This photo of my mother and Sergey in my parents’ Ontario kitchen having a Skype video chat with Sergey’s wife Leisa in her apartment outside of Kiev in Ukraine could very well have been featured in an AT&T advertisement in 1960 anticipating a rosy electronic future:

So much digital stuff is happening every day that it’s easy to lose track of just how truly amazing this is: video traveling, in real time, halfway around the world, from kitchen to kitchen, on a magic tablet you can hold in your hand. For free. Amazing.

The Charlottetown Festival announced yesterday that it’s cutting the size of its orchestra from 19 to 13. My friend Dale eloquently dicusses all of this from the point of view of a musician in the pit, and I highly recommend that you read his post.

I’m no great fan of Anne of Green Gables — The Musical — I am a victim, alas, of being part of the chorus for a staging of the musical when I was in grade 3, and so I have a strong involuntary flight response whenever I hear the stirring refrain “Anne of Green Gables, never change.”

But I’m the father of a die-hard fan — [[Oliver]] has seen the musical every summer for as long as I can remember — and as much as it pains me that Anne is the primary artistic output of “Canada’s National Memorial to the Fathers of Confederation,” I recognize the centrality of the musical to the cultural and economic life of the city and the province, and so, despite my artistic misgivings, I am forced to admit that, net-net, it’s a good thing.

I also have a lot of friends who are employed, directly or indirectly, by the musical’s annual staging: technicians, stage crew, carpenters, designers. And musicians. Indeed if you you want make a living as a professional musician on Prince Edward Island, the Festival’s pit is about your only option; and the contribution of those so-employed to the musical life of the province is inestimable.

So when the Charlottetown Festival cuts 6 positions from its orchestra, I pay attention: I’m concerned for friends, concerned for the musical itself, and concerned for what the unanticipated side-effects of such a cut will be for the Island.

What really bothers me about the announcement of this cut is the way that it was spun by the Confederation Centre administration: CEO Jessie Inman was quoted by the CBC saying:

“I think the magical theatre experience that we have offered to our patrons of Anne — The Musical for so many years will be maintained. The integrity of that score will be maintained, and I don’t believe that our patrons will have any lesser experience,” she said.

Which I read as “we never really needed those 6 other musicians anyway, and nobody will notice they’re not there.” Setting aside whether this is true or not, this shows tremendous disrespect to the players whose positions will be cut: if there will be no “lesser experience,” then, presumably, they were just dross taking up space in the pit.

It’s fine to spin the “magical theatre experience” bullshit to bus tour companies, but this kind of talk has no place when addressing so serious a cut to an Island audience: these musicians are our friends, our neighbours, our music teachers, the parents of our kids’ friends, the people we see on the street every day. Whether or not economic realities of the Centre’s operation require this cut, Ms. Inman owes all of the musicians employed by the Charlottetown Festival an apology for her callous disregard to the role they have played in the success of the musical and in their importance to the Island community.

After a lot of printing and labelling and stamping, 64 copies of the 2012 Christmas Card went out in the mail earlier this week. I used small poly bags as envelopes, sticking a white mailing label and stamp on each and inserting the card so that it faced out through the transparent back. While I made the Canada Post mailing deadlines for all Canadian locations (December 15), missed the US deadline (December 13) by a day, and the deadline for Europe, Australia and Taiwan by almost half a month. So not everyone will get something for Christmas, but some will and the rest, well, you can hold on to things for 2012. Just out of interest I’d appreciate it if you’d add a comment to this post when and if you do receive your card.

In last week’s accidental destratification episode I found myself at a house party with the city’s hipster intelligentsia nervously clutching a glass of red wine while listening to Foster the People on the hi-fi and trying not to flash entirely back to the social suicides of 1980. I felt old and decidedly unevolved.

This week, however, destratification alighted on my shoulders again, and the results were decidedly better.

Every year the Rodd Charlottetown Hotel fêtes its loyal customers with a Christmastime buffet and bar in the lovely Georgian Room. This year, by dint of my role as secretary to the PEI Home and School Federation, I was invited to attend (the Federation holds its annual meeting there every year, so we are, indeed, a loyal customer).

