Stanley Tucci cooks spaghetti aglio e olio.

It’s my favourite way to have pasta. Patience is the primary ingredient.

I don’t understand the role of this Bridging humanity and efficiency video from Health PEI — is it marketing? celebration? politics? education? — but it’s well-produced, and uncommonly clear for health system communications. Dylana Arsenault should be put in charge of talking to the public.

Some high-quality barista work at Receiver Coffee on the North River causeway this morning. Accompanied by top-flight service.

Colin and Samir are a YouTube duo who experimented with many different approaches to filmmaking, having focused, most recently, on conversations with YouTubers about YouTube.

As a starting point, I recommend How Hasan Minhaj escaped the YouTube Algorithm and The Nearly Impossible Job of Managing MrBeast: Samir and Colin are skilled interviews, and the “behind the music” approach, diving into the mechanics of influence, the algorithm, and how “content creation” works is fascinating, both as a watcher and a maker.

Bruce MacNaughton writes, in It Was a Big Night, about his early kitchen experiences:

The custom was to serve old food to staff who were further down the pecking order in the kitchen brigade. The dishwashers usually received food well past its prime, covered in a gravy of some sort to mask it.

What will I cook for these men? I couldn’t imagine cooking this way for three 80-year-old Portuguese characters who were very hard-working. They always spoke Portuguese while working. They grab half-smoked cigars from the plates, wipe them off, light them and smoke them while washing the pots and pans. They were real characters.

It was 4 in the afternoon, so I cooked breakfast. I pan-fried potatoes with onions, eggs sunny side up, bacon, toast and jam. Being nervous how they would receive the plates, I rang the bell and watched the three men shuffle up to the counter. They looked at the plates for what seemed like forever. Then, finally, they turned and looked at each other in dead silence. Then they looked at me with tears flowing down their cheeks. It still gets me when I remember that moment. The men were so grateful for a fresh meal. I agree with what Don Miguel Ruiz once said, “Respect is one of the greatest expressions of love.”

The personal thing category of Bruce’s blog is a steady source of compelling tales well-told.

Two years ago I wrote about my first visit to M. Vrac, the zero-packaging store that had just opened in West Royalty. I wasn’t entirely sold:

All that said, I’m not sure whether I’ll go back to Monsieur Vrac: I’m completely on board with the philosophy, and seeing how much packaging I didn’t use was enlightening, but I wonder if I have it in me to bus my own tables week after week. I will try. I hope others will try. In the meantime, I have a lifetime supply of vegan 70% chocolate chips.

M. Vrac closed its Charlottetown store this week; from Facebook, in part:

We regret to inform you that we have decided to close down our zero waste store. Our last day of business will be on November 1st. After that date, our Zero Waste Store will no longer be offering any kind of products and services @ 171 Buchanan Drive in Charlottetown

All our inventory and equipment has to be sold. Starting tomorrow you’ll find lots of discounts on all of our products.

The decision to close down this business was not easy, but the impact of the pandemic on our sales as well as the recent storm Fiona have forced us to review our business model.

As if to mark the occasion, I managed to cut myself this morning trying to wrangle an extension cord I purchased from Staples this morning that was encased in a seemingly-impenetrable tomb of plastic for seemingly no reason whatsoever.

I lament the passing of M. Vrac, as it was a showcase for the wide variety of how much typical packaging isn’t needed, and can be removed without harm from the logistics ecosystem. At the same time, I only shopped in the store once or twice more after that initial visit: the convenience penalty was simply too great.

Ultimately I don’t think the sustainable ecological answer is for there to be special-purpose “zero-packaging stores,” but for all stores to move toward zero-packaging.

By Opening This Book is a limited-edition 200-page book from artist Jonas Lund that is “not exactly a book”:

This is a book, yet not exactly a book, more a contract between Jonas Lund and You, the reader.

While browsing the Internet we all click mechanically and blindly on the boxes confirming that we “agree to the terms of service”, entering into a legally binding contract with the corporation behind the website, yet the omnipresence of the legal pop-ups (and the near physical impossibility to read them) has gradually emptied the agreement of any substance beyond a legal function.

In a similar move, by opening this book, you agree to all of the following terms as presented by Jonas Lund. Somewhere among the 200 blank pages, the artist has handwritten a URL giving the reader access to a unique page, on which the reader’s experience will begin. Each copy of this book is unique and no one but the artist knows what terms the reader agrees to by opening this book.

Lund has an interesting body of work; Walk with Me is a good place to start.

A few days ago I walked to my mailbox up the street and opened it to find just one piece of mail, a postcard featuring a Shanghai street scene:

On the back was a short handwritten message about how Zephyr Berlin, a Kickstarter project launched by my friend Peter, and partners Michelle and Cecilia, had just started shipping its intriguing travel trousers. Inasmuch as I was under the impression that Zephyr Berlin wrapped up operations 2 years ago, this struck me as odd. But perhaps, I thought, Zephyr had risen from the dead? 

I greeted this prospect of a possible rebirth with some enthusiasm: while I was an early backer of the Kickstarter, by the time the pants got from concept to production it turned out that the largest size, large, was for a 34 inch waist; at the time I sported a 38 inch waist, and there was no way they were going to fit. I had to downgrade my backing from “One pair of pants sent to you. First dibs from our production batch. Special Kickstarter edition” to “supporter” and sit out the production run.

As I write, I’m comfortably wearing a pair of blue jeans from The Gap with a 34 inch waist: perhaps I could ride the Zephyr now that I’m trimmer?

It was only today that I thought to look at the postcard in more detail: it was sent on November 4, 2016, six years ago:

Somehow this postcard, placed, Peter reported to me today, in a Shanghai post box that “looked a little shady,” took 2,214 days to arrive. 

Where has it been?

Stuck in Shanghai? Stuck in Charlottetown? On a really, really, slow boat. The mind boggles.

So, no Zephyr Berlin trousers for me. But a mystery to ponder, and a welcome opportunity to ping Peter in Berlin.

Alicia Kennedy, on taking a vacation:

A vacation is taken to escape the daily, to appreciate something new—I suppose I’ll be wondering whether it’s a good thing to do, or perhaps a neutral thing, or maybe even a bad thing, for the rest of my life. I do know I desperately wanted one, perhaps more than any other time in my life.

An announcement from Hai at The Shed on Facebook:

The hardest thing to share, for us these days is to close the sweetest spot which is our original shop at 99 Pownal. Just to do more crazy things such as installing the new bigger roaster, transforming our lovely coffee shop into a coffee roastery. Meaning,
- New roaster set up
- New coffee cupping/tasting events coming
- New kool product launching
- New obsession’s foods/bakeries offered.
We will be back even sweeter. 
P.S Just repost a reel capturing our sweetest customers, partners, friends who are non stop encouraging us to make better coffee everyday. Some were gone, some moved away but you’re always in my ❤️. 99 Pownal will see you again, soon.

I’m archiving the Instagram reel here for posterity; points for finding my footprints: