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While we were driving past Ladysmith on our way to Victoria last weekend Pamela spotted a new little restaurant, right on the main highway, next to Ladysmith City Hall.   Yesterday we thought we'd try it out, and we were blown away. 

I arrived in Mainz, Germany yesterday after a somewhat make-it-up-as-you-go-along voyage, which started with the airline with which I was supposedly booked for travel not having any record of my existence. After a few phone calls it was determined that my itinerary had changed, with me the last to find out, fortunately for a later flight. The new schedule made a mess of my train connections, booked via internet with the Deutsche Bahn, and left me in Stuttgart at 11:00pm with no hotel arranged.

My first stop upon arriving in Portland was Powell's, the legendary bookstore. I arrived at the main location, which consists of a city block's worth of old 3-storey commercial buildings fused together into one huge store.

I travelled last week to Portland, OR for the Drupal Conference. I decided I'd take the train - it's been more than twenty years since I took the train through that part of the country, and I thought it would be an enjoyable mode of travel. Also, I recently was made aware of the greenhouse gas emissions associated with air travel: approx. 19Kg per person per 100 km travelled - or about 300Kg for a round-trip flight Vancouver to Portland.

The trip cost $65 USD each way... actually the first leg of the trip was via Bus from Vancouver to Seattle. This took 3.5 hours, what with the customs processing and all.

I happened into a second-hand bookstore today (Carson's Bookstore, on Broadway two blocks east of Alma, in Vancouver, BC). Carson's is a great place - there's always something irresistable, be it a book, sheet music, or LP. Today I was overjoyed to discover Buckminster Fuller's "Ideas and Integrities" and "Intuition", in paperback.

Sample quote:

When the first Sputnik accomplished orbit, it knocked the airplane out of the sky, as a weapon, as the airplane had knocked the battleship off the seas.

This summarizes an amazing analysis of a technological shift, and its attendant global economic impacts. The implication seems to be that the government financed airplane industry, which cost '100 times the total value of

I spent most of August in Montréal. August is usually a swelter, but this year it was cool, cloudy and rainy. I visited with friends and family, ate lots of wonderful meals, spent some time in the MAC, attended ballet classes at Ballet Divertimento, and wandered around various neighbourhoods, some old, some new, some rich, some poor. There's a lot to you, you big old sprawl. A lot of horizontal disquiet.

I was sharing my experiences of Montréal with my friend J - she spoke of the city as a Tango, in its intimacy and warmth, complexity and conflict. I immediately thought of this photo, taken just outside the Mont Royal Metro station.

A few weeks ago I travelled from Victoria 'up island' to Ladysmith. I'd been invited by a friend to spend a weekend with him and his family at their beach house near the small town. My friends were travelling from the mainland by ferry; I had spent the day in Victoria, and we'd agreed to meet in Ladysmith at the new Tim Hortons.

Happy Earth Day!

Buckminster Fuller coined the term "Spaceship Earth" in the 60's [His Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth dates from 1969; I can't find an earlier reference at the moment] to describe the closed system nature of our planet, and to capture the notion that all of Earth's inhabitants are, as it were, in the same cosmic boat.

Since then, the number of passengers has increased to 6.4 billion give or take a few 10s of millions. That's a more than 50% increase over the population in 1970. (see this population clock, based on US Census estimates).