UofWinds 450, Week 46, 2026: Community Solar, Against disliteracy, The Moon's origin story doesn't add up
Good morning. I am sitting in the study, at my desk, and I have just blown out the candle that I had just lit because its flickering burning was distracting my eyes from the screen. After this newsletter is done, I will commemorate the event with a re-lighting. Or maybe I won't – I don't really need the extra light yet as our November skies continue to be open and blue, although there now is a foreboding chill in the air. One of cats is kneading biscuits in the room next door. It is the work of self-soothing.
Community Solar
One of the essays that I keep meaning to write is one dedicated to exploring those things that do not have an advertising budget and, as such, they are not part of the popular conversation. One of these things would be open source software, but I've also considered other forms of human infrastructure to be considered such as the very local social services that operate in our communities.
I mention this because earlier this week I was looking through the website of an American organization called the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and found a reference to something called, Community Solar.
Community solar provides a way for people without the financial means for solar on their rooftops and people who don’t own suitable rooftops to reap the benefits of renewable energy.
Community solar programs may be established by lawmakers or regulators. A community solar policy enables virtual net metering, which allows many individuals to be credited for the generation of a single solar installation. The policy should also create a competitive market that allows independent power producers to develop and own community solar installations (sometimes called gardens).
I had never heard such a thing and, being vain, promptly assumed that Community Solar was not legally possible in Canada. I started searching the internet to find out why it is not allowed to exist... and I found out that I was wrong. There are community solar organizations in Canada that exist as ventures where individuals can make monetary investments directly into solar projects for personal profit and in doing so, support community solar installations for organizations that lack the up-front capital to build them. I figure that these ventures must be profitable because the RBC is now getting in on the action (although perhaps not for long considering this breaking news).
One group that I discovered that was new to me was OREC, the Ottawa Renewable Energy Co-operative, which has existed since 2010. Since that time, OREC has completed 37 projects, with 30 being solar, 2 being wind, and being 5 energy retrofits funded from the over $16 million in local investments raised directly from members.
Which makes me wonder not just "How did I miss this?" but also, "What else am I currently missing?"
Against disliteracy
Earlier this year, the Ontario Library Association's podcast, Library Land Loves dedicated an episode on Reading As an Essential Service. What I particularly appreciated in this conversation between host and guest, was the suggestion that perhaps libraries have been (un)intentionally quieting our message about reading. We've been repeating the mantra of "Libraries are more than books" for so long now, that it feels uncomfortable for librarians to advocate for reading.
I suspect that there is some fear of being accused of being elitist that holds librarians back from taking the charge of loudly advocating for regular reading and writing as an essential ability to maintain one's self in this age of distraction.
I know that I personally pause before sharing works like "The Case for Cognitive Rearmament: Taking misinformation and cognitive decline seriously" because I'm wary of its framing of IQ being a measure of collective cognitive health. I am also wary of using the framing of Cognitive Warfare but recognize that while I might not be interested in warfare, warfare is interested in us.
This is why I'm so grateful that Mandy Brown has recently shared her essay, Against disliteracy, as it connects reading and attention in such a way that I have no hesitation to share it widely and to sing its praises.
Poet and typographer Robert Bringhurst proposes that reading “simply means paying attention to what’s in front of you and trying to make sense of it.”1 This is what he terms a “non-material” definition of reading, a reading that encompasses both books and texts but also pictures, rivers, your lover’s face. To read words and paragraphs trains you to read the rest of the world, the way a pugilist hits a bag the better to smash someone’s face. The attention reverberates: you read and receive the wisdom the writer has carefully carved, the river slicing through rock, the bag swings back. One of the ways—perhaps the primary way—that people of a modern, literate society practice attention is by reading. Ursula Le Guin writes that
reading is active, an act of attention, an absorbed alertness—not all that different from hunting, in fact, or gathering….It won’t move your mind unless you give it your mind, or your heart unless you put your heart in it. It won’t do the work for you. Le Guin, Words are My Matter, page 72
The Moon's origin story doesn't add up
Last Saturday, friends and I visited a planetarium that was passing through town and ever since I keep ruminating on why it was both so enjoyable and also (literally) illuminating as it reworked my understanding of our place among the stars. What other explorations could be made into travelling road shows of shared experience of light and sound?
And I've become obsessed with the moon again. This newsletter's publication was delayed by 20 minutes because I started watching this beautiful Howtown video, The Moon's origin story doesn't add up and I could not stop.
How will you view the moon today?
Member discussion