Truthiness reigns in newsrooms

The London Free Press article claims the reflective markers found on fire hydrants in London, Ontario, are shaped like the Maltese cross. One look at a picture of a Maltese cross confirms this isn't true. Without a doubt, the blue marker shown is not shaped like the Maltese cross. What cross, if any, inspires so many of the firefighter emblems in North America? The answer: the cross of St. Florian.

The cross of Saint Florian, used by firefighters, is often confused with the Maltese cross; although it may have eight or more points, it also has large curved arcs between. The cross of St. Florian is widely used by fire services to form their emblem. -- Hudson, New Hampshire, Fire Department and others and others.

When I read the questionable reference to the Maltese cross in the paper, I immediately contacted the paper. I posted my correction as a comment below the story. All comments must be vetted before being published. I thought the comment would make the newsroom aware of the confusion and the story would be corrected

London Professional Firefighter Association

Why did I believe the cross was misnamed? Because, I used to work at The Free Press and I used to visit local fire halls to take pictures for the paper. It was on one of those assignments that I learned it was a common myth that the firefighter symbol is the Maltese cross. Simply not true, a London firefighter told me.

Think about it, he said, the Maltese cross is sharply pointed. The cross in question is gently curved. The London symbol is based on the cross of St. Florian, the patron saint of firefighters, he said.

And the London Fire Department is not alone in using the cross of St. Florian. Numerous fire departments across North America use a form of this symbol. Even the International Association of Fire Fighters is on board.

Which cross do you see in the IAFF emblem?

The funny thing is many of the fire fighting organizations don't know their St. Florian cross from their Maltese cross. It is a common error.

I believe the London firefighter. Despite the claims of others, I'm sure he is right. The reflective markers in use in London are not the Maltese cross but the cross of St. Florian.

Admittedly, there is a connection between the Maltese cross and firefighters. There are badges in use that are decorated with the true, sharply pointed Maltese cross or a clear derivative. Many of these are in use in Canada.

Did the newspaper remove the questionable history lesson from the article? No. And they didn't post my comment either. Somewhere there is a London firefighter shaking his head.

Left to right: Maltese cross, reflective marker in London, cross of St. Florian

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Why is the wrongful identification of a firefighter symbol worth a blog post? Because this is about more than one very small mistake. This post touches on a very big problem affecting newspapers and all other media outlets: truthiness.

Mark-A-Hydrant reflectors in shape of cross of St. Florian.

This is a word coined by comedian and former host of the Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert. A news story with the quality of truthiness rings true. But being truthy doen not mean it is necessarily facty.

Something that has truthiness seems true, it feels right, it may even have the support of some trusted sources⁠—but dig deep and it will become clear that the statement is not true. In fact, it might be complete balderdash.

"Facts" that are actually balderdash crop up all too often in the media. Once an error is reported as truth and then reported again and again in newspaper article after newspaper article, repeated on television newscasts and radio reports, the error takes on a patina of truthiness.

For an example, think of the UFFI scare. Today it is known to have been balderdash. Yet, the myth is stronger than the truth and even newspapers that have carried the opposing view at one time or other, still fall back on the myth. Colbert was quite right: truthy wins over facty.

I contacted the paper on the weekend about the neither-here-nor-there error of misidentifying the cross of Saint Florian. The common error is still in the story and it is in my Monday morning paper. Sad, but no big deal.

Newspaper columnist admits fear and anxiety overblown.

But the UFFI error is a big deal. At the time the original UFFI story broke, I had proof the story was wrong. On one assignment a scientist from the Ontario Ministry of the Environment told the reporter I was with that my take on UFFI was correct. The scientist backed me up.

Did folk at the paper look at my documents? No. Did the professional journalists examine any of the evidence I gathered? No. The adherence of the media to truthiness and not fact financially damaged thousands of innocent people across North America.

Some months back the local paper ran an article on rebranding. The article illustrated the strength of rebranding with a story on rebranding in action. The illustrative story was nothing more than truthiness.

When I confronted a reporter from the paper about this, the reporter told me that the illustrative story didn't have to be true; it only had to illustrate something that we all know to be true. Stephen Colbert would be proud.

Truthiness causes big problems and that's the truth.

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Addendum:

If you are thinking of sending a comment and getting into an argument over the correct name for the cross that inspired so many of the firefighter symbols in North America, please click the link and read the post titled The Maltese vs. Florian cross: Which one is correct?

FireRescue1states The Florian cross is often confused with the Maltese cross. But it is the Florian cross that is used by the majority of fire departments in the States.

Whether it is claims about UFFI or claims about the symbolism of a cross, it seems a claim does not always need to be true. Far too many journalists believe a good story should never go unreported but it can go unquestioned.

I will leave the last word to the American Township Fire Department:

• Look at the shape of the ATFD patch. Many call it the Maltese cross when in actuality it is known as the cross of Saint Florian, the Patron Saint of Fire Fighters.

Celebrating the Thames

Even without a working dam, Londoners enjoy visiting their river.

Years ago I wrote a feature for The London Free Press called Celebrate the Thames. At the time, the move to have the river declared a heritage river was gaining traction and the folk running the paper were in favour. They thought this assignment was tailor-made for a photographer willing to write as well. I was a staff photographer and, as luck would have it, I was given the assignment.

In the time I wrote about the river I came to appreciate not only the Thames but all rivers. Furthermore, I came to admire the enthused folk who were pursuing the dream of having the Thames honoured with the heritage designation. Today, those visionaries have seen their dream realized: the Thames is a Canadian Heritage River.

