The personal podcast of Peter Rukavina, a Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada-based printer, writer and developer.
Every year I sponsor the Oscar Wilde Award at Island Fringe, given to the show that “most effectively celebrates non-conformity.” The award-winning show is chosen by a jury, and evidence suggests that the process of jurying the shows is done with considerable thoughtfulness. Island Fringe is one of my favourite things, and watching the Oscar Wilde take on a life of its own continues to be a lovely part of it. This year's award went to Riley Jane Carson for her show Transpectrum: Follow Riley Jayne Carson on a wonderful journey. This neurodivergent trans beauty queen explains how a love for Anne of Green Gables awakened her identity. And after over thirty years of self denial, it took another red headed Ann to help her rediscover her gender identity. Riley Jayne is a Jack (or should I say Jill) of multiple talents. A background in theatre and very basic music allowed her to express her views, humour and attitude in a variety of forms ranging from stand-up comedy to drag. On the way over to the closing ceremonies I was talking to Olivia about what “non-conformity” means, and used her owning her neurodivergent transness as an example of it; that the award went to “neurodivergent trans beauty queen” was a delightful counterpoint to that.
The birds were alive and musical as I was pottering around with my bicycle in the back yard yesterday.
I have long enjoyed the 1980 Christopher Cross song Ride Like the Wind. Listening to it this morning I realized that one of the reasons I like it so much is the backing vocals by the estimable Michael McDonald (he of the Doobie Brothers, Steely Dan, and a successful solo career). Oliver and I listened to the song this morning in the car: McDonald’s contribution–we counted–amounts to only four utterances of “Such a long way to go…” Nonetheless, without those the song wouldn’t be as delightful as it is. Like salt, sometimes all you need is a little, but without that little the food doesn’t taste nearly as good. (Clip from The Very Best of Christopher Cross, 2002)
The generous helping of topsy-turvy in the air caused me to think Thursday was Wednesday and thus to miss my scheduled 5:00 p.m. Charlottetown Farmers’ Market pickup. My penance was to ride my bicycle up today, a day late and in the rain; I was happy to find Caledonia House Coffee still open, and so I am currently fortifying myself with an espresso macchiato before heading back into the now-cats-and-dogs-style rain.
Back in mid-March I received an email from Matt Rainnie, personable host of CBC Mainstreet: would I be interested, he asked, in being the “Spin Time DJ” for the show on an upcoming Friday. Would I be interested? Of course I’d be interested. Had I not been dreaming of this very moment for years! “Spin Time DJ,” for those from away, is a regular Friday feature on the afternoon radio show where a guest is invited, in 22 short minutes, to relate their life story, punctuated by three meaningful songs. Here’s Ashley Belanger-Birt doing it. And Bill Schurman. And John Connolly. As a non-Islander of no particular note, I’d long ago given up hope that I’d one day be called up to the bigs. But dreams do come true. So plans were made to record this morning. And then the hard part. Summarize my life in three songs. Not easy, as it turns out. For a while there I had a strong plan to go completely Kobayashi Maru, and set aside popular music in favour of sounds of Japanese coffee shops and walks in the woods behind my childhood home. Is there not music in nature? But I pulled myself back from the edge, dug in deep, and came up with three songs I’m very happy with. Matt and I had a nice chat this morning, backed by the audio engineering prowess of David Rashed, and the segment will air Friday, April 9, 2021 after the 5:30 p.m. news. You can listen live on the radio if you’re near, on the web stream if you’re not, and the episode will be posted to the Mainstreet website on Monday. —— Postscript: Here are the three songs I choose: Jane Siberry and David Ramsden, The Love I Have for You (3:51), from the 1990 cassette “Quiet Please, There’s A Lady On Stage,” recorded live at the Cameron House in Toronto. Shawn Colvin, This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody) (4:01), from the album 1994 album “Cover Girl,” recorded live at the Bottom Line in NYC, August 1993. Karine Polwart, Labouring and Resting (3:14), from the 2017 album “A Pocket of Wind Resistance.”
