I get a Christmas card every year from this American visionary‘s Mom. Steven Johnson keeps writing books that “stay ahead of the curve.” His last, “Everything Bad is Good for You” was published just last year. Forget the Montessori School. Get the XBox. Now he’s published another book. “The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic — and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World,” follows a doctor and a clergyman who teamed up in 1854 to figure out why cholera had ravaged their neighborhood. (Salon.com) This guy writes books super quick like. This is sobering news as I sit down to finish a compact fluorescent…

Sarah Harmer’s sweet. She has an angelic voice. And she can change a light bulb. Her show last night was great. I’ve had Oleander in my head all day. She can change my porch light anytime. The campaign is one year old today, not counting Kinmount, of course! We’ve hand delivered over 150,000 compact fluorescent light bulbs! Today was to be our volunteer recognition event. It rained. Hard. Still, 300 people passed by (picking up bulbs and treats and moving on before getting soaked, like us). And it was a blast. Sometimes adverse conditions make things better. Like working for a year against all kinds of obstacles to get something…

Project Porchlight is holding a volunteer appreciation event on Saturday. We’re going to have pumpkin carving, a band, 100 black-light CFL bulbs to give away, and two (2) mascots. We’ve got the Hydro Ottawa PowerWise Owl, and the Giant Tiger. When I told someone recently that the Giant Tiger mascot was coming, he actually said, “Yeah, I’ve seen that big yellow cat before; what’s the Giant Tiger mascot called?” These events are lots of fun, but we’ve never had more than one mascot before. How will the PowerWise Owl and the Giant Tiger get along? Will there be territorial fights? Some scratching? Growling? It’s possible. Above: Underdressed PowerWise Owl explains…

OK, so that last post (below) is a bit grim. Thanks for calling. Maudlin and self-indulgent fall far short of suicidal. Besides, I’m too busy to be self-destructive; I’ve got 100,000 more bulbs to distribute! One e-mail this morning was different. It seems I’ve inadvertently restored a part of my old Walden site that is popular and shocking. It’s definitely sweet, and hot. Old Sister-in-law (see also below) is single. On the prowl. And she’s threatening me unless I take down the offending web page. So it’s coming down tonight! See if you can find it! Big prizes! You have 10 hours. Go-ogle! JD has sent some alternate photos (one…

Tonight I remembered Aberfan. Not sure why. I’d had a couple of beers, some meatloaf and laughs with the in-laws and then came home mad. It’s been like that since I was a kid, except for the beers that is. It’s a grim wisdom, finally coming to terms with never being really happy, despite everything, even surrounded by abundance, and love and beauty. Simon was screaming, fighting sleep after snoozing through the meatloaf, when I remembered the date. Forty years ago this week in a mining town in South Wales an entire school of kids was wiped out when a 40′ tidal wave of coal sludge slid down a mountainside…

Someone commented here recently that she senses spiritual growth happening in my life. I hate to say this, but she’s wrong. I just spent nearly two hours trying to figure out how to restore some gems from the old Walden Cabin site to this “new” one. Why? I haven’t written a bloody thing in nearly a year, and I’m grouchy. So I resurrect some old Maclean’s pieces I published, and pop up some Jordan or Alaska photos from press trips, and I have this sense of accomplishment. Meanwhile, all the software I used to play with to edit this site since I started blogging in 2001 (yes, five years ago!),…

I noticed this evening that the leaves are largely gone. Summer is a blur. The water’s still on at the cabin; it’s time to get some bales for around the bath house. And now I find myself clicking through Alaska pictures I took four months and a lifetime ago. With Porchlight in full swing, it’s great to have the distant touchstone, even if the irony of flying around the world to watch glaciers melt isn’t lost on me. These pictures just don’t capture the scale. Three hundred feet of thousand year old ice pinching down between two mountains to the sea, chunks the size of bungalows busting off and falling…

