Hello!
It’s been—finally—a mostly chill, restful weekend. Long overdue, and grateful for it. We read, ate ice cream, did some light shopping, caught up with family (including Oma!), and later today will catch up with friends. No travel, nor trips to the hospital, nor much distress. I even had a chance to write some data parsing code! (To get a breakdown of my Communauto trips from PDF invoices, so thrilling are my interests.)
Part of the chill-ness, external factors aside, has also come from not reading too much on screens—I’ve had plenty of screen time (coding, gaming, accounting), but tried to focus my reading time on paper. Good for the eyes, yes, but also a good way to escape the onslaught of the feeds. To that end, I’ve been reading City of Illusions (Ursula K. Le Guin) and Pastoral Song (James Rebanks), both fitting books for a quiet, rainy weekend.
Because of this, I haven’t got many links to share, but that’s okay. More time for all of us to tend to things offscreen, whether books or plants or life outdoors or something else. Still, though, I’ve two brief notes, on Ottawa things that aren’t just Ottawa things:
- The strike continues, and Lyn wrote a brief thread on why the work from home issue is so central, offering more to the country than people give it credit. Pairs well with Michael’s post from last summer, on “Government from home”.
- Wellington has reopened to regular traffic, and I already miss the quiet the street closure offered. With so much of the downtown paved (and the city / developers not knowing how to keep trees alive), transit so bad, and driving so central to existence here, the noise of downtown has been ever more on my mind. I wish we’d prioritize quiet more in our politics, as Ursula Franklin once eloquently argued.
All the best for the week ahead!
Lucas