A previously-unreleased episode recorded on October 1, 2020, Oliver’s 20th birthday. Earlier in the day he’d received a negative COVID-19 test.
It’s tricky to get my Google Home to play CBC Radio One: depending on the way I ask, it’s as likely, for reasons unknown, to play the private radio station CFCY instead. Here’s a transcript of my attempts: Me: OK Google, play CBC Radio One. Google Home: Streaming 95.1 FM CFCY from Tunein. Me: OK Google, stop. OK Google, play CBC Radio. Google Home: Streaming 95.1 FM CFCY from Tunein. Me: OK Google, stop. OK Google, play CBC Charlottetown. Google Home: Streaming CBC Radio One from Tunein. I’ve almost trained my brain to do this the right way every time, but I still get it wrong about 20% of the time.
I sat down in the studio the Matt Rainnie yesterday morning (although I wasn’t in the studio, I was on Skype, and Matt, oddly, was standing not sitting) to have a conversation about Using Her Marbles. You can listen to our conversation, which aired between 5:30 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. last night on Mainstreet. Update: the CBC has posted a “web story” version of the interview.
Shortcuts are a delightfully powerful set of digital Lego blocks for iOS, a modern day HyperCard, in a way. This guide from Apple to creating Siri Shortcuts using web APIs prompted me to try creating one for myself, a Shortcut to retrieve the percentage of PEI’s electricity load generated from the wind. As a starting place, I used this wind energy API endpoint, the same endpoint that my PEI Electricity web app uses. It returns real time data about wind energy load and generation on Prince Edward Island, like this: { "current": { "updatetime": "2020-11-05 12:59:00", "uptimetimehuman": "Thursday at 12:59 PM", "on-island-load": "202.86", "on-island-wind": "163.86", "on-island-fossil": "0.00", "wind-local": "77.98", "wind-export": "85.88", "percentage-wind": "80.77" }, "previous": { "updatetime": "2020-11-05 12:44:00", "uptimetimehuman": "Thursday at 12:44 PM", "on-island-load": "202.80", "on-island-wind": "164.65", "on-island-fossil": "0.00", "wind-local": "77.36", "wind-export": "87.29", "percentage-wind": "81.19" }, "peak": { "peak": "213", "hightime": "10:14 AM" }, "peakwind": { "peak": "179", "hightime": "8:29 AM" } } That’s got everything I need in an endpoint to make a Shortcut: I want the Shortcut to use the “percentage-wind” value, 80.77 in this example. To create the Shortcut, I launched the Shortcuts app on my iPhone, tapped the “+” to create a new one, gave it the name “what’s the wind energy,” and then added my first action, a Get Contents of URL action to get the contents of that endpoint: Next, a Get Dictionary Value action, as I needed to pull out just the value for percentage wind energy generation, using simple dot notation for current.percentage-wind: Because that’s returned as a decimal value, and I didn’t need that much granularity, I rounded off the value using a Round Number action: I added the words “per cent” using a Text action: Finally, I added a Speak Text action to read the result: With the Shortcut saved, I can say “hey siri, what’s the wind energy” to my iPhone and it tells me. You can save yourself the trouble of recreating the Shortcut from scratch by installing on your iPhone here. That was so much fun I decided to make another Shortcut, this one to tell me how much water our household has used today. For this one, I used this API endpoint, which returns data, used also by my Consuming.ca web app, about my water usage, like: { "metadata": { "serialnumber": "30142394", "address": "100 Prince", "location": "Basement", "role": "Household", "metertype": "water", "metertypecode": "13", "colour": "#30c020", "public": "1", "publiclabel": "Miller-Rukavina", "active": "1" }, "reading": { "current": { "value": "7697", "datestamp": "2020-11-05 13:56:50", "formatted": "769.70 m3" }, "firstever": { "value": "1171", "formatted": "0.00 m3" }, "firsttoday": { "value": "7696", "formatted": "769.60 m3" } }, "consumption": { "today": "100 ℓ" } } The Shortcut for this is essentially the same as “what’s the wind energy,” but it’s called “how much water have we used today,” and it uses the value consumption.today. If you have particular interest in knowing how much water I’ve used today, you can install this Shortcut on your iPhone too.
