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.
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.
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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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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
Coronettelevision 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 . . .
Monday I took my granddaughter to Covent Garden Market where the Original Kids Theatre Company is located. Fiona was taking part in the Kidlets production of Squirm. And the kids, by the way, were simply great. Loved every minute of the performance.
What does my granddaughter's appearance in Squirm have to do with urban transit? More than you might think. To get Fiona downtown on time I picked her up at her school in northwest London and scooted her to the theatre using Riverside Drive. Using my car, I had her downtown in less than fifteen minutes.
What I find interesting in this story is that at no point did anyone suggest taking the bus. And no one even thought this strange. But it is.
When I was a boy in the '50s everyone I knew lived close to a bus route. All the schools were on bus routes. Because very few families had two cars and some families did not have a car at all, taking a child from school to a downtown event usually involved a bus trip. (When I was born in the late '40s there was only one car for every five people living in Ontario.)
I admit that even in the '50s taking a bus took a bit longer than taking a car, if a car was available, but the difference was a matter of minutes and not a choice between being on time or being late.
Since my boyhood a lot has happened in urban growth and most of it has been centred around our use of the car. Many believe the car-oriented approach to urban planning has to change and the City of London gives lip service to this argument but, for the most part, only lip service.
A New Urbanism development slated for the southeast corner of the Colonel Talbot and Southdale Road never materialized. London politicians, and worse London urban planners, like to talk the talk but time after time they fail to deliver.
Take all the talk about TOD (Transit Oriented Development). You'd think that a TOD was something new; it isn't.
TOD is prominently featured in Smart Moves, the 2030 Transportation Master Plan. Smart Moves claims that London urban planners have determined the northeast corner of the intersection of Oxford Street West and Wonderland Road North will be the focus of a major mixed-use, transit-oriented, development. To underline the depth of their support for this they have included some art in the Smart Moves presentation.
The off-the-shelf graphics are inadequate. Anyone familiar with TODs would realize this does not represent a world-class TOD despite claims by the city planners to the contrary.
Two story commercial with no residential being built on site.
Consider the fact that a development is going up on that very corner today and it is not at all as envisioned. Some TODs in the States and elsewhere are absolutely amazing and this didn't just happen. They were planned, nurtured, coaxed and guided to completion.
In some ways where I lived in the '50s could be thought of as an early form of TOD. Transit, commercial, residential and even industrial were all mixed. The major road through my neighbourhood was what was then known as a King's Highway. That road was four lanes wide, plus on-the-street parking and a centre boulevard. It easily supported my fully mixed-use neighbourhood. Buses moved relatively unimpeded along that road.
And back then mixed use really did mean mixed. There were lovely apartments above many of the commercial businesses lining the King's Highway. I had school friends who lived above some of those stores. This was a common feature of business districts built in the early part of the last century. My aunt in Brantford lived above a store and many friends in art school in Detroit walked to school from their apartments above nearby stores.
And there was also a lot of industrial included in the mix. It was not uncommon for people living in my neighbourhood to walk to work, to walk to stores and even to walk to church. If your doctor was in the Medical Arts building, you probably took the bus to see your doctor. The main library was downtown, the locally owned department store, Bartlet, McDonald and Gow, was also downtown, and, of course, the biggest and best movie theatres were all in the city core. Taking the bus was an integral part of living in the city.
Apartments north of the intersection are a wee bit boring.
Come to think of it, the present development at the Oxford and Wonderland corner could be thought of as a poor attempt at a TOD. Without these two major thoroughfares I doubt the forest of high-rise apartments would have sprung just north in this intersection.
But the apartments sit bunched together separated from the commercial. In many parts of the world, small stores would fill the first floor of many of these apartments but not in London.
This intersection earns no praise for imaginative planning. I doubt it will be an absolute visual delight in the future no matter how good the transit system.
A key point of the PowerPoint presentation above is that the TOD value come more from the actual mixed use neighbourhood created and not simply from the transit itself. Think: Quality. Look at the pictures posted from the London intersection. Do you immediately think "quality"?
Simply adding rapid transit, bus or light rail, is not enough to instantly create a successful TOD.
This morning Heather Hiscox used a story about a B.C. man who has been unable to find a surgeon to operate on his pineal gland as her program hook to hold listeners and keep them from slipping away during the commercial break.
It was a good hook but proved to be a poor story.
