We’re hosting an informal gathering with Green Party candidate Will McFadden at 84 Fitzroy Street, Charlottetown on Monday, May 31 at 2:00 p.m.. This isn’t a debate or a speech or a formal Green Party event, it’s simply an opportunity for some of us to meet Will, hear his ideas, and ask some questions.

If you’re interested in coming by, please drop me a line, just so we can get an idea of how many people are coming.

We’ve sent out invitations to other candidates in the Charlottetown district to come to similar gatherings over the next couple of weeks; watch this space for details.

I grew up in Ontario. Ontario is large. And far more socially stratified than Prince Edward Island.

I grew up in a left-leaning household. Socially progressive. Open-minded. My grandmother was a scrutineer for the NDP. I never ever heard my parents grumble about paying taxes. We were thankful.

And it was easy to demonize, or at least marginalize, those who thought otherwise. Like our anti-metric MP Geoff Scott. Or the inexplicable Tory leader Frank Miller. Or the whacked out fast-talking candidate for some fringe party who wanted to install particle-beam weapons in the neighbourhood.

Growing up near Hamilton, and having lots of friends whose parents worked for Big Steel, it was easy to see the political world as black and white: you either supported the workers, or you supported their corporate bosses. Later, when I worked in a union newspaper, echoes of the same: you were one of us, or one of them.

I’m not suggesting this was a positive thing, at least not completely. When the teams are so clearly defined, it’s not hard to just join the regular team by default, which doesn’t inspire a lot of thinking. On either side. Nonetheless, if you’re going to end up on a team by default, I think I ended up, generally, on the right one.

Segue to Prince Edward Island.

Politics here, to someone who didn’t grow up in the midst of it, is incomprehensible. Black is white and white is black. Conservative and Liberal don’t mean here what they do in Ontario, partly because the lack of big corporate patrons forces them to be more grounded. And because big labour on PEI is more white collar than blue collar, the sensibilities of the NDP are somewhat foreign as well.

Suffice to say that every time I think I understand Island politics, I get knocked on my ear, and realize it will take another 12 or 13 years before I even get an inkling of what’s going on. Is it any wonder that I’ve choosen to concern myself with understanding the apparatus of politics rather than its substance?

Which brings me to my current quandry.

I’m faced with a slate of candidates here in the Charlottetown district each of whom I either know directly, or at least through friends.

When I headed up the Victoria Row Business Owners Association (long story) a decade ago, I worked closely with Shawn Murphy, who owns property on Richmond Street. He was a smart, capable, generous colleague.

The second Christmas we spent on the Island, Catherine Hennessey invited us for Christmas dinner with her, David Weale, Reg Porter and Darren Peters. Although that is the sum total of my personal time with Darren, he has nonetheless said hello to me absolutely every time we’ve passed each other on the street in the years since. Many people I’ve come to know and respect on the Island also know and respect Darren. It’s rare to hear an unkind work spoken of him.

Dodi Crane is an occassional regular at Eddie’s Lunch (aka Viva’s, aka the MarinaGrill). She’s married to a friend of mine. Her office used to be next door, and we shared the same recycling bin for six months. In a province where NDP candidates are sometimes described as “knuckleheads,” Dodi has always stood slightly above the fray, and seems respected even by people who don’t agree with the substance of what she espouses.

Will McFadden lives across the street from my brother Johnny. He parked his van in their driveway last week. A friend whose opinion I respect says Will is a smart, intuitive, crackerjack thinker.

So if I set aside the swirling confusion of the national campaigns — something that is becoming increasingly necessary as things descend into quote-trading and ad hominem attacks – and see my local decision as one between four well-respected neighbours, all of a sudden things start to get really difficult.

I have a friend who was once courted to run provincially. He was invited into the office of the Premier of the day and shown the results of polling in his district with his name in the fray. He told me it was an eerie experience to see his character judged in such a clear-cut numerical way by his friends and neighbours, to have an actual percentage attached to the question “on a scale of one to ten, how honest do you think I am?”

But, when the decision is concrete — “who’s the best neighbour to send up to Ottawa” — and not abstract (and specious) — like “who will put more billions into healthcare” — then the campaign crystallizes into something more akin to a public job interview process than a pointless pep rally. And so questions like “who is more honest?” or “who’s the better manager?” become really important.

And so for perhaps the first time in my life, with the bedrock of “left = good, right = bad” removed from play, no deal-breaking issues to cleave off superfluous candidates, I’m forced to think really, really hard about my vote. I’m going to have to work at this. And I only have 32 days.

Good citizenship, of course, demands nothing less.

Compass ran a very well-produced story tonight on why Prince Edward Island’s voter turnout is as high as it is. I don’t know exactly what it was about the piece that was so compelling, but there was a good combination of interviews, historical photos, B-roll and commentary that was all tied together into more than the sum of its parts. Kudos to Nancy Russell and crew for an excellent piece.