Back in the day, when it seemed like Nickelback was playing at the Charlottetown waterfront every second weekend, I developed the reputation of being something of a curmudgeon. Truth be told my protests were always rooted in a feeling that public land should remain public, not given over to concert prompters, but the subtlety was often lost on the readership. As such, I celebrate the sweet sounds coming out of the third floor apartment next door unreservedly: if I can’t revel in the vigorous music-making of the young, what’s the point of being alive?
When Oliver and I were on the beach at Wood Islands Provincial Park on Sunday, I recorded just under two minutes of the same of the water lapping against the rocks. You’ll hear birdsong in the background if you listen carefully. An interesting project in these pandemic times would be to stick a permanent microphone at the shore to broadcast sounds of the PEI surf 24/7 to those unable to be on the beach in person.
I was saddened to read of the death of former Member of Parliament, Member of the Legislative Assembly, and Speaker Wilbur Macdonald this morning. I could not help but think back to the warm summer afternoon of June 27, 2006 when, from the public gallery in Province House, I witnessed him hold forth at some length so as to keep the Legislative Assembly busy while, behind the scenes, the Pat Binns government sought to put the finishing touches on its electoral redistricting plan, An Act to Amend the Electoral Boundaries Act (the “Cletus Dunn map,” as it had come to be known). With the introduction from the Speaker, “The hon. Member from Belfast-Pownal Bay,” he began (you can follow along in the day’s Hansard, starting on page 3,304): I rise to speak on the budget which we had brought in in the spring. It’s an opportunity for me to talk about my riding and about what is taking place in the province. One of the things that has really happened in this province in the last number of years is the expansion of the economy. I think it all started with the industrial malls a number of years ago and is continuing over the last number of years. The federal government has also contributed to that in Charlottetown and in Summerside. At this point he departed from his prepared notes to address the issue of the lawnmower making noise outside, clearly audible in the background, something that had been on my mind as well: I must say every time that this House opens that lawn mower seems to be going outside. Is the guy going over and over the lawn or what is he doing out there? If it’s under the department of public works, I wish the minister would tell him to take off. Go someplace else. He can cut the grass in the morning, then we can hear one another. But he’s been going for the last two hours and I don’t know where the lawn is. But anyway. From there he continued for more than 4,200 words and 30 minutes, covered topics ranging from the lobster fishery to the Northumberland Strait to Lord Selkirk to wind power to the quality of the roads in his district to the life expectancy of males and females. Eventually the Act to Amend the Electoral Boundaries Act was ready for introduction, and so Macdonald got the nod and finished off with the same good humour he started with: Mr. Speaker, I could go on for a little longer, but I think I have spoke long enough. I will adjourn the debate. While Macdonald was simply doing his loyal best to keep the puck in play, his speech, looking back 14 years, is a thorough survey of Prince Edward Island through his eyes, and we are the better for it, and for his years of service as a legislator. (Audio from the Legislative Assembly of PEI Video Archive).
My friend Dave Atkinson mused that an oral history of how I learned the things I learned the other day came to be learned. So I recorded one.
In this brave new world we’re all jacked into Zoom (or, maybe, Jitsi) all day long. We’ve been at this for a month, and it’s remarkable how little most of us continue to pay attention to video and audio, as if living the Dick Tracy future is enough, and we don’t really need to be concerned with seeing and hearing other clearly. Here in my office I mostly use the “Display Audio” microphone built into the front of my Apple Cinema Display. It’s always been good enough. But, I wondered, could I do better. So I dug the old Live from the Formosa Tea House audio setup (Apex 435 microphone, Behringer 802 mixer) out of storage, bought myself a line-to-USB cable, and set everything up beside my computer to see if that would prove the audio quality. If you listen to the same here, I think you’ll agree that it did. I’m taking it out for a real ride in 15 minutes on my weekly conference call with my colleagues in New Hampshire. I’m also using the opportunity to promote the brand (get your Vegetable Gardener’s Handbook by The Old Farmer’s Almanac today!):
Recorded eight days ago (8 months in quarantine years) on the Charlottetown waterfront at the end of a drive in the countryside on a sunny Sunday.
