My longtime friend and colleague Morley Pinsent died on Saturday at the age of 73.

I wrote about Morley in 2014 on the occasion of a benefit his community held for him; what I wrote then is as true now as ever:

Morley was contracted by the PEI Crafts Council to manage the ACOA-funded project that originally brought me to the Island and it’s not an exaggeration to say that if not for the good humour and good welcome he gave me and, later, in the tutoring to understand “the Island Way of Life” that Morley gave me, I might not still be here. There’s not a better man to be found on PEI.

I last saw Morley at The Noodle House in mid-November. I was having lunch with a friend and was engrossed in conversation when Morley walked in and sat at the next table. We waved hello, and I planned to chat with him on my way out. But he ate and I dawdled and I missed him. The best laid plans.

The fire extinguisher we snagged at the silent auction at that 2014 benefit stands at the ready behind our kitchen sink; I think of Morley every time I see it. Is there any better totem to remember a man whose razor wit and sharper mind could slay many a conflagration?

I’ve been carrying Android phones for the past few years after a long period of self-imposed exile on the Firefox OS, Windows Phone and Nokia ice floes. My choice of Android over iOS is less a religious choice than a frugal choice: to get a well-resourced iPhone would cost me $1000, and it’s almost impossible for me to conscience carrying around something that costs that much in my EDC bag. By contrast, my Nextbit Robin cost me $299, and while it’s rough around some edges, at that price I can treat it less like an expensive totem and more like a disposable appliance.

What might yet force me to buy an iPhone, though, is the seeming lack of a capable email IMAP client for Android.

The world’s gone Gmail, it seems. At least the world outside of me. And so there seems to be little development happening for Android on creating an email client with the high standards of something like Spark for iOS.

And believe me, I’ve tried them all.

My needs, I would have thought, are simple and easily-realized: I need is an IMAP client that’s reliable, elegant, and that handles IMAP folders and email attachments without flakiness.

All of the clients I’ve tried–Gmail in IMAP mode, Microsoft Outlook, Blue Mail, TypeApp, K-9 Mail, Alto, Aqua Mail–fail to tick at least one of those boxes.

And so I’ve ended up using Fastmail app that’s provided by my email service provider. It’s not perfect: it’s sluggish, has an awkward UI for deleting messages, doesn’t support sharing images from the Android share sheet, and has unusual auto-correct behaviour when composing. But it’s reliable, elegant in it’s own quirky way, and has reliable handling of IMAP folders.

But given that at least half of my email handling is done with my phone, I pine for something better.

Any recommendations?

Made-on-PEI Heatherdale Wholesome Goods oats are now available at Riverview Country Market in Charlottetown.

While you’re at it, pick up some Mont Carmel cheese curds.

Two thoughts on the individual vs. the group.

First, via William Denton, the words of Michelle Dougherty from a BBC interview:

Dougherty: It’s to do with confidence, and that you only build up over time. But what I’ve found, after I turned fifty—I don’t really care what anyone thinks: if I think it’s the right path, I do it anyway.

Al-Khalili: All of us over fifty feel like that.

Dougherty: It’s great, isn’t it? It’s great! I just wish I could have been like that in my twenties, but what the hell.

And in the latest Alpine Review, in an interview with Barry Lopez:

We were hunting out at the ice edge, and a storm came up; the wind that had started coming out of the north was coming out of the south. Big transverse cracks in the ice were opening up, so we had to break camp and cross forty miles of ice to get back to land really fast. We came to an open lead and it was a lot of water. We were just on snow machines, we didn’t have anything that would float along with us. The approach these guys took was, everybody stood at the ice edge, and everybody said what they knew about this situation, and then everybody did whatever they wanted. There was no consensus, there was no spokesperson that said, “Here’s what we’re going to do.” Everybody was left to behave autonomously. Which is very much a part of the way traditional societies behave. They’re able to combine community and autonomy in a way we just don’t seem to be able to manage; we end up with these grotesque expressions of personal autonomy and these phony communities. So when I told that story in the group, this woman said, that’s so interesting because we’re trained with this idea of fight or flight. She said there’s a third alternative, and that’s gather . And I thought, right. You get together, and talk it through, but don’t make any joint decisions. Everybody does what they’re going to do.

With the inauguration of President Trump, we’ve reached the apotheosis of don’t-give-a-fuck-what-you-thinkism, and I would never recommend more prayer in that church.

But I’m also well-aware of the paralysis that comes from an unrelenting belief in the primacy of communitarianism, especially when practiced without a supporting framework. Collaboration can be great. But if you don’t know how to do it, it can be dreadful and soul-destroying.

In my own (having turned 50) life, I find myself, more often than not, swimming against conventional currents. Sometimes this is because I’m an idiot, sometimes because I’m a weirdo, and sometimes because I can see a better path leading off from the status quo that others cannot.

This is one reason why I’ve never been able to fit into traditional party-politics: the notion of snapping my thoughts and ideas into a rigid ideological grid—in this we believe—seems like it would drain away the most important parts of what makes me me.

I think the notion of gathering might be a way that avoids the worst of both steel-eyed individualism and doe-eyed consensualism: there’s a way to make decisions that requires neither a dictator nor an advisory council.

We gather at the ice edge, share our ideas, and then head out with whatever ad hoc affinity groups might emerge. Or by ourselves.

Email newsletters are the cat’s pajamas these days. Recomendo, from Kevin Kelly and his Cool Tools crew, is among my favourites. “A weekly newsletter that gives you 6 brief personal recommendations of cool stuff,” they describe it. And that’s what it is. Here’s a recommendation that I followed this week:

For many years I’ve used Gmail’s web interface. I’ve tried lots of standalone apps, but they always fell short and I’d return to Gmail. Then I tried Spark (Mac OS X and iOS) and I’m hooked. It’s smart, snappy, and has lightning fast search. I have not used Gmail since installing Spark.

I installed Spark immediately, and am trying it out to see whether I agree (I’m comparing it to Apple’s Mail.app, not to Gmail; I’ve never been a serious Gmail user).

While you’re subscribing to email newsletters, give Mita Williams’s University of Winds a try too; it’s also accurately described: “Three links to things in the world every Saturday.” And that’s why you get.

(I am so glad that I have neither first nor last name that ends in “s”–I’m not sure I could handle the apostrophic ambiguity of it all).

From the compelling Spoon & Tamago blog, the story of the Japanese train station built around a tree.

Dave Atkinson writes about the ramifications of an oversupply of Gorgonzola cheese to the Fredericton market. He begins:

I’m squeezing through the crowds at Fredericton’s Boyce Farmers Market. It’s a few weeks before Christmas, 2002. I finally make my way to the front of the line at the cheese shop.

From this morning’s New York Times:

Steven T. Mnuchin, who failed to disclose nearly $100 million in assets, said the disclosure forms were “complicated” and his omissions were “unintentional.”

Every year, as a U.S. citizen living abroad, I have to file disclosure forms detailing all of my foreign bank accounts. I do this in scrupulous detail, down to the $8 in my PayPal account and the $15 in my Provincial Credit Union shares account.

I file these disclosures with the Treasury Department. The same department that Mnuchin is being vetted to head.

Seeking solace in the memory of President Santos.

Every night just before bed I make up a crossword puzzle for Oliver. Sometimes, like tonight, they are topical.