Every night on The National they run the standard four stories covering the party leaders’ tours across the country for this General Election. Here are my impressions after Day One:

• Stephen Harper - Surprisingly relaxed and looking a lot less like a wax museum figure than he usually does; he’s dressing better too. Performed better than I expected, and is doing a good job at covering up the secret “lets ship all the poor people to Australia” agenda that others report him to have. 6/10
• Paul Martin - That blue checked shirt took 10 years off him. Also looked relaxed, but the whole “Stephen Harper is the anti-Christ” approach is already wearing thin, and I predict it will backfire because it makes Harper more credible, not less. The “let’s visit the greenhouse and help the little children plant seeds” was over the top. 5/10
• Gilles Duceppe - He’s not running for the top job, so he can be more relaxed than the other guys. He used to feel a lot like a high school vice principal; he’s a lot friendlier now, more like a that socialist friend of your parents who used to drop by from time to time. 8/10
• Jack Layton - The green hues in the backdrop are nice. The prancing through Chinatown was a little too composed and artificial. The speech was well executed: he got all the righteous indignation out of his system before the campaign, and now he looks like the calm alternative to the warring Harper and Martin. Performed better than I expected. 7/10

Where was the Green Party, by the way? If they’re running a candidate in every riding, don’t they deserve equal treatment? The existing setup means the CBC is an agent of status quo preservation.

Oh no, I’ve been Stevedotted. Firecat rocks!

An off-the-cuff remark on last night’s Beat the Press on WGBH led me to this up-to-date display of front pages of newspapers from around the world from the Newseum — “The world’s first interactive museum of news.” Cool.

From Ann comes a nudge towards Josh Ritter. I’m listening right now. Ann doesn’t recommend lightly, so I will explore.

And via Grassy Hill comes Susan Gibson from Texas. The title track [MP3] of her album Chin Up is fantastic: the kind of music that shoots clean into your diaphragm and enlivens your insides with glee. The rest of the album is great too. Texas demands more of our cultural attention.

By the way, Susan is playing at the 2004 Woody Guthrie Folk Festival in Okemah, Oklahoma, running from July 14 to 18. If there was ever a reason to go to Oklahoma, this is it.

One more music note: the Good Music Recently Heard section that appears at the right of all pages here now has an archives page all its own that lists all the music I’ve been captivated by of late.

Away From My Desk, subtitled “A Round-the-World Detour from the Rat Race, the Tech Wreck, and the Traffic Jam of Life in America,” is a book by Rif Haffar about a motorcycle trip around the world with has girlfriend Tracy.

This is the first round-the-world travelogue I’ve read written by someone with money. I’m used to reading about the adventures of travelers who stay in $5 hotels and spend their days welding together the frame of their broken jeep. I’m used to characters who travel close to the ground, get themselves into trouble, and have a true sense of adventure.

Haffar is none of these things: his travel plan in a new city consists mainly of finding the most expensive hotel that provides the greatest isolation from the teaming hordes of the native population. This isn’t universally true — especially while they’re still traveling by motorcycle, the pair does live slightly more “rough and ready.” But the last half of the book is full of Intercontinentals and Sheratons.

I say “still traveling by motorcycle” because this really isn’t an “around the world by motorcycle” book — the motorcycle was tied up at Indian customs, and the rest of the trip — through Asia, Australia and South America — was conducted by plane, sea, and rented cars, trucks and motorcycles.

Haffar tries to be a witty and entertaining writer. But his primary attempt at humour — wildly exagerating numbers, like “and 1,000,000 mosquitoes” — is quickly tiring, and the balance of the humour rests mostly on making fun of, or pointing out the peccadillos of the locals.

I like reading tales of round-the-world adventures for two reasons: I like learning about the world, and I like learning about what happens to people when they travel. Away From My Desk doesn’t convey much about either topic: we don’t learn very much about the countries visited, and we don’t learn very much about Haffar and his partner, save for their predilection for luxury.

Whereas in First Overland, we learn a lot about the interplay of the expedition team, and Who Needs a Road? is filled with the protagonists getting thrown into prison and hoodwinking themselves through customs, Away From My Desk is really just a mundane travelogue, relating neither a thrilling adventure nor a compelling travel relationship.

If you’re a serious student of round-the-world travel you’ll still get something out of the book. Just don’t expect too much.

I bought Away From My Desk at the The Toadstool Bookshop in Peterborough, NH in the spring of 2004.

• Too many splash pages. These are useless and annoying.
• If you’re going to use your photo, at least have a well-composed, high-resolution photo one taken; a bad photo is worse than no photo at all.
• If the national party is going to link to your site, make sure it’s there!
• Hey, NDP, it’s time to get out of the 1992 web design rut you’re in!

Three websites on the radar this week under the “planet restoration” category (or at least “less planet destruction”).

From my mother comes Meta-Efficient: A Guide to the Most Efficient Things in the World, with information on everything from rain water harvesting to energy efficient televisions. The introduction to the site says:

An average household spends $5000 on utilities and gas per year. Incorporating these tools and techniques can dramatically decrease your dependence on petroleum, electricity, gas for heating and cooling, municipal water and sewage utilities. Once implemented these sources will be available to you perpetually.

From Rob Paterson comes news of Talk Energy, a “new international web-site community geared towards sustainable energy solutions, sharing ideas and showcasing innovative alternative energy products.” Talk Energy is based at UPEI, has broad aims, and seems uncommonly chocked full of practical goodness, like this discussion of measuring fridge energy consumption. It’s having a public launch on Tuesday, May 25th at 1:00 p.m. at the Irving Chemistry Building at UPEI.

And, finally, a re-run of a pointer to a site I’ve pointed to before: Dale, Sandy, Riley and Bailey live in a house that’s off the grid. Their website details how they did it, and what they do about heating, appliances and the like. They’re living the kind of stuff that is coffee shop rhetoric to the rest of us. Bravo.