On Thursday morning I was immersed in a video conference, with the personable Josh MacFadyen, when I got a text message: As Oliver was across the street, at home, and “five machine” sounds a lot like “fire machine,” which is something someone might say when the house is burning down and they are panicking, I immediately ran across the street to rescue Oliver. Oliver was fine. The buzzer on the clothes dryer had gone off, and Oliver was simply, helpfully, letting me know. Here’s how the text message got to me: Oliver was upstairs in bed. The dryer’s buzzer went off. Oliver has a Google Home in his bedroom, so he asked it to call me: OK Google, call Peter. The Google Home dutifully called my office number. But my officer number automatically goes to voicemail, so Oliver left a voicemail (the one you can listen to above). The voicemail went to my voicemail system, which is set to automatically speech-to-text transcribe voicemails and email them to me. Which is how I got the text message “Five machine went off at home.” Lower shields.
My friend Dave does a regular segment on CBC’s Island Morning called The Things We Do For Love, wherein he interviews people about their esoteric passions. Tuesday morning Dave dipped into Pen Night. Things don’t get much more esoteric than pen geeks talking about pens, inks and paper. I’ve attached the MP3 that aired this morning.
Oliver’s got the death of a cold, so I made my way to the Charlottetown Farmers’ Market by myself this morning. After a healthy amount of Duckduckgoing “how to cycle in the rain,” I decided I was not up for it, so I took the bus instead. It was a soggy walk from Subway to the market, but the passing cars were kind, and slowed down to prevent causing monsoons from driving headlong through the standing water. In addition to being Thanksgiving-busy, the market was also Elizabeth May-busy this morning, as she made a quick campaign stop en (Tesla) route from Pownal to Cape Breton that included a lunch of Claudia’s Mexican food. And a lot of chatting with a lot of people. It’s quite humbling to see May in action: her entourage is lean, and she is open. To everyone who approaches. It must be exhausting, and we all owe her a great debt for her tenacity. I escaped from the melee on to the loading dock of the market for some quiet reflection, and recorded 30 seconds of the suddenly-torrential rain falling on the metal roof. My friend Ann rescued me from a wet walk back to the bus stop by offering me a ride home; it was on her way. Where I delivered a smoked salmon bagel and cup of tea to ailing Oliver. Who will, I think, spend most of the day sleeping.
Ten top simple field recording tips from Cities and Memory; includes: You might think that’s only a gentle breeze, and it can’t possibly do anything to your recording, but IT WILL. Even a light wind sounds like someone’s ripped your mic in half, and will render your recording unusable. Use wind shields, use shelter, avoid wind at all costs. The recording here is a classic example of it: riding our bicycles by the metal fence surrounding the Charlottetown Event Grounds on Saturday, I noticed the the gusty winds were making beautiful music through the slats. So I pulled out my phone and pressed “record,” trying to shield it from the wind. I failed. So you’ll have to take my word for it. See also diy (do it yourself) from Quiet American. Link provenance: William Denton to Radio Apogee to this exhortation to make field recordings of decent quality.
When booking a room at the lovely Latchis Hotel in Brattleboro, Vermont, you can select a “mountain view” room (with windows looking out on Wantastiquet Mountain, just across the border in New Hampshire) or a less expensive “interior view” room (with a view of, well, not much at all). What they don’t tell you, however, is that an “interior view” room comes with a window that opens out on Whetstone Brook, which runs into the middle of town and into the Connecticut River. I left the window open last night and enjoyed the best sleep of my trip so far due its pleasant sound. I arrived here in Brattleboro last night, after a short drive from Dublin, NH. This stop has become a trusted airlock between Yankee life and home life (2015, 2013, 2010, 2002), and this weekend was no exception: I had supper at the co-op across the street, and saw Downton Abbey in the Latchis Theatre downstairs. Today I am heading north, stopping in Windsor at the American Precision Museum (it is Museum Day here in the U.S., so I was able to secure a free ticket!), and ending up at the home of my friends Valerie and Lars in Burlington for the night.
