The number of Vietnamese restaurants in Charlottetown was zero for so long that it seems a miracle that we now have seven (indeed, there were eight until Home Kitchen closed a week ago).
This is so many that a map is required. So I created the map.
A few years ago a physiotherapist recommended that I join a breathing group. She might as well have recommended I join a motorcycle gang for all the understanding I had at the time for why one would join a group centred around breathing. I understand (a little) more about intentional breathing now, to the point where I might even consider seeking out a breathing group, if such groups were not so obviously a COVID vector at present.
I found my way to Ashley Neese via a Google search for “relationship with grace,” as I was trying to understand what a relationship with grace might be after a friend recommended that I seek to “forge a deeper and wiser relationship with grace.” The meaning of grace in this context isn’t self-evident, and so it requires some puddling about.
This search led me to Letting Go with Grace, a post that Neese wrote in her blog in 2016 about ending a relationship:
Nobody knows how to end a relationship. Even if you read all of the self-help books and talk to your friends, family, teachers, and therapists, you still have to navigate the conversations and the separation on your own. It’s your work to do, it’s your path to carve out.
The reality is, we’re all just making up how we relate to each other as we go along. While it can seem overwhelming to breakup with someone you love, the truth is, you only have two paths to take. You can choose to let go with an open heart or you can shut yourself off from what is happening. To end a relationship with an open heart is to let go with grace. This is the path I chose because I had enough experience with unconscious breakups over the years and this time I had to do things differently for myself and for Jason. I owed us both that much.
While the post doesn’t come right out and say what she means by grace, reading it provides an uncommonly deep insight into it nonetheless. It might not be the grace I need to forge a deeper and wiser relationship with, but it’s a place to start.
Ashley Neese also happens to be a breathwork practitioner, and although it takes some skill to navigate the language rapids of her professional offerings (“sessions are led in a safe and co-regulated energy field”), I’ve found the simple breathing exercise she describes here to be a helpful starting place for understanding what this world is all about.
I wonder if professional archivists are ensuring that artifacts of our culinary past are being saved for posterity. I was in the habit, for a time, about a decade ago, of collecting photos of Charlottetown restaurant menus and saving them in Evernote for reference. This process seems to have been the kiss of death for several of these restaurants, as an uncommon number of them have since closed. Here, for old time’s sake, are the highlights of the collection.
Tai Chi Gardens
Perhaps my favourite, and most-frequented restaurant ever, Tai Chi Gardens was on Pownal Street just south of Grafton, and was operated by my friends Kennie and Wennie. Menu from April 2011.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
The Seatreat
A long-running and much-loved restaurant at the corner of Euston and University, since closed. Menu from July 2010.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
Orange Lunchbox
It started off as an (orange) food truck, and moved into the space on Great George Street next to Cedar’s that’s now home to Crafters Burgers and Khoaw Son. Menu from June 2013.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
Black & White
One of the last of the grandfathered-in downtown grills, Black & White is still in operation, albeit under new ownership. This is the menu from March 2011.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
Terre Rouge
It keeps changing its name and its emphasis, but there’s been a restaurant in the old Carter’s Office Supplies for a long time now. This is the takeout menu from January 2013.
I’ve been trapped in a Hogan’s Heroes vortex for several days now: the YouTube singularity thinks it’s on to something, and I keep confirming it.
This led me to Wikipedia, where I learned that, despite being shot in California, every single episode was set in winter:
Although it was never snowing on the film set and the weather was apparently sunny, there was snow on the ground and building roofs, and frost on the windows. The set designers created the illusion of snow two ways: the snow during the first several seasons was made out of salt. By the fourth season the show’s producers found a more permanent solution and lower cost, using white paint to give the illusion of snow. By the sixth and final season – with a smaller budget – most of the snow shown on the set was made out of paint.
After Ton first mentioned Obsidian, I decided to try it out: like Ton I’m looking for a way out of Evernote, but I’m also looking to become better at making notes about projects and plans in a trusted repository so that I can refer back later as a resource (on the job we’ve used Trac for more than a decade now, and it’s proved invaluable to be able to refer to the copious notes my younger self took).
Obsidian has a simple plug-in called “Daily Notes” that makes it slightly easier to create a new note every day, and, on a lark, I started to do this, noting things under three headings: “Work,” “Projects,” and “Home & Family,” with an additional “Accounting” thrown in on money-handling days.
To my surprise, I’ve kept it up for the last 49 days:
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My father kept a daily log from the mid-1960s until he died. He started off on paper, and moved to using a computer in 1990. It was that log we consulted when we wanted to known where we watched the walk on the Moon in 1969. I have 28 years worth of his digital log in a file on my computer: it’s a plain ASCII file with 301,543 lines in it. Reading it now, I realize that I use exactly the same style and voice as he did for all those years, and cover much of the same ground, freely mixing work, family and projects.
