A lucky happenstance — it was actually a bug on the website that needed some fixing — drew my attention to some long-forgotten audio recordings on Almanac.com, (the website of The Old Farmer’s Almanac that I’ve maintained for the past 17 years).

The monthly Garden Musings are short essays written by George and Becky Lohmiller, gardening exports from Hancock, New Hampshire. Since 2007, each essay has been recorded and posted on Almanac.com; before he died in 2008, my dear friend and colleague John Pierce was the narrator and fixing the bug I fixed today unearthed these old recordings on the web. They are among the last things John recorded before he died. It’s so good to hear his voice again:

• The Roots of Evil
• Cyclamens for Christmas
• Milkweed
• Miniature Vegetables
• Lilies

The monthly Garden Musings are available as a podcast too; they’re not read by John any longer, of course, but a new crop of narrators has stepped in to the breach.

It was Architecture Week here in Charlottetown last week, and, alas, it was a week of merriment that passed me by entirely. Unlike last year, when I not only visited every architecture office of note in the city, but I gave them awards to boot.

My absence, I am happy to say, was noted by no less than three “where are you?” email messages from the architects of the city on Friday afternoon. Apparently I was a sizeable enough proportion of the open-house-visiting-public that urgent action was required. Or maybe there was simply fear that I was off giving awards to some other firm.

My disappearance from the wine-and-cheese-fuelled afternoon was, I hope, understandable: Friday also happened to be the 40th annivesary of no less than two of my brothers, and, as is the tradition in my family, this event was marked with an epic “fly everyone in from across the country” surprise party, for which my complicity services were required. (Friday was also my 21st anniversary with Catherine, something that got lost and overshadowed in the process).

It seems perhaps that the architects’ concerns were warranted, at least as regards shining a light on their profession: the Lieutenant Governor’s Award of Excellence in Architecture was given out on Thursday night at Government House and this event appears to have completely escaped the attention of media. Granted, it appears to have also escaped the attention of the Architects Association itself. So they have only themselves to blame. (Does anyone know who this year’s winner was?)

As almost all my heroes are either librarians or architects (if you’re a librarian at an architecture firm we should probably discuss marriage), I will endeavour to not schedule conflicting events for the 2013 celebration of the profession. Keep the wine chilling.

The summer I was 19 years old I bought myself a VIA rail pass, a frame backpack and sleeping back from Canadian Tire, and headed east. It was 1985 and I was looking for adventure. Or at least to get out of the house.

My first stop was Québec City.

After setting up camp at a small, cheap, only-mildly-sketchy hotel on the outer edge of the old city I went looking to buy a comb, the only vital personal care item I’d neglected to bring with me. 

While I was equipped with 6 years of Ontario public school French, none of the vocabulary lessons I’d learned from Sol involved personal care items, so, lost in a pharmacy that had no combs in evidence, I was left to describe what I needed in more primitive terms.

“Avez vous un chose avec les petites batons pour écraser mon cheval?”

“Do you have a thing with little sticks to straighten my hair?”, I thought I was saying. I wasn’t.

But, somehow, I got a comb.

The next day I continued east to Moncton. I knew nothing about Moncton. But on the map it looked like it was close to the ocean, and I thought I might exercise my camping muscles by walking to the seaside.

The train arrived mid-morning. I stopped at the food court in the mall near the station for breakfast, and then headed out of town on foot.

I had no idea how I knew which way to go; I suppose I must have followed the signs for Shediac. I was entirely unprepared for walking the 30 kilometers ahead of me. I was wearing cheap old running shoes. I had no food or water. I’d never walked more than a mile or two before in one go.

But, like I said, I was looking for adventure.

After about 3 hours I’d escaped the suburbs of Moncton and was in rural New Brunswick. My feet hurt like hell. It was getting late. And I had no choice but to continue.

I kept walking. And walking. And walking.

In the late afternoon I was pretty close to not being able to walk any more: I had blisters on both feet, was dehydrated, and I had little idea how far it was to the sea.

So I decided, having really no other choice, to hitchhike to Shediac. I’d never hitchhiked before. It had never occured to me to hitchhike before: I’d never had anywhere I needed to go that I couldn’t get otherwise. 

It was surprisingly easy: I stuck my thumb out, and the first car that came along picked me up. Ten minutes we arrived in Shediac. 

