I'll be back! That's a promise.

I've got a good reason to regain my health.

Less than two months ago I was healthy. Oh, I've had health problems and serious ones. But teamed with the wonderful medical folk here in London, Ontario, I've surmounted the worst that has occurred.

Then in mid June in Sonoma, California, I suffered a serious V-tach event with my heart racing to 300 bpm. It took an emergency cardioversion (defibrillation) of 200 joules of electricity to shock my heart back into proper rhythm. I was given beta blockers to prevent a re-occurrence.

Then in mid July in London, Ontario, I went blind temporarily in my left eye. I was off to the hospital emerg again. I had suffered a TIA event, often a precursor to a stroke. I was given Plavix, a blood thinner.

Within hours I had an MRI of my head and neck to confirm what the doctors suspected, hardening of the arteries with plaque in my carotid artery. The good news: My arteries are clean. The bad news: I have micro bleeding throughout my brain.

Tuesday I must go to the Cardiac Institute and as the month progresses I have quite the number of medical appointments. What caused the V-tach event? Why is my brain bleeding? Am I reacting poorly to the blood thinner? Should I stop the Plavix? Was the low-dose (81mg) Aspirin I used to take responsible for the bleeding? If I do stop all blood thinners, will I put myself in position to suffer a stroke?

I am beginning to feel as if I am starring in an episode of House.

All of this is taking a great toll on my free time. My blogging has suffered. My photography just isn't happening. And worse, I haven't been able to chase some very good local stories for Digital Journal.

Sorry team. I will be back doing my small bit for citizen journalism. Just give me, and my doctors, a little time. Who knows, maybe there will be a good medical story here. Now, I must go; It's time for my beta blocker.

Cheers!

Why is this not available in Canada?

Would you be interested in a car that gets more than 100 miles to the Imp. gallon? I would.

Recently I read that Suzuki has launched a hybrid powered gas/electric vehicle for sale on the Japanese market that travels an impressive 34 kilometres for every litre of fuel used!

Called the Suzuki Twin, it also features an automatic idling stop system to shut the engine down whenever the car stops at traffic lights or when stationary in heavy traffic, minimizing CO2 emissions and fuel consumption.

Apparently the Suzuki Twin hybrid vehicle is currently only sold in the domestic Japanese market. Too bad.

I find this car is far more interesting than the new Chevrolet Volt.

Global Warming: Have they no grandchildren?

New York Op-Ed columnist Thomas Friedman wrote another piece on global warming. In it he quotes contrarian hedge fund manager Jeremy Grantham writing in his July letter to investors:

“Conspiracy theorists claim  to believe that global warming is a carefully constructed hoax driven  by scientists desperate for ... what? Being needled by nonscientific  newspaper reports, by blogs and by right-wing politicians and think  tanks? I have a much simpler but plausible ‘conspiracy theory’: the  fossil energy companies, driven by the need to protect hundreds of  billions of dollars of profits, encourage obfuscation of the  inconvenient scientific results. I, for one, admire them for their P.R.  skills, while wondering, as always:

‘Have they no grandchildren?’ ”

And when I die . . .

When I was in my twenties I spent an evening listening to Laura Nyro singing on the stage of the Masonic Temple Auditorium in Detroit. It was years later, while working the electronic picture desk at The London Free Press, that I learned of Nyro's death from breast cancer; She left us while still far too young. I sat at my work station and quietly cried.

I closed my eyes and I could see Nyro on stage, sitting at the keys of her grand piano, singing, "And When I Die." And I cried.

The other day I celebrated my birthday. I'm 63. I'm now older than my dad when he died from heart disease. And I'm older, much older, than three of my uncles, my dad's brothers, who all died from heart disease.

Whether or not I'll make 64 is an open question. I feel quite confident that I will but it is certainly no longer the sure thing that it seemed just weeks ago. In the past month or so, I have suffered a bout of V-tach and a TIA event causing temporary blindness in my left eye.

I'm now on a beta-blocker for the heart and Plavix to thin my blood to prevent another TIA event. My blood pressure last night was 89 over 48 with a pulse of 43. My beta seems well blocked.

Now, about that Laura Nyro concert and my lingering connection to that night. I took a young date to the then young singer's concert. We drove to the hall in my then young Morgan roadster. I lost track of that young lady years ago but I still have the aging Morgan. We've grown old together. We've both had valve jobs, we've both had work done on our pumps, and on our electrical systems too. And we both just keep going and going and going.

I don't kid myself, I won't go on forever. But I'm not going to wait to die before recognizing and honouring the "one child born"; I can see that baby and enjoy her right now: Fiona. My little, bubbly granddaughter brings the light of youth into my life. She opens a window into a world where hips don't ache and knees don't buckle, where every day is better than the last, where growth, daily improvement, is the expectation and not the exception.

