From left to right:

• “Let us meet where you and I will be at home” card from Fenix.
• Postcard of The Old Gardener (De Oude Tuinman) by Belgian painter Emile Claus.
• A postcard with a poem by Filipa César, gift of our friend Brandon, from Serralves in Porto.
• Postcard of a painting by April Bey, from the exhibition In-between: Ten women artists on migration
• Catalog from the In-between: Ten women artists on migration exhibition.

Serralves is wonderful; I have fond memories of a visit 20 years ago.

From How to Travel:

These problems would seem to be very much of today, a consequence of the tiny phones in our pockets. But they were noticed right at the beginning of the history of photography, when the average camera was the size of a grandfather clock. The first person to notice them was the English art critic, John Ruskin. He was a keen traveller who realised that most tourists make a dismal job of noticing or remembering the beautiful things they see. He argued that humans have an innate tendency to respond to beauty and a desire to possess it, but that there are better and worse expressions of this desire. At worst, we get into buying souvenirs or taking photographs. But, in Ruskin’s eyes, there’s one thing we should do and that is attempt to draw the interesting things we see, irrespective of whether we happen to have any talent for doing so.

You may recall that there is a place on PEI named after (or not) John Ruskin. 

From How about Free? Is that affordable enough for you? by Bill McKibben:

Beginning next week, Australians across a huge swath of the continent will begin getting three free hours of electricity every afternoon—to charge their cars, runs their dishwashers, fill up a storage battery to run the house at night. I’ve written about this before, so I won’t belabor it here, except to say that humans have spent the last 1.79 million years (according to new research last week) working hard for energy: spending time gathering firewood, spending time working to pay the power bill. Now, in one large part of the earth, for one large part of the day, electricity will be too cheap to meter. You want some abundance? Here you go.

From The Flamborough Review, January 5, 1983, by E.B. Kennedy:

“This little business developed out of difficulties we encountered in trying to find the most suitable computer for our use at home,” explained Norm Rukavina of Carlisle, in a recent interview about “Cellar Door Software” and its, “Have Computer, Will Travel” service.

‘My son Peter and I had to do so much homework and digging out of information,” he continued, “that we thought we might be able, by sharing what we had learned, to save other people the time and effort of going through a similar difficult experience.”

It was in July of 1982 that the father and son set up the small firm to provide information and education about personal and home computers.

Peter, a Grade XI student at Waterdown District High School, is President of the very active Computer Club at the School, a Club which has 25 regular members and about as many more who attend when they can.

His father, a geologist research scientist on the staff of the Canadian Centre for Inland Waters, developed an eight-week course, “An Introduction to Programming”, which he and Peter began giving at the Hamilton YMCA two evenings a week last September.

“It provides the rudiments of working with ‘Basics’, a language of computers, and includes learning how to write programmes in that language,” our informant explained.

“Since most of those taking the course range in age from nine to 15 years and are interested in video games, our course enables them to reach the point of competence where they can work out programmes for complicated games. That gives them what they need for writing programmes for many practical purposes as well.

“The first course finished and we are now half-way through the course with a second group.”

“The “Have Computer, Will Travel” service is the part of the new little business that more nearly carries out its original objectives. It brings a small computer into one’s own home (or small business) and demonstrates what can be done with computer files, word processing, music and graphics.

It was interesting to see how, with proper daily recording of household expenditures, the totals of what was spent for food, education, etc. could be called up in seconds.

The home service for those who want to know how to write programmes that could be most useful for their home or business purposes includes instruction in writing such programmes in Basic, and the experience of actually working with the computer.

For those interested in owning a computer and who want to know about various types and their particular uses, the service provides helpful information.

“We don’t sell or endorse any particular brand of computer,” Norm Rukavina stated emphatically. “We can provide lists of local sources of computer products, of useful books and magazines, and of reports on home computers, all of which could be useful to a prospective buyer.”

The magic of the computer as word processor was demonstrated by its ability to replace immediately a wrong letter or word with the correct one, to insert a word, and other such operations which are laborious and time-consuming when using a typewriter.

In the realm of graphics, the possibilities seemed almost limitless. Our guide and mentor showed the results of his carefully planned effort to portray, in colour and movement on the screen, the changes wrought upon beaches by wind and wave action. What could have taken many words to convey was unmistakably evident to the viewer in the four-minute sequence resulting from the imaginative use of the computer’s possibilities.

“The average homeowner investing in a computer would use it for the other helpful capabilities we’ve been demonstrating,” the demonstrator admitted with a smile. “I just wanted to give some idea of the range of uses, not only for storing and recalling information, but for helping to present information in an effective way.”

Because the Rukavina father and son enjoy sharing their knowledge of what this relatively new tool can do, they are pleased to respond to any inquiry directed to their “Cellar Door Software” or “Have Computer, Will Travel” service.

As I wrote earlier, it was fortuitous that among Catherine Hennessey’s collection of things was a line rule box from The Guardian. I happened to need one. I filled it up this morning with leading, transforming a messy drawer into something organized.

My longtime friend Catherine Hennessey died in March at the age of 92. 

