Tag Archives: Peter Rukavina

I swear I know how to read, and I have bookmarks to prove it

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Peter’s wonderful post about Charlottetown’s venerable Bookmark (his photos of tiny details around the shop and their aerie office are delightful) made me dash pre-morning-coffee to rifle through my small bookmark collection to confirm his observation that there has never been a “the” before the bookstore’s name. Me too, Peter, me too.

I guess I had my final visit to the Queen Street location this past Wednesday, when I dashed in to pick up a book order while a friend waited in my illegally-parked car. I didn’t know to give a final nod to the place where I’ve spent many happy hours, so Peter’s post allowed me one last wistful glimpse. Looking forward to the new digs!

A series of yellow and blue bookmarks from a Charlottetown, PEI, store called Bookmark. The oldest one would likely be from the early 1980s and the most recent from a couple of years ago.
The bookmarks of Bookmark, from the early 1980s to almost today.

Rosa

This beautiful vignette from Peter’s Italian travels sees him momentarily propelled back in time to the backlot at Cinecitta in 1962 and onto the set of a Sophia Loren/Marcello Mastroianni classic, and I’m swooning at the thought of it.

What if we had all agreed to use the internet only to share the beauty we had seen through our days, like digital Damiels and Cassiels?

The Saints

Peter captured so beautifully the rollercoaster that November is for me. I always find this time of year a bit unsettling: the shorter days, the cold north wind after the tease of a warm day, the chores I should be doing and can’t get to, the looooong lead up to Christmas, the passing of another year.

It’s probably not a surprise to anyone who has read along with this blog that I am often thinking of times past, but lately the people who are long gone are gathering around me in ways I’ve not felt before. Most days I drive by the houses where generations of my family have lived and I picture them inside, or working in the barn, or standing by the road chatting with a neighbour. These houses are empty, uninhabited, so available for my imagination to fill them again. It is comforting but strange, as if something happened on All Saints’ Day this year that released them back into the world. I’m not going mad, but perhaps there are things I need to learn from these people.

Freeland 1935. My grandfather has stooks of grain in his field at the top of the photo, and my mother is living with her grandparents at the farm in the bottom, on the corner of the Barlow and Murray roads.

Wifi QR code

With the new Bell Fibe system comes a new wifi network and password. I could set up a guest network for visitors, but opted again to follow Matt Haughey’s instructions to make a wifi QR code.

Thanks to Peter for first sharing this tip. His advice to get your own domain for your email prompted me to do just that, and start this website. Then I started blogging after his 2019 unconference. My advice is to follow Peter!