The words of Nyro's song, written in her youth, didn't seem so poignant when I was young. Yes, I "don't want to die uneasy, just let me go naturally."

And When I Die

And when I die and when I'm dead, dead and gone,
there'll be one child born and a world to carry on, to carry on.

I'm not scared of dying and I don't really care.
If it's peace you find in dying, well, then let the time be near.
If it's peace you find in dying, when dying time is here,
just bundle up my coffin cause it's cold way down there,
I hear that's it's cold way down there, yeah, crazy cold way down there.
And when I die and when I'm gone,
there'll be one child born and a world to carry on, to carry on.

My troubles are many, they're as deep as a well.
I can swear there ain't no heaven but I pray there ain't no hell.
Swear there ain't no heaven and pray there ain't no hell,
but I'll never know by living, only my dying will tell,
only my dying will tell, yeah, only my dying will tell.
And when I die and when I'm gone,
there'll be one child born and a world to carry on, to carry on. 

Give me my freedom for as long as I be. All I ask of living is to have no chains on me.
All I ask of living is to have no chains on me,
and all I ask of dying is to go naturally, only want to go naturally.
Don't want to go by the devil, don't want to go by the demon,
don't want to go by Satan, don't want to die uneasy, just let me go naturally.
And when I die and when I'm gone, there'll be one child born, there'll be one child born.
When I die, there'll be one child born. When I die, there'll be one child born.
When I die, there'll be one child born. When I die, there'll be one child born.

A companion piece to the above is a post I did last January. It, too, features Fiona. If you have the time and the inclination, check What Is Happiness?

Where are the pictures?

The London Free Press carried no pictures from the Bruce Coburn concert.

Bruce Cockburn was in London Saturday performing at the Home County Folk Festival, a big annual Southwestern Ontario event. And the hometown paper blogged about it. They'd say they reported it and blogged on it, but with the quality of newspapers severely hampered by staffing cutbacks, the difference between their off-the-cuff blog posts and their more in-depth news stories is becoming blurred.

The one story is on a reporter's Free Press blog and carries information supplied gratis by a reader. The other report on Cockburn's appearance is an LFP story. Check them out: Cockburn Captivates,  Me and a Face in the Crowd: Home County/Bruce Cockburn. Note there are no pictures! My guess is no photographer was working Saturday night. No shooter, no shots. It's that simple --- or that cheap.

And you know what else is missing, some information. The newspaper's blogger/reporter asks: "How many of us were there . . . ?" The crowd estimates, supplied by JBNB, range from about 3,000 to 70,000.

If newspapers cannot staff events held a short walk from the paper itself, if the paper cannot supply a crowd estimate with a tighter spread than 3000 to 70,000, why should we continue to think of them as our best source of local information? Are they trying to tell us something when they file reports as blog posts?

Oh wait, a lot of real bloggers would supply pictures. (And maybe better crowd estimates.)

By the way, I did call the paper to offer them my pictures but all I got was an answering machine. The paper has a way of allowing readers to supply images but they want them donated; They do not pay one cent for the rights to a reader's pictures. In this situation the paper seems to be more a charity than profitable business.

If you make a picture donation to this media charity using their "Your Scoop" feature, it is demanded you grant the paper, ". . . worldwide, irrevocable, royalty-free and non-exclusive license to use, reproduce, distribute, transmit, broadcast and publish that Material for any purposes, on any material form and in perpetuity."

When I clicked on Photos to find the Your Scoop link, you might be interested to see what picture popped up. It appears there's ample time and staff to post a "supplied" picture of two-time world land-speed record holder Valerie Thompson.

I wonder if anyone noticed her foot is cropped off awkwardly at the ankle? Oh well, lots more of Thompson still shows in the picture --- maybe enough to make up for the missing foot.
_____________________________

James Reaney's LFP blog now has pictures supplied by Christine Newland, the principal cellist with Orchestra London. I think it is safe to say that because of staffing cutbacks, the paper was unable to send a staff photographer to the Bruce Cockburn performance. Now that the local paper is openly partnering with readers for facts and art, the distinction between journalists and citizen journalists is becoming blurred.

A young woman I know studied photojournalism at college. It was her passion. Upon graduation, this U.S. based photographer discovered the local newspapers around her hometown are all relying more and more on readers for pictures. Work in the industry is drying up.

The Vacation Continues

We are now in Thessalon and winding down. This was the shortest drive we have had in quite awhile. Tomorrow we only have to drive three hours to a ferry and then we can relax. After the cruise, we have only a one hour drive.

The next day we drive home!

For more info see my post on the Digital Journal.