The Thames River is not a large, mighty river. In fact, just an hour outside London, the river is small enough that a young boy can straddle it. Yet, its small size can be deceiving; it meanders some 270 km through Southern Ontario before emptying into Lake St. Clair. Originally the river ran through rich, and rare for Canada, Carolinean forest in which tulip, pawpaw, Kentucky coffee, and sassafras trees could all be found. Some of the wildlife and fish species in the Thames watershed were equally rare in Canada.

To celebrate the Thames is to respect its true nature and the important role the river plays in the unique ecology of Southern Ontario. A dam, like the one temporarily out of commission at the west end of Springbank Park in London, does not belong on our heritage river. A damn like this says residents living alongside the river are out of tune with nature and have turned their backs on the river.

According to The London Free Press:

The (Springbank) dam plays no role in flood protection, instead it keeps water levels higher in the river during summertime, which is a crucial part of the city's new Downtown Master Plan focusing on many riverside amenities. (Like canoeing, I assume.)

"For it to be that attraction, and be that experience, that higher water level really is important," says John Fleming, city planner.

Clearly, the City of London plans on turning the river in its core back into a reservoir but acting as if it is celebrating the river. In truth, the city and city planners like John Fleming are celebrating a reservoir. They are celebrating the presence of high water backed up by the dam and sitting almost stagnant, thick with algae at the forks.

Kayakers paddling on Thames inspite of damaged dam.

I would encourage the city planning department to get their thinking out of the past and into the present. Dams are no longer seen as win-win structures. There are environmental prices to be paid and these can be steep. When a free-running, more natural river is dammed, its flow impeded, water quality, fish numbers, and wildlife composition can all suffer.

The failure of the Springbank Dam some years ago has made it very clear that the river is much healthier without the structure. It is time to consider the alternative to the dam: a free running river.

Warning: Contactless Credit Cards Not Completely Secure

My wife and I use a credit card with the PayPass feature. Tap the card on the reader, the green lights glow momentarily, there's a beep and the purchase is paid for. Fast, easy and possibly not secure.

My wife was paying for a purchase today and the the card reader flashed and beeped while my wife's card was still inches distant. The clerk said that the store card reader was more powerful than most and was causing some customers a little grief. Occasionally, the reader would complete a transaction while the customer's card was still in the customer's purse. If the customer has two cards and both have RFID, radio frequency identification, sometimes the wrong card is activated.

The clerk told us she knew a lady who, after pumping gas, got her card out to pay for her purchase. When she walked by the next pump, her card connected with that pump's card reader. She almost paid for a stranger's gas.

If I hadn't seen my wife's card talk almost remotely to a store card reader, I'd have found the gas pump story more urban legend than truth. But after what I witnessed, I'm not so sure how secure these RFID cards really are.

Check out the story posted by CBC News: New credit cards pose security problem.

Balderdash weakens Brian Meehan claims

Was discarding river-blue colour an act of cultural heritage vandalism?

A few years ago, The London Free Press carried an opinion piece by Larry Cornies examining the Back to the River project: a move to reconnect the river to the city and to celebrate The Forks of the Thames. The claim is that this is something that has not been done in the recent past.

Have they forgotten the thinking behind the Raymond Moriyama-designed art gallery erected at The Forks in the late '70s and opened in 1980. Based on comments by Museum London executive director Brian Meehan, the short answer is "yes"; they have forgotten.

View of The Forks from the Moriyama art gallery in London.

Cornies reports, at the launch of the Back to the River design competition, Meehan claimed the present museum and gallery was built with its back to the river. It was designed to face the city, he said.

He was wrong. It wasn't designed that way at all.

Meehan went on to reveal the museum’s board is contemplating how to best accomplish an institutional about-face in terms of the building’s symbolic and physical orientation.

In truth, the present design was the result of public consultation. "Hundreds of questionnaires were distributed," according to an article in The Free Press published at the time of the opening. "In many ways, the gallery is a physical manifestation of the people and the process," said famous Canadian architect Raymond Moriyama.

For inspiration, Moriyama did a lot of walking about The Forks. One result of those walks was the original water-blue colour of the structure, inspired by the oh-so-near river. The design of the building and its site placement was driven by the need to recognize and enhance the beautiful location, The Forks itself.

Wolf Garden above Forks at gallery.

According to Randy Richmond, an award-winning reporter for The Free Press, the art gallery/museum was "designed to bridge The Forks of the Thames to the edge of downtown. It was a gateway from downtown to the river . . . " Moriyama himself said he made a conscious "attempt to erase any sense of front" from the design.

So much for the executive director's claim that the gallery was built with its back to the river.

Is any of this important? Yes, if London's built heritage is important. The wonderful Moriyama building didn't turn its back on The Forks and on London; London turned its back on the building.

Randy Richmond said it very well when he wrote:

Raymond Moriyama's original design evoked the river, the historical significance of the forks and the buildings around. The large arches were painted blue to evoke the river and inside was an airy fan design.

A reflecting pool in the lower gallery extended outside to a fountain and the water was to flow from the fountain to a stream that led to the river.

Citing finances, the city rejected the fountain and stream. The reflecting pool was built, but eventually filled in. After the blue panels atop the aches rusted, they were replaced with grey aluminum ones. (The dynamic fan shapes in the arches disappeared, as well.)

With the release of The London Plan, the city planning department is promising to "protect our built and cultural heritage." Despite being but 35 years old, the Moriyama art gallery/museum at The Forks is part of London's built and cultural heritage.