Oliver was dismayed to learn that the 2019 Island Fringe Festival wasn’t going to include any audience-participation activities in its launch event, as it had in previous years. “For every problem, there is a solution,” I am forever telling Oliver. So he reached out to Fringe officials and, to their eminent credit, the decided to correct this oversight, and added something: DRAMATIC READING OF YOUR FAVOURITE SONG Come on down and give a truly dramatic reading of your favourite song… channel your best Liam Neeson as you woo the audience with your rendition of Janelle Monáe’s ‘PYNK’… or pretend you’re Viola Davis as you wow the crowd reading the lyrics of Maroon 5’s ‘Moves Like Jagger’! Of course this parry required a thrust. And Oliver decided that I needed to participate too. So I gave a dramatic reading of Kim Mitchell’s iconic Patio Lanterns, and Oliver recited Blackbird, by The Beatles, in his take on a Liverpudlian accent. There is no extant recording of my performance. But I recorded Oliver’s.
There was a baby crow born in our back yard last week that’s been learning to fly this week. Its parents have been understandably protective, and so every time Ethan the Dog goes outside they go on high alert, cawing and swooping. It’s been very effective.
Manitoba fiddler Patti Kusturok accompanied by multi-instrumentalist Jeremy Rusu at the National Fiddling Day celebration at St. Paul’s Anglican Church on May 18, 2019. Sound engineering in the hall was by Brent Chaisson; I plucked this sound from the back of the church with my phone.
St. Paul’s Anglican Church commemorated the beginning of its 250th year by ringing its bells 250 times at midnight tonight.
St. Paul’s Anglican Church participated in the Bells of Peace initiative today, ringing its bell 100 times to mark the centenary of the end of World War I. The church generously offered the opportunity to ring the bell to all comers, so Oliver and I lined up, at sunset, with a diverse group, parishioners and otherwise, for our chance. The stairway up the bell tower turned out to be far more civilized than I imagined, and it was an easy climb up the stairs. We were each given the chance to ring the bell twice; I recorded Oliver’s second go.
The final event of Oliver’s Birthday Season, a trip to Wolfville to bear witness to a live taping of Laurie Brown’s Pondercast podcast. So, of course, we recorded a podcast while waiting for the show to start.
The first time Oliver used the sink at our Malmö Airbnb, he emerged exclaiming “The sink sounds like a didgeridoo!” I asked him to record this, and he emailed me this sound. Which does, indeed, sound like a didgeridoo.
We are heading home, and recorded a quick podcast here in Schiphol Airport after going through security. Security passage, as you will hear, was greatly aided by advance planning: last week I contacted Condor, our “host” airline, requesting assistance for Oliver. They responded with a “DPNA” PDF file that I could print out that identified Oliver as a flyer-with-autism, and instructed me to print it out and show it along the way. With the aid of this very helpful blog post from a mother and son in our situation, we knew to go to the “Assistance Desk” upon arrival at the airport. So that’s what we did. They took a look at Oliver’s paperwork and asked us to wait in the nearby “elderly and disabled” waiting area. About 10 minutes later we were greeted by Pascal (pro tip: always ask assistants for their name; it instantly establishes a rapport) and I explained our situation. Pascal, it turns out, is an intern, halfway through his term at Schiphol, on the way to working in the air. He proved a useful aid, as he was able to be a sort of “advance man” out in front of us, opening the way for the special services (calmness, physical search, no crazy questions) that we needed. He walked us through check-in, and then from check-in to security, took us to the special services line there, explained to the security agent that we needed a physical search, walked through security himself (also getting a physical search), and pointed us on our way. We shook his hand, explained what a great help he’d been, with hopes that he will now go on to a more autism-flyer-friendly career. The physical search itself was conducted by the kind Patrick (see earlier pro tip), and was done calmly and without delay. Oliver remained calm and happy throughout, even through, deep in our hearts, we were both nervous and a little anxious. Once we left Pascal, we headed into the departure gates, spotted a “reboost in 5 minutes” massage chair, and Oliver eagerly volunteered. Best €2 we’ve spent today. And then we made a podcast. On to Frankfurt! Young man relaxes with “revitalising shiatsu massage” at the airport after successful, calm passage through security. Best €2 we’ve spent today.
