Fiddleheads make a nice change

Fiddlehead greens, the furled fronds of a young fern, make a fine vegetable alternative. Low in fat, with no cholesterol (no vegetable contains cholesterol), a small 100 gram serving supplies 10 percent of one's daily potassium needs plus eight percent of magnesium, 72 percent of Vitamin A, 44 percent vitamin C, 7 percent of iron and 9 percent of one's protein requirements.

The polenta served yesterday with tomatoes and asparagus.

Served here with polenta topped with a tomato sauce containing not only tomatoes but egg plant as well, this dinner would please my heart and stroke doctors. Admittedly it does contain some beef, a no-no, but there are only two, small meatballs. The meatballs were coated with fennel seeds and gently fried in their own oil. This removed some of the fat from the meatballs

The polenta was a leftover from yesterday. At that time my wife and I served company the polenta with grilled tomatoes and steamed asparagus.

All in all the polenta made for some very inexpensive meals. It delivered eight full servings and tasted wonderful as leftovers.

Don't believe everything you read. Head lice are not super.

Head lice are not easily spread by hats, pillowcases, sofa backs or rugs.

Newspapers love a good story. The Globe and Mail, one of Canada's most respected newspapers, warned readers about the growing problem of super lice. These are lice which have developed resistance to the insecticides used in the traditional treatments. Hardy, resilient, tough to wipe out: No, I am not talking about head lice but about the stories, mostly myths, surrounding the pesky, little bugs.

When the Toronto District School Board announced it was reviewing its "no nits" policy, a media fire storm erupted. The "no nits" rule, once common in schools around the world, excludes from school those students suspected of having head lice. And they cannot return until their heads are declared nit free. The rule sounds reasonable but isn't.

Teachers, parents and even health care workers often misdiagnose head lice infestations. When the Harvard School of Public Health examined samples of head lice and nits submitted for study, more than 40 percent of the samples had nothing to do with head lice. This is why a "no nits" policy results in students being barred from school for such things as hat lint or dandruff. Of the remaining samples, approximately half or 30 percent indicated non-active infestations. Do the math. 70 percent of the samples were innocuous.

The Toronto Star fanned the fires of fear by conducting a highly suspect, online poll. The loaded questions determined most readers believed "nits are damaging to the kids." This came as no surprise since the story was replete with myths. Readers were warned, "Lice are a common problem among young children because they can be easily spread by sharing items like hats, brushes or combs." Completely untrue. A myth.

Research has shown, and this is a quote, "the odds of head lice transmission via hats of lice-infested children is sufficiently low to be considered improbable and inconsequential."

With the school board in Toronto reconsidering its approach to the head lice problem, my local paper, The London Free Press, decided to do a take on the story but with a local twist. The fact that neither the public nor the separate school board was contemplating changes to the head lice policy should have made this a non-story but it didn't stop the paper. A grabber headline, a big picture of a concerned mother intent on protecting her young daughter from head lice, a separate fact-box with the usual stern warnings and voilà: a head lice story.

The Thames Valley District School Board cannot be faulted for being cautious. Without community support a move to discard the "no nits" policy may fail. Progressive boards which moved too fast have been forced to reinstate the discredited "no nits" policy after facing a flood of complaints from angry parents and, in some cases, teachers.

I contacted a school board in the States that had to backpedal on its decision to drop its "no nits" policy. It felt the local newspaper was of no help in getting out the true head lice story. The newspaper preferred yesterday's myths to today's news.

Head lice are not a health hazard, they do not spread disease, on this everyone is in agreement. What they do is carry is a nasty stigma. They spread fear, stress and anxiety. Possibly, The Free Press should have run a picture of a young mother who no longer wants her children exposed to the possibility of being barred from school for having hat lint. Don't laugh. Remember the study done by the Harvard School of Public Health.

The little critters, only as big as sesame seeds, are unable to hop, let alone leap tall buildings, yet in the press they are called "super lice." There is nothing super about them. After years of being controlled with insecticides, the little bugs have done what insects do best — adapt. Head lice have developed resistance to the insecticides in the hair treatments used to fight them. This development took no one by surprise.

But that very adaptability may well be their undoing. After living thousands of years as our uninvited guests, head lice are perfectly adapted to life on a human head. Once off the human head, they don't fare so well. They die.

With newspaper stories goading them on, fearful parents toss out pillowcases complete with pillows. Hats, scarves, coats are washed or even dry cleaned at some expense. Toys are bagged and left bundled away for weeks. Almost everything a child with head lice has touched is considered contaminated. Rather than focusing on the environment, parents should focus on the affected child's head. The fear-driven cleaning response is totally out of proportion to the risk and this is thanks in part to the myths spread by our newspapers.

When I contacted the local reporter who wrote the head lice story, she referred me to her source, something she found on the Web. I thought, "You can't believe everything you read on the Web." The reporter's nose was so far out of joint because I dared to question her story, she has not talked to me since. Clearly readers should not question journalists.

It's claimed that Edward R. Murrow said of his own profession, "Journalists don't have thin skins. They have no skins." Sadly, I have discovered this observation on the sensitivity of many reporters to criticism is all too accurate. In this age of the Internet, with the ability to check any and all questionable claims, journalists would be wise to listen to a little criticism.

Google enough sources and you will soon realize there is a battle being raged over head lice. I like to think one side studies lice in the lab while the other studies lice in their environment, in the community, in schools and on children's heads.

To get the whole story, the accurate story, I contacted the people behind the claims. My search led me to Richard Speare, professor emeritus, James Cook University, Australia. Speare is one of the major players in  unraveling the myth-riddled head lice story. Speare graciously responded to my email and attached a number of documents detailing some of his work.

Speare and his cohorts accepted that hats were considered high-risk items but could find little hard data supporting the all-too-common claim. The research team examined over 1000 hats in four schools. They also examined the students. The team found no head lice in the hats but over 5500 head lice on the students' heads. One myth busted.

The Australians also investigated the possibility of contacting head lice from contaminated floors. 2,230 children were examined from 118 classrooms. A total of 14,033 lice were collected from the children but not one louse was recovered from a floor. Researcher Deon Canyon doesn't mince words. He calls the risk of contacting head lice from a floor "zero." It is, he says, another groundless myth.

The out-of-proportion fear and stigma attached to head lice can make the lives of our most sociable little children quite miserable. Why the most sociable? Because they are the kids most likely to be making the head to head contacts that are almost always the source of the problem.