Heather Hiscox is a bright lady. I knew her at Western many years ago. She is a trained journalist. She has a Masters degree from the London, Ontario, university. Why can't she read this bumph before taking it to air and spike it rather than reading it.
The U.S. study to which the CBC story links begins by stating "Surgical indications for patients with pineal cysts are controversial." A quick search of the Web uncovers an American doctor, Derek A. Bruce of the Children's National Medical Center, who posted the following on the Web:
I have never in my career, 43 years, found it necessary to operate on a
pineal cyst. . . . The incidence of asymptomatic pineal
cysts at autopsy is 10%. . . . Do not operate on this lesion until you are completely convinced that it is causing progressive hydrocephalus with symptoms.
Does the fellow in the CBC story need surgery on his pineal gland -- a gland buried deep in the brain. Maybe. It is a possibility. But another possibility is that the Canadian surgeon who said "it's not ethical to cut into your head for no reason" may be voicing a solid concern -- a concern shared by many American doctors as well as Canadian ones. Maybe this surgery IS unnecessary for certain patients.
I understand that American doctors face more threat of being sued for malpractice than Canadian ones. The fact, reported by the Los Angeles Times, that the doctor slated to do the surgery on the Canadian man "has been sued for malpractice about 17 times in his career" may mean nothing. And the fact that a judge said the U.S. doctor was "more interested in marketing than he was in medicine" may also mean nothing.
There is a story here. There may be a number of stories here. And one of the stories may find that a multitude of Canadians have undergone brain surgery at great expense south of the border for questionable reasons.
The other story may be that the resistance to doing pineal gland surgery is misplaced and it is time for more neurosurgeons to offer this option to their patients. Whatever, the story is not the one emotionally presented by the CBC reporter Rosa Marchitelli.
Are mandatory flu shots for nurses and other health-care workers a good or bad idea? The answer depends on the newspaper article and the reporter one consults. If you read The London Free Press you can be forgiven for believing mandatory vaccination is a critical weapon in the fight against the deadly flu virus. But do a Google search and you may find the answer is not so clear cut.
For instance, a report in the Cochrane Library states there is no evidence that vaccinating health-care workers prevents flu or its complications ( such as death due to lower respiratory tract
infection) in individuals aged 60 or over. There is no evidence
of a pressing need to institute compulsory vaccination of health-care workers caring for those 60 and over.
The Globe and Mail reports Dr. Michael Gardam, director of
infection prevention and control at the University Health Network in
Toronto, thinks the growing trend
toward mandating flu shots to health-care workers is a bad idea.
According to the Globe article:
It turns out that the evidence in favour of mandatory vaccination policies is far from conclusive.
Just for the record, I personally like the flu shot. I get mine annually and as early as possible. I have heart and lung problems. I don't feel like sitting on the fence waiting for the definitive answer. If the shot doesn't help me, I am not worried that it may hurt me. In all the years that I have had the shot, I have never had a bad reaction and, it may be coincidence, but I have not had a serious bout of flu either.
This post is not an attack on the flu shot. I simply believe newspapers should strive to be more balanced.
How truthiness is spread by the media. Image edited in Photoshop.
There is a myth, almost an urban legend, that aging baby boomers in high rise apartment filling numbers are forsaking their suburban homes to relocate in city centres. My local paper tells me the move to downtown is "typical of what's happening in other cities." But is it typical?
Perhaps no urban legend has played as long and loudly as the notion that
“empty nesters” are abandoning their dull lives in the suburbs for the
excitement of inner city living.
But there’s a problem here: a look at Census data shows . . . that rather than flocking into cities, there were roughly a million fewer boomers in 2010 within a five-mile radius of the centers of the nation’s (U.S.) 51 largest metro areas compared to a decade earlier.
If boomers change residences, they tend to move further from the
core, and particularly to less dense places outside metropolitan areas.
It must be admitted that Joel Kotkin is not a promoter of downtown living at the expense of the suburbs. Kotkin has an agenda but, with all that out in the open, one must acknowledge that Kotkin may be right. Now, Kotkin is American but the figures in Canada tell a similar story. Using Stats Canada numbers only made available to researchers, a Concordia University study found "seniors prefer the suburbs."
Lookout Crt. view the equal of those from many apartments.