Heritage properties don’t have to be old. There are newer buildings and structures all across the province that have cultural heritage value because of their design, cultural associations or contribution to a broader context. 
— Strengthening Ontario's Heritage: Identify, Protect, Promote (page 7)

I don't understand how those operating the art gallery, running a safe house for culture, can change the colour of a work of art, and make no mistake about it, the Moriyama building is a work of art. Possibly Meehan and the board should be contemplating making their own about-face when it comes to their thinking concerning the now pavement grey art gallery.
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The gallery/museum was previously featured by this blogger in a post titled simply: The Gallery.

First floor commercial adds walkabilty

Commercial on first floor of Arlington apartment buildings adds walkability.

Although it must be admitted that not all apartment buildings in Arlington, Virginia, have commercial on their first floors, it is not unknown. Mixing commercial and residential in one building was common in the past.

I recall one building in Detroit had a massive theatre on the ground floor mixed with some retail businesses. Above there were offices. There was even a dental office. Finally, the top floors contained some apartments.

A similar mix can still be found in Arlington, Virginia, and it works as well today as did decades ago. The area pictured above garnered a Walk Score of 95. This is a walker's paradise.

Yet in London pure apartment buildings are still being erected with retail businesses located nearby but not within.

There are two new luxury apartment towers on Southdale Road east of Colonel Talbot. In a place like Vancouver where land is valuable, the first floor would be commercial.  In London, where land should be valuable but isn't, the building sits in the middle of a commercial area but is not truly integrated into it.

The result is more sprawl than necessary and a lower Walk Score. When last I checked the Walk Score was only 50 for these new buildings despite being located near banks, drugstores, restaurants and more

I expect this number to climb as more businesses are opened in the strip malls surrounding the apartment towers but with a few changes these towers could have been world class places to live. As it is they are simply very, very nice for London, Ontario.

Sidewalks not always found on the most walkable streets

Many equate sidewalks with walkability. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Sidewalks are nice, no argument, but putting new sidewalks where there are no destinations -- like stores, schools or parks -- does not transform the street into a wallker's paradise thanks to the addition of the pedestrian pavement.

Note the residential street above in Leeuarden, Netherlands. This street rates a Walk Score of 92 despite lacking sidewalks and dedicating a huge amount of roadway to parked cars. Space for walking is tight.

Why does a street, clearly unfit for walking, rate such a lofty score? Location, location, location. Almost everything a person needs is within a 20 minute walk -- even sidewalks.

Maybe the urban planners in London, Ontario, could learn from the Leeuarden experience.

Almere New City, Netherlands: ReThink in action

This street in The Hague, Netherlands, lacks sidewalks.

It was called ReThink London. It was a bust. All that was new was the moniker. So far it seems the new London, Ontario, will simply be more of the old London, Ontario. The changes to the city, and there will be some, will be the ones to be expected. ReThink contained no surprises.

If one wants to view a city with a true ReThink approach, check out Almere New City in the Netherlands. It has been reported that Dutch planners and architects consider the Almere New City plan and its urban form to be unique. There is little unique in London now or on the drawing board for the future.

If interested in knowing a little more about Almere New City, please click the link. The author of the piece, Mirela Newman, contends that Almere could be used as an example to follow by both new town planners throughout the world, and for the development and redevelopment of old and new subdivisions and districts already in existence.

Be warned, a tour of Almere New City using Google Street Views did not convince me that the designers of Almere had it totally right. Oddly enough, I personally still see the South Walkerville neighbourhoods developed in Windsor, Ontario, in the early part of the last century as just about perfect for the time. The area was very walkable with some streets bordered by sidewalks and others left totally without. Some streets originally lacked curbs but over the years curbs have appeared almost everywhere in the area.

If the neighbourhood in which I now live, Byron in London, had sidewalks through the wooded areas to link commercial shopping areas with residential areas, Byron would be a very fine example of good urban design. Sadly, Byron is being developed more in the style of a '50s suburban neighbourhood but with the addition of some box stores and some highrises on a major thoroughfare.

Woonerf fine downtown but not outside the core

Art showing imaginary curbless street in downtown London.

Three years ago The London Free Press interviewed Bob Usher, president of the Downtown London Business Association and Joel Adams, a Downtown London board member. Both were in favour of making Dundas Street a "woonerf" or a shared street.

A shared street integrates pedestrian activities and vehicular traffic. No segregating sidewalks and no curbs are allowed. The shared street approach has proven to be very adaptable and examples can now be found around the globe.

Fast forward to today and the paper is reporting that a quiet street, where kids play road hockey, where car traffic in an hour can be counted on one hand, a street that has existed for decades without sidewalks and without complaints, must now lose some trees, some front yard space and some driveway length to make room for a sidewalk. This is happening over the protests of the residents.

A suburban street with neither curbs nor sidewalks in action.

The neighbourhood ward councillor, Stephen Turner, is pushing for sidewalks. According to the paper, he believes the city’s newest urban planning approach, ReThink London, demands walkable streets, and to Turner walkable mean sidewalks.

If ReThink London was about anything, it was about thinking outside the Southwest Ontario urban planning box. True ReThinking leads to thinking about woonerfs, home zones, naked streets. Mr. Turner is missing the core ReThink message.

Studies show a drop in the number of traffic accidents when a naked street replaces a street with curbs and sidewalks. Installed in suitable locations, naked streets are both walkable and safe.

What will the sidewalk on Auburn Ave. cost? What would a naked street tailored to the needs of Auburn Avenue residents cost? Let's put on those ReThink London thinking caps and come up with an original solution.

One final caveat: a successful naked street demands consultation. Naked streets are not created over the objections of residents.