The reward for their social nature can be exclusion from school, isolation from friends, over-treatment and under support. Toddlers can find themselves ostracized by their best friends. It can be emotionally traumatizing. It doesn't have to be this way. The next time I see a story in the newspaper on head lice, I want to see a picture of a mother protecting her child from unwarranted emotional trauma. This would be a great story and this would be news.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States has listed solid reasons for discontinuing "no nits" policies:

• Nits more than ¼ inch from the scalp are usually not viable and thus are unlikely to hatch.
• If nits are easily visible, they are most likely empty shells or nit casings.
• Nits are cemented to hair shafts and are unlikely to be transferred to other people.
• Misdiagnosis of nits is very common, resulting in children being banned from school in error.
• Misdiagnosis can result in a child undergoing unnecessary chemical treatment.

Female head lice glue their eggs to the base of human hair shafts close to the scalp. And it must be a hair on a human head. A human body hair won't do. Nor will the hair of a favourite pet.

Also, the distance the egg is from the scalp is important. The eggs, called nits, are incubated by the warmth of the scalp. A growing hair can carry a nit too far from the warmth. It will fail to hatch. Without an oh-so-close warm scalp, there's no hatching. It's that simple. Adaptation is a weakness as well as a strength.

Now you can understand why the presence of nits does not indicate an active infestation. If the nits are easily seen, they are most likely not viable. Or the nits may be nothing but empty egg casing or bits of dandruff and the like, all misidentified by the untrained eye. The CDC knows all this but not all school boards and not many parents and certainly not many reporters.

It is claimed head lice have become difficult to eradicate. But it is not just head lice that have developed resistance to the insecticides in use. Many parents have also developed strong resistance to the neurotoxins used in the treatments. More and more parents are hesitating to douse their child's head with powerful, poisonous chemicals to kill a benign pest.

Image courtesy: Community Hygiene Concern, Joanna Ibarra

The approach du jour is bug busting. A lubricant, often conditioner, is used with water to wet the hair. The lubricant makes it difficult for the lice to move quickly and thus avoid the fine-toothed nit comb sliding through the hair from the roots to the tips.

Bug busting is nit picky. The goal is to physically remove all nits and lice from the infested head. Many people have neither the time nor the patience to see the process through. The failure rate is quite high.

Others believe an oil, such as coconut oil, will coat the bugs and suffocate them. It will certainly slow them down but lice are resilient. This approach has yet to find clear support from scientific testing but those wanting to asphyxiate the little critters may be on to something.

One product available in Canada, Nyda, combats head lice by using the asphyxiation method but kicks it up a notch. During an interview on Radio New Zealand, Professor Rick Spears was asked, "How essential is a nit comb for getting rid of head lice and nits?" The professor answered:

With some of the new dimethicone based products, some of the silicone based oils penetrate the egg too, so the embryos die as well. In that case you don't have to comb them all.

That's Nyda! Nyda is a dimethicone based product. And it claims not only to kill lice but also nits. In many cases one treatment is sufficient, the maker says. If necessary a second treatment ten days later guarantees a lice-free head. No neurotoxins are involved. Nyda is safe but keep it out of the eyes. You don't want a child fighting head lice to also be fighting the caregiver, you, and the treatment.

I chatted with a family that used Nyda as directed. The parents told me that Nyda appeared to eradicate the head lice after just one treatment. But the affected child was treated again after ten days just to be sure. The family asked me not to go into too many details as they had discovered the London school their child attends does not follow the "no nits" policy. The principal and teaching staff were clearly enlightened.

The parents read The Free Press article and realized the paper wasn't enlightened. The paper and the reporter were still living in the head lice dark ages. The parents were disappointed and more than a little surprised that the newspaper story was so much more myth than fact.

If it makes you feel better, wash that toque, put those sheets in the dryer set to hot, bag those toys, vacuum the floor and carefully dispose of the dust bag. But do try to relax, shake off your fears. Take comfort in the facts and forget the myths.

Remember: head lice are adaptable and they've adapted to heads. Off the human head they are dead within as little as six hours. You see, the damn things aren't so super after all.
_______________________________________________________

For a slide presentation on dispelling the myths surrounding head lice, click the following link: Head lice: Are you Scratching for Anwers? 

This presentation was posted by the Victoria State Government Health Department. Note: the info on hair treatments does not appear to be up-to-date. The relatively new dimethicone based products do not seem to enter into the discussion.

People do not always apply head lice hair treatments correctly, some areas of an infested head may be missed. For this reason, saying no treatment is 100 percent successful is arguably true. With improper application, even dimethicone based treatments can fail.

The Victoria State Government also has an info sheet online. Here is a link: VGS head lice info sheet. If you don't believe me, maybe you will believe the VSG health department.

And lastly, here is a link to an interesting CDC post. It advises, among other things, "Students diagnosed with live head lice do not need to be sent home early from school; they can go home at the end of the day . . . "

I tried to interest my local paper in this alternate story concerning head lice. The reporter of the original story took great personal offence. She refused even to discuss the topic of head lice and what experts say. She was saying nothing. In fact, asking her a question using Twitter so incensed her that she may never speak to me again. Weird and remarkably childish, reminds me of my 3-year-old granddaughter and her pouts.

Polenta makes a nice change of pace for dinner

Polenta topped with tomato sauce and rimmed with fresh, green vegetables.

Polenta topped with your favourite tomato-based spaghetti sauce and then rimmed with fresh vegetables, like broccoli, green beans and asparagus as shown, makes a wonderful change of pace dinner. The instructions for making polenta can change from package to package. Some polenta is instant, cooks in two minutes, and other polenta can take up to half an hour of simmering and constant stirring.

What ever you decide, the result is delicious and in expensive. We pair our meals with an inexpensive red, box wine. If it were bottled, it wouldn't cost even $6. This is truly a dinner for the retiree on a tight budget.

We needed to save a little money on dinner. Why? Because later, we're opening a nice bottle of Antichi Poderi Jerzu Chuèrra Riserva Cannonau di Sardegna to enjoy with slices of toasted baguette topped with grated Parmesan cheese and diced olive spread. The smooth, full-bodied ruby-red wine is based on the Grenache grape which has gained fame for being the grape used in making Châteauneuf-du-Pape. The Sardinian wine may not be famous like its French cousin but it is easier to find on sale.

Ah, we will all sleep well tonight. And who said retirement isn't fun? (Now, to go and decant the wine. I understand it is best if it is allowed to breathe for a couple of hours before serving. Hey, I'm just following orders.)

Part One: Selling news is not like selling pickles

Selling news is not like selling pickles. People want pickles. This is not to say that people don't want news. They do, they just don't want to pay for it. Never have.

Two-bits worth of pickles costs two-bits. Fair enough. But two-bits worth of news costs maybe a nickel. Why? News is subsidized by advertising. In a traditional newspaper the editorial content and the advertising copy exist in a symbiotic relationship. Despite their great differences, journalism and advertising live side by side on the pages of a newspaper in a mutually beneficial relationship.