Matt Rainnie produced this spot for CBC Prince Edward Island’s Island Morning that aired on Friday, August 10, 2018 after the 8:00 a.m. news. He interviewed me about the Charlottetown Boulder Park, and interviewed the proprietors of the new food trucks about their role in the park’s revivification.
You may recall my report that Archdeacon John Clarke, who leads the parish here at St. Paul’s Anglican Church, took a sabbatical this summer to learn to play the guitar. Well, his sabbatical is over, and he’s reflected on the experience on his blog, where he writes, in part: It has been a challenge, to say the least, but one that I have thoroughly enjoyed. Not being particularly good at something has never stopped me from trying. And have no fear, the guitar will not make it into every sermon. There were times when trying to accomplish some guitar related skill felt more like work than play, this time has been, overall, a great joy for me. The guitar will be a part of my daily life as long as my fingers will allow it. My hope is that I will continue to improve, add skills and play well with others. I am thankful for all the support I’ve had and am deeply touched by the interest so many people have shown. I hope too, that one day people will enjoy listening to me as much as I enjoy playing. I am so happy to be housed inside a parish led by such a thoughtful person, and someone so willing write about his adventures in public; his suggestion that “not being particularly good at something has never stopped me from trying” are words to live by. (The attached song is from the Ceedees 1979 album Hit The Ditch, long out of print).
For my old friend John Muir, who introduced me to BB Gabor 33 years ago, this lovely rendition of Big Yellow Taxi.
When Matt Rainnie was host of Mainstreet on CBC Radio we produced a couple of summer’s worth of eclectic radio pieces, like Everything You Wanted to Know About Ice Tea in 2004. Matt is inveterately curious and a great interviewer, so when I wanted to flush subscribers to The New Yorker out of the bushes I dropped him a line, and he quickly bit, coming along to the Reinventorium yesterday morning to tape a short piece that aired this morning. The awesome power of radio has resulted in a half dozen more subscribers outing themselves.
I have an Amazon Echo at home, and one at the office. Both are set to allow “drop in” calls: I can just say “Alexa, drop in on the Reinventorium” and I get a live microphone into the office, no questions asked. Tonight I had to get home for supper before my 3D printer was finished printing. I plan to go back to the office when it’s done to shut things down. But how will I know when it’s done? Turns out that I can hear the printer printing through my Echo-to-Echo connection. So I’ll simply “drop in” from time to time and head over when I can’t hear the printer any more.