Capital preservation is a big goal of many retirees, if not most. It is not a fear of death that occupies the minds of many seniors but a fear of living -- a fear of living so long that they out live their wealth.
My home in Byron has three bedrooms, three full bathrooms, and a lovely view of the city from the side of the glacial moraine on which it is built. My property taxes, heating and cooling plus water and electricity costs amount to about $8610 a year ($717.50 per month). This is small change in comparison to the $25,200 a two bedroom, two bath apartment in a new luxury downtown London high rise might run.
This was a bad year for us financially. Our furnace failed last Christmas and we had to cough up some $8700 come March. We replaced both the furnace and the central air. This summer we had to have some extensive remedial brick work done. This cost about $1650. Still, even an expensive year in our home only set us back $18,960. We saved $6340 over living in a beautiful new apartment in the core.
From my Byron home I can walk to a couple of grocery stores, to three drug stores, an LCBO and more but I admit I often drive. I burn 17-cents of diesel fuel when I drive to the nearby No Frills and back. Am I an aberration? Not according to Stats Canada which reported:
Seniors do not use public transit more often as their main form of
transportation as they get older. Nor does occasional use increase with
age. Rather, the proportion who had used public transit at least once
in the previous month declined with increasing age . . .
I opened with one urban legend (seniors are moving downtown en masse) and I'm closing with another (many seniors choose to use public transit over the car.) Sadly, urban legends which feel true are all too often spread by an unquestioning media. Stephen Colbert had a word for this: "Truthiness."
A recent newspaper story introduced a young girl with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome to tens of thousands of readers across Ontario and possibly Canada. The story originated at The London Free Press and was carried by many other papers owned by the same chain. The young teen has found it impossible to get treatment in Ontario and the province is balking at paying the out-of-province treatment costs — costs that can easily surpass the 100 thousand dollar mark.
If you didn't see the story, you must be wondering "What exactly is Ehlers-Danlos syndrome?" Answer: It is a group of inherited disorders affecting connective tissues — mainly skin, joints and blood vessel walls. According to the paper, the disorder "affects one in 5,000, only some of whom suffer the worst symptoms." The paper goes on to claim that this translates into about 100 Ontarians with Ehlers-Danlos with 20 of those having symptoms so
severe their lives are consumed seeking help from doctors who don’t know
what to do.
A little bit of quick, ballpark math says that a province with population of some 13 million must contain about 2600 people touched by the genetic disorder. It is interesting the reporter only discovered 100 known Ehlers-Danlos patients in Ontario. A little googling reveals why: The condition is under diagnosed. Doctors, both in Canada and the States, lack familiarity
with it and there is no consensus regarding
diagnostic criteria — this revelation is from the American Journal of Nursing.
But what really troubled me was the claim "there is speedy treatment south of the border." Not true. The wait time to see a specialist is often months and if the doctor does not accept insurance, or the patient is uninsured, the cost of treatment in the States may be prohibitive. One American with the disorder wrote, "I do not have insurance, nor can I get it privately. Testing and surgery will have to wait."
Read a comment taken from the newspaper's own Internet site:
"I'm in the US and recently was diagnosed with EDS after being told for
30+ years, on and off, it was all in my head too. I'm so sorry that you
have to endure the ignorance of the medical community and the additional
pain that comes with all that. I have been waiting for a list of
experts from my insurance company in the US for 2 months now ever since
my diagnosis. From what I am told, all the"true experts" in EDS are on
the East Coast. I live on the West Coast 3000 miles away...like another
country away and my insurance may not cover the referrals. This syndrome
is probably not as 'rare' as it has been made out to be, just rarely
diagnosed. It's time that doctors become aware and learn how to treat
it. Keep fighting and keep having faith."
The treatment for Ehlers-Danlos is expensive. The newspaper got this fact right. And the costs are never ending. This can be a painful, genetic disorder keeping sufferers awake at night while giving medical insurance actuaries nightmares. To further complicate the financial picture, the Stateside specialist the young Canadian is seeing is an out-of-network provider.
About Health has this to say about out-of-network specialists: An out-of-network provider is one which has not contracted with an insurance company for reimbursement at a negotiated rate. Some health plans, like HMOs,
do not reimburse out-of-network providers at all, which means patients are responsible for the full amount charged by the doctor. Other health plans offer coverage for out-of-network providers, but the patient responsibility is higher than it would for an in-network provider.
