*
Sunday, July 10, 2016
There's a lot of joy in being a grandparent
I haven't thought of my Cat in the Hat hat in years. But my six-year-old granddaughter found it and loved it. The hat was magic. It brought my two visiting granddaughters to life just like the top hat placed on Frosty the snowman. Although, I must admit that winding up my granddaughters for a bit of singing and dancing is a lot easier than moving old Frosty.
Here we go go go go,
on an adventure!
The Thing-a-ma-jigger is up and away.
Go go go go,
on an adventure.
We’re flying with the Cat in the Hat today!
I'd have gotten some fine pictures if it wasn't for the performers insisting on the lights being dimmed during the performance and banning flash photography. It's as tough shooting entertainers at my home as at the Budweiser Gardens.
Sunday, July 3, 2016
It may have been a generation of booming good fortune for some, but not for me.
I have to agree with The London Free Press columnist who recently confessed he risked generalizing when writing about life as a baby boomer. His memories are not my memories despite my being a baby boomer. And a chat with some of my friends confirmed that his memories are not theirs either. I think his fears were realized; he slipped into generalizing.
A quick reading of this columnist's piece left me with the feeling that the writer believed baby boomers are a privileged generation. Boomers are about to inherit an estimated $750 billion from their "more frugal" parents, we learn. In one sense, he's right. My parents were frugal. They had to be. They were poor. And both died decades ago. When my mother died, she was living with my wife and me. She had to. She could not afford to live on her own. My mother wasn't one of the privileged class.
My earliest boomer memories are of growing up in a Wartime Housing neighbourhood. Wartime Housing Ltd. was a federal crown corporation that built and managed some 32,000 rental homes between 1941 and 1947.
Our Wartime home was cheap. The walls were scarred with thousands of deep, round dimples left by the hammer heads wielded by the drywallers who pounded in those nails with far too much haste. No smoothing plaster hid either the drywall nails or the tape. Our home had gone up quickly, maybe too quickly.
Our porch was made of two by fours as was the walkway up to our home. A large, coal-burning, black-iron stove sat in the corner of the living-room. The stove wasn't connected immediately to a chimney but first the hot exhaust gases meandered through a torturous maze of pipes. This was ugly but the long length of exhaust piping encouraged the transfer of heat, the better to warm our poorly insulated home. As a young boy, I was well acquainted with Jack Frost who decorated my bedroom windows each winter with thick swirls of icy crystals.
Our coal stove was a bit of a throwback. Many of my friends had oil stoves. But when it came to our fridge, I had the bragging rights. Many of my friends' parents were still using ice-boxes. The blocks of ice were delivered by men driving horse-drawn wagons as was our bread and milk. The lady who dropped off our eggs once a week was the only delivery person to use a car.
And as for cars, no one in my neighbourhood had a new one. Most cars were at least a decade old and some went all the way back to the twenties. I liked riding in a rumble seat whenever I got a chance. Cars seemed to last longer then. I've heard it was because in the early part of the last century not as much salt was spread on snow-covered winter roads as is done today.
My
parents got their furniture second hand. I still have a table that my
dad and I found at Goodwill. It sits in the hallway of my Byron home.
And the dining room set my wife and I use today is the one my dad and I
picked up used back in the late '50s when it had already seen some three decades of use. I can see that set still in use at the century mark.
The London Free Press writer tells readers, "When the boomers needed schools, governments built them." He makes all boomers sound spoiled. Maybe he was spoiled but not me. My public school was opened in 1922 and my high school in 1929. The high school still had the same seats and desks screwed to the classroom floors that it had had when the school was built more than three decades earlier. As an early boomer, growing up in the fading shadow of the Great Depression, the old desks just seemed right. Why buy new when the old still works?
My first real job, not just a summer job to earn tuition money to pay for art school, was as a newspaper photographer. It paid $90 a week. Taking inflation into account, that converts to about $560 today. Unlike The Free Press writer, I did not fall easily into a good-paying, full-time job. In fact, I got my first good paying job when the photo department of the newspaper unionized. Our salaries just about doubled overnight. It took workplace militancy, not good luck, to get a decent wage. The silver spoon has constantly eluded me.
I credit unions for more of my supposed good luck than my birth-date When I was injured on the job while still a student, it was the union that fought the company for me and won for me some much needed compensation.