Today that relationship is under stress. The parasite, the advertising, has found a new host: the Internet. Here, think Alphabet and Alphabet's biggest division, Google. According to Reuters:

"Alphabet Inc easily beat Wall Street's quarterly profit forecasts on Monday, helped by strong mobile advertising sales . . . Google's advertising revenue increased nearly 17 percent to $19.08 billion, while the number of ads, or paid clicks, rose 31 percent . . . Advertisers pay Google only if someone clicks on their ad." (These are the fourth quarter results ending Dec. 31, 2016.)

Clearly there is money to made on the Internet from advertising. But I could have told you that. When I took a buyout from The London Free Press I tried to start a blog at the paper as an experiment. The editorial department was not at all interested in my experiment. Although I was promised a blog, they dragged their feet, I looked elsewhere.

Soon I had a blog supported by Blogger, the blogging platform owned by Google. I decided to run AdSense. One ad appears beside my posts and another ad runs immediately after. If a reader clicks on an ad, AdSense and I split the payment. AdSense claims the lion's share. I find this only fair as Google charges me nothing to post my thoughts.

I haven't earned a lot from my blog, but I have earned a little and more importantly I have gained a little window into how money can be made online. When I left the paper, I had asked to have a blog with the paper but there was a stumbling block: I wanted to be paid. I didn't want a lot but I was offered nothing. There was no money to be made on the Internet, I was told.

A few months ago, after the monthly breakfast of retired local media types, I picked up the entire restaurant tab plus tip. I found it strangely satisfying to be able to pay for dozens of breakfasts with money earned from posting information to the Net.

I was a little surprised that after more than seven years in retirement, the media line about the Internet had changed very little. The spin from the media still seems to be that there is no money to be made online. I don't believe even one panelist admitted that decades ago newspaper management took their collective eye off the ball or should I say dot and fumbled the future. How to fix that colossal  failure of imagination is the question demanding to be answered.

And the answer will not be found in treating newspapers like pickle factories. The American food giant Smuckers bought the Southwestern Ontario pickle producer, Bick's, once located in Dunnville, Ontario. I say once located in Dunnville as Smuckers closed the plant and merged the business with its Stateside operation. Smuckers chopped lots of jobs and saved a lot of money. Nothing is left of Bick's but the name. Economies of scale made it all profitable.

In the media world giants also rule. Canada's newspapers have been bought, closed, moved and merged. Reporters, editors, and oodles of support staff, even advertising staff, have lost their jobs. In many Canadian communities nothing is left of the local paper, a paper that may have been a going concern for more than a century. In many cases even the name of the local paper is but a memory.

But, unlike the big pickle maker the media giants have discovered economies of scale did not make it profitable.

End of Part One.

Understanding the heart attack gender gap

Understanding the heart attack gender gap

More dining on a budget in retirement

As I have often said in the past, dining at home during retirement doesn't have to break the bank. Watch the sales and build the menus around these items. The little potatoes were not a dollar for enough for both my wife and me.

The small tomatoes were also on sale but I had to buy a big box of the things. I've been finding ways of including them in my dinners every night. I don't want to have to toss some because they were kept too long. Tonight I grilled all the vegetables after rolling the tomatoes and potatoes about in a little garlic flavoured olive oil.

The fish is sole purchased frozen at Costco packaged in a gigantic plastic bag of a size only Costco would carry. Each fillet is individually wrapped and none has any sign of frost-burn. We keep them frozen until needed and then let them thaw in a sink filled with cold water.

I put a layer of Sole fillets in a small baking dish, topped this with a tight row of asparagus and then finished off with another layer of Sole. I brushed all with olive oil combined with the zest from one lemon. I heated the oil mixture for a couple of minutes on the top of the stove before brushing on the sole and asparagus.

The romaine lettuce was, you guessed it, on sale. We bought a three pack and I cut one head in half tonight and grilled both halves after wiping each with a little oil and vinegar dressing. Before serving, I sprinkled grated Parmesan cheese on the fish and on the romaine plus I put a few chopped chives on the fish and added a squeeze of lemon juice. (My wife grows chives in her small garden. Chives grow like weeds. We will never run short when it comes to chives.)

And how did it taste? Good, very good. And like I said it didn't break the budge.

Thanks to the strong flavour of the Parmesan, the garlic and the asparagus, we decided our red house wine would go just fine. Recently, we got a few 4 litre boxes of Peller Estates French Cross blend on sale for $30.95. You may laugh but at that price we are only paying $5.80 for a 750ml of wine. That's the amount found in most bottles. Being old enough to recall the wines available in the '60s has its advantages. For us the wine quality bar is set awfully low.

That said, I do have a nice Chateauneuf Du Pape aging in the cellar. I'll crack it open when the time is right. And yes, I got it from the sale bin at the LCBO. It wasn't cheap but it wasn't all that expensive either. It had been knocked down in the double digits. It was the last bottle in the store and was being dumped to make room for more product. It will make a fine wine to serve guests.

Stuff I found of interest today: April 12, 2012

First Link

The London Free Press has often run stories maligning the healthcare in Canada. According to the local paper, generally the Americans are much better off than those of us north of the border. I contacted the source of one of the Free Press stories, the Commonwealth Fund, and they said their findings had been given a right-wing spin by the London paper. For that reason and others, I am quite interested in healthcare stories. Which brings us to my first link:

• For life expectancy, money matters: The Harvard Gazette

A new study shows, that the average life expectancy of the lowest-income classes in America is now equal to that in Sudan or Pakistan. Yes, in the United States being poor is so hazardous to your health. I assume some of the same rich-live-longer findings would also hold in Canada but would the spread be as dramatic?

Second Link

When it comes to retirement stories, I have begun following Wade Pfau. This fellow is not just another opinionated blogger. Pfau has credentials. Today, I am posting links to two of his posts:

• Which Is Better for Retirement Income: Insurance or Investments?

Retirement income planning has emerged as a distinct field in the financial services profession. But because it is still relatively new, the best approach for building a retirement income plan remains elusive. There are two fundamentally different philosophies for retirement income planning. Pfau says one approach is probability-based while the other puts safety first.The second Pfau post to which I am linking is:

• Understanding the Tools in Your Retirement Income Toolbox

Retirement plans can be built to manage varying risks by strategically combining the following retirement income tools in different ways. You should be familiar with all these tools for creating a successful approach to retirement.

Crayola inspires everyone interested in art.

Third Link

Do you have children? Yes? Check the Crayola Website. I've granddaughters and the Crayola post is chock full of good ideas. I went to art school and I still found the Crayola site informative.