I’m not sure what was going on in Shediac that late summer night, but there turned out not to be a hotel room or a campsite available. Not a single one. I walked (hobbled) from one end of town to the other. Nothing.

It was getting late — it seemed like midnight but I expect it was around eight — and so, in desparation, I headed off into the forest, just across the road from the RCMP detachment (perhaps I figured I’d be safe?). I didn’t have a tent, but I had a plastic sheet. And plenty of branches. So I set up camp as best I could, tucked into my sleeping back, and fell almost immediately to sleep.

Until I was woken up by what, at the time, sounded to me a lot like a bear. It probably wasn’t a bear. It might have been a squirrel, or a raccoon, or a fox. But whatever it was, I couldn’t see it, it was breathing really loudly, and I was terrified. In a panic I tore down camp and stuffed everything into the Canadian Tire frame backpack and ran out to the highway.

Where I stuck out my thumb. Toward Moncton. I was getting the hell out of Shediac.

Again, hitchhiking proved quite easy: a truck picked me up after about 5 minutes. Nice guy. Told me where I might be able to get a room in Moncton, and drove me right downtown, out of his way.

I spent a very (very) pleasant rest-of-the-night, no creatures in sight, in a room at the Colonial Inn — it’s still there — just 450 m from where I’d started the day 12 hours earlier at the train station.

The rest of my trip was much less eventful: the next day I took the train to Halifax, found a summer residence room at Dalhousie University, and hobbled around the city on my blistery feet for 3 days. I saw the The Man with One Red Shoe at the Paramount. Went to the public library. Saw a bit of the city.

And then, after 6 days on road, I got back on the train and headed back west to Ontario.

Tim Chaisson first appeared on my radar in an episode of Steven Garrity’s Acts of Volition Radio 8 years ago. He was Timothy back then — his old timothychaisson.com domain seems to be a Japanese motorcycle site now — and only 17 years old. Steven played a track, Stay, from Tim’s “Something Acoustic” album and called him “the beginning of a really great songwriter.” He was right.

Tim’s the kind of young hipster who plays the kind of clubs that start up after my bedtime, so I’m left to catch his band dates like the bandshell in Souris (which is, don’t get me wrong, a pretty good place to see any Chaisson). I somewhat famously predicted, 5 years ago, that “the Timothy Chaisson song all over again will be used as closing credits power ballad on a prime-time television U.S. program in the next 12 months”, a prophecy that came (sort of) true 3 years later.

I really, really like the kind of impromptu videos that Tim’s made over the years — like this one in Toronto and this one at UPEI. And he played a lovely acoustic set at Zap Your PRAM, five years ago this month.

Which is, all to say, in the intervening years I’ve become a big fan myself. And so why the appearance of new album by Tim is a Big Deal. I’ve been listening to The Other Side, released just a few weeks ago, all day. I can’t stop: it’s a great piece of varied work, pop built on a bedrock of east coast traditional. From Long Road of Love (backstory):

Caught a teardrop from the sky.
You’re the saddest girl on PEI.
You should never love another guy.
But you’ll never know if you never try.

You can watch a track-by-track commentary on each song on the album on Tim’s YouTube channel. Which is where you’ll also find this video, feature Serena Ryder, for the track Beat This Heart:

You can buy The Other Side where quality albums are sold, including iTunes and from Tim’s label. You’ll be happy you did.

My great-great-grandfather, Nathaniel Caswell, was born, the first of 11 children, in 1835 in Innisville, Ontario. He died, 97 years later, in 1932, in Cobden. Here he is in 1925, at age 90, sitting atop the roof of a house he built himself:

In Our Caswell Relatives he’s described as a “man of high intelligence [and] an omnivorous reader [who] being gifted with unusual eyesight, could read without the aid of spectacles” and as someone who could “pass for having a much better education than he had ever received.” His grandson, Dr. Robert L. Jones, recalls:

Nathaniel Caswell appears to have been very much respected as a citizen. He was notable for his easy-going nature and his tolerance of the opinions of others. He never got excited over things which were none of his business. He was a lifelong Conservative (except for one occasion when he voted for a candidate of the United Farmers of Ontario,  a deviation which he always subsequently regretted). My father, who considered this to be a compliment, not a disparagement, said of him that he lived so long and with so little illness because he never killed himself working. 