Catherine was an inveterate collector of things: books, scissors, art, bells, building materials for a house she planned to build herself.

As she aged, contracted, downsized, she moved this archive of interesting things from place to place, home to home, storage locker to storage locker. At one point she occupied 13 lockers in the parking garage at Harbourside, despite being only entitled to one.

In an effort to consolidate, Catherine held a series of sales, starting on her 80th birthday with a silent auction (I ran the online part of this), and continuing on through to a sale that took up most of the old Campbell Lea building.

On Sunday was the posthumous final sale, and Catherine’s friends and familiars gathered on a farm in Emyvale to see what was left. It was an eerie experience seeing things I knew so well—paintings, furniture, photos, bins of scissors—out of their home context. It was made less eerie by the presence of so many people who loved Catherine.

Here’s what I emerged with, a kind of “Museum of Catherine Hennessey” in the same spirit as The Museum of Norm.

Dorchester Street Enameled Sign

Of the type affixed to the side of houses, rather than on a pole on the street. Provenance unknown. Catherine lived on 145 Dorchester Street when I first met her in the early 1990s, in a house she called “Pidwell Lane.”

Playground Sign

This small metal bar, engraved with “Playground,” has “Klassen Bronze Ltd., April/72” written on the back. Klassen Bronze is a Toronto company:

Established in 1950, many years of exceptional service and experience have made Klassen Bronze a world leader in the manufacture, distribution, import and export of letters, numbers and signs.

Leading Box

Labelled as being from The Guardian’s composing room, this is a box designed to hold different lengths of leading (thin lead rules used between lines of metal type). It just so happens that I need a box for my leading, so this was heaven-sent (thank you, Catherine).

Lino Cutters

Why did Catherine have lino cutters? I don’t know. But the box is beautiful, as are the wooden handles. And we’re printmakers.

Island Identity Sign

Catherine worked under the “Island Identity” banner for a time. Others will know more about it; it predated me, I believe. It’s a beautiful hand-painted sign from Custom Signworks.

Cowbell

Catherine loved bells. To own one of hers is an honour.

Dr. Smith Sign

Catherine Hennessey was born Catherine Smith. Her father was Dr. Smith. I love this sign.

Ceramic Pig

Catherine collected pigs. So many that there was a hutch filled with them that sale-goers were invited to choose from. This is the one I chose.

Marble Cutting Board

In an earlier life this piece of marble lined the doctors’ showers at the old Charlottetown Hospital, a fact that delighted Catherine.

Her countertops at 222 Sydney Street were from the same showers; this piece travelled with her to Rankin House at Harbourside.

Tonight I baked molasses bread, from her recipe, and kneaded the dough on it, as she had.

I’m still coming to terms with the role Catherine played in my life (and the role I played in hers). Owning some of her much-loved objects is a small help to that. I will treasure them.

From Eat This Newsletter 305: Hot:

It has been a funny week, with temperatures up in brain-scrambling territory. If this issue is late, which it may well be, that’s because I spent yesterday morning in the cool of a cinema enjoying a glorious restoration of Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times. If you can, I highly recommend it.

Jeremy’s newsletter, focusing on food and where it comes from, is always a good read. This issue is a particularly good one: mushrooms, coffee, hot sauce—it has it all.

We started Sunday with an almost-20 km cycle over to Stratford, through Fullerton’s Marsh, Mount Herbert, and back home via Bunbury.

It was exposure, yet again, of the Town of Stratford’s committment to active transportation: from getting on the cycle path on Water Street near HMCS Queen Charlotte, we were on a separated pathway all the way to the Mount Herbert Road intersection with the Fullerton’s Marsh Trail, 10 km later.

Once we got to Mount Herbert things got (mildly) hilly; a gentle rain made this slightly easier to manage.

An excellent way to spend the morning of my 25th Father’s Day. Kudos to Lisa for being the catalyst.

A casual mention in conversation with my friend John Flood this afternoon led me to learn that the 1925 telephone directory for the Town of Cochrane, Ontario is digitized and is online.

There are several delightful finds there, including “Don’t Use Telephone During a Thunderstorm” (guidance that followed me into my childhood).

In the listings I see:

• David’s Variety Store, where my mother worked as a teenager (ring 329).
• Lady Minto Hospital, where my mother was born (ring 46).
• Smith, R.M., the furniture store and later funeral home that buried all of my grandparents (ring 239).

What’s remarkable about the R.M. Smith listing is that the funeral business lives on, under the name Irvine & Irvine, and the current telephone number, a century later, is 705-272-3239.

My favourite listing, however, is for my great-grandparents’ house on Fifth Avenue, under Caswell, E.:

And on the cover of the directory there is this section:

My great-grandfather, Edgar Caswell, was both the Fire Chief and the Town Foreman, and so their home telephone number was also the number for both of those. The calls they must have received, at all hours!

(Given Cochrane’s propensity for burning down, it’s ironic that the telephone number for the Fire Chief was 13).

I was at the camper this afternoon. I had one big failure—couldn’t fix the issue with the Dometic fridge’s refusal to recognize that it was powered by electricity—and a couple of successes, including installing a suction cup shower mount.

Bring on the summer.