Read the Barbara Calder story in The Wall Street Journal: How U.S. Health System Can Fail Even the Insured. Calder has Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome but despite having health insurance she spent a year battling numerous
roadblocks just to see a specialist who could diagnose her condition.
According to The Wall Street Journal:
Mrs. Calder's difficulties mirror those of millions of insured Americans
who get lost in the U.S. health-care system's giant maze. For many, the
journey is frustrated by coverage limits, denied claims and impersonal
service.
When Barbara Calder finally succeeded at getting an appointment with a
specialist, she learned the doctor had an eight week waiting list.
Unfortunately, her husband had lost his job and their insurance was
coming to an end. The couple could not afford the $1,267 a month in
premiums.
Ontario has to do better. Our health care system needs improvement. In this, the newspaper position is dead-on. But health care heaven is not to be found just an hour or two down the highway.
Just as Canadians seem to be going to the States for treatment, Barbara Calder has been looking outside her home turf for medical help. According to the journal, Barbara Calder has been lobbying her husband and her
children to move to Belgium, where she once lived,
arguing that they could get good care there cheaply through the
country's universal health-care system. One of the leading researchers
of EDS is a Belgian geneticist working at the University of Ghent.
Calder's bright hopes for finding help in Belgium might come as a surprise to EDS patients living in the small, European country:
Every day is a kind of fight against the pain,
the fatigue . . . but also against the institutions
when you try to obtain support to cope with the disease". — Florence Simonis, president of the Belgian GESED
(Groupe d'Entraide des Syndrômes d'Ehlers-Danlos — a support group for
Ehlers-Danlos patients). She suffers from Ehlers-Danlos syndrome
(EDS) herself.
This thick layer of artichokes, sweet peppers, mushrooms and pepperoni is sitting a a pizza.
Dr.Oetker pizzas often go on sale. One can pick up the doctor's four cheese pizza for just under three bucks. My wife and I like to stock-up whenever we get a chance. We use these pizzas for the base on which to build our own Weight Watcher friendly pizzas every Tuesday night: our Pizza night.
One half a pizza, two slices, of our enhanced Dr. Oetker pizza is 14 points. That's a lot of points but not crazy high. We watch our points during the day, taking care to leave some head room, or in this case stomach room, for the pizza.
I add lots of mushrooms - no points, sweet peppers - again, no points, artichokes - no points, pepperoni - one point and hot pickled peppers - no points. Our pizza is filling, healthy (low in cholesterol and saturated fat) and delicious. (I precook the mushrooms, sweet peppers and pepperoni. This cuts down on the fat and removes some of the excess water from the vegetables. The hot peppers and artichokes go straight onto the pizza.)
Can we really afford to have this pizza once a week. I can't afford not to. I weighed about 215 pounds when I started eating Weight Watchers friendly meals with my wife. Today, I weight just under 170 pounds. My waist has dropped from 41-inches to about 37-inches. I may have to buy a new belt. I've tightened my present belt to the point that I'm running out of holes. I don't want to lose too much more. Please, pass the pizza.
Not a fine photo but it was a fine dinner. Maybe I'll get a better shot next time.
I don't recall how I discovered Elena Paravantes' blog Olive Tomato but as someone who regularly enjoys Mediterranean cooking I have found her blog inspirational. A recent post encouraged readers to quickly fry sliced zucchini and serve it warm with sprinkles of parsley and feta cheese. The picture that Paravantes posted made her zucchini look quite appealing. Inspired, I decided to use a both yellow and green zucchini as a side dish.
My wife and I are trying to adhere to the diet advised by my heart and stroke doctor while also trying to adhere to a Weight Watchers-friendly diet. This dinner met both requirements: low in fat, low in cholesterol as there's neither meat nor eggs but lots of fresh vegetables. This dinner delivered a Weight Watchers low point total.
The star of this dinner was potato gnocchi. At a little over 100gms per portion, the gnocchi contained only four points. It was boiled until it rose to the top of the bubbling water. After a minute it was removed using a slotted spoon.
Meanwhile the small tomatoes were fried in a little olive oil seasoned with finely diced garlic . The zucchini was fried in the same pan at the same time. Two minutes on each side in a very hot fry pan was enough for the zucchini. The tomatoes were removed when the skins began to split. Both vegetables were placed on waiting dinner dishes.