Today I learned about Koru painting created by the Maori people of New Zealand. Koru symbolizes new birth and growth. The colourful painting on the left shows fern plants ready to unfurl.

In the coming days I will post more links to the Crayola Website.

More than a dozen fruits, vegetables and nuts daily but no meat

Pasta with pesto, green beans, potatoes, broccoli, walnuts, pine nuts and more.

 

Today was a no meat day. My doctors at the stroke prevention clinic have advised me to go meatless every other day. When I do have meat, it usually fish or chicken. Red meat is a once a month treat. Eggs are simply out. I have ice cream with cake on my birthday. My cholesterol levels are down across the board with the bad cholesterol down dramatically. The diet seems to be working.

The right ventricle of my heart is enlarged and the tricuspid valve is leaking. This is all the result of a genetic disease called arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy (ARVC). It sounds bad but if one could choose which part of one's heart is going to fail, choosing the right ventricle is the right decision. The left side of my heart is in pretty good shape as I had the mitral valve repaired robotically some years ago.

The ARVC has disrupted the electrical system of my heart and left me requiring an ICD/pacemaker. An ICD is an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator. If my heart should begin beating rapidly, it hit 300 bpm once, my ICD shocks the heart forcing it t return to its proper rhythm. I have only had about four shocks and they all were delivered a few hours apart. Such an event is called an ICD storm. My meds were increased and the problem has not returned.

My pacemaker is another matter. It runs almost 100 percent of the time. I have a complete heart block. I run on battery power. I'm a bit like a Tesla automobile. At some point the battery will need to be replaced. At that point, a new unit, complete with a new battery, is put into my chest.

With so much going wrong with my heart, I don't want to add traditional heart disease to the equation. I watch my fats, I eat lots of fresh fruit, lightly cooked vegetables plus a few nuts every day. My diet may be restricted but it doesn't feel that way. I actually eat a far more varied diet today than I did before my ARVC was discovered. I love food, I enjoy cooking and my diet makes me happy. 

Cooking new and imaginative creations is fun. The results, when they turn out, are a mixture of art and craft. When my wife and I sit down for dinner, the meals often look beautiful and taste wonderful. And our meals don't set us back a bundle either. We buy stuff in bulk when its on sale. We have a PC Points card and we try and buy the stuff with bonus points when those products are also on sale. We charge everything with a credit card that returns us one percent of the value of our food expenses. And we are not too proud to price match. 

We try to avail ourselves of every trick. It seems to work. My wife and I are both retired and yet our food expenses are not hard on our limited budget.

How simply moving benefits your mental health

How simply moving benefits your mental health

Treasures mark path to mindfulness

Most of those at the party missed the small bouquet of artificial flowers.  Not my
granddaughter. The six-year-old got my camera and saved the moment with a picture.

What does a Harvard Graduate School of Education article and a little six-year-old girl have in common? Answer: Both promote a positive approach to life reinforced by the seeking of small treasures in daily life.

The Harvard folk have a name for this: Mindfulness. One exercise to develop mindfulness is to remain constantly alert for small moments of beauty throughout one's day. My oldest granddaughter has a word for these beautiful things, these beautiful moments: treasures.

She constantly sees treasures in her world. She stops her little bike to pick up walnut shells split and emptied of  meat by a squirrels. She finds the intricate sculptural shapes inside, once secret but now revealed to the world by the hungry squirrels, beautiful and worthy of careful inspection. The shells grab her attention and make her smile as she rolls them in her hand to quietly inspect their inner beauty.

I have a small, orange pail filled with her collected shells. This pail makes me smile. The pail is one of my treasures

Steel cut oats make an inexpensive and very healthy breakfast

Steel cut oats for a good but inexpensive breakfast.

All too often I have read how difficult it is for retirees to eat well on a tight budget. One reporter even went so far as to suggest retirees should prepare themselves for eating pet food as human grub may be out of the question. That's nuts.

I'm retired and my breakfast is nutritious, filling, amazingly delicious and cheap. Even my granddaughters, two and six, have given it a thumbs up. The steel cut oats are the main ingredient and these cost as little as 11-cents a serving or less. The fresh and dried fruit, nuts and maple syrup drive up the cost but the whole mixture still comes in at a bit more than a dollar a serving.

Keeping the number of strawberries used down can keep the cost in line as strawberries are the most expensive ingredient. When apples are inexpensive, I dice an apple, soften it in the microwave, and add apple instead of strawberries to my mix.

I like the PC Blue Menu Steel Cut Oats. I boil 1 1/4 cups of water in the microwave, remove the steaming water from the oven and stir in 1/4 cup of the coarsely cut oat groats. I return the oats and water to the microwave and cook for 12 minutes at 40% power. This is important. At full power there is a big risk of the cooking oats boiling over.

At the end of the ten minutes, I remove the bowl from the oven and stir. Any foam that has gathered at the water's edge, I stir into the mix. I return the mixture to the microwave for a a further five minutes at 40% power. At the end of five minutes I stir the mixture, making sure to stir anything adhering to the side of the bowl back into the oat mixture. I finish by cooking the oats for up to one minute at full power. When I remove the bowl from the oven, the top of the mixture is covered with bubbles. (These times and power settings will vary depending up the microwave used.)

While the oat groats are cooking, I measure 1 tablespoon of Qi'a into a bowl and add two tablespoons of milk. I let the chia, buckwheat and hemp cereal soften for a few minutes while I turn my attention to dicing four or five strawberries to add to the bowl of Qi'a. I dribble one tablespoon of maple syrup over the berries. I coarsely chop 20 grams dried blueberries plus a couple (2) of Brazil nuts. I add these to the mixture. Finally, I mash a banana and add it.

All the measuring, dicing, dribbling, chopping and mashing takes time. If I time this right, I may have to take a break to look at the morning paper, at the moment the oats are done the sweet fruit and nut mixture is added to the hot cereal. I stir all together and enjoy.

You MUST experiment with the cooking times and microwave power settings to ensure you do not overcook the oats or have the oats bubble over and splatter about your microwave. My times are unique to my microwave. Take care. Go slowly. I use the approach I do because I am sure it will not result in a mess. It takes a bit of time but it works and like a said, I take a break and read the morning paper. When one is retired, time is not a problem.

Addendum: Bought some Bob's Steel Cut Oats at Costco. Price was a bit less than the PC Blue Menu Steel Cut Oats I've been using. Bob's claims to cook quicker than the PC variety but does carry a warning about the potential for boiling over if cooked in a microwave. From weighting equal volumes of both brands of oats, I believe the PC variety is a bit denser than Bob's. The PC oats may be ten percent heavier when equal volumes are compared.

Difference One: I have cut the amount of water to 3/4 cup.