Roads without sidewalks can encourage a rich mix of uses.

Comment left on Shift London Website: Moving London Forward – Time to ReThink Mobility

The Twilight Zone: PD Day style

This illustration is wrong. Can you see why?

 
It seems Barbie should not have been ridiculed for admitting she found math class tough. The Barbie doll making the confession was yanked from the shelves and the offending words banished from her vocabulary. Now, it is clear that the Ontario Ministry of Education along with quite a number of teachers in London, Ontario, are also befuddled by math.

Professional development days, or PD Days as they are commonly called, are held by the Ministry of Education to teach teachers. A recent PD Day in London focused on improving the teaching of math in city schools. The lesson contained a glaring error. This is bad enough in itself, but how this obvious blooper slipped by numerous teachers is concerning.

The teachers were told two growing puppies both gained three kg. The first dog went from a weight of five kg to eight kg while the second went from three kg to six kg. The teachers were asked: Which puppy grew the most? For added clarity, an illustration was provided comparing the growth of the two dogs.

Unfortunately, the illustration is wrong. Rather than correcting errors in proportional thinking, the illustration promotes one of the very myths the PD Day should have been addressing. The doubling of the external dimensions of something, say a figurine, does not double its weight nor double it area. Some 26 years ago, The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics noted the surprising acceptance of this myth among math teachers.

Doubled weight? Wrong!

The second dog doubled its weight. It did NOT necessarily double in height, width and depth as well. As a former art student I know this problem well. Sculptors make small scale models, maquettes, before starting the full-sized piece.

If a small sculpture of a dog takes 1 kg of clay, the same sculpture doubled in size requires 8 kg of clay. Doubling the length, width and depth does NOT double the amount of clay required but increases it by a factor of eight.

How the little dog in the illustration only doubled its weight while expanding eight times in volume is not a riddle; It is an impossibility.

In a ministry of education publication, Paying Attention to Spatial Reasoning, the ministry reports that the National Research Council calls errors in the teaching of spacial reasoning a “major blind spot . . . locked in a curious educational twilight zone . . . "

Well, welcome to the Twilight Zone, London PD Day style.

A vegetarian cook celebrates fruits and vegetables

My wife and I just returned from Montreal after a brief visit with some Quebec-based friends . They are both vegetarians and their meals were an eye-opener.

I thought being a vegetarian was, to a great extent, simply taking standard meals and removing the meat while pumping up the vegetable and fruit component. I learned I was wrong.

My friends celebrate vegetable and fruits. Meat may be missing but it is not missed. A curried dish that I would have served with chunks of chicken hidden in the sauce was simply delicious on its own. No chicken; no loss.

I'm on a low cholesterol diet. I'm half way to understanding the approach practised so successfully by my Montreal friends. Now, back in London I'm going to try to change my attitude and maybe, just maybe, I'll see less meat but more variety in my menus.

I'm going to start tomorrow with a cauliflower dish cooked in a tagine. This meal should say North Africa and not vegetarian. It should delight the eye and satisfy the pallet without raising red flags drawing attention to the lack of meat.

If this works, I'll post the recipe and a picture soon.

I have CHF but life is good

I have CHF, congestive heart failure. I had planned on doing a lot of traveling upon retiring. Thanks to CHF, I won't be leaving the country. Oh well, life still can be fine even if one stays right here in London.

CHF isn't my only health problem but it is battling for first place. I have developed a dry cough, my fingers are a little fat some mornings and my feet are a little puffy some nights. It is all a bit concerning but I'm try not to let these things bother me. I don't really have time to waste on depression.

I have three wonderful grandkids who bring joy into my life and a wife who loves me. She makes sure we find stuff to do together that won't challenge me too much while delivering a good wallop of fun. Cooking is one of those activities.

My wife made the stuffed peppers and I was responsible for the green beans and the artichoke-covered grilled baguette slices. It doesn't look it but this is a low fat, low calorie, Weight Watchers friendly, dinner. It would make my heart doctors smile as it contains no meat. The only cholesterol is in the light use of cheese, a dairy product.

As I am not healthy, I must continue to monitor the cholesterol in my diet. The recent good news about dietary cholesterol didn't change a thing in my diet. I must keep my consumption of red meat to a minimum and eggs, at least egg yolks, are simply out.

Broccoli served with pasta in a hot pepper pesto: A heart healthy dinner.

I like to approach cooking like creating art. I found the above pasta a little too dark. I was following a suggestion that encouraged cooking the pasta in chicken broth in a fry pan. The pasta absorbed the chicken broth, taking on a light flavour and a darker tint.

Tonight I tried something similar but I cooked the pasta in a pasta pot filled with boiling water. When the pasta was done, I tossed it with a mix of  hot pepper pesto, 20gm of hot pepperoni (yes, I cheated a little on my diet) half a yellow and half an orange sweet pepper diced and a couple of tablespoons of grated Parmesan cheese. I also diced a large tomato, minus the seeds, and added that to the mix.

My wife declared the two pasta dinners a draw but I preferred the second by far. I thought it had focus -- the hot, spicy flavour supplied by the pesto and the pepperoni. Visually, I liked the brighter colour of the second dish compared to to the first.

London borrows a page from Charleroi, Belgium

Image from The London Plan: Dundas St. future look.

The London Free Press reported the main street of the Southwestern Ontario city may become a flexible street. Flex-streets lack curbs to define pedestrian space and keep traffic separated from walkways.

According to the paper, making part of Dundas St. a flex-street should create a healthy, vibrant core thoroughfare.