The chopped asparagus was tossed into the hot fry pan with a little more finely diced garlic. After a minute the gnocchi was added to the pan with the asparagus. At this point about 90 gms of Alfredo sauce diluted with an ounce of the gnocchi water was added. The sauce immediately began bubbling, thickened, and coated everything in the pan. A couple of tablespoons of chopped dill were stirred in and the mixture spooned onto the dishes with the zucchini.
While I cooked the gnocchi and asparagus my wife sprinkled parsley and feta cheese on the hot zucchini and tomato. Next, she sprinkled a little grated Parmesan onto the still hot food. With a small glass of wine, this dinner came in at only 15 points. It may have been even less. The only cholesterol was in the small amount of cheese and the light cream used in the sauce.
I have been eating like this for a little more than a year. I had my arteries checked a couple of months ago and the plaque has diminished. Of course, I am also taking some powerful drugs and so it is impossible to say to what extent the Mediterranean diet has been responsible for the improvement.
There is one improvement that I can credit to my new eating habits: My weight. I've lost some 45 pounds.
Originally I posted this image on Facebook and Google+ but now I'm sharing it here as well.
There has been about twice the normal amount of rain this June. It has forced me to stay indoors with my youngest granddaughter. Last Friday I had had enough. I decided to take Isla, 2, outside to show her some temporary treasures created by the
stormy weather.
Treasures is the term my grandchildren use for beautiful, found
objects. In this case, the treasures were the drops of
water beaded up on the plants and flowers surrounding our home. Although we could not stuff these treasures into granddad's pocket, we could capture them with his camera.
Wearing
her biggest, highest boots and a raincoat with hood, my little
25-month-old granddaughter wandered about the yard seeking treasures that
might "make a picture." She would point
and I would aim the camera. When she was happy with what she was seeing on
the large monitor on the camera back, Isla would snap the picture. She shook with excitement
every time she saw the image she wanted appear on the back of
the camera.
We stayed
outside until both of us were dripping with water like the foliage and
flowers we had been shooting. Oh, how I wish someone had been there to take a picture of us. I think,
for me, that picture would have been a treasure.
A piece in the New York Times, widely quoted on the Internet, states unequivocally that beautifully prepared and presented food is not art. I beg to differ.
Taking my inspiration from R.G. Collingwood, I have no problem calling some food creations art. For a short summary of Collingwood's work in aesthetics please read the entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. It will quickly become apparent I play fast and loose with Collingwood's ideas.
For me, I make a quick and easy divide, placing art on one side and craft on the other. Art requires creativity and the results are often unique. Craft, on the other hand, demands skill and the resulting product is cranked out repeatedly.
Most people can appreciate craft (skill) and they like their art (creativity) mixed with craft as well. This is why Jackson Pollock just doesn't cut it with many people. His work may be creative but "a child could do it." Pollock's splatter approach to art, to these viewers, doesn't appear to require a finely honed skill.
The creation of a new food dish is, in the beginning, an act of craft driven by art or creativity. But once an artistic result is achieved, then craft, the skill of being able to duplicate the artistic work, quickly becomes the force pushing the entire endeavor forward. Great chefs are both artists and craftspeople. They develop unique dishes and then prepare them on demand.
I had this at the Blackfriars Bistro.
Take the cold, potato salad I make. The olive oil used is the result of both an art decision and a craft decision. My goal is to delight the sense of taste and I want to do it repeatedly. My personal favourite oil for this salad is one from Provence in the south of France. It has a very light flavour that doesn't mask the flavour of the potatoes. This oil is dependable when it comes to its flavour and thus the resulting potato salad is at once satisfying and yet holds no surprises -- at least, not for those who have enjoyed it before.
I often serve meals that are high quality when it comes to craft but are partial failures on the artistic side. Why? These dinners taste great but fail to impress the eye. A great dish ripples across one senses like a hand playing chords on a piano. A perfect dish delights the eyes, teases the nose and surprises and satisfies the taste buds. Restaurant chefs have perfected the skill of the presentation.
And with this post, I am now ready for my meeting with a lady from the art gallery here in London, Ontario. Apparently the gallery is about to mount a show featuring food and I have been invited to give some input. I believe I can now argue food can be art but, as is true with a lot of art, many people insist on a good smattering of skillful craft with their art.
My, but what weak-kneed nation builders we’ve become.
