On the DEWLine 2.0: Dwight Williams

From PBS on a trend in public transit:

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/some-cities-turn-to-free-public-busing-to-counteract-inequity

From an activist group in Ottawa:

https://www.ottawatransitriders.ca/wfh_could_be_a_golden_opportunity_for_better_transit

From the Transport Politic blog:

https://www.thetransportpolitic.com/2023/01/12/openings-and-construction-starts-planned-for-2023/

I'd like to think that all of these things are good news telling of helpful things in progress.

Laundry and shopping got done. Bus pass has been updated for another month.

Ottawa the city is still here, too.

So I got a bit of good luck with today's eye exam: my sight hasn't worsened. My back-of-the-one-eyeball issue is still stable. I got a one-third discount on the price of that eye exam. And despite missing the bus I hoped to take home from that, I caught another one within two minutes when I was expecting to wait half an hour. So I started thinking today was a good day.

Then, I get home, log into Twitter, and find out about George Pérez's health news.

Then, I look at the solidarity among other artists and among fans in response to that news.

For all the other troubles of the world, yeah, all of *that* has been wearing me down. But that solidarity?

COVID-19 might have given me a break from the stresses of public transit...but it still isolated me from people I've wanted to stay in touch with. Flawed as that public transit still is.

(And the "blah" emoticon should NOT be smiling.)

I went to Perfect Books this morning, having pre-paid, to pick up Stumptown V.4 and ST:DSC Wonderlands. Both books were pretty much as I expected them to be, hence worth the money and time to get them.

The trip was mildly eventful because of the weather. The trip from home to downtown requires switching from bus to train at Blair Station these days, and the rain that was being given 40% odds of happening by Environment Canada fully happened during the train ride. The "wave" passed over my route when I was between Cyrville and Tremblay Stations and left me behind when I got to UOttawa Station and - at that point - off the train.

Finally got the transit pass updated for this month - thanks again for the current unemployment insurance rules, federal government, or that (and much of my current ability to keep looking for work) might not be possible! - after I got there.

Looking at the Rideau Canal as I crossed the Corkstown Footbridge connecting the University of Ottawa's Sandy Hill campus with the "Golden Triangle" section of Centretown, I saw...a lot of underwater plant life blooming. I think that's normal most years, but with canal boat traffic largely shut down because of the Pandemic (like so much else), the greenery comes right to the surface in much of the canal that I was able to see.

Perfect Books is in the midst of an upgrade of sorts. Their longtime next-door neighbour, Elgin Jewellers, has shut down in part due to Pandemic and partly because the owner was already thinking of retiring. That decision opened up an opportunity that the bookstore has taken advantage of: to double their then-current floor-space. They'd already been managing to weather the Pandemic "storm" - and the reconstruction of Elgin Street over the year prior to the Pandemic's beginnings - fairly well due to bulk-order business, a devoted long-time walk-in clientele willing to pivot with them, and other factors. So owner Jim Sherman's taking this chance. I'd really like this to work out for him and his staff.

Maybe it's because of the binge-reading of the Retail comic strip series' archives these past few days, but I'd like to see independent bookstores - and other retailers - be able to keep going, and maybe a little bit of careful growth, too.

And that leads me to my next reiteration: that we need a better "new normal" to move into from these Pandemic times. I worry that we're not going to get that better "new normal" because of far too many reasons right now.

Tom Leroux pointed this video out to me this afternoon. Food for argument, maybe?

From 2019 in Nature for a revisit:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02242-y

From this month at The Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jan/22/electric-vehicles-close-to-tipping-point-of-mass-adoption

Making me wish Trek-style replicator tech was real. I know there's people working on it...and we want to make this not be a no-win scenario...

Before we started building the Confederation Line and Lines 1 and 2 were still bus routes, like it says. Route 2 ran a length spanning from Blair Transitway Station - near Gloucester Centre, and CSIS HQ - and Bayshore Mall. Which was pretty much most of the city back then.

As I said in the comments:

YES. This is exactly the point. Transit preserves civil society. Therefore it must be protected and defended, even as we defend funding for police, firefighting, public broadcasting, etc..

https://www.citylab.com/perspective/2020/04/coronavirus-public-transit-subway-bus-ridership-revenue/609556/

Updating my cleverphone apps now that I've got my shopping, banking and newspapers in hand for the day. I'm a bit annoyed at having put off the newspapers as that meant I missed The Globe and Mail but that can't be helped.

Also, only mildly surprised that my preferred bank branch is closed on this particular Saturday, but at least I was able to confirm that I could get my bus pass topped up for next month. Just in case.

Job search question: who here knows anything beyond Wikipedia reports and the company website about a Vertex Venture Holdings company? I got a text message from someone claiming to represent them on my cleverphone asking if I was interested in an online interview. Is this really part of their normal hiring routine?