I enjoyed this, though it took a minute to figure out why the site was called that. What’s that green hand thing?

Back in the mid-nineties, as the Internet was taking off and media companies were merging in the orgy of “convergence” I used to joke that I wanted to buy a manual printing press and a few thousand no.2 pencils and bury them shrink-wrapped somewhere safe so I could be a publisher after the “inevitable collapse.” Now that there’s a name for the end (Print and Read This Article) and I still don’t have my press, I’ve been looking to see what’s out there in the way of survival guides. Surely someone has written The Guide to Surviving the End of Oil. Maybe I should. Meanwhile, here are some good links.…

“High on a hill lived a lonely goatherd.” Write sponsor letters. Call Giant Tiger about media kits. Send the PM package. “That men will want to write on. To-o-o write on…” Send the revised budget to Suzanne. Call Globe about the bulb boxes in Shanghai. “Timid and shy and scared are you. Of things beyond your ken.” Prepare for meeting with Mayor at 2. Follow up to press release. “Fellows I meet may tell me I’m sweet and willingly I believe.” Call McGuinty, Baird, Poilievre. “A prince on the bridge of a castle moat-er” Review final Hydro contract for signing meeting tomorrow. “Folks in a town that was quite remote-er.”…

Happy Belated Father’s Day. Or, Belated Happy Father’s Day. I’ve been coveting an iPod for months; yesterday I got a jPod. Which is great. I really like Douglas Coupland, though I also hate him. Every time I read one of his books I think, “Shit, I could have written that.” And that’s the thing about art. It’s like JD said Friday night as we were waiting in line at the Fringe Festival to see Brendan McNally’s new play, Heads or Tails. “The artists are the people who have the balls to hang it out there for everyone to see.” Brendan’s been writing plays for years. Heads or Tails was fun,…

And now, from the “Gratuitous Grasp for Web Traffic” department, Kwesi’s got an idea. Skim down his post — and buy yerself some jigging line, har!

It’s been over six months since I was at Walden. I know because my dreams change. Lately at night I’m in the woods or on the deck or near thespring. Sometimes Dad is there, silently watching, and that’s not a bad thing anymore. Last night I dreamed of a big pumpkin patch out behind the bath house, bright orange balls popping out of the fall-dried field full of kids playing and picking jackolanterns for carving. I want a pumpkin patch. And a trip home. Too lazy to write more today. So I’m going to recycle.

I used to shave on Saturdays. Today I met a friend on the street at Westfest. She said I looked good. “You’ve lost your gordon face.” I’m glad. I do feel better. A month after leaving my job at gordongroup marketing and communications, I’m beginning to see that two years as Director of Writing in perspective. My biggest regret about leaving is that there was a time when I thought I should stay longer. More soon.

Last October, a week before the Porchlight launch, I called Stephen Harper’s office. I said I wanted to take a photo of The Leader holding a compact fluorescent bulb. “Everyone’s doing it,” I said. I thought my request would be a long shot, or at least lead me to the foot of some weeks-long queue. Just a few minutes later, the call was returned. “Mr. Harper will be arriving on the Hill in a few minutes. Can you come right now?” Luckily, I’d brought my camera to work that day. I ran out of the office, up Metcalfe and across the lawn of Parliament Hill, to the base of the…

I don’t use that word very often. In fact, I’m not sure it’s spelled correctly. My reluctance on righteous probably stems from my shadowy religious upbringing. If I close my eyes and concentrate I can still smell communion juice (never wine, always Welches), and pew stiffness quickly creeps into my back. It’s also odd to have become an evangelist, despite no longer believing in Noah. I’ve spent the past two months going church to mosque to Sai centre addressing congregations about hope and light-bulbs. It’s fun. Compact fluorescents are universally good. Porchlight is working with Faith and the Common Good. Kristina drives a Smart Car; it can hold 400 CFLs…

“Emerging Social Entrepreneur” I like it.

Twenty years ago, after one year of university at Carleton, I decided I’d had enough of Ottawa — a familiar feeling. On my way into the library to study I happened upon a poster that said, “Study in France.” So off I went, to Universite canadienne en France, a branch of Laurentian University that was set up on a low mountain overlooking the aquamarine Mediterranean and the gritty Riviera resort town of Nice. I took with me one suitcase, a bike that was too big (built for Rod, my 6’4″ stepdad), and no clue what I was doing. I was 19. It was a riotous year of travel and wine…

Alaska is four hours behind Eastern Time. Since getting home last Thursday, this fact has made midnight productive but mornings a mess. I tookJasper to school this morning in a fog on a clear day. Then I headed into town to my first day in my new office and didn’t know where it was. Project Porchlight is now renting space from Vrtucar on MacLaren St. just around the corner from a Bridgehead with free wireless Internet and expensive fair trade coffee. Which is Virtuous with an i. Alaska has me thinking about what kind of life I want, and more confident that I could have whatever life I choose. It’s…

It’s 12:30AM Anchorage time. I have a wake-up call in 3.5 hours for a 6AM flight to a 10AM Starbucks Tall Bold in Seattle, and dinner in Chicago and a snooze en route to Ottawa to (hopefully) a nice hug and kiss from sweet Mme Siouxie. 15 hours of travel. I’m beat. I would call this trip: Planes, Trains and Automobiles if it didn’t also include boats, glaciers, kayaks, crampons, mine shafts and whale pods. Today I spent 7 hours on a 20-passenger yacht on Prince William Sound en route from Valdez to Whittier writing a Porchlight funding proposal. I’d write a bit, then dash to the bow to watch…

The Shoup Glacier toe (the part that reaches the water) is over 300′ tall. You just can’t tell from photos. When bits crack and fall off (many pieces as big as bungalows), the sound starts like a grumbling stomach followed by a thunderous crack and a splash.

It’s a good tired. Since my last post, I flew in a wee De Haviland Beaver over the Chugha mountain range to the interior of Wrangell Elias National Park. We stayed at America’s last frontier town and former copper mining community of McCarthy, a dusty strip of road with an original brothel/lodge (where we stayed) and saloon. The horses were replaced with ATVs, and I really doubt that the original settlers in 1910 had saffron-infused shrimp skewers on the menu. Yummy. We hiked on a glacier with crampons (definitely required) and drank from the crystal-blue runoff. Today we drove to Valdez, arriving just in time for a quick trip to…