Has this been done elsewhere? As a matter of fact, yes: Charleroi in Belgium. Has it worked? That's open to debate. When was the idea hatched? Surprise: almost 20 years ago!

Charleroi has been called the Dark Heart of Europe and the Ugliest City on the Continent (of Europe). An industrial town, like Detroit in Michigan, it lost its industrial base and today is but a shadow of its former self. It has struggled for decades to find new footings. Has the flex-street been a great success? I could find nothing to indicate its been a win-win move. Two decades later, the city is still struggling. And a map of the area posted in French indicates the street today, at least at times, supports two-way traffic. I did find indications that the process is still ongoing. The final chapter for the transformation of Place Buisset has not been written.

Google Street Views: Charleroi street in core transformed into a flex-street.

It was hoped the changes to Place Emile Buisset, changes that respect the area's past, would make the street one of the great pedestrian entrances to a city anywhere. The making of Place Buisset into a flex-street was an early part of the move to make Rive Gauche (the name of the area) a mixture of commercial and residential in a neighbourhood composed of both new-buildings and restored historic ones. The river, once ignored, was to be integrated into the old but reinvigorated city core. (An another link: Link.)

I'm not saying the flex-street as detailed in the London Plan will not work. Flex-streets, river front renewal projects, re-purposed heritage properties and more have worked to varying extents in numerous places. If a city is attempting to restore a faded urban core, these are the approaches frequently taken by today's urban planners.

I'm just saying the London Plan is not a groundbreaking blueprint. The London Plan is business as usual when it come to urban planning in the twenty-first century. And the resistance the plan is meeting from both politicians and developers is also par for the course. No surprises here, either.

A Charleroi city plan of  Place Buisset.
The last hours of the Colonnades
Urban renewal may not be forever
A mall is planned for another area of Rive Gauche

On winning awards or the World Press Photo fiasco

Little Isla demonstrates how Santa tells a little mouse to keep quiet on Christmas eve.

Find a dark topic, illustrate it with dramatic photos and you may have an award winning piece of work. Tackle a more upbeat story and the chance of having a winner drop off dramatically.

Placing a puzzle piece correctly, Isla reacts.

This morning I learned World Press Photo disallowed photographer Giovanni Troilo’s first-prize for the Contemporary Issues story titled ‘La Ville Noir - The Dark Heart of Europe.’ The photo story examined life in the Belgian city of Charleroi. Some pictures were set-up, others were stage-directed and the one that resulted in the disqualification was not even shot in Charleroi.

In the photographer's defence, he was pretty up front about all his transgressions. World Press Photo ignored many of the criticisms of their choice of Troilo but I believe found itself in an increasingly impossible situation. When it came out that one photo was not shot in the town itself, World Press saw an out and took the exit.

I have been documenting my granddaughters early years and I am learning little children are remarkably capable. I believe that my images plus some excellent in-depth reporting with interviews with university researchers looking into the talents of babies, toddlers and little kids should be an award winner. It should be but I doubt that it would be: Too upbeat, too positive, with images too bright and all lacking the prerequisite dark mood and dramatic lighting.

Walking the line challenges the little toddler's sense of balance.

I believe we seriously underestimate children. I don't believe for a minute that my three granddaughters are geniuses and yet all three seem to be at the head of their class. That is if there was a class. The story here is how well little children do when given love and affection on a constant basis from caring grandparents. Isla is not yet twenty months and yet she understands a massive number of words and concepts.

Tonight I asked Isla to place some Play-Doh on a can. She did. Then I asked her to move the Play-Doh to beside the can. As my wife watched, the little girl followed each order to the letter. Isla understands not only frequently used nouns and verbs. She understands prepositions.

Isla was clipping together colourful foam numbers when she was maybe a year and a half. Her other grandfather watched her taking the tops off bottles and then screwing them back on at 12 months. He decided then and there that his little granddaughter might well be an engineer in the making.

The grandchildren are flourishing under the care of their grandparents and the old folk seem to be responding well to the demands of late life parenting. It seems to be a win-win situation that to an imaginative writer could yield a number of great personal interest stories.

Years ago I chaired a news photographer seminar held annually at the local university. To paraphrase one prize winning shooter, the winning entries in monthly clip contests are the disaster of the month images. Shoot tears, shoot grief, shoot people on a bad drug trip and shoot a winning photo essay.

The photographer admitted he too shot this stuff to win awards but he still shook his head: There's more to life. I believe he would agree that choosing Charleroi to depict the dark heart of Europe was an easy call. In recent years the city has gained notoriety for being the home of paedophile serial killer, Marc Dutroux. Another notorious resident was Muriel Degauque who gained eternal infamy as a female suicide bomber. In 2005, she blew herself up in Baghdad. An opinion poll in nearby Holland voted Charleroi the "ugliest city in the world."

I have discovered that there are boosters of the once successful city. Charleroi reminds me of Detroit, Michigan. Kicking a city when it is clearly struggling and taking no note of its successes should not be award-winning photojournalism. Balance, so important here, is all too often clearly lacking in these murky pictures accompanied with dark prose.

Note: This is not to say there are no happy, upbeat images being published. Of course, there are. But all too often the images and stories are dark, manipulated dark, and are more reflective of an award winning mindset than any attempt to depict life in all its complexity.

Foolproof Spaghetti Carbonara

Pasta carbonara with carmelized Brussel Sprouts, chopped green onions and grated Parmesan.

