Annie Mueller, in I am adamantly opposed to urgency:

I need to shower, start laundry, do chores, start work, get the day moving forward. Where is the pause button? I’m competent and I can do so much but I don’t want so much to do. I want to sit here longer, to move unhurried, to glide, to breathe, to be ordered but not scheduled, to release into reverie, to let my mind wander, my shoulders loosen, my being melt and flow with curiosity, delight, warmth, ease.

I am achieving some measure of unhurriedness this week.

Manuel Moreale writes about accepting success:

I find it interesting that the pursuit of endless growth is something we despise when corporations are doing it but it’s not something that bothers us too much when it’s done by “content creators”. And yet, after a certain scale, it’s the same mindset. This is why I love to support small creators who do things simply because they enjoy it and are not driven by other incentives.

Manu edits the wonderful People & Blogs, the arrival in my RSS reader of which I look forward to every week. He runs a Ko-fi to help support the effort, and it was this post that pushed me from passive onlooker to financial backer. 

When Lisa proposed buying four folding chairs with gold velvet covering last summer, I didn’t immediately buy in.

But I suspended my disbelief, and we drove to Borden-Carleton for a chair transfer with a very helpful Summerside cousin intermediary.

The chairs have been a part of our life since. In winter they are taken out for large family gatherings as overflow seating around the dining room table. In summer they come to the camper with us, where they are general purpose workaday performers.

And I have come to love them. They are everything folding chairs usually aren’t: comfortable, solid, nice to look at.

Lisa’s broader mind FTW.

Cowboys Cry Too, a ballad by Kelsea Ballerini, with Noah Kahan:

I grew up wishing I could close off the way my dad did
‘Cause that man never felt a damn thing he didn’t wanna feel
But I’ve burned too many miles tryna ride out all the sadness
But you can’t outdrive pain, someday it’s gonna take the wheel
Can’t be alone, but don’t wanna get close to anybody
Don’t wanna bare teeth, but don’t wanna look weak, it’s a tough spot
But I’m afraid you’ll walk away when the tears start runnin’
But I hope not

I’ve watched curiously over the past few years as my friend Hai, at The Shed, has developed, fine-tuned, and found markets for canned Kool Brew coffee.

This summer she’s celebrating distribution through Sobeys, but I snagged a can the other day from the Morell Coop. It’s high-test.

I accompanied Olivia to the Access PEI office in the Charlottetown Mall this afternoon to submit the paperwork of her official change of name.

The process went extremely smoothly: we were in and out in 15 minutes.

I want to highlight the professionalism of the clerk who processed Olivia’s paperwork. Many people, sensing Olivia communicates differently, defer to communicating with the person accompanying her, often ignoring Olivia completely; in this case, however, the clerk addressed everything directly to Olivia, as is right and proper. It was refreshing.

In a month or so Olivia should have a new birth certificate.

The process was not inexpensive: the change of name was $185 and the new birth certificate was $35. This despite the minister responsible, Hon. Bloyce Thompson, committing to examine the fees three years ago. As reported by the CBC at the time:

Thompson said he would take these concerns back to the department and see if any changes could be made. 

“I have to acknowledge that that is an exorbitant amount of money and I wasn’t aware of that,” Thompson said.

We should be supporting and celebrating trans Islanders in change of name, not imposing financial penalties like this. I hope Minister Thompson follows through on his commitment. 

———

Postscript

I heard from Minister Thompson’s office yesterday:

On November 18, 2023, amendments to the Change of Name Act and Regulations came into force which reduced the fee for a legal change of name, from $190.90 to $100.

In addition, the Vital Statistics Office also removed the fees for amending an electronic birth record following a legal name change.

Olivia was charged the old fee in error, and the excess will be refunded. 

For our June edition of This Box is for Good we created a 24 page zine to tell the story of the project, and to nudge box receivers to register and pass along their boxes.

(The project is as much about this act of passing-along-generosity, and many people who are receiving don’t pass them on).

We’ve still a few copies of the June box available if you’d like to request we mail you one for free.

This afternoon I scanned the pages of the zine, so you can also read it online.

I took the lights in our back yard to a whole new level yesterday, stringing wire cable between trees to make everything more solid. (Last year we just strung the lights under their own weight).

The wires are from $19 kits from Home Hardware (they are in the hardware section near the bulk wire). Each kit has hardware and 50 feet of cable. The only extra things I needed were a couple of turnbuckles (one aisle over, if you’re looking), one for each run, and a pack of 100 zip ties to attach the lights to the cable (you can, in theory, run the cable through the holes in the lights, but everything I read online suggested zip tires are a better option).

It was a multi-step job that took a couple of hours and a lot of ladder-moving: string and tighten wires (first figuring out how the hardware works), zip tie the lights to the wires, screw in the lightbulbs.

I’m very happy with the result. We had a back yard party yesterday, and they were a delightful background to it all.

CBC reports that the Ontario Science Centre, where I spent my final year of high school, has suddenly closed:

The Ontario Science Centre is shutting down immediately due to the risk that the building’s roof could collapse, due to the use of a type of lightweight concrete that has prompted concern, the province announced Friday.

The abrupt closure, which the province says could last years, comes after the government’s  controversial announcement in 2023 that the popular landmark and attraction would be moved to the Ontario Place site — a move it says  will save costs.

I am not a conspiracy-minded person, but this seems like an awfully convenient conceit for closing the facility, given the Ontario government’s inane plan to downsize and move the Science Centre to the Toronto waterfront. 

From Scottish designer Morag Seaton, Making Zero Waste, a real project:

As a collective, MZW is committed to eliminating waste in the design process by inspiring tailors, upcyclers, brands and designers to re-think their waste strategies and re-imagine waste as an opportunity, as they continue to design products for a better future. The intent was for participants to gain knowledge about the theories, context and construction of zero waste pattern cutting and design. Throughout the workshops, MZW also explored how zero waste design can draw inspiration from the rich tapestry of African fashion and textile traditions and histories, while complimenting today’s contemporary fashion.

From Robin Sloan’s Moonbound, a description of “Matter Circus,” a fictional project:

Adjacent to Matter Circus were the manufactories, insatiably hungry for material from the recycling center. There were foundries and kilns, woodshops and upholsterers. More than anything, there were clothiers, ravenous for every kind of textile. Long streets were curtained on both sides with their offerings. Some had the look of homespun hodgepodge; others were so subtly reconstructed they would have earned applause on the runways of the Anth.

The clothes Ariel had worn out of Sauvage were in tatters. From a clothier of basic work attire, he acquired two shirts and a single pair of pants in the wide-legged style currently popular in the city. He began to say he would debit his balance of matter, but the clothier, eyeing the weave of his ruined clothes from far-off Sauvage, suggested: “Consider a trade?”

Ariel traded everything but the jacket—never that—and strutted out of the shop having never felt so fashionable, or indeed aware that fashion was an option. By the following week, his new pants were hopelessly passé, but Ariel still liked them.