And it was the union that made sure no other workers would be injured in the same way that I had been. The union got the workplace rules changed. All this came as no surprise. When I worked in a plastic injection plant, it was the union that fought for a safe workplace, forcing the company to supply workers with the protective gear to safely perform certain dangerous jobs.
When I stopped working at factories I felt blessed. It was hard work and dangerous work, at least at the factories with which I was familiar. My time on the factory floor left me with a great admiration for skilled factory workers, and yes, factory workers are skilled. Often their skill is very focused but it is a skill nevertheless.
Boomers "largely benefited from decades of steady inflation," according to The Free Press. Maybe for the writer but inflation has been an unsteady bugbear for me. Over my lifetime, inflation has averaged 3.8 percent. I don't believe the Bank of Canada would call that good.
But there was a period, stretching over some nine years, when inflation was out of control. It hit almost 11 percent in 1974, dipped down to 7.6 percent two years later, only to start climbing until it hit 12.5 percent in 1981.
Those were scary times. If you were making $10,400 in 1973, you had to be making $24,430 by 1982 just to stay even with inflation. Tonight, one of my retired friends told me that back then he and his wife had to take out a mortgage at an annual interest rate of 18 percent. Those nine years instilled in him a fear of inflation that I find similar to the fear of another depression that my parents developed during the '30s.
I should say that the writer focused many of his comments on the year 1967, the Centennial year. Somehow, he forgot Bobby Gimby's Canada Song. My wife calls it upbeat and fun. She liked it. I guess I was a curmudgeon even then because I didn't. Thankfully, The Canadian Railroad Trilogy by Gordon Lightfoot, mentioned in the newspaper article, had more staying power. Listen to both and see what you think.
I must say, I was proud to be Canadian in 1967 but then I was proud to be a Canadian before that and after that as well. I'm not big on pomp and circumstance. I cruised through 1967 without giving much thought to the Centennial Flame on Parliament Hill or the world's fair in Montreal.
As a boy in the early '50s, my friends were also boomers and some of them were foreign-born boomers. Some of these kids referred to themselves as a DP -- displaced person. They had come with their parents from Europe to start new lives in a new country, a country which they saw as filled with hope and promise and not the rubble of war and the strife of ethnic divisiveness. Their upbeat, positive take on Canada was contagious.
It's funny. I wasn't smiling when I started this. I found The Free Press piece a little off-putting. Kind of pollyannish. But as I sit here, recalling my childhood and my little boyhood friend with leather embroidered pants, I smile. He and I didn't require a commemorative bronze coloured medallion to remind us that Canada is a good country. He, and I, had Canada to remind us.
___________________________________________
I'm posting this but tomorrow or the next day I will add the links.
A quick reading of this columnist's piece left me with the feeling that the writer believed baby boomers are a privileged generation. Boomers are about to inherit an estimated $750 billion from their "more frugal" parents, we learn. In one sense, he's right. My parents were frugal. They had to be. They were poor. And both died decades ago. When my mother died, she was living with my wife and me. She had to. She could not afford to live on her own. My mother wasn't one of the privileged class.
My earliest boomer memories are of growing up in a Wartime Housing neighbourhood. Wartime Housing Ltd. was a federal crown corporation that built and managed some 32,000 rental homes between 1941 and 1947.
Our Wartime home was cheap. The walls were scarred with thousands of deep, round dimples left by the hammer heads wielded by the drywallers who pounded in those nails with far too much haste. No smoothing plaster hid either the drywall nails or the tape. Our home had gone up quickly, maybe too quickly.
Our porch was made of two by fours as was the walkway up to our home. A large, coal-burning, black-iron stove sat in the corner of the living-room. The stove wasn't connected immediately to a chimney but first the hot exhaust gases meandered through a torturous maze of pipes. This was ugly but the long length of exhaust piping encouraged the transfer of heat, the better to warm our poorly insulated home. As a young boy, I was well acquainted with Jack Frost who decorated my bedroom windows each winter with thick swirls of icy crystals.
Our coal stove was a bit of a throwback. Many of my friends had oil stoves. But when it came to our fridge, I had the bragging rights. Many of my friends' parents were still using ice-boxes. The blocks of ice were delivered by men driving horse-drawn wagons as was our bread and milk. The lady who dropped off our eggs once a week was the only delivery person to use a car.