Here, for example, were his notes from August 27, 1993, 27 years ago today:
hot weather continues
called for rates of alternative long-distance service
called William Dam Seeds and Hank at RBG re winter rye/wheat, when to turn under the buckwheat
winter rye not available at Millgrove Feed till September 10
to CCIW at 1215 to pickup Chris for goodbye lunch at La Trattoria
Chris and I worked through documentation of cleanup of files, gave Harry Pulley the format for numeric data
Chris back to university on Monday
PM: entered all cash data in budget
Among my notes for today:
Moved the explanatory Moon copy from results pages to the generic Moon Phase Calendar index page.
DNS updates for gardenplanner.almanac.com.
Got confirmation that I could transfer the AccountEdge license to Windows from Mac and did so: worked without problems.
Lunch at Madame Vuong’s.
Got Oliver’s prescription refilled at Parkdale Pharmacy.
When I cracked open Dad’s log after he died, I thought I might find deeper insight into my father, some undiscovered aspect of his personality that might explain him, and me, and fatherhood.
But I didn’t.
I found “tilled middle garden” and “DLed and tested some BBS files” and “ran memmaker on 386H.”
Where there are references to me they are things like “email from Peter, not interested in Honda after all,” and “call from Peter, their house offer has been accepted,” and “big breakfast of potato pancakes made by Peter with new food processor.” And I realized that he wasn’t writing for anyone other than himself. And I’m doing the same thing.
There is utility, I have found, in creating a running reference: I couldn’t remember when an intake worker had called me from the government in July, and then I remembered that I noted it. And I’ve got our new refrigerator’s serial number noted so that when it breaks in 20 years, I’ll know where to look. But more so than any practical reference, I think there’s value in noting the events of each day as a way of simply processing what happened, developing a sense of progress (or not), realizing that when it feels like nothing at all has been happening, there’s actually been a lot.
Earlier today I was on a conference call with someone in California, and, by way of making a (sarcastic) point, I made reference to Horse & Hound.
At the end of the call my Californian colleague, clearly not a Notting Hill fan to the degree I am, asked me for “the name of that magazine you mentioned” with promises to get to the bottom of things.
Fast forward 6 hours: after hearing some Gordon Lightfoot on Oliver’s playlist, I’m searching the web for the name of a cottage on Lake Superior where Catherine and I once stayed, a cottage owned by a man who was there the night the Edmund Fitzgerald went down.
The quality of the morning sun changed completely this morning as its position vs. Earth vs. 100 Prince Street saw sunlight streaming in the back windows in a most delightful way at breakfast time.
It was a hard cycle to the this morning: Oliver was grumpy, the trail was crowded, and we were both out of shape and overdressed for the weather.
But we persevered, made it to Gallant’s for our smoked salmon bagel, and then back down to the farmers’ market; once we had food and drink in us, brighter times prevailed.
If you’d told me a year ago that Oliver and I would successfully build a 12 km cycle into our Saturday morning routine I’d not have believed you. But I’m so glad we did: grumpiness notwithstanding, it’s the highlight of my week.
How does an overturned safe end up in the ditch beside the Confederation Trail? Oliver speculated it was a drunken burglary gone wrong. If you’re missing your safe, it’s between Joe Ghiz Park and the 1911 Jail.
Charlottetown’s annual outdoor art festival, Art in the Open, sputtered to life yesterday for its 10th anniversary. Between the pandemic and the threatening (and then actual) rain, people were much fewer and far between, and much of the joie de vivre was bleached out of the event, exposing more starkly what we’d known all along: it’s as much about experiencing art in community as it is about the art itself. Without the community, it was a lonely, damp evening.
Although the annual Crow Parade was covided out of the festival, participants were encouraged to continue to casually dress up as crows; Oliver was one of the few to step up, reprising his costume from 2019, and adding a bovine element (hence “coo” rather than “caw”) as an homage to Russell Louder:
Despite the scant crows, the damp, and the sparse participation, there were highlights.
Norma Jean Maclean’s Work, in the oval at Confederation Landing Park, “a performance about day-to-day physical acts, searching for meaning in the mundane, and ultimately the processes of doing and undoing” was inspired.
