At the beginning of the month I wrote about Android Pay coming to Canada, and I pondered what the benefit of paying with my phone vs. paying with my credit card were, given that the physical complexity of paying with each was about the same. What I learned in the interim is that if you have an unusual-looking phone, like my Nextbit Robin, you get a lot of “hey, that’s a cool looking phone” comments when you pull it out to pay. Which, if you are prideful, is self-reinforcing behaviour: who doesn’t want to be that person with the cool looking phone, after all.

On Sunday night, on VIA Rail Train № 14 from Montreal to Sackville, I set up a complex nest of devices–two phones, two laptops, an external battery pack–to charge on the table in our room. As I did this before the train started to move, I paid no heed to the fact that these devices would be in motion as the train moved, and that this motion might result in disaster.

And, sure enough, when I woke up at 6:00 a.m. the next day, they’d all tumbled to the floor. Fortunately, the only casualty was my phone: Oliver’s laptop and mine were fine, as was Oliver’s phone and the battery pack. My Nextbit Robin, however, had a cracked screen. It still worked, mind you. It’s just that using it ran the risk of embedding glass shards in my fingers:

While this was a (preventable) accident, I can’t help but thinking that it ultimately amounts to punishment for my prideful attitude. At least that’s what my more religious ancestors would tell me if they were still alive.

So, for now, I’m back using my 8 year old Nokia N95 (I used it to take the picture of the shattered Robin). As much as I’d like to keep using the N95 forever, it’s just one generation too old to bear the complexity of connecting to the Internet, typing T9 style, and so on. That said, having a dedicated camera button, and dedicated slide-out audio controls was brilliant at the time, and I miss these dearly.

And as much as I’d like to be able to go phone-free, or to revert to a flip-phone, there are just too many aspects of my mobile lifestyle that require ready access to the Internet, and so I’m looking at my options. Repairing the Robin might be possible, but there are also newer sexier phones that have come along since that attract my eye.

Oh, right, pridefulness.