And as for cars, no one in my neighbourhood had a new one. Most cars were at least a decade old and some went all the way back to the twenties. I liked riding in a rumble seat whenever I got a chance. Cars seemed to last longer then. I've heard it was because in the early part of the last century not as much salt was spread on snow-covered winter roads as is done today.
The London Free Press writer tells readers, "When the boomers needed schools, governments built them." He makes all boomers sound spoiled. Maybe he was spoiled but not me. My public school was opened in 1922 and my high school in 1929. The high school still had the same seats and desks screwed to the classroom floors that it had had when the school was built more than three decades earlier. As an early boomer, growing up in the fading shadow of the Great Depression, the old desks just seemed right. Why buy new when the old still works?
My first real job, not just a summer job to earn tuition money to pay for art school, was as a newspaper photographer. It paid $90 a week. Taking inflation into account, that converts to about $560 today. Unlike The Free Press writer, I did not fall easily into a good-paying, full-time job. In fact, I got my first good paying job when the photo department of the newspaper unionized. Our salaries just about doubled overnight. It took workplace militancy, not good luck, to get a decent wage. The silver spoon has constantly eluded me.
I credit unions for more of my supposed good luck than my birth-date When I was injured on the job while still a student, it was the union that fought the company for me and won for me some much needed compensation.
And it was the union that made sure no other workers would be injured in the same way that I had been. The union got the workplace rules changed. All this came as no surprise. When I worked in a plastic injection plant, it was the union that fought for a safe workplace, forcing the company to supply workers with the protective gear to safely perform certain dangerous jobs.
When I stopped working at factories I felt blessed. It was hard work and dangerous work, at least at the factories with which I was familiar. My time on the factory floor left me with a great admiration for skilled factory workers, and yes, factory workers are skilled. Often their skill is very focused but it is a skill nevertheless.
Boomers "largely benefited from decades of steady inflation," according to The Free Press. Maybe for the writer but inflation has been an unsteady bugbear for me. Over my lifetime, inflation has averaged 3.8 percent. I don't believe the Bank of Canada would call that good.
But there was a period, stretching over some nine years, when inflation was out of control. It hit almost 11 percent in 1974, dipped down to 7.6 percent two years later, only to start climbing until it hit 12.5 percent in 1981.
Those were scary times. If you were making $10,400 in 1973, you had to be making $24,430 by 1982 just to stay even with inflation. Tonight, one of my retired friends told me that back then he and his wife had to take out a mortgage at an annual interest rate of 18 percent. Those nine years instilled in him a fear of inflation that I find similar to the fear of another depression that my parents developed during the '30s.
I should say that the writer focused many of his comments on the year 1967, the Centennial year. Somehow, he forgot Bobby Gimby's Canada Song. My wife calls it upbeat and fun. She liked it. I guess I was a curmudgeon even then because I didn't. Thankfully, The Canadian Railroad Trilogy by Gordon Lightfoot, mentioned in the newspaper article, had more staying power. Listen to both and see what you think.
I must say, I was proud to be Canadian in 1967 but then I was proud to be a Canadian before that and after that as well. I'm not big on pomp and circumstance. I cruised through 1967 without giving much thought to the Centennial Flame on Parliament Hill or the world's fair in Montreal.
As a boy in the early '50s, my friends were also boomers and some of them were foreign-born boomers. Some of these kids referred to themselves as a DP -- displaced person. They had come with their parents from Europe to start new lives in a new country, a country which they saw as filled with hope and promise and not the rubble of war and the strife of ethnic divisiveness. Their upbeat, positive take on Canada was contagious.
It's funny. I wasn't smiling when I started this. I found The Free Press piece a little off-putting. Kind of pollyannish. But as I sit here, recalling my childhood and my little boyhood friend with leather embroidered pants, I smile. He and I didn't require a commemorative bronze coloured medallion to remind us that Canada is a good country. He, and I, had Canada to remind us.
___________________________________________
I'm posting this but tomorrow or the next day I will add the links.
Tuesday, June 28, 2016
Link to proposed class action settlement in VW TDI fiasco
Today the proposed settlement to the class action fought in a California court was released. Volkswagen Canada has indicated that it may follow the guidelines detailed in the American ruling. Gosh, I do hope the Canadian arm of VW does just that. According to the settlement, my 2011 Jetta TDI could have a buyback value as high as $18,347 U.S.
