On the DEWLine 2.0: Dwight Williams

A couple of resources:

https://www.ottawafestivals.ca/jobs

https://apt613.ca/ottawa-arts-and-culture-jobs-april-2025/

Wallack's got back to me with an answer about the options they have either in stock or available to order:

Holbein (Japan)
Colleen Pencils (Thailand)
Bruynzeel (Holland)
Faber-Castell (Germany)
Caran d'Ache (Switzerland)
Derwent (UK)
Lyra (Germany)

I didn't go out for anything after work last night. Weather was too messy.

Maybe tonight?

Some day, I want to do something like this for Ottawa:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/first-person-ode-to-montreal-mile-end-1.7092013

I've lived here since the summer of 1985, so...

The fog was just perfect in the moment on December 10, 2023. Imagine my surprise to find Google Photos "stitching" three shots together into this.

Steve Lieber mentioned on BlueSky recently that the comics artform and industry alike can benefit from an updating of this page:

https://web.archive.org/web/20150415200242/http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/lists/lists_and_links/30269/

I mentioned in reply that I could probably make some time to update the Ottawa-Gatineau section. Sadly, we lost Suzanne Marsden three years ago, and the Ottawa Comix Jam sessions were her Big Project of keeping the community connected to itself and the larger city and comics creators' community of North America.

Writers, artists of all branch-disciplines, and so on...

More on this to come, I think.

I think we're going to have a Problem despite our attention to the details in recent years:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/bus-route-changes-ottawa-1.7018834

The networking to counter this plan is already underway, partly because we were already talking amongst ourselves and with city council. This is a good thing. We need to keep building on this.

Well, it wasn't a deputation. That's apparently not until next month, which is going to...not complicate at least one other appointment at the end of November. I am going to have to deal with lost income for however long I have to be ready to deliver it on that day, I think.

What did happen was further training, as well as face time directly with three city councillors. Leiper, Troster and Devine. Also, contact with some of the staffers of other members of city council.

Focus is still on mental health, poverty reduction and housing, because the city budget-building for 2024 is underway, and the staff's under direction to keep the rate increase to 2.5 %.

What I could have felt better about? More than a half-dozen of the 50 attendees masking up, for one. Seeing working air purifiers in the room for another. Neither of those things happened, though, so...

...to advocate for extra municipal funding for mental health support programmes this morning. I've printed out three drafts of my "deputation" - city hall slang for a speech expected to last no more than five minutes - and am not sure that I'm properly set up for this.

I am, of course, terrified of being reinfected by COVID-19 by way of public transit. Not that I have any realistic alternatives to that to resort to right now for various reasons and excuses.

I haven't visited the downtown core of Ottawa-Gatineau in over a year. There have surely been additional changes to the neighbourhood that I don't know to expect.

Yes, there still is such an event. The Pandemic hasn't killed it. I hope everyone who goes, is careful and has fun. In that order, please?

https://apt613.ca/tips-on-what-to-see-at-oiaf-2023/

Meanwhile, I'm trying to figure out an alternative to epsilon Eridani for Axanar's host star. This leaves me with a history question: how much of the local galactic region was already charted out by the Vulcans before first contact with Earth?

I don't think they knew about Axanar - the planet or the species - going by "ENT: Fight or Flight". So, while the first contact between Earth and Axanar may well have happened at epsilon Eridani, I don't think that species' homeworld should be there as well.