About a year ago, when Amazon unleashed the ability for third-party developers to create skills for its Echo speaker devices, the first one I created was a skill that allowed you to ask questions about Prince Edward Island’s electricity load and generation. But I never took the skill to certification (the review process by which Amazon certifies a skill and makes it available to everyone), and so while I continued to use it myself in “developer mode” on our Echo, nobody else could. I decided to follow through on the last few bits of the skill development a couple of weeks ago, so that others could benefit. And at the end of last week I received a notification that the skill is now live for all Echo users in the U.S. and Canada. This means that, if you own an Amazon Echo device, you can now ask it things like this: Alexa, ask PEI Power for a summary Alexa, ask PEI Power about the wind Alexa, ask PEI Power for the load Alexa, ask PEI Power for the peak load in 2014 Alexa, ask PEI Power for the peak load in December 2017 Alexa, ask PEI Power for the peak load yesterday. Behind the scenes, this skill looks like this: { "languageModel": { "intents": [ { "name": "AMAZON.CancelIntent", "samples": [] }, { "name": "AMAZON.HelpIntent", "samples": [] }, { "name": "AMAZON.StopIntent", "samples": [] }, { "name": "GetLoad", "samples": [ "the load" ], "slots": [] }, { "name": "GetPeak", "samples": [ "the peak on {Date}", "peak on {Date}", "peak {Date}", "peak load on {Date}", "the peak load on {Date}", "highest load on {Date}", "maximum load on {Date}", "the maximum load on {Date}", "high load on {Date}", "the high load on {Date}", "the highest load on {Date}", "the peak load {Date}" ], "slots": [ { "name": "Date", "type": "AMAZON.DATE" } ] }, { "name": "GetSummary", "samples": [ "a summary", "the report", "a report", "an update" ], "slots": [] }, { "name": "GetWind", "samples": [ "the wind" ], "slots": [] } ], "invocationName": "p. e. i. power" } } That’s a JSON representation of the skill on the Amazon end; when an Echo device sends a query, Amazon tries to figure out which “utterance” (like “an update” or “a report” or “the wind”) the user is looking for, sends a request to a PHP script on my server that queries the same load and generation data I scrape from the Province of PEI website for other purposes, and my server then returns a script for the Echo to read back to the user. It’s fundamentally a pretty simple ecosystem to develop skills for; there are some fiddly bits on the initial setup my skill got kicked back to me several times for seemingly minor inconsistencies like “you called the skill p. e. i. power but your sample utterance used the phrase p.e.i. power,” but I managed to resolve those quickly. If you have an Echo, please take this skill for a ride and let me know what you think.
I popped in to Brìgh Music & Tea after lunch today for a spot of chocolate (they carry Katlin’s, and it is excellent). It turned out to be a bustling day in the shop, with guitars being sold, and tea being offered, and questions being answered. Between tea and chocolate I happened upon a Mano Percussion shaker, tucked away in a hidden corner, and, what with it being reasonably priced at $9.38, and the Reinventorium currently lacking a house shaker, I added it to my bill. As I was settling up, personable co-owner Mary MacGillivray asked me to remind you all that they are open every day through Christmas Eve for all your holiday shopping needs. And until Christmas Eve they have a “buy 1 bag of loose leaf tea, get the 2nd free” promotion. So now you’ve no excuse not to put a ukulele under the tree, and to infuse your home with the pungent aroma of their Berry Berry tea.
Oliver recites the poem We are here, turning the mundane into the delightful.
Summer Kitchen is a new restaurant in Charlottetown that’s moved into the space occupied for decades previous by the venerable Noodle House, which moved downtown recently. The building has received a long-deserved clean-up and renovation; the pervasive pink has been expunged, and replaced by shades of red. The place has never looked better. Oliver and I stopped in for lunch mid-afternoon yesterday. There being no vegetarian options evident on the menu, we asked our server for recommendations; she called the chef out to speak with us, and we took him up on his suggestion of spicy eggplant and tofu over rice. The result was very good; indeed it may have been the first palatable version of eggplant I’ve ever been served. They’re starting off slowly at Summer Kitchen, waiting for additional staff to arrive before they step on the accelerator. Now might be the best time for you to stop in for a meal, before it gets really popular, as I’m sure it will. Open every day except Tuesday. Our bill was $16 for two, which included a plate of vegetarian spring rolls to start.
I’ve had Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet running through my head all weekend. I finally found an outlet for my earworm in the public piano in Confederation Landing Park. It’s impossible not to hear this without thinking of the last episode of M*A*S*H.
Oliver and I took Ethan for a windy Thanksgiving Sunday walk around the waterfront. When we got to the Charlottetown Yacht Club we were greeted by a cacophony of jingle-jangle. Here’s 23 seconds of it.