According to America's Test Kitchen:

Most carbonara pastas are so rich that it’s hard to eat a whole bowlful. [The cooks at America's Home Kitchen] lightened the usual recipe by dismissing additions like cream and butter, cutting any oil, and including only a tablespoon of the rendered bacon fat. Having done so, [they] had to find other ways to make [their] sauce smooth and prevent the eggs from setting into curds and the cheese from melting into lumps.

As this recipe is from the ATK magazine, Cook's Illustrated, I will say only a little more. I will give you a link and trust that it will work for some time. No guarantees.

Being that both my wife and I are watching our weight, a pasta carbonara dish containing no cream, no butter, no oil, sounded like something we should be trying. And tonight we did. I took the picture at dinner.

I already know that there are two more changes I must make to the usual recipe. One, I'll use Egg Creations rather than eggs out of the shell and, two, I'll use pancetta instead of bacon. I don't want maple flavouring or hickory smoke in my carbonara. This is an Italian dish and should taste like it.

The first time I had pasta carbonara was in Chicago at a small, neighbourhood diner. The pasta was al dente, the bits of pork were pancetta and it was served with a poached egg gracing the top. It look great and tasted even better. But my heart friendly diet does not allow egg yolks: None. And so the decorative, and oh-so-tasty, egg is out.

Mesclun greens and fruit make a great salad

Between my wife going to Weight Watchers and my granddaughters spending an inordinate amount of time at our home, our fridge had filled with oodles of fruit and other healthy stuff. My heart and stroke doctor would approve no matter what the cause. I'm sure he'd tell me to just get imaginative and eat the stuff -- and I did.

Tonight I made dinner in a bowl. With almost a whole bag of mesclun salad mix as the base I added fruit and other stuff to create a satisfying, heart-healthy meal.

Ingredients

• Dole mesclun mix - lots
• 1/4 of a small, red onion diced into large pieces
• 1/3 of a fennel bulb diced into large pieces
• a splash of Newman's Own oil and vinegar dressing
• 2 1/2 navel oranges, sectored and diced
• a large handful of chopped strawberries
• a couple of tablespoons of both dried cranberries and dried cherries
• 2 ounces of chicken breast, chopped and quickly browned in a fry pan
• 1 ounce of fry-pan-browned pecan bits

The salad was easy to make and quite delicious. And no wonder it was good. It was inspired by a wonderful salad I had recently at Waldo's in Byron. Although, I have to admit that Waldo's was better. I gave myself an eight. The onion bits were too big and too strong. The next time I may eliminate the onion and add apple chunks. I'd choose either Fujis or Galas as they are both known for their sweetness.

Farro and Porcini Risotto on a Budget

Being retired means watching the budget. Then again, for most of us watching the budget is a wise thing to do even when not retired.

As I have mentioned before, years ago The London Free Press did a series on the difficulties encountered when trying to live on a tight budget. In 2013 the Middlesex -London Health Unit conducted a survey calculating it took $6.47 a day for each of us to eat enough to keep body and soul together. This was calculated using a family of four.

With inflation, I'm sure it costs more today. Let's up this amount to $7.50 a day, keeping in mind that food has increased in price faster than the overall inflation rate.

Today, my wife and I spent the entire $7.50 plus maybe another buck and a half. On the plus side, we got a lot for our money. I started the day with oatmeal porridge bought on sale for less than twenty cents a serving. I used 1% milk rather than water to make the porridge and added one banana well mushed for sweetness.

For lunch both my wife and I had Heinz tomato soup from the Dollar Store. It cost less than 70-cents a can. Finding the Heinz soup was a good deal as I like the Heinz product better than the more expensive Campbell's sold in the grocery store. Sometimes we add crackers bought in bulk from Costco.

If we want a snack in the afternoon, we have fresh fruit. We watch the weekly flyers and try to buy our fruit on sale. We have seven different grocery stores just minutes by car from our suburban home. With such a wide selection, there is almost always fruit and other stuff we need available on sale. We buy lots when stuff is available and this keeps our pantry well stocked. We are still working through the pasta bought for 49-cents a package some time ago. The threat of getting snowed-in doesn't frighten us.

Dinner tonight was a treat. My wife and I worked together to crank out farro and porcini risotto served with asparagus topped with a sprinkling of Parmesan. The Italian farro and porcini normally sells in the $22 range. We paid half that. We found a large bottle, enough for six meals, at Winners. I highly advise checking out the specialty foods at Winners. That place is a godsend when it comes to punching up a day's menu while staying within a tight budget. And for Parmesan, check out Costco. A big block of the hard Italian cheese is expensive at about $25 but wrap it tightly in foil and it keeps a long time.

We made this rice-less risotto using Campbell's chicken stock purchased at No Frills for under a buck. We kicked the risotto up a notch by adding a few small pieces of quickly browned boneless, skinless chicken breast. We have a large tray of this meat with each breast individually wrapped to make defrosting easy.

With my heart condition, I'm only allowed a couple of ounces of chicken or fish and then only every other day. Red meats are out except for one day each month. To simplify our food preparation, my wife also follows my food restrictions.

Dinners made from leftovers nudge food budgets back in line.

We don't drink any beer to speak of. The cost of beer is way too high when one considers how much of the cost is tax. I already pay enough tax.

When we have company I buy some Steam Whistle and hope our guests leave me lots. What we do like is a glass of wine with our dinners. Canadian box wines are actually good as one's personal house wine. We especially like the Jackson-Triggs Shiraz. It often goes on sale and each time $3 is chopped off the price we buy a box or two.

For dessert we each had fruit yogurt which was also bought on sale.