Difference Two: When using Bob's, I have cut the time to five minutes at 40% power. After that I stir the cooking oats and return the bowl to the microwave for another three minutes at 40% power. At this point I may give the mixture another minute at high but usually I can give it a bit less. You'll get a feel for how much extra cooking is required as you gain experience cooking the steel cut oats.

Warning: I liked my oats cooked a little more than many folk but as time goes by I am finding I like a little more crunch in my finished cereal.

This is not only a filling breakfast, it is very healthy. The exact nutrition numbers will vary with the amount of fruit and nuts one adds, but I think it is safe to say that this breakfast may provide 15% of one's calcium needs, 35% or more of one's daily fibre requirements, more than 100% of one's need for Vitamin C thanks to the fresh strawberries, a quarter of one's potassium, magnesium, iron and B6 needs. The nuts provide a bit of protein without adding any cholesterol to the mix.

And these are only the good things listed on the packages of fruit and nuts. On the Web you will learn that just two Brazil nuts, the number I chop up and add, meet all of one's daily selenium requirements.

This is definitely a healthy breakfast.

Looking beyond the Thames for answers

Community leaders in London, Ontario, like to throw money at problems in an attempt to buy quick, expert-sourced solutions. All too often once the solution is provided, it is praised, criticized, shelved and forgotten. London leaders embark on spending sprees before first checking out the market place of ideas.

The dual problems of how best to treat the Thames River at the forks and what to do with the broken Springbank Dam are just the latest in a long string of brouhahas following this pattern. The city leaders would do better if they spent a little more time investigating what others have done.

Think of Stamford, Connecticut, and what that community has done and is continuing to do in respect to its river. In many ways, Stamford has the same stated goals as London but Stamford is taking an approach more in tune with present thinking. The Stamford approach is the one being taken by more and more communities around the world. Read the project statement reprinted below:

Formerly a polluted, derelict riverfront, Mill River Park and Greenway is now a verdant, animated civic space that mends the ecological and social fabric of downtown Stamford, Connecticut. Working closely with engineers and ecologists, the team conceived of a landscape designed to revitalize aquatic and terrestrial habitats and reduce flooding by restoring the channelized river’s edge and introducing hundreds of new native plants. The transformative effect of this park builds on ecological sustainability into social sustainability and social justice. A series of walking paths along the river reconnect neighborhoods to this vibrant landscape, granting access to the river’s edge for the first time in a century. The design provides much needed park space for active and passive recreation and a flexible “Great Lawn and Overlook” for large programmed events. A model for redefining active urban life, the park is a catalyst for residential, corporate and commercial growth and economic sustainability. 

If you are curious and want to know more, check out this link: The Plan for Mill River Park. It is interesting to note that Stamford, once it settled on the direction it wanted to follow, found a consultant to assist with realizing its dream. The community did not go it alone. Instead, the community turned to the Laurie Olin design team. Olin has been called the most significant landscape architect since Olmsted, the chap behind Central Park in New York and more.

If you would like to know more, the following video makes it clear what was accomplished in Stamford, Connecticut.




The two largest water resources management agencies in the United States, the US Army Corps of Engineers and the US Bureau of Reclamation, often work together today on dam removal projects. Something in the neighbourhood of a thousand dams have been removed in past twenty years in the States alone.

A bee in my bonnet

My wife likes to tell me I have a bee in my bonnet. In fact, sometimes I have a whole hive buzzin' about in there. I sit at my computer, coffee in hand, heart held in check by my ICD-pacemaker, and I tap out page after page addressing whatever is distressing me at the moment. Today, it's the Thames River.

Years ago I wrote a weekly column for The London Free Press called Celebrate the Thames. I put a lot of myself into that column. For instance, there was a little boy that my wife and I often cared for at the time and he and I explored the Thames River system together, often by canoe. We traveled from the source, near Tavistock, to the mouth where the river empties into Lake St. Clair. We covered literally thousands of kilometers in the year and a half that I wrote that column. Much of the investigative work was done on my own time. I mixed business with pleasure.

Following UTRCA directions, we drove over the Thames River near Tavistock.

Today all that work is forgotten. When Randy Richmond, the paper's present Thames River expert, writes a piece on the river, I shake my head in disbelief. He is making many of the same mistakes I made all those years ago.

Map of North Thames River is from the GNBC Website.

Like Randy, I got sucked into the what-is-the-correct name for the Thames River and its tributaries confusion. I watch as Randy drowns in the same flood of different monikers.

I wish I could throw him a lifeline but as a reporter, a professional journalist, he is unapproachable. I've learned that reporters do not handle criticism well. They perceive criticism as an attack on their skills as journalists.

The problem that sunk both Randy and me is that the Thames River and its main tributary sometimes have the same name depending upon the map. Unless one has an excellent editor checking accuracy and consistency, errors creep in.

Some maps show Fanshawe Dam on the North Branch of the Thames River, others label the same river the north branch of the Thames River and others simply call the river the North Branch. The river flowing into London from the north is rarely labeled the North Thames River but that is its actual name. If you don't believe it, check the Geographical Names Board of Canada site.

In Canada, since 1897, names on official, federal government maps have been authorized through a national committee, now known as the Geographical Names Board of Canada (GNBC). 

The need for a Canadian names authority was recognized in the late 1800s, when resource mapping beyond the frontiers of settlement and extensive immigration made it an urgent matter to manage the country's geographical names - to standardize their spelling and their application.

I first learned that there was a lot of confusion surrounding the name of London's river and its main tributary from readers of my column. These folk were keen on local history and wanted to clean up all the confusion surrounding the name of the local river. My sloppy river naming was driving these folk crazy. (I imagine they were surprised and disappointed when a respected, investigative journalist stepped in and stumbled just as the photographer-playing-journalist had.)

Note: the Thames River reaches Tavistock and beyond.

The river with the flood-controlling Fanshawe Dam is the North Thames River. The river flowing into the Forks of the Thames from Woodstock is the Thames River. Pittock Dam is located on the Thames River. There is no south branch of the Thames River. That is a misnomer for the Thames River itself.

If only Randy would think for a moment about what he is writing, he would realize that if there were two branches merging at the forks and no Thames River upstream from London in either direction, then the Thames River according to this logic springs to life at the Forks of the Thames.

This, of course, doesn't mesh with the  John Graves Simcoe stories of the mighty Thames River flowing east possibly as far as the highlands north of Toronto. After arriving in Canada, and viewing the river firsthand, JGS realized the Thames was not so mighty after all but he still saw it as flowing east to Woodstock.

As for Randy's claim that the Thames River starts as a drainage pipe, that is a bit of a stretch but not as big a one as the folk at UTRCA would like. Way back when my little buddy and I traveled all the way to the source of the Thames River we walked along the narrowing river until we reached water-logged ground. We stood with our feet wet in the boggy wetlands that are the source of the Thames River. Later I took a picture of the young boy straddling the creek that would quickly expand to become the Thames River.