It turns out that the other loyal customers all wear suits. And are the rich and powerful among us. Judges. Doctors. Tycoons. Moguls. The people, in other words, liable to say “why don’t we do it at the Rodd’s” when they’re at meetings discussing, say, where to hold the annual White Ball.

While I might normally, as a dungaree-wearing ne’er do well, feel like uncomfortably like a fish out of water among such suit-wearing oligarchs, in this case the accidental social destratification paid off: because, outside of my home and school brethren, I didn’t really know anyone there, I was free to graze amply at the lavish buffet stations, most of them almost completely untouched, while the socially well-connected were trapped in their vortices of social obligation: it’s hard to break away and grab another helping of cajun salmon when that guy you’re trying to cultivate a deal with is talking your ear off about the Dow Jones Industrial Average (note my complete lack of awareness of what important people talk about).

And so eat I did.

I started off with an appetizer-sized portion of grilled scallops served on a bed of risotto. It was fantastic: perfectly cooked, served at the perfect temperature.

Next it was the smoked salmon table, where all the fixings required to create a custom-tailored smoked salmon masterpiece were on tap: rye bread, dilled cream cheese, capers, tomatoes, lemon wedges. I returned to this well several times and was seemingly the only one who did, as the table seemed hardly touched even as things were winding down.

Over to the fruit table: grapefruits, kiwis, oranges, starfruits, mangoes. Accompanied by tiny desserts: tarts, squares, and the like.

Back to the hot line for the aforementioned cajun salmon, served fresh-grilled on a bed of rice with a perfect white sauce.

On to the cheese table: smoked cheese, swiss cheese, cheddar cheese, gouda cheese.

Back to the fruits on the way out.

I did, in fact, get a chance to have a nice conversation with Shirley Jay (our Executive Director at Home and School) and her husband Allan in amongst all that eating. And I did actually wave hello to a few people that I do know — I’m not a complete dungaree-wearing hermit after all.

But I emerged more well-fed and satisfied than most, I think. And I have my dorkiness to thank for it.

The Dow was up 45 points, by the way, closing at 11868.

When we last discussed my ailing Volkswagen Jetta you may recall that it was in the context of the $3,242.94 estimate to repair it from Brown’s Volkswagen.

For additional guidance on this matter I turned to Craig Wilson who, 10 years ago, recommended the dealer, then called Sherwood Volkswagen, as a place to buy a new car. I’d never met Craig, but I took his advice, and I did, indeed, enjoy the purchase and service from Sherwood Volkswagen back in the day. So I reasoned that it would be a good time to check in with Craig to see where he goes these days for service.

Craig gave a ringing endorsement to Dave’s Service Centre at the corner of Allen Street and St. Peters Road. I’ve driven by the place a thousand times, but I’d never been in. Today after dropping Oliver off at school I drove the Jetta over for them to take a look at. The result:

That number over there in the bottom right, $269.11, that’s the price, parts and labour, Dave’s Service Centre charged me to fix everything but my small exhaust leak (which I didn’t ask them to fix). Indeed it includes an additional issue — a wonky ABS sensor — that wasn’t an issue until this morning.

The $586.80 that Brown’s quoted for power steering lines? Turns out I only needed one of them, and Dave’s happened to have a salvaged one around which they sold to me for $75. The shimmy in the front end I’d asked Brown’s about? Brown’s solution — replace the front struts — was quoted at $709.89. Dave’s found the problem to be simply a scalloped front tire, which they rotated onto the rear of the car, no parts needed.

Now it’s not really fair to say that Brown’s quoted me $3,242.94 to do the same thing that Dave’s did for $269.11, because Dave’s did different things. The point is that Dave’s appears to exist in the real world of solving problems so that cars work better, as opposed to the “how much can we figure out wrong with this car to wring the absolute largest margin out of this guy” world that Brown’s VW lives in.

Dave’s Service Centre today becomes my go-to place for auto repair: they were friendly, efficient, explained everything to me clearly, showed me the old parts, and sent me on my way. Recommended (I should really send Craig a $3,000 bottle of scotch, shouldn’t I).

Tonight was my first night in the basement of The Guild taking the new Golding Jobber No. 8 letterpress for a ride, printing something actually useful (or, at least, something actual): it was printing night for the 2012 Christmas cards.

