What the web version of this CBC story about ministerial travel on Prince Edward Island cannot effectively communicate is the sense of righteous indignation with which is was delivered on the local radio news this morning.

Of the myriad traits of Prince Edward Islanders, good and bad, the most poisonous and self-defeating one is xenophobia: the sense that we’ve got a good thing going on here and the associated resistance to the strange, the foreign and the unusual. As if accepting a world beyond our borders risks pollution of the Island Way of Life.

This is by no means a universal trait, and there are many, many Islanders with minds open to the world. But still the tendency lurks in the heart of the Island identity. And that’s not only unfortunate for the rest of the world, which could learn a thing or two from Islanders, but more so for the Island: restricting the oxygen of the novel is not the way to thrive in the interconnected world.

Which is why the CBC’s “gotcha” approach to “uncovering” ministerial travel, as though finding evidence of an egregious crime, is so galling. It is the role of the fourth estate to be vigilant, and certainly the CBC fulfills this role every day. To fan the flames of the natural tendency of Islanders to be suspicious of anyone travelling off the Island, however, is irresponsible, and goes beyond vigilance and into tabloidism.

I’m certain the some ministerial travel is vital to the life of the province. I’m equally certain that, on occasion, ministerial travel is essentially ceremonial and at least somewhat self-indulgent. Which travel is which deserves scrutiny.

But regardless of how practical ministerial travel is, it is important to the life of the province that ministers travel, broadly and frequently: to remain solely inside the echo chamber that is Island politics leaves a minister exposed to a limited slice of ideas, approaches, opportunities and ways of doing things; the simple fact of being immersed in a different environment is reason enough to travel, for the openness of mind that inevitably results.

When Premier Robert Ghiz went to China earlier this autumn there may well have been practical reasons for doing so.

But, more importantly, when Islanders saw Robert Ghiz on television standing on a stage in China with his fellow Premiers it communicated, as the Premier himself said, “We need to look outwardly.” That’s an impulse we should celebrate.

Update for non-Islanders: “ministers” are member of the provincial cabinet, chosen by the Premier to lead government departments.

There’s activity at The Town and Country Restaurant on Queen Street near City Hall in Charlottetown: the lights are on, the windows are clean, and people are going in and out. Not open yet, but it looks like the something’s afoot. Nice to see after a year of being shuttered.

Possible reasons that Bruce Rainnie would email me looking for a telephone number where he could call me:

1. Sally Pitt unavailable to pinch hit on Compass tonight and they need a last-minute fill-in host.
2. Decided to ditch the Five Minute Flurry sports segment in favour of a Open Source Orgy segment; wants me to produce.
3. Trouble getting along with brother Matthew; seeking advice from someone else who works with a brother.
4. CBC management thinking of changing the name of Compass to Cross-Canada Newscape; wants me to make it stop.
5. Needs someone to call the Leafs-Blackhawks game on Saturday night.

Actual reason the Bruce Rainnie emailed me looking for a telephone number where he could call me:

• Wireless networking issues with Vista and Windows XP.

If you use Gizmo5 or another VOIP client, you can now get Charlottetown Public Transit schedule information simply by dialing sip:info@thebus.ca. You’ll get the same interactive system you get if you dial (902) 367-3694 on a regular telephone.

How To Read Your Bill on the Maritime Electric website is a partially useful tool for helping decrypt your electric bill. While it would be nice if there was more detailed information provided, it’s still an excellent starting point for figuring out what you’re paying and for how much.

My favourite part of the page is the address of the customer on the sample bill: only on PEI is it conceivable that there would be a community called Anywheres:

It’s been raining babies in Charlottetown this year — everywhere you look they’re breaking out. Oliver is no longer wee by comparison, but sometimes it’s good to remember that he once was:

The photo is by my friend Steve Muskie and was taken at Steve’s house in Harrisville, NH in the spring of 2001 when Oliver was eight months old.

And as proof of what utterly irresponsible parents we were, here’s me hanging on to Oliver in the back up a pickup truck cum taxi in Chiang Mai, Thailand 8 months later in the water of 2002:

And finally here’s a photo from that summer, when Oliver was walking (he’d taken his first real steps the month before during a visit from my parents):

Our house at 100 Prince Street has two rooms, the upstairs bath and the downstairs kitchen, that are lit with halogen light bulbs on tracks. Each track holds four 50 watt bulbs. The bulbs are hot, burn out a lot, and are expensive to replace ($17 for a package of three).

I’d always been under the impression that there was something special about the whole halogen-lighting setup, and that these were bulbs we couldn’t replace unless we replaced the fixtures; a helpful clerk at Canadian Tire disabused me of this notion this afternoon, telling me and another guy with the same issue that although a compact fluorescent replacement might stick out a little more, there’s no problem with swapping out halogen and replacing them.

And so I bought two packages of two 9 watt ECObulbPLUS compact fluorescent bulbs to retrofit the bulbs in the upstairs bath — three of them burnt out over the last week anyway, so it was high time.

The new bulbs were just a little longer than the ones they replace, but because the fixtures aren’t the kind where the bulbs are flush, this didn’t matter at all.

The light is only slightly less “warm feeling” than the halogens, and not at all like the “fluorescent-lit 1975 high school history classroom in the middle of winter”-light I assumed I might be ending up with:

I replaced 200 watts of bulbs with 36 watts of bulbs. Assuming we have the bathroom lights on for 2 hours a day, or 730 hours a year, that would mean that, before the change, we were using 146 kilowatt hours to light the bathroom every year, for a cost, at the Maritime Electric rate of 15.15 cents/kwh, of $22.11 per year.

After swapping in the new bulbs we’ll use 26.28 kwh/year for a cost of $3.98/year. The bulbs were on sale for $10 per package, so the $20 total cost will be paid for in the first year of the bulbs 9-year rated lifespan.

Next stop: the kitchen. There are six of the 50 watt halogen bulbs there that need replacing, and the Canadian Tire sale is still on.

I’m running an experimental telephone-based bus schedule for the University Avenue line Charlottetown at (902) 367-3694. Phone that number and you’ll hear when the next buses are leaving from the Confederation Centre and from the Charlottetown Mall, and you’ll then have the option of selecting a stop and hearing the next four buses outbound and inbound from that stop. You’re welcome to try it out and get back to me with feedback in the comments.

The same information is available, of course, on the web at thebus.ca and on your mobile browser at m.thebus.ca.