Near the Ellice Swamp, the source of the Thames, the river is but a big creek.

I understand that there are signs of drainage activities in the lands surrounding and in the headwaters of both the Thames River and the North Thames River. This should come as no surprise as historically wetlands just seem to beg to be drained and turned into farmland.

For me the constantly shrinking drainage activity in these wetlands areas symbolizes our awakening understanding of the value of wetlands. UTRCA recognized the importance of Ellice Swamp near Tavistock almost 70 years ago when the conservation authority began purchasing property there in 1948. Over the intervening years, the swamp has been declared a Provincially Significant Wetland (PSW) and is recognize as one of the largest natural areas in south-central Ontario.

It was Randy-the-award-winning-writer who wrote the south branch of the Thames River starts as a drainage pipe and the north starts as a wetlands and came to the conclusion that "one source (is) symbolic of human management and one source symbolic of nature." Writers love a good dichotomy.

A more boring reporter might simply say that both are symbolic of human management and good human management at that. Take a bow UTRCA.

Both the Thames River and the North Thames River have their origins in what remains of their respective historic wetlands and not the remnants of drainage canals, drainage pipes and tiling. And I didn't come by this belief from just looking at a map. Back when I was writing Celebrate the Thames, it took almost an hour's drive, a canoe and a soggy hike to find and become intimately familiar with the source of the Thames.
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The Plan for Mill River Park

In the coming days, I am going to try and find the time to examine another false dichotomy that The London Free Press is pushing: human needs versus environmental concerns. The paper pits "human enjoyment of the river" against the goals of environmentalists. The two goals are intertwined.

Randy makes reference to the worldwide movement that finds more and more people viewing dams as environmentally damaging. He, in my estimation, needlessly adds that these people also view dams as "tributes to human arrogance." In a lot of cases, this is simply not true. Many of those dams served a purpose at one time and many do not dispute this. But times change.

The Free Press fails to report in depth what is being done in other communities worldwide. There are increasing numbers of cities removing dams and being hailed for the move by a majority of residents from the young to the old, from millennials to baby boomers.

Redesign of Springbank Dam may be faulty

Canoeists prepare to run the river below the dam.

The question many are asking in London is: "Should the out-of-operation Springbank Dam be reactivated?" Maybe a better question would be: "How much will it cost to reactivate the Springbank Dam?" I have a gut feeling it could take quite a lot of money.

I was there when the rebuilt dam was first tested back in 2008. Many of those present had serious concerns about the design of the the new gates. Almost all the folk with whom I talked told me, off the record, that bottom-hinged tilting flap gates demand sophisticated engineering to operate reliably. One of the most common problems encountered with this design, I was told, was stream debris interfering with the operation of the submerged hinges. Not just the gates were being tested but the quality of the engineering was also being tested.

I got in touch with the reporter who was with me at the initial test. The reporter confirmed he believed those present thought they would encounter some teething problems bringing the new dam online. That original test was not just some perfunctory operation done to satisfy bureaucratic demands. It was a genuine test conducted to discover the strengths and weaknesses of the new dam design. And, it appears they did discover a weakness -- a weakness that a simple tweak or two was not going to set right.

As most folk know, the initial test of the new dam design had to be aborted when one of the four gates failed. Some blamed stream debris. In mid-summer of 2015 the three remaining gates were retested. Two passed but yet another one failed. Should more money be sunk into repairing a dam which has now failed two tests? Are there serious design flaws at work here?

According to writer Larry Cornies, the new design allows "year-round, dynamic adjustment of water levels in the river." In other words the dam can be fully open, fully closed or anything in between at any time it is felt necessary. Really?

Springbank Dam sits, gates down, out-of-commission.

Based on my talks with those present at the initial test, I believe the present design does not allow frequent adjustment of the position of the gates. Two tests and two failures. This does not inspire confidence. I have read that when operational reliability is paramount there must be a way of clearing debris away from the submerged hinges at the bottom of tilting flap gates.

How much will it cost to correct the faults in the present dam design? Would jets of water or bursts of compressed air clear debris? Possibly filtered river water could be used to flush the hinges before the flaps are raised or lowered. Possibly the design of the gates needs to be altered to modify the water flow pattern as it passes over the hinges.

Restricting the operation of the gates to being lowered in the spring and raised in the fall, as was done in the past, may be necessary. And possibly divers will have to be present to guide the operation and clear debris. Using divers whenever the gates are moved may not be the most elegant solution but it may be the least expensive.

The new dam design may be doomed. I say, remove Springbank Dam. In the past, the river water trapped behind the dam could be damn foul. I used to write the Celebrate the Thames feature for The London Free Press. I can tell you that the river in the area of the Greenway Pollution Control plant was the foulest section of river I encountered during my year and a half of traveling the river from its headwaters to where it discharges into Lake St. Clair.

An icon of the boomer generation, David Bowie, has died

When I talk of the music of the baby boom generation, I don't think of music listened to by baby boomers. Simply listening to music does not make a generational claim on that music. I'm a baby boomer and I, and many of my friends, like Beethoven and Chopin but that fact does not make their music the music of the baby boom. I believe most folk would agree.

But refer to the music maker Chuck Berry and the argument changes. In this case, many would argue Berry wrote the music of the boomer generation. If you believe that I believe you are wrong. Chuck Berry was born a couple of decades before the baby boom. Beethoven was born in 1712; Chopin was born a century later in 1810. Chuck Berry arrived in 1926. More boomers may have listened to Berry but, as we have already agreed, listening to music by a generation is not enough to allow a claim on that music by the generation. More is demanded.

David Bowie           Photo by: Adam Bielawski Aug. 8, 2002

Which brings us to the late David Bowie. Bowie was born in 1947. He was a boomer who wrote  music listened to by boomers. Bowie wrote some of the earliest true music of the baby boom generation. Bowie was not only a singer and songwriter, he was a record producer, painter and actor. Bowie was a baby boomer Renaissance man.

Bowie's art is not just an intrinsic part of baby boom culture, his creative endeavors permeate pop-culture across generational divides. I don't believe many were surprised when Commander Chris Hadfield, a Canadian-born baby boomer astronaut, performed a cover of Bowie's Space Oddity while circling earth in May 2013. The video is posted on You Tube until Nov. of 2016 after an agreement was reached with the copyright holder (not David Bowie.)



David Bowie, a baby boomer icon, will be sorely missed.
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For some other thoughts on the death of a cultural icon, follow the link to the article David Bowie and Me posted in the Arts and Culture section of the Harvard Gazette. Five Harvard academics, possibly all boomers, share their personal reactions to Bowie's death.