The farro and porcini was a special treat. My wife's a good cook and her risotto with chicken and asparagus was like something I'd get at a fine dining restaurant. We may have overspent for the day but all will pull into line by month's end.

As I have said before, there is no reason to eat pet food in retirement despite what The Free Press warned in an editorial some months ago.

Is this art? Well, it sure isn't happenstance.

I admit, it doesn't look like much. Yet, there's stuff to appreciate in this simple work of art. And what are these, you might well ask. The answer, I would say, is consistency of style and choice and purity of colour wrapped up in a drive to create. A simple, drive. A still developing drive. But a strong drive, nevertheless.

Little Isla, not yet two, has really taken to painting. The other day she will took my hand and ordered, "Come on." She lead me through my home to the basement stairs. "Paint," she said. It was a statement of fact, of what was she had planned.

We went downstairs. Isla climbed onto her chair. There was a pad of blank paper sitting on the table with paint brushes off to the side. When I get down the paints, she squealed with excitement. The moment the paints were within reach, Isla was chanting, "Orange. Orange. Orange"

She unscrewed the lid on a small jar of orange paint, picked a paint brush and set to work pushing the brush, now wet with paint, into the paper. It left big, colourful blobs of orange paint. Isla worked quickly and consistently. She repeated her violent attack on the paper. I have never seen her paint with such ferocity. Within moments she was done with the orange. She handed me the jar and turned her attention to the other paints.

She chose a yellow jar, removed the lid and looked in at the bright yellow paint. "No," she declared after a moment's consideration. She handed me the open jar along with the lid.

Isla poked at the remaining jars: purple, blue, red and green, clearly considering her colour choices. She settled on green. With a satisfied look, she dipped a big brush deep into the small pot of paint and then rammed the brush into the paper just as she had done with the orange. There were few swirls or tepid touches of the brush to paper this day.

As soon as the two colours touched, she stopped. "Done," she announced, got up and headed for the bathroom to clean-up.

Addendum:

A few days after posting this, Isla got a look at the posting and her featured painting. She immediately recognized her work. I asked her if what we were looking at was a painting of a horse. "No," she said emphatically. I then asked if it was a drawing of a bird. The answer again was a firm "No." But, when I asked her if this was a painting by Isla, a small smile appeared and she said softly, "Yes."

This painting was, and is, important to her. I'm amazed.

A dinner a child could make -- and almost did

My granddaughters visit often and, for this reason, I find myself playing kid's games. I hate kid's games. Why mess with Play-Doh when you can mess with cookie batter? Why make pretend cookies when the real thing is so easy. Both activities take the same effort but doing something real carries a bigger payback.

When not cooking, Fiona like to draw.

With this in mind, I let my five-year-old granddaughter, Fiona, help with dinner the other night. Amazingly, she was a lot of help and she had great fun being adult for twenty-five minutes or so. Working around a hot stove, one doesn't play at being adult; one has to be adult. Fiona was.

So, what recipe did my granddaughter and I tackle? A skillet dinner featuring penne with broccoli and chicken. I got the recipe from Cook's Illustrated, a magazine produced by America's Test Kitchen. With everything cooked in one, large skillet, it was easy to keep an eye on Fiona. That said, the kid rallied to the moment and stayed amazingly focused as she stirred the penne to keep it from sticking.

I like both the America's Test Kitchen television show, it could be alternately titled "Cooking with Sheldon" as they approach cooking using the scientific method. It is high school science class meets home economics.

There were four ingredients eliminated from our take on the recipe: onion, garlic, red pepper flakes and white wine. And Fiona and Isla also skipped the grilled tomato served on the side. All five ingredients are on the grandchildren's don't eat list.

Using a kitchen scale, Fiona weighed out the eight ounces of penne while I quick fried the chicken strips. Fiona measured out the chicken broth. We used two cups. And she also measured out the water. I added both to the skillet. She sprinkled a quarter teaspoon of dried oregano over the pasta while it simmered and she took a break from stirring to snap the broccoli flowers apart. No knife was involved. Minutes before the penne was done, Fiona added the broccoli to the almost cooked pasta. Then, just before serving, Fiona added Parmesan cheese grated earlier.

Amazingly, the pasta turned out al dente and the broccoli was a rich green with just a hint of crispness. In other words, nothing was overdone. And the chicken broth added extra flavour to the pasta which both Fiona and Isla appreciated. My wife, Judy, also appreciated the dinner. She declared it winner and said it appeared to be Weight Watchers Friendly to boot.

I posted this in mid February, 2015. The Cook's Illustrated magazine with the recipe may be off the shelves by the time you find this post. You can try finding the recipe on America's Test Kitchen online site but you may find it difficult. These folk are not into simply giving their knowledge away. You may be asked to sign up for a free two week trial. I can't fault them. Giving info away has not been a profitable tack for newspapers and others in the information business.

And lastly, I may have cooked up a monster along with a dinner. Fiona, all of five remember, told Judy, my wife, not to worry about dinner in the future. She (Fiona) and I would be making all meals from now on. I've got to find a way to let this kid down gently. It is that or finding more recipes she can tackle.

What Brian Williams brouhaha and UFFI have in common: Torquing.

Years after the damage was done, Harris Mitchell told the rest of the UFFI story.

It seems the media are appalled that NBC news anchor Brian Williams embellished a story. Yes the story involved Williams himself and this puts a little extra wobble in the usual spin but pumping up stories is all-too-common in the media. It even has a name: torquing.