Over the weekend I set the type, a passage from A Christmas Carol. The original plan was to set it in the shape of a Christmas tree, but I couldn’t make that work on the 3”x5” index cards, so I shortened things up and set it as more of a candle or ornament shape that looked like this:

I made a proof with a rubber stamp, noting and fixing some issues (the “shut-up hearts” was set as “shus-up hearts” with a non-printing “u” for example):

With the job proofed, I set it in the larger Golding Jobber chase and, tonight, headed down to The Guild (I really do need to get “composing” and “printing” under the same roof sometime soon!). The original plan was to print the text surrounded by four lines, with ornaments, printed in red, in each corner.  The vertical lines, however, proved problematic: I couldn’t adjust the job so that they were equidistant from the right and left edges, and I ended up not liking the look of the lines in any case. So I removed the vertical lines and left the horizontal ones, which made for a dramatic improvement:

I then used the awesome power of the Golding Jobber to run off 100 of these in about 10 minutes. I didn’t take very long to get into a good rhythm (and to realize that I need to recreate the old wooden “shelf” that holds work in front of the press). And then I had a pile of 100 of the black:

Next, I removed the black type from the chase and set the red ornaments in, set to appear in the four corners just touching the black horizontal lines. Things were going so well by this point, that something was bound to go wrong. Here’s as far as I got with the red:

With everything aligned almost perfectly, I moved the metal “paper holders” that swing up and down to hold the paper in place on the press a little closer to the job. I was sure that they weren’t too close. I was wrong. The result: on the next run there was a metal-metal-paper sandwich that crushed the right-hand ornaments:

In the end, with no replacement ornaments and the evening drawing to a close and Christmas only 11 days away, I had to settle for a black-and-white job and leave the fancy two-colour job-with-ornaments until another year.

The silver lining in this experience: it was the ornaments, not my nose, fingers, ears or hands, that got crushed. And I learned another layer of awesome respect for the crushing power of the press, something that I’m sure will stand me in good stead.

So you 66 Mail Me Something subscribers, your red-free cards will be in the mail to you on Wednesday; depending on your location they’ll arrive before or after Christmas. Enjoy.

Last week when Readmill launched to the public I jumped in with both feet, blogging about its general greatness and on some novel uses for it. Inevitably, after I started using the Readmill iPad eBook reader more, and thus generating more highlights, I went looking for my highlights, and others’ highlights, in RSS form. When I didn’t find them, I tweeted and Readmill replied:

Fortunately, despite the absence of RSS, Readmill does have a public API, making it possible to roll ones own RSS. Which turned out to be a relatively easy task in Yahoo Pipes: just slurp in the publicly exposed XML of everyone’s highlights, loop through each item to look up the title of the book in question, and emit as RSS: ta-da, you’ve got an RSS feed of everyone’s Readmill highlights, something that looks like this in Google Reader:

You’d think that an RSS feed of everyone’s highlights wouldn’t be all that useful and, indeed, when I encounter highlights in German or Chinese it’s not; but, on balance, I’ve been finding this RSS feed is a goldmine of interestingness. It is, after all, a constant stream of things that other people find interesting enough to highlight, and thus, in essence, a stream of what’s good about what’s good.

And it’s more than just passing-interest: yesterday I bought a book — The Hollywood Economist — based on the interesting highlights I’d seen stream by in my RSS from Readmill community manager Aaron Kelly.

Note that none of this would have been possibly without the open systems and associated bits of flue underlying it all: Readmill’s API which exposes XML; Yahoo Pipes which reads XML and transforms it into RSS; Google Reader which consumes RSS; Melville House, the publisher, which had the courage to release a book unencumbered by DRM (which both enabled Aaron to read-and-highlight it, and me to buy it).

In the ABC News Iowa Republican Presidential debate held last week candidate Mitt Romney was asked a question by moderator George Stephanopoulos:

Governor Romney, Speaker Gingrich crystallized his argument a couple of weeks ago. He said, and I quote, “I’m a lot more conservative than Mitt Romney, and a lot more electable than anyone else.”

Romney replied, in part (emphasis mine):

But really, this is more about— about us talking about what we believe. And w— and whether we can lead the country at a time when— when we need to restore the kind of values that make America the greatest nation on Earth.