The first piece is by professor James Wood, a boomer born in 1965 in England. The professor wrote: "I loved Bowie’s work, and in many ways it defined my youth, as it did the upbringing of anyone who grew up in Britain in the 1970s and ’80s."

Well said, professor.

Head lice: Not so super

This post, Head lice: Not so super, has been moved to the Digital Journal in support of an imaginative new media outlet. DJ may be providing a window into the future of journalism.

Please click the link and check out the story and the newspaper itself.

Cheers,
Rockinon
(former photojournalist: The London Free Press)

The online presentation is excellent. Journalists take note.

 Journalists take note:

The digital journal has been around for years. Their software is excellent. If journalists worked together to get out the news instead of working to ship money out of the country to foreign investors, journalists could get by without old technology companies like Post Media.

With the right people working on the money earning end of the business (selling ads) and professional journalists covering the news, maybe newspaper people could free themselves from the anchor of the printing press and the tyranny of media chain ownership.

Facebook shares are now 15. Time on pg. is 5 min.

And how is my head lice article doing online? Not badly. The number of hits is as expected.

The bounce rate is rather low and that's good. The bounce rate indicates the percentage of readers who read the first few lines and move on without reading the full article.

The average time spent on the page is high, indicating that good number of readers stay to read the story. The number of comments is low. That surprises me. I thought this topic would elicit a lot of comments from parents and others. The Facebook shares are partially driving the hits. Facebook may become the main driver of hits in the coming days.

Racist? Maybe. But not everyone would agree.

United States Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia recently stated, "Most of the black scientists in this country do not come from the most advanced schools." He added that many such African-American scientists actually benefited from being given the opportunity to take a "slower track."

I caught this story on CNN. The newscaster was stunned by the remark by the supreme court justice. A discussion of the remark immediately followed the report. No time was taken to consider whether there was any substance, any support, for Scalia's stance.

Was I shocked by Scalia's remarks? A little. But, I had no immediate comment and I believe the on-air folk at CNN would do well to do a little research before launching an attack in which they quickly labeled the justice "racist."

If you are curious to know what others have said on this matter, folks whose views very well may have influenced the justice, follow the links:

• The Painful Truth About Affirmative Action: Why racial preferences in college admissions hurt minority students -- and shroud the education system in dishonesty. -- from the Atlantic.
• Does Affirmative Action Do What It Should: Scholars have been looking more closely at how affirmative action works in practice . . . some of these scholars have come to believe that affirmative action doesn’t always help the students it’s supposed to . . . some minority students . . . might actually be better served by attending a less elite institution . . . -- New York Times
• And just this year the Harvard Political Review ran an article Matters of Mismatch: The Debate Over Affirmative Action's Effectiveness. The article examined the controversial theory of University of California School of Law professor Richard Sander who wrote a provocative 117-page article back in 2004 and published in the Stanford Law Review, "A Systemic Analysis of Affirmative Action in American Law Schools."

Is Antonin Scalia right? I don't know -- but I am certain the CNN folk are too-quick-to-voice-an-opinion. If I had the time, it would be interesting to discover just what exactly CNN has had to say on this issue in the past. When the Atlantic and the New York Times are two of the possible sources of Scalia's thoughts, it is hard not to imagine that CNN has reported Scalia's position in a more positive manner at other times.

First, horseless carriages; soon, paperless newspapers

Recently a fellow told me newspapers are dead. He was quite adamant. No one reads newspapers anymore, he said. He was, of course, overstating his case but there is a core of truth here. The big offset presses of the world will not be pumping out millions of newspapers indefinitely. At some point the rollers will stop rolling, the ink pots will go dry and fleets of trucks will be parked and sold.

But newspapers are more than just newsprint stained with ink, newspapers are also bricks and mortar, newspapers are businesses. Think of The London Free Press. But the soul of the local paper is not found in the large Goss offset press. No, the soul of the paper is found in the staff -- the journalists who gather the news, the editors who massage the information and the computer experts who make everything from the digital collection to the online delivery possible.

Reportedly, most newspapers today get no more than 15 percent of total revenues from online sources. That said, the Los Angeles Times claimed in 2008 that online income had grown to the point that it was enough to cover the cost of the paper's entire news staff, both print and digital.

Jeff Jarvis wrote in the guardian:

So in the LA Times revelation, I see hope: the possibility that online revenue could support digital journalism for a city. The enterprise will be smaller, but it could well be more profitable than its print forebears today and - here's the real news - it would grow from there. Imagine that: news as a growth industry again.

I'm a news junkie. I admit it. I still get the daily paper delivered to my door. But, I also get daily news feeds from many online sources. I first began experimenting with the paperless newspaper more than twenty years ago. Using my Apple Mac hooked up to an unbelievably slow modem, I used GENIE, General Electric Network for Information Exchange, to download text data. GENIE wasn't free but it wasn't outrageously expensive either: about $9 a month and $3 an hour after the first four hours.

About a year after I joined GENIE, I became a Crayon.net subscriber. Crayon stands for Create Your Own Newspaper. I say stands for and not stood for because Crayon is still in existence today. GENIE, on the other hand, is long gone.

As a boy, my grandfather introduced me to two magazines he felt were worth a read: the Atlantic Monthly and Harper's Magazine. The Atlantic Monthly was born in 1857 and is still going today in both print and online editions. The online edition is known simply as The Atlantic and costs about half as much online as at the store. If, like many readers, you choke at the idea of paying for articles online, a lot of the content is available free online.

Harper's Magazine was first printed in 1867. It has successfully skirted some rough financial shoals and is still on sale in stores today. Like The Atlantic, it is also found online. I don't believe there is a charge for the online edition. I believe both the magazine and the Harper's Magazine Foundation are supported by purchases made from their online store.

What I find most interesting here is that Atlantic Media, the folk behind The Atlantic Monthly, a publication with a history going back more than a century and a half, is experimenting with a free, business-oriented, online paperless newspaper called Quartz. I get an e-mail every day announcing what is new.

And there are more paperless newspapers testing marketplace acceptance. Think Politico and Vox.com.

Traditional newspapers are in trouble but often their problems are amplified by the decisions of their new owners. Think of The London Free Press. To fill the daily news hole, the small, southwestern Ontario daily must run stories from Windsor and other cities located hundreds of kilometers away. Why "must" they do this? Staff cutbacks.  Everyone agrees that local stories sell papers but chain-owned newspapers can no longer afford to cover all the local stories they once would have covered.

And why the severe slashing of news staff and others? To free up money to service Post Media's massive debt ($650 million) which, in large part, is owed to a number of U.S. and Canadian hedge funds specializing in distressed assets. Gaining control of the majority of English-language daily papers in Canada was not cheap and it may not have been too bright either.