Forget the formidable challenges that faced our forebears: stitching
together a new federation from scattered and diverse colonies, or
building a transcontinental railroad, or aspiring to be a nation that
would one day stand upright, on its own, on the world stage. Forget all that. These days, the prospect of merely reforming and
renewing the upper chamber of our bicameral parliament is enough to make
us cower like frightened turtles.
Cornies tells us, "the nation builders . . . seldom flinched
when it came to difficult political negotiations or the job of building a
better Canada . . . "
Wow! I thought flinching was in a politician's job description. When I started looking into our Canadian forebears, I found more flinching was the least of their crimes. Our forebears are no better than the folk in power today and possibly quite a bit worse. I posted something on this -- No saints found despite newspaper's praise.
I learned Sir John A. Macdonald was a shakedown artist. A plucky shakedown artist but still a shakedown artist -- a crook. The following is from a page posted by the Canadian government.
In April 1873, the government of Sir John A. Macdonald was
charged with accepting illicit funds from Sir Hugh Allan. In return for
these payments, Allan was assured that he would be awarded the
lucrative contract to construct the transcontinental Canadian Pacific Railway.
When evidence of the agreement was made public by Opposition members of
Parliament and published in newspapers across Canada, the episode
became known as the "Pacific Scandal."
A telegram from Macdonald to Allan's legal adviser read: "I must
have another ten thousand; will be the last time of calling; do not fail
me; answer today."
This is not to say Macdonald didn't achieve a lot of good. He did. After all he was one of the Fathers of Confederation. But he also did a lot that was bad. We should not forget this as Larry Cornies appears to have done.
But, when I think of important Canadian forebears, I don't think just of politicians but I also think of all those wielding power outside the political arena. For instance, I think of the chap Sir John A. was shaking down, a fellow by the name of Sir Hugh Allan. Hugh Allan is most certainly a Canadian forebear and a very determined one. Allan had pluck (spirit and resolve). Unfortunately, he didn't have a working moral compass. At the very least, he ignored it.
Richard J. Gwyn in his book, Nation Maker: Sir John A. Macdonald: His Life, Our Times 1867-1891, tells the following story: During a dinner at her home, Lady Macdonald asked Sir Hugh Allan for a donation for her church. "You can't take it with you," she told Allan. From the other side of the table her husband, Sir John A. Macdonald, quietly added, "It would soon melt if he did."
Curious as to who this fellow Allan was and why he enjoyed dinner at Macdonald's home, I began to read biographies on Allan. The words associated with Allan paint a sad picture: scandal, stock manipulation, haphazard bookkeeping, unwarranted dividends, debt, bribery . . . . Allan called the rumours surrounding him "absurd" and "senseless." I suspect many, including Macdonald, would not agree.
Another term appearing again and again is "political patronage." Sir Hugh Allan controlled Canada's second largest bank. But Allan controlled more than the bank; Allan controlled influential people. For instance, the ex-finance minister John Rose was the bank’s London solicitor, in 1866 the future
prime minister of Canada J. J. C. Abbott was kept on a $1,000 annual retainer as the
bank’s Montreal lawyer and in 1883 both Sir Charles Tupper and Sir John
A. Macdonald were special solicitors for the Winnipeg branch. Well known politicians pop up time and time again on the bank's employment rolls.
And the bank had another way to keep politicians on a tight leash: debt. For instance, Sir John A. Macdonald was probably the bank’s most prominent debtor.
Allan's corrupt ways spilled over to stain the manner in which employees were treated. A Royal Commission revealed the oppressive exploitation of workers by Allan. Many of the longshoremen employed by the Allan Line fleet of ships were compelled to work
30 to 35 hours at a stretch for the wretched wage of 20 cents an hour. Plus, the Allan Line, according to the Commission, retained one per
cent of the workers' wages to provide the employees with insurance from Citizens’ Insurance Company. A company that had Sir Hugh Allan coincidentally at the helm.
The commission found that the
longshoremen of the Allan Line paid a premium equivalent to an
annual premium of $9.12 for protection lasting no more than ten hours a day during 365
days. Better coverage could be obtained elsewhere for $8.75, payable per quarter, and providing coverage for not only accidents happening during
the ten hours of the work but all the accidents that could happen during
the twenty-four hours of the day.
Sir Hugh Allan: a Canadian forebear. And sadly, he is but one embarrassment among many.
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