As everyone now knows, Brian Williams claimed that while he was covering the war in Iraq the chopper in which he was riding was hit by enemy fire and forced to land. It's a great war story for a journalist, unfortunately his harrowing first-person account isn't true. Williams was in a following aircraft. His aircraft drew no fire. As Mark Twain said: "Never let the truth get in the way of a good story."

A fellow with whom I worked at The London Free Press in London, Ontario, left the paper rather than torque a story. Sent to cover what the editorial department heads believed would be a sensational trial, he returned with a relatively dull tale. The courtroom drama failed to gel. With lots of space set aside for a front page story, a non-story wasn't acceptable. The reporter was ordered to torque his piece, to inflate it and fill the space. He refused. Rather than knuckle under he cleaned out his desk and bid the paper adieu. Another reporter, a more malleable one, was assigned the task of torquing the story.

I can't tell you how many times I watched reporters twist stories. One occasion that still roils me up involved a small child lost over-night in a cornfield. The little girl wandered into the tall, mature corn at sunset. Police were called and the field searched. When the police left sometime after midnight, the child had not yet been found.

At daybreak a helicopter arrived and flew over the corn field still cold and damp with early morning dew. Inside the chopper a passenger aimed an infrared thermographic camera at the field. Soon the high tech tool, normally used to detect heat loss in buildings, had pinpointed the location of the child. Despite mild hypothermia, the sleeping little girl's cool body was still much warmer than the surrounding soil.

Although it made a great story in the morning edition — high tech saves child — the high tech angle wouldn't save the story in the afternoon edition. And so the reader-pleasing slant to the story was born. According to a later edition, the child could have been found earlier if only the insights of an area psychic had been followed. While television and radio were still hawking the high tech angle, the paper ran with paranormal angle.

Of course, the psychic story wasn't true. Both the reporter and I were at the farmhouse all night. There was a reason the reporter hadn't given the psychic much weight in the first story and I hadn't spent time in the darkroom printing pictures. The psychic had been of no help whatsoever.

But, as the day wore on, and interest in the high tech angle wore thin, the psychic saviour looked better and better. The paranormal story got torqued.

Which brings us to one of the best known torqued stories in the history of journalism: the UFFI scare story. Admittedly, more was at work here than simply pumping up the dramatic value of a story. There is an unhealthy amount of Steven Colbert's "Truthiness" at work here, as well.

Urea formaldehyde foam insulation — UFFI — was forced off the market in Canada decades ago. Yet, even today folks selling homes in Ontario are asked if their homes contains UFFI. Banned in Canada in 1980, UFFI is occasionally still used in Europe. And after briefly being banned in the States it is back in limited use there as well.

Fear of Foam: Harris Mitchell

Why is a product deemed unsafe in Canada legal everywhere else? The E.U. is well known for being quick to hit the "ban button." Think of genetically modified foods, pesticides for increased food production, bovine growth hormone, chlorinated chicken, food dye and more. UFFI is not quite ho-hum in Europe but neither is it a scare-you-out-of-your-pants story either.

The reason for the continuing Canadian UFFI scare story is simple. The media loves a good story and one about killer insulation is a beaut. It is not true but it is still a beaut. Sadly, the story has hurt a great many Canadians — both home owners whose homes lost value because of the story and small, private business owners who lost everything when their insulation businesses closed after the foam, installed using expensive specialized equipment, was made illegal.

I'm not surprised the UFFI story is now known by many to be false. I was certain the story was torqued when it originally broke in Canada. CBC Marketplace still brags on its Internet site that it "did several groundbreaking reports on it [UFFI] 20 years ago."

Why was I certain? Because I had insulated a fifty year old home with the foam. After reading everything I could, I settled on UFFI. In use in Europe for years, it was a proven product.

From the brochure for Insulspray by Borden that I was given.

I had the Borden Chemical Company product, Insulspray, injected into the hollow walls of my home. The installer told us that the UFFI would not damage our wall by expanding and forcing the aging plaster off the laths nor would it cause any other pressure related damage. He assured us that the foam would shrink as it dried. This would reduce the insulation value a little but insure a damage-free installation.

After tens of thousands of Canadian homes were insulated with UFFI, many with government assistance, insulation horror stories began circulating. I recall being incredibly angry about the attacks made by Marketplace. For instance, Marketplace made a big deal out of the shrinkage. It was great television but poor science and poor news reporting. They acted as if the shrinkage was unexpected and a problem. Neither was true.

Three metal fasteners in UFFI for years and no corrosion.

Newspaper editors saw the Marketplace story and felt scooped. Newsrooms across Canada scrambled to retell the Marketplace story but with a local angle. The scare spread and politicians caved to media pressure. UFFI was banned. More than a quarter of a million Canadian homes required the removal of the foam from hard to reach exterior wall cavities where it had been injected, often with government assistance.

I recall one story on which I worked. Since being insulated, a local home had had a string of residents taken by ambulance to the hospital and the indoor air had a hazy quality.

When I visited the home I learned that the home was being used as a defacto old age home. All those taken to the hospital were seniors. The health emergencies should have come as no surprise.

And why was there hazy air? Hazy air that the paper made such a big deal about. The answer is simple: The home, draft free since installation of the foam, had all windows sealed with tightly taped plastic. As most of the residents were smokers, the home was filled with a haze of tobacco smoke.  

The energy saving measures had cut air infiltration to almost zero. The smoke was no longer being diluted by outside air. The haze was no mystery.
  
Most news stories are good stories but not all are true. The Brian Williams Iraq War fable is not out of place in the world of journalism. Torquing a story has a long, well respected history.
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For more on the present thinking on UFFI, read: Urea Formaldehyde Foam Insulation (UFFI)