The Fisher brothers, builders of horse-drawn carriages, switched to building horseless carriages, car bodies, and stayed in business. Whether Post Media will be able to make the successful transition to a paperless newspaper is an open question. But organizations more focused on providing news rather than servicing debt may well keep journalists and their support staff, the soul of the daily paper, busy pumping out news for interested readers as has been done for generations.

And despite the fact that the baby boomer generation is aging and departing (yes, dying), the generations following are, contrary to popular opinion, still interested in news.

There is a growing body of evidence showing that the conventional wisdom about Millennials’ consumption of news is wrong. Millennials engage news sources differently than past generations to be sure, but the label “newsless” is largely inaccurate.

• The "Newsless" Myth: How Millennials Consume the News
• by: Joshua Bleiberg and Darrell M. West
• Myth: Millennials Won't Read: Today, the average adult consumes 72 minutes of written news, up from the previous average of 60 minutes with the number bolstered almost exclusively by those under the age of 30. -- RDW Group

Music of Boomer Generation not simply pop-rock

I find it odd that baby boomers neither wrote nor performed the early music so linked to their generation. If the music of a generation is the music created by that generation then boomers should not take any bows for early rock and roll.

Take Johnny B. Goode: this is the number one top '50s hit on a list compiled by Boomers Life.  Johnny B. Goode was written and performed by Chuck Berry. Berry was not a boomer. He was born in 1926. He was in his thirties when Johnny B. Goode was topped the charts.

Number two on the list is the Elvis Presley hit Jailhouse Rock. Written for the movie of the same name by the famous song writing team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, both writers were born in 1933. The two were responsible for many of the early rock and roll hits. And Elvis, of course, was not a baby boomer either.

The third song, Rock Around the Clock, was written by Max Freedman and James Myers who were born in 1893 and 1919 respectively. That's right, Max Freedman was 61 when Rock Around the Clock was released. As for Bill Haley himself, the band leader was born in 1925.

My point is that life flows and as it flows it changes. What's happening today is a result of what happened yesterday. But yesterday does not determine today. If it did we could tell the future and we can't. The past influences the present but it doesn't determine it.




And so I say humbug to much of the baby boomer talk. I don't doubt there was a post Second World War baby boom. There was and it was big but there is no perfectly homogeneous, generational wave of Baby Boomers rippling through our society. We are as diverse a group as should be expected being that we span a period of some 19 years -- 1946 to 1965 in Canada.

Early rock and roll is music written and sometimes even performed by the parents of the boomers generation. I do not want to be defined by music gifted to my generation by my parents', and even my grandparents' generation.

One expert on this topic claims classic rock radio supplies an uninterrupted audio lifeline for aging boomers -- a soundtrack-of-one's-life, so to speak. The expert wrote he has fond memories linked to lot's of old rock songs. But his links are suspect.

A check of the release dates of some of the songs uncovered mismatches between the writer's memories and the dates of the songs' popularity. The writer's personal soundtrack is damaged, stretched and distorted like tape in an aging eight track. I am not surprised. At 68 years, I'm finding that linking songs to events has gotten rather iffy and is becoming more and more iffy with each passing year.

Still, I do have some early, very early, memories linked to songs. You may be surprised to learn that these songs are not early rock and roll. Think of How Much Is That Doggy in the Window: I was six when that was a hit for Patti Page. I used to listen to that song with a little girl I thought was kinda cute. We would sit and listen to her Patti Page record together.

I have more memories attached to Perry Como's crooning than I have to early rock and roll and no wonder. There was no rock and roll to speak of when I was a very young boy in the early '50s. I grew up with Perry Como. First on radio and then on television. I recall sitting in front of our large, white Coronet television watching The Perry Como Show with my family.

And my memories of our Coronet television set are as important as my memories of Perry Como. Coronet sets were made right in my hometown, Windsor, Ontario. At one point, one out of every three sets in the Windsor area carried the Coronet name. When a tube failed my mother would pick up a new one at the nearby drugstore. If a new tube didn't fix the problem, our neighbour, who owned a television sales and repair business, would stop by on his way home and put life back into the small, black and white screen.

But, I digress. I told my friends that I didn't believe top-40 radio was the whole story when it came to the baby boomer music story. I have lots of memories linked to songs by artists who got little or no pop-music airtime. My friends didn't and so they disagreed. They seemed to think that record sales numbers told the whole music-of-the-baby-boom story.

I don't think so. Think: Pat Boone. Why Pat Boone? Well, only Elvis Presley and Fats Domino surpassed Pat Boone in record sales in the early days of rock and roll. I pray no one believes the early covers released by Pat Boone represent the music of the boomer generation. That music doesn't represent me.

That said, even I admit to memories attached to some of Pat Boone's soft-pop period songs. Love Letters in the Sand recalls slow dances at weekly sock hops in evening-dark school gyms. But I have more memories attached to other songs, often by lesser known artists.

So, is early rock and roll really the music of the Boomer Generation? The simple answer: No. The music of the Boomer Generation is a rich, all-encompassing mix, composed of all the music from our still unfolding lives. Pop music is only a small part of the mix. It may be the most obvious musical thread but the other threads, though smaller, may be brighter, more colourful and more demanding of attention. In many cases, the music released by lesser known artists still reverberates strongly if only one listens.

I'd place a song with the unlikely title Fresh Garbage among the music of my generation, the boomer generation. And I am sure I am not alone in having wonderful memories linked to that early song by Spirit, a California progressive rock group.

The late '60s song received a fare amount of air time on FM underground radio or alternative rock radio. Fresh Garbage may not have sold in the numbers needed to propel it into the top 40, I don't believe it was ever released as a single, but Spirit album numbers made Fresh Garbage a hit.

When I think of Spirit , I think of 1970 and I think of Berkeley, California. I think of roaring my Morgan roadster down narrow, twisting, mountain roads above that famous college town and I think of Rebekah Wilcher and her incredible family. Her mother, Ida, an artist and her father, Denny, an early environmentalist. Both were strong, left-wing activists. Ida had a picture of herself protesting the war in Vietnam with Joan Baez. Google Denny Wilcher and be amazed. He is one of my heroes.

There is no easy, one-size-fits-all, music road taken by an entire generation. There may be a path most often taken but there are a lot of other well-trodden alternatives. If you insist on having one, all-encompassing answer to the question asking what is the music of the boomer generation, go for it. But please make some room in your answer for Spirit, Captain Beefheart, Karen Dalton, Teegarden and Van Winkle, Savoy Brown, Paul Butterfield, Vanilla Fudge, Cat Mother . . .