We have in Washington a president who believes in a fundamental transformation of America into an entitlement society. Where the government takes for some from some and gives to everybody else. And the only people that do real well in that setting are the people in the government. This nation was founded on the principle of being a merit society, where education, hard work, risk taking, have lifted certain individual, and they have helped lift— lift the entire nation.

All credit to Romney for the clarity of this explanation; I like it when candidates talk in broad terms about their worldview rather than about the minutiae of their personal lives or their narrower interest-based policies.

Constrast Romney’s philosophy with that put forward by President Obama in an interview on Sunday with 60 Minutes:

If we make sure that everybody’s doing their fair share, to pay for things like infrastructure improvements in basic science and research and advanced manufacturing and innovation, we ask those who’ve benefited the most over the last three decades, we ask them to do a little bit more. And if we’ve got tough rules of the road — like the financial reform package that we passed into law last year — there’s no reason why over the next five, ten years, we cannot reposition ourselves so that every single American, no matter what they look like, no matter where they come from, they can succeed. And that’s my goal as President. That’s what I think about every day. And that’s what led me to run for president in the first place.

While on the surface they are saying the same thing — “work hard and you can succeed” — they approach this issue from completely different poles: Romney is saying, in essence, “there will always be a class of successful individuals who will, through their activities, provide a climate where others might thrive” whereas the President’s position is more akin to “together we can create a climate where everyone can thrive.” It’s a subtle but extremely important — and polarizing — difference in philosophy.

I wish that the American Presidential campaign could be about this, about competing political philosophies. And not about how many marriages someone has had, or what labels we should apply to various candidates, or whether a given candidate changed their mind about something.

Here’s is the 2012 levee schedule for January 1, 2012 for Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island and area. If you’re new to all of this and want to give it a try, read How to Levee.

Print out this handy PDF file and carry it in your pocket to guide you through the day, and spread the word on Facebook and Twitter.

All levee times have been confirmed by telephone or email contact with organizers, or with information from published sources.

Other Formats

• PDF (print and carry in your pocket!)
• iCal (load into your iCal on a Mac to sync with your iPod Touch or iPhone)
• XML (load into any RSS feed reader)
• Google Calendar
• CSV (import into a spreadsheet or roll-your-own app)

Updates

• Removed Handibear Hills, which is not having a levee this year. But they are having “open barn week” between Boxing Day and New Years Eve.
• Added Engineers PEI, a new levee this year.
• Changed start time of UPEI levee to 11:30 a.m.
• Changed time for Charlottetown Fireman’s Club to 6:30 p.m. and noted that it’s a dance and not a levee; in their words, “everyone comes here after the levees.”
• Changed time of Masonic Temple levee to 1:00 p.m.
• Confirmed times for HMCS Queen Charlotte and Haviland Club.
• Added time for Polar Bear Swim (not technically a levee, but…).
• Confirmed times for Benevolent Irish Society and Prince Edward Regiment (all times now confirmed).

Our friend Beth Cudmore died last week.

Our lives overlapped with Beth’s in innumerable ways over the last 20 years: I used to shop at Henderson & Cudmore, the Charlottetown haberdasher run by the family; I worked with Beth’s son Chris at the Anne of Green Gables Store; I counted Beth’s late husband Brian as a good friend; I came to know Beth’s daughter Cynthia, first here on PEI and later through her Panamanian operation and her daughter Carolyn, with whom I shared an excellent travel agent; I helped Beth get her computer working when it had problems; and, by coincidence, I am friends with many of the people who called Beth a landlord over the years.

Perhaps more than anything, however, I got to know Beth around the dinner table at our mutual friend Catherine Hennessey’s house, and through the dinners and Christmas and birthday parties we shared there I came to know her as an independent, funny, caring, curious person.

The last time I saw Beth was earlier this fall — it seems like only yesterday — around that same dinner table. We talked about our Volkswagens, about her kids and grandkids and about [[Oliver]] and shared a meal with friends and family.

During Oliver’s first summer back a decade ago in the summer of 2001 my friends Sophie and Oliver (Oliver’s namesake) visited from the USA and we used the occasion to hold an “Oliver Oliver” party at 100 Prince Street. Beth and Brian both came, and I snapped this photo of the two of them:

We’ll miss Beth around that supper table; our condolences go out to her family.