“Climate change is the greatest all-round threat this country faces,” he wrote Oct. 16, “and … my nation’s government should not let us down with half-measures, a curtsy to junk science or a sell-out to the tar sands.” Independent MP Garth Turner. “We don’t think that energy efficient lighting is appropriate for Official Residences.” So sayeth the all-powerful National Capital Commission. Last spring I tried to schedule a photo shoot at Rideau Hall with the Governor General changing a bulb at the Head of State’s Official Residence on Sussex Drive. And why would that be so crazy? After all, it’s a home in Ottawa, and we have a mandate to…

I’m a pessimist. I’m a writer, but I have doubts about whether or not I even spelled that right. Or correctly. But I’m also changing. Two years ago I started a job at an Ottawa marketing company, after years and years of running my own business. I was scared sh*tless about working at an “agency.” It didn’t take long to discover that people hide in jobs where there’s structure and false formality. One of the partners at my old employer is single-handedly keeping that good company from being Great. And nobody will ever do anything about it. Back in April, one of the partners of the same firm told me…

I’ve made my YouTube debut, just days after the two 20-somethings that invented it sold it to Google for $1.6 billion.

Every now and then things just feel right. I finally bought an iPod, after a whole lotta wasting time fretting about it. See, I’m the kind of guy who can order and pay for a cedar porch or outdoor shower and grape arbour from 1200 km away, but spending $160 on a digital music device paralyzes me. The iPod rocks. I’m running again, and now I can toss the old Sony mini-disc playlist. The disc in rotation features In-flight Hungarian, the Montreal Jubilation Gospel Choir and The Petshop Boys. Even my mother noticed how I have less stuff around the house. I’ve been downsizing for months. I LOVE IT. Last…

I love my electric bike. But it’s no longer cool. It’s now legal to ride. Mine was duct-taped and bungied all summer to get me to work on the daily road to resurrection for my light bulb project. I loved the informality and uncertainty of a one horsepower motor strapped precariously to the frame of my 1989 hybrid Bianchi, still showing scars of a crash that nearly killed me in Gatineau in ’90. I’m pro helmet. Look closely at my right eye for the stitches scar. Jasper is taking karate. Simon wishes he could too. He’s a real swinger.

Someone said Margaret Atwood may not be the best spokesperson for our friendly neighbourhood bulb campaign. I read somewhere that she will only do interviews with people dressed in red; Porchlight’s colours are blue and green. Damn. So that leaves us Sarah Harmer, Jim Bryson. No reply yet from Sarah’s agent. Alanis Morisette would be great, although I betray my uncoolness when I refer to her only as Alanis, her pre-Jagged Pill self. Even I had big hair back then. Another person suggested Dan Ackroyd for his Ottawa connection, but I immediately think he’d be better at slinging drinks than bulbs. I’ve been wrong before. Many times. Suzy regularly calls…

Suzy brought Canadian Living home last month. The pumpkin pie on the cover sucked me in, but it was article on Margaret Atwood’s “no-holds-barred approach to energy conservation” that caught my attention. My heart leapt when, a few paragraphs in, the interviewer asked, “If we gave you a magic wand and you could make one change to Canadian society, what would it be?” One change. A great idea for a campaign. Someone should do that. Then Ms. Atwood said “…let’s ban leaf blowers.” Celebrities are so hard to reach. I wish I could just call Ms. Atwood up and tell her about Porchlight. I think she’d like it. Notwithstanding her…

The Porchlight launch was a success last week. Mag Ruffman was super — animated, self-deprecating, irreverent. But the media in Ottawa is taking a “been there, done that” approach. That’s fine. We got such good coverage of our test campaign last year that I can understand it if we don’t get on the editorial page again. The Ottawa campaign is just beginning, but it’s really over. The hardest part was getting it going, quitting my job, losing the first contract to get this program going, then rebuilding it within weeks. And now that we have surpassed 30,000 bulbs delivered since last week (!), more than we delivered in 8 weeks…