If you'd like to read the settlement, here is a LINK. There is a table showing the proposed buyback values for the affected vehicles. And if you would like to read what exactly Volkswagen Canada is saying, and it is not a lot now that the Yanks have shown their cards, here is a link to the Canadian site: We're working to make things right.
Eat healthy while having fun
I've talked about this in the past but tonight's pizza was just so good that I must share. It was healthy, lots of vegetables, and delicious with bits of hot pepperoni spicing up the presentation. Plus, it was not expensive. Perfect for two seniors on fixed incomes.
Watch the Thursday food flyers. When Dr. Otker pizza is on sale at less than $3.00, buy a few. We used to buy just the four cheese kind but my wife and I have found many of the others from the good doctor also make good bases on which to build great pizzas.
Usually, we add gently fried pepperoni, fried mushrooms, bottled artichokes, a mix of sweet peppers (green, orange and red) and black olives. I may add some minced garlic to the mushrooms while frying. The frying removes excess moisture from the mushrooms. I always wrap the fried pepperoni in a paper towel to absorb any oil released by the frying.
These pizzas cost less than $3 a slice but taste like a million dollars. They are low in fat and low in cholesterol but high in fibre and all the other good stuff contained in the rich mix of vegetables.
The pizza looks big in the picture but it is actually just large enough for two. We enjoy our weekly pizza with a glass of boxed wine. Our favourites are either the merlot or shiraz from Jackson-Triggs. Again, watch for the sales. Don't pay more than $40. We usually pay about $1.50 a glass for these wines. We have a budget and we stick to it.
Being retired and on a fixed income does not have to translate into eating poorly. Life's got to be fun. And with that, I think I'll have another sip of merlot. Cheers!
Monday, June 27, 2016
My obit picture has been taken
Isla wanted take my picture. I gave he my small, point and shoot Canon S90. I love the image that resulted. It's me. Old but not too wrinkled and tired. She has captured my sparkle. I hope I have sparkle. I certainly do when I'm watching a cute, little three-year-old take my picture with love and affection.
And how happy I look. Maybe even content. And, in truth, I am both happy and content. She's nailed it. I've told my wife I want this image as my obit picture in the local paper. (Maybe they can lighten the mid-tones just a little before publishing. Open the shadow end of the scale.)
Friday, June 24, 2016
Media spread myth
 |
| Isla, 3, sprinkles coarsely chopped cashews onto her peanut butter sandwich. |
I thought it was a cute picture. It shows my granddaughter Isla, 3, making "the best peanut butter and jelly sandwich in the world." The claim might be a little overstated but I was somewhat surprised by one response. I was sent a link to a Post Media story claiming "Butter is alright, but margarine just might kill you, massive Canadian study finds." And yes, that was the headline.
Simply stated, in the past margarine contained a lot of partially hydrogenated oils. These fats contain lots of trans fats. Trans fats are bad. How bad? According to the American Heart Association, "Eating trans fats increases your risk of developing heart disease and stroke. It’s also associated with a higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes."
But, and it's a huge 'but', today's soft margarine is not hydrogenated. Hydrogenation makes margarine solid so it can be sold in sticks like butter.
Becel is soft and sold in tubs. It is a non-hydrogenated margarine, made with 68% canola oil, 6% olive oil and 6% modified palm and palm kernel oils. The palm oils mildly solidify the margarine without creating trans fats. Unfortunately, the palm oils add a little saturated fat to the final margarine mix.
Why the media cannot get the hydrogenated oil story right with any consistency is a puzzle. I could take a guess but it would be just that — a guess. And taking guesses, rather than spending the time finding answers, is what drives the media into promoting "truthiness" and "urban legends."
The media loves to form organizations which award member for all the great stories published or broadcast over the past year. Maybe one of these organizations could add another award to their long list: The Truthiness Award, given the media outlet or group that did the most to spread the urban myth that inflicted the most damage on its readers or viewers.
Recipe for Isla's "World's Best Peanut Butter Sandwich"
2 slices of whole wheat bread (bread cannot be made with refined flour)
1 Tbs of pure peanut butter (This stuff separates. No added sugar allowed.)
1 Tsp of pure strawberry/peach jelly (This can be tough to find.)
2 thinly sliced large, fresh strawberries (These are in season in SW Ontario in June.)
2 coarsely chopped, roasted cashews
If the cook is three, like Isla, one adult to supervise, or lend a helping hand should an emergency arise, is not optional.
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