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…

We’re back blogging. No more tears. It was sunny today. I planted grass, raked. Listened to the Montreal Jubilation Choir on a mini disc that Iburned 3 years ago – and have forgotten how. Then I balked again at iPod, even with Dan urging me on. Jasper hosted his first annual “Best Plane Festival.” Five kids showed up. We made paper airplanes from on-line patterns. The last new design I’d learned before today predates the space shuttle. Porchlight’s growing. 26,000 bulbs out in 10 days. About a dozen strangers showed up at the new office today to volunteer to deliver light bulbs. It’s astonishing, really. 8:15 am on a Saturday…

I went to Futureshop tonight to buy a webcam for the Boler. Funny, last time I wrote here I didn’t know what a Boler was. And then I came home and had a teary meltdown with Suzy when I remembered it was five years ago today that Dad died. I tried to distract myself by looking for a memorial notice in the crappy PEI Guardian. They don’t publish memorial notices on-line. So I Googled Dad. No hits. Five years is all it takes to vanish on-line, if ever you were even there. Heck, his name would have appeared lots of times from my self-indulgent ramblings about our complex relationship. They’re…

Our contractor at the cottage told us that we’d get through the summer with the 1980 roof; he’d reshingle in the fall. Bad idea. Suzy and I braved the tail of tropical storm Barbara on the rooftop overlooking St. Peters Bay and the Gulf of St. Lawrence soaked to the bone and blackened by four bucketfuls of tar. It’s tough to spread tar in a downpour, even a tropical one, warm. At least the bugs weren’t bad. But at one moment I looked across the roof at my squatting tarred-up wife of seven years and felt all warm. At last: We’d managed to find some time away from the kids.…

It’s 30C in the shade of the earth (aka night). And almost too dark to type with the lights off. I’d light a candle but am afraid of the heat buildup.There’s no a-c at Walden. And that’s fine. A fan hums above me in the loft, stirring the air up there before I head up to bed. It’s 5C hotter there. Maybe I will have that beer. Jasper is asleep on the sofa behind me, exhausted after another day in the woods and at the MacPhee farm across the Dock Road. His little friends Megan (8) and Christie (11) keep him running, chasing barn kittens and exploring the hill and,…

I’ve been coming to this beach since I can remember. I’m sitting in the kitchen. The mouth of St. Peter’s Bay, PEI, opens to the Gulf of St.Lawrence. The sandspit point of Greenwich reaches out and fails against the inky waves. Buoys bob and sway. It’s 2006, but when I close my eyes on that shore and sink my toes in and suck in a deep nasal breath, sharp and salty in the back of my throat, it’s the early 80s again and I’m the kid on the beach, still a worrying type, but appreciative of the screeching dune terns, the endless night skies, the brace of a seawater cannonball…

Good-bye: One “Pump in Style” breast pump: $40. One Fisher Price wagon: $20. A live trap for “rabbits and small creatures”: $20. (Sorry to make you drive from Pinecrest, but it’s not big enough for raccoons). The Maytag washer is older than I thought. Marked down from $75 to 50, but the antique “Suds Saver” feature could come in handy! One glider rocker and slightly-stained ottoman: $45. Yes, it can easily be re-covered. A pee-green (no, not pea) micro-fibre-what-were-we-thinking reading chair: Please, take it. Getting rid of junk while the family’s away at a cottage for the weekend: Priceless. Hello, iPod.

It’s 10PM on a Tuesday. I just caught myself surfing sites on how to declutter the home. God, that’s bad. But I do like this suggestion: When travelling, pack old underwear, socks and t-shirts and, get this, Throw Them Out after wearing them. I can just see myself pulling over sweaty for a steamy cheesy foil sandwich from a silver truck at a rest stop near Rivière-de-loup. Peel off that Tee and keep on rolling! Voyons-donc!

I complain a lot about having too much stuff. And it’s a dumb thing to do in a world where 90% of people have too little. I have this ideal notion in my head that I will be happier with less. And I want to pass this on to my kids, but I feel I’m failing miserably. Dan introduced Jasper to Gameboy yesterday. Thanks! 🙂 The happiest times in my life have been those when I had less “stuff.” And discovering Thoreau has given me a historical touchstone for this perspective. But getting there’s tough. It seems I keep moving things out of my house and there’s still more and…

In the heart of Alaska’s Wrangell-St. Elias National Park there’s the tiny abandoned copper mining town of Kennecott/McCarthy. 30-40 people still live there, even though the mine was closed, suddenly, in the 1930s. It’s only in the last ten years that the pool table was removed from the local hall. Back in its hey-day, the only way into town was by rails that were laid across moving glaciers. Some say Armand Bombardier developed the snowmobile here, an innovation to deal with the 8 months of snow. Today the best way in is by bush plane. McCarthy is a great place to hang out. The main drag of town is a…

No, I wasn’t Looking at the car door. I Ran Into It (see below). They should rename the Boxter “Bruiser” and sell idiot insurance to the owners. The only thing I’m still bewildered about is the fact that the first thing that came out of my mouth after hitting the car was, “Is your car all right?” Twit. Could be the meditation. This week was transformed by 2 hours on my knees Wednesday at the Society of Friends Quaker house on Fourth Avenue. Try thinking of nothing for two hours sometime. It’s hard. But so, so worth it. Admittedly, my silent mantra to fight back the noisy mind-chatter was somewhat…

I inspected a car door today on my ride in to work. Up close. It was a silver Porsche Boxer. Convertible. With a tall lawyer in an Oxford blue shirt and gold tie. Maclaren and Elgin, next to Bridgehead. He has good taste in coffee but poor peripheral vision and was illegally parked. More later.

Still building the playlist to justify the iPod. Please help! Zac and Heavy Metal Dan have responded with some good tunes. Thanks! I’m listening to The Clientele right now: “Where the Universes Are”. Nothing from you yet, Alex! Come to think about it, I should check out people I already know. Like Jon at Kelp Records. I miss our breakfasts at the Maple Leaf. Or Andrew Vincent, or even my cousin’s band, Inflight Safety. Keep the tune suggestions coming!