Detail from “Work” by Norma Jean Maclean, August 29, 2020
Nine Yards‘ Alone Together was intended as an installation, but was just as interesting as a performance piece, as we ambled along as it was being last-minute assembled (we returned later in the night and were able to walk inside and feel it pulse and rumble):
Detail from “Alone Together” by Nine Yards, August 29, 2020
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Detail from “Alone Together” by Nine Yards, August 29, 2020
Hannah Bridger’s Wind Farm, on the great lawn in Victoria Park, was an interesting rumination on the wind:
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“Wind Farm” by Hannah Bridger, August 29, 2020
I have long-admired Sandi Hartling’s work, and her anything at all, in the windows at the Confederation Centre Art Gallery entrance, was playful, especially in that (reflective) setting:
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Detail from “anything at all,” Sandi Hartling, Confederation Centre of the Arts
By 6:30 p.m. the rain had begun in earnest and we’d done the waterfront-downtown-park loop. We ordered a pizza, paid one more visit to Nine Yards, and headed toward home.
On the way there we passed evidence of Becka Viau’s Revolution, wherein she rolled a round hay bale about the city. It was perhaps the piece that best summed up the contemporary zeitgeist.
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Detail from “Revolution” by Becka Viau, August 29, 2020
We picked up the pizza and sought shelter at home for our regular Saturday Movie Night; Oliver insisted we watch a movie with an artistic theme, so we settled on The Best Offer.
I’m used to returning home from Art in the Open with a feeling for the endless possibility of the human endeavour; that feeling escaped me yesterday, replaced with a more basic satisfaction that art can perservere even in fraught times.
Oliver and I are on our last night of a week’s vacation on the eastern shore of Cape Breton Island; against traditon, I’ve maintained radio silence throughout, so as to perfect the art of doing absolutely nothing, which is a practice I do not come by honestly.
We have largely succeeded at carrying out a week of nothing but sleeping, eating, reading, sketching, watching TV, and going for walks on the beach, punctuated by a trip into Port Hawkesbury for supplies, and a run up to Judique for lunch.
Otherwise, save a lovely afternoon hosting my old friend George on Friday afternoon, we’ve been in pleasant isolation, enjoying good weather, fresh blackberries every morning, and the occasional game of Crazy 8s.
The closest vacation I’ve ever had to this one was the week that Catherine and I spent on the shore of Lake Superior in 1992 at a remote cabin; there was more nudity on that trip, but otherwise it was similarly “let’s try to do nothing for a week.” There’s a lot to recommend it, especially when the hearty mélange that is daily life includes an awful lot of not doing nothing for both me and for Oliver.
As I write our car is up the road charging at the garage of the owner of the house where we’re staying, we’re just back from our last walk on the rocky shore, and I’m plotting how to turn the remaining food in the fridge into a last supper (what can you make from carrots, naan, heavy cream, blueberries, honey and barbecue sauce?). Tomorrow we’ll make our way to Antigonish for lunch and an EV top-up, and we’ll then catch the 4:00 p.m. ferry to Wood Islands and home.
Oliver starts a new course at the University of PEI on Tuesday–Susan Brown’s Cool Britannia–and I have my first committee meeting of the fall season on Wednesday. It’s been good to have a break.
So an ice cream van that pulls up, jingling out the MIDI version of Josh Wink’s Higher State of Consciousness at 11am, everyone on the street downing tools and heading out for a caffeine hit and to catch up with friends?
My workplace has not changed at all due the pandemic—it’s still just me and the machines in our underground church bunker—but I would welcome the chance to punctuate my day like this with all the other hidden toilers. As it stands, most days I don’t lay non-Zoom eyes on a single soul.
Three boxes of the 2021 edition of The Old Farmer’s Almanaclanded at The Bookmark in Charlottetown today, and I encourage you to stop by and pick up your copy while there are still copies available.
When you buy The Old Farmer’s Almanac, not only are you getting a companion that’s “useful with a pleasant degree of humour,” but you’re also helping put food on the table of we at 100 Prince Street, as I enter my 25th year helping to maintain Almanac.com.
As a special bonus this year, you’ll also find an article by Charlottetown author (and my longtime friend) Ann Thurlow in the Canadian edition, so you’re really helping keep food in the pots of two Island households.
(Those of you from away are also encouraged to buy the 2021 edition: find retailers here).
A prototype for a paper construction that’s been rambling around my head for the last couple of days. Inspired by Oliver, who had us listen to a meditation about “moving beyond grief” on the ferry sailing home on Monday, which got me thinking about focusing backward versus focusing forward.
The swooshing sound, which was accidental, is perhaps my favourite part of the mockup.
In case you missed it, Borgen, the well-received Danish political drama, is now streaming on Netflix. Think The West Wing but with more political parties and more Denmark. Highly recommended.
I received word this morning that Ron Gaskin died in August.
This tribute to him by Rebecca Campbell makes it clear that my fondness for Ron was not something unique to me. ”Ron approached everything with resolute principle, unconditional love, and a DIY ethic,” she writes; we should all aspire to live like that.