At the age of 92 he composed an autobiographical poem:

In 1835 I was born on a small piece of earth 
In a log house nine miles from Perth. 
My father and mother watched over my youth 
And taught me respect for religion and truth.

My brothers and sisters joined in my play, 
And helped me enjoy the sports of the day. 
My partner in life was loving and true; 
It was sad when the time came she had to depart. 
The hope of the Christian still rules my heart.

My sons and my daughters I also must say 
Are thoughtful and kind when I am old and grey. 
I never was rich but always had good hash 
A small share of brains, often scarce of cash.

And yet I have friends I’d like to greet 
But if on earth we never meet 
We all may come in love complete 
And join around the Mercy Seat. 
And when our earthly sands are run 
If we the great reward have won, 
We then may tune our voice and sing 
With Him who washed us in the blood 
And made us kings and priests with God.

If any should ask you who do you think I am 
You may answer and say, 
‘It shure must be Than.’

If I’m still dangling my legs from the side of a shed and writing poetry when I’m in my 90s, I’ll count myself lucky.

Oliver Duncan Lowell Rukavina turned 12 years old yesterday. We celebrated with breakfast the day before with uncle, aunt and cousins, and then, last night at supper, with a sushi supper with friends new and old.

One of the things about Oliver is that he doesn’t do anything halfway: he either does it, or he doesn’t do it, and the transitions between one state and other more “blamo” than “gentle evolution.”

This has been true of many things — sitting up, crawling, walking, Googling — and it was true of being born too. Oliver, after two days of unconscious teetering on the edge of life, just, one morning, turned on as a healthy, full-formed, fully present little kid:

That was, by coincidence, the day he got his name, meaning the nurses could stop calling him “Baby Male Miller.”

Raising Oliver with Catherine is a tremendous joy; I can’t imagine my life without either of them. Happy Birthday, Oliver.

My grandmother, born Natalia Potjahailo and known after she was married as Nettie Rukavina, was born in Fort William, Ontario in 1915. As a child she played in a mandolin orchestra; here she is, sitting beside her cousin Stella at the left end of the first row, in an undated photo from that time:

Many years later, at 80 years old, she was still playing the mandolin. In 1995 my brothers and I gave our parents a large glass jar containing sand from the four corner of the country we then called home (our sand came from Victoria, PEI, gathered on the car right off the Island toward Ontario). My brother Steve captured the preparation and unveiling of that present in video, and he used a duet of my father on guitar and my grandmother on mandolin as the soundtrack

After three days of rain, giant mushrooms suddenly sprout on Prince Street just up the street from our house.

Because I found it so difficult to get information about the so-called “PEI Plan” from Bell Aliant, here’s a brief synopsis of what you need to know if you’re interested in taking advantage of it yourself. I wish Bell Aliant or the Province of PEI documented the details themselves somewhere; for now, apparently, the details are in an internal Bell Aliant document that employees cannot release to the public.

1. The plan is in place as a “stop-gap” measure for rural Islanders who live at addresses not yet served by Bell Aliant’s wired Internet. So, to be eligible, you need to establish that your address isn’t eligible for wired Internet. You should be able to find this out on the High Speed Availability Check page on the Bell Aliant website, but there might be an additional “check with engineering” when you request the service to double-check this.
2. There’s no cost for the hardware: Bell Aliant provides a Novatel MiFi 2732 as part of the plan (you must return the device if you cancel service).
3. No long-term contract is required. You must give 30 days notice to cancel service.
4. There’s a $35 one-time sign-up fee.
5. If you’re not already a Bell Aliant customer for other services, they’ll do a credit check before approving you for service. You’ll be asked to provide your date of birth and one of your SIN number or a credit card number. The credit check happens quite quickly.
6. There’s a monthly fee of $49.95 for the service.
7. There’s no usage cap, and no usage-based billing: you pay $49.95/month no matter how much Internet you use.
8. You can connect up to 5 devices to the MiFi unit via wifi. Range of the signal, in my testing, is sufficient to reach all corners of a large house.

