Make way for donuts

We had another quick trip to PEI last weekend, a good trip, although exhausting. We learned that if we open the rear window on the driver's side, Marley would stick his head out and the good folks at Tim Horton's would give him a few Timbits.

Islanders, like most North Americans, are serious about donuts. A donut franchise, name not disclosed, has purchased a corner lot in Montague. One of the parcels was owned by Sandra's cousin; they're in the process of moving the house to a new location along the river.

But, the big news of the summer is that Aerosmith will play in Charlottetown on July 21.

A travel reminder for this summer: The state of Maine would much rather that you bring or buy food for your journey on the Maine Turnpike.

Shortly after we crossed the border into St. Stephens, we stopped at a roadside stand where a guy was selling fiddleheads. The sign said $3/bag, but all he had on his little folding table were $5 bags. He had to rummage around to find a smaller bag when Sandra insisted that she only wanted to pay the $3. Fiddleheads taste like small, green peppers stuffed with grass clippings. They can also carry toxins that can make you quite sick, as Sandra discovered.

Who would have thought that good coffee would be on the wrong side of the environmental movement? Increasingly, people are buying coffee that's packaged in aluminum, paper, or plastic bags, materials that don't have much of a second life. (As I've mentioned before, we've been buying our coffee from Equal Exchange for 10 or so years. Although they do good things on the coffee plantations, the coffee arrives in bags that are tossed when they're empty.)

A coffee bag can't match the utility of a humble Hills Bros. coffee can when you need help to prime a water pump. Dunno the age of the coffee can, but it came from a time when a one-pound can contained one pound of coffee.

It's OK, folks. We don't have to worry about electing a Mormon as our president. Mitt Romney shows that he's a regular guy.

Harvard recently hosted a forum on gender roles in higher education, particularly among the Ivy League schools. (Half of the Ivy League college presidents are female.) 'Course, in the photo, that accompanied the story in the Boston Globe, I first noticed that the participants are sitting in Nichols & Stone chairs, from Gardner.

Speaking of Gardner, the convenience store that's a part of the Gulf station on City Hall Ave. has a sign that says that a person cannot buy more than three cell phones from the store per day. Send their customers some of these.

A recent issue of the Raivaaja reported that Finland is less relevant to the United States these days, in large measure due to the end of the cold war. Finland, with its proximity to the Soviet Union, was an important part of the diplomacy of the time (and also a base for U.S. intelligence operations). The Finns aren't letting this get to them: they've sent in the clowns.