I mistakenly told my Google Home to make a telephone call this morning–”Hey Google, call Richard’s Fish & Chips.” This was a mistake, because the Google Home can’t make telephone calls. Except that it can. Apparently the Google Home now has a new superpower, which is making free telephone calls in the U.S. and Canada. So when I said “Hey Google, call Richard’s Fish & Chips,” Google figured out which Richard’s I wanted (it knows where I am, because I told it where my Google Home is located when I first set it up), and placed a call for me. It also works for “Hey Google, Call Catherine.” And it knew to call her cell phone. It can’t yet send text messages, it can’t yet receive calls, and its response when you try to call a number it doesn’t recognize is the stock “I don’t know how to help with that” rather than “I don’t have a number for them” or something more specific. But, it’s still pretty keen. I’m not sure why I’d ever use an actual telephone to call out from the office ever again. A reminder that the Google Home is now available in Canada: you can purchase one from Best Buy, Walmart, Staples or The Source, or direct from Google. And remember: once you have yours, be sure to say “Hey Google, ask Farmer’s Almanac about today.”
Sara Fraser at CBC Prince Edward Island asked me and Oliver for a photo of us recording a podcast. So we recorded a podcast. And we took some photos.
Art in the Open was wonderful. Again. In a new way. As it always is. My favourite part of it all was watching people amble—and ambling is truly the best word for it—across the fields and through the forest and around the campfires. The pace, the expressions on the face, it’s not like anything else: it’s not work, it’s not shopping, it’s not entertainment; it’s (only) art. It’s a sight to behold. When we say “I wish this lasted longer,” I think the amble is what we’re talking about. The disengaged engaged amble that allows the art to leak in when you’re not paying attention. I wish this lasted longer.
Oliver was very passionate about getting a chance to speak at the “Inaction is Not an Option” rally today here in Charlottetown, organized to give Islanders a chance to gather to speak out against racism, hatred, white supremacy and nationalism. The organizers generously allowed his name to be added to the speakers list at the last minute; he chose two passages to read, one from Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes, and one from Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. I have never been prouder: Oliver has a deep-seated aversion to inequity, violence and hatred, and feels a strong common cause with anyone whose intrinsic worth is threatened.
Oliver made this piece of audio art by overlaying multiple TED Talks and then manipulating the audio in GarageBand on his Mac. I love this.
The Island Fringe Festival had its launch party last night at Marc’s Lounge, and Oliver decided that he wanted, at the last minute, to respond to the open call for poets to read “found poetry.” Fortunately the Fringe team is on the ball and digitally-engaged, so the request-to-perform reached them in time for him to make the list. And so we headed over to secure a seat around 7:30 p.m. for an 8:00 p.m. start. Because of Prince Edward Island’s antediluvian liquor laws, Oliver was only allowed to be present until 9:00 p.m., and so there was some last minute stress surrounding whether he’d be able to go on stage before turning into a Prohibition pumpkin, but, again the Fringe team rose to the challenge and made sure he was on in the first hour. Oliver is a master of the acrostic poem, an excellent adaptation that accommodates he’s need to express with his challenges with choices: it’s a poetic hook to hang his hat on, so to speak, and to watch him pull a poem out of the digital ether is a sight to behold. Here’s the poem he read: Had IPods Pluto Songza That are now Things of the Recent Past Extinct Revolutionized Cities Short Vine Videos Yearning for Unoriginal Objects Continuing to Recreate Completed Things In the Present Existing Past Since Then Many Revolutionized Cities and Had IPods and Pluto Leaned Lots Extinct Now Not New IPods Another Last Generation That are Now Things of the Recent Past Short Vine Videos and Songza Growing Generation Everyday New Era Recreate Atari Today It Only Continues to Grow Now Xenocracies Everywhere Really Soon I love the phrase “continuing to recreate completes things in the present.” There was an intermission of sorts just before 9:00 p.m., and Oliver insisted we high-tail it for the door lest the Provincial Treasurer come and haul us out by the coat tails.
Six years ago, at the tail end of a trip to Europe, Oliver and I went cycling on the railway in Skåne, Sweden. As I was bopping through the filesystem on my recently-resuscitated Nokia N95, I found this very short podcast we recorded, notable not so much for our insights as for the sounds of the railways. And for Oliver’s emphatic rail sound effects. (Also, I’m pretty sure I didn’t pronounce Skåne correctly).
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