This service is a good deal compared to the equivalent Bell Mobility service (which is, in effective, what you’re being resold a version of by Bell Aliant): with no contact you’d need to spend $199.95 for a wireless MiFi-like device, and the mobile Internet plans increase in price as you increase usage (I exceeded the 100MB entry-level $22/month cap simply by testing the device and in the 18 hours since I dropped the device off for my cousin usage has been 500MB).

To order this service do NOT call Bell Aliant’s regular customer service or support numbers, as it’s likely that the people you talk to will not know about this PEI-specific plan. And do NOT go to the Bell Aliant-branded kiosk in the Charlottetown Mall, as they are not able to provision the service there.

Instead, call the Bell Aliant Charlottetown “mobility” office at 902-566-0117 and ask about the “PEI wireless rural Internet plan,” or go and visit the office in person: it’s located in the old Island Tel maintenance building at the corner of Queen and Belvedere; park between the large headquarters building and go inside the marked entrance, then through the first door on your left and ring the bell on the desk. A (in my experience, helpful and friendly) representative will come out to assist you.

If, for some reason, you are told that the service is no longer available, or that there’s a long waiting list for hardware, point them to my experience, and mention to them that the official position of Bell Aliant, as communicated to the media after I raised the issue, is that there is no waiting list or delay in providing service to eligible customers.

Following the promise of success in my drive to get Cousin Sergii equipped with high speed Internet on the farm in Green Meadows, I headed out to Bell Aliant’s old maintenance shed at the corner of Queen and Belvedere in midtown Charlottetown yesterday. I was greeted by Marcie, who I’d spoken to earlier in the day, and she handed over a small paperback-book-sized box containing a Bell-branded Novatel MiFi 2732, a credit-card-sized device that is, in essence, a cell phone that only does data.

Oddly, I was strongly advised to not leave the battery in the unit — it can run by an internal cell-phone-sized battery or by electric plug — because “the batteries can expand” (there’s more details in this 2010 report). But, okay, we can run the device from the mains with no problem.

Marcie was very helpful: walked me through the setup of the device, gave me some tips about day-to-day usage, and so on. She’s the kind of helpful “when you call, I’ll be there”-style employee that Bell Aliant needs more of in their call centres.

I headed home to downtown Charlottetown to test the device before heading out to Green Meadows; it worked without issues: started up, found a signal and, when I connected by wifi to the device’s SSID, I was prompted for a WPA password which, helpfully, was printed on a label on the device itself.

In town the throughput wasn’t great — 0.60 Mbps down and 0.03 Mbps up, which is much less than the device’s theoretical 7.2 Mbps down and 5.7 Mbps up. But I’d been cautioned by Marcie that the service is kneecapped by Bell Aliant so as to be equivalent to the throughput on their rural wired DSL Internet, so I wasn’t expecting “high” high speeds (I can see the internal logic of this “parity” in service, but it does seem odd to handicap a device in the name of equity; I suppose the concern is the shock customers would experience otherwise when forced to “downgrade” to wired Internet).

But, even at 0.60 Mbps down, I could still make Skype calls (albeit audio-only), and surf the web (albeit at dial-up like responsiveness), so we packed everything up and headed out to Green Meadows.

On arriving we were warmly greeted by Sergey, who, without mobile or wired phone nor Internet, told us he’d spent “two days out of the world.”

I powered up the MiFi unit, set it on the window, and connected to it with my iPad and ran another speed test; to my surprise and delight the situation was much improved over the city: 3.42 Mbps down and 1.32 Mbps up. Sergii connected his laptop via wifi, fired up Skype, and was, shortly thereafter, doing a full-on video Skype call with his wife and daughters in Ukraine, taking them on a tour of the house he, for his time here on PEI, calls home.

Bringing Sergii “back into the world” and letting him reconnect with his family made all my machinations this week worth it. I snapped a photo of the happy family chatting away and sent it off to Bell Aliant, just to remind them what wonders their technology is capable of.

It’s useful to remember in all of this, that if you’d told 1994-me that there would be a day that you’d be able to pack more than a “T1” full of bandwidth into something you can slip into your pocket, I’d not have believed you. Really amazing bandwidth back then was 14.4 KBps, which is 0.0144 Mbps, or 237 times slower than what Sergii has out on the farm now.

Barring any changes in throughput (or unanticipated battery expansions), Sergii’s set now. Thanks to all who helped make this happen.