The Vacation Continues

The stuff you see driving down the TransCanada highway over Lake Superior.

I'm blogging on my vacation on the Digital Journal.

The Vacation Continues

Sioux Narrows in the Lake of the Woods region of Northwestern Ontario.

 For the whole story, see the post on Digital Journal.

The Vacation Continues

Only a week left and Judy and I will be back in London, Ontario! But now, we are in Kenora in the far northwestern part of the province.

The Vacation Continues

With a loud dramatic crunching sound, the bumper fell from the car and wedged under the roadster.

 If you have been following my posts on Digital Journal, you'd know my Morgan was hit in Gorda by the Bay. Today the fender fell off the roadster and wedged under the car. The whole story has been posted on Digital Journal.

The Vacation Continues

If you are following the Morgan Adventure, there are two more posts on the Digital Journal.

http://www.digitaljournal.com/blog/7636

http://www.digitaljournal.com/blog/7637

The Vacation Continues

A young violinist on the main street of Fort McLeod, Alberta. The street was closed for an arts festival.

We are now in Alberta and today we should end up in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. My heart seems stable as does the Morgan. The old car seems to have rallied to the moment and is on its best behaviour. It only gives us trouble after we stop. Some say this is the elevation or the western gas causing vapour lock but I know this is the car telling us that it just wants to get us home: "Don't stop me. Let me run. I'll get you home," it is saying.

More pictures posted on Digital Journal.

The Vacation Continues

I never expected parts of the state of Washington to look like this. Where are the mountains?

For today's post, see the Digital Journal.

Cheers!

The Vacation Continues

A steep climb and massive wind turbines greeted us entering Washington.

Yesterday we cleared Oregon. It is now checked off our list. We are in Washington and we'll be here again tonight: Spokane. After that it is British Columbia and Canada. It may not be "home of the free and land of the brave" but it is the home of government-run medical care.

When your ticker is losing its mojo, Canada looks better and better. One of the first stops in Canada will be a hospital or medical clinic. I'm going to check on the strength of my heart meds. I'm wondering if I could be taking a little more of this metoprolol. Right now I am on a minimal dosage.

The downside to this stuff is that you must take it regularly. Don't stop! It comes with this warning:

"Do not stop taking metoprolol without talking to your doctor. Suddenly stopping metoprolol may cause chest pain or heart attack. Your doctor will probably decrease your dose gradually."

I think the Morgan is having sympathy pains. Yesterday, on the steep road into Washington state the engine balked, lost power and stopped for no apparent reason. But the little car restarted beautifully and has run fine ever since.

I've got confidence in both my little roadster and my heart. Hey, I've known them both for a very long time.

Cheers!

Oh, I may not post tonight,

I may go to bed early and get a really good night's sleep.

The Vacation Continues

After a day and a half in the hospital to treat a runaway heart rate, I am back on the road. Judy and I are now in Oregon with the Morgan.

Cheers!

The Vacation Continues

The Morgan has had a day at the mechanics and is now running beautifully. Maybe it will now go another few thousand miles and get us home.

The big picture opportunity of the day was offered by the kite-surfers spotted south of San Francisco in the Pacific.

For more information, see: The Digital Journal

The Vacation Continues_San Simeon to Santa Cruz through Big Sur

Rockinon rocked down Highway 1 today from San Simeon to Santa Cruz. Big Sur was amazing. It was a great Morgan run. For more, see my Digital Journal post.

The Vacation Continues

Stayed at the Hacienda. A ranch home designed for William Randolph Hearst by the same architect that worked with him for decades on his castle-like home near San Simeon.

Drove from the one former Hearst property to the other via a mountain road across the Fort Hunter-Liggett military base. What a road!

Today's picture is a view from this road.

More info is posted at:
http://www.digitaljournal.com/blog/7445
http://www.digitaljournal.com/blog/7446

 

The vacation continues . . .

I'd heard of dust devils but until today I had not encountered them. There were literally dozens of dust devils to be seen out on the Nevada desert Thursday. Driving through that in an old Morgan was quite the buzz.

I posted some of the events of the day at: http://www.digitaljournal.com/blog/7272

Rockinon is on Vacation!

It may be almost summer in London, Ontario, but in the Grand Tetons above Jackson Hole the snow is still six-feet deep beside some of the mountain top walkways. Blogging on trip on Digital Journal.

Rockinon is on vacation!

One of the geyser basins in Yellowstone National Park.

By now you know Rockinon is on vacation. The Morgan has put Yellowstone National Park behind it and is on its way to Providence, Utah. What's in Providence? A wonderful B&B, I hope. But this is just a stop before the next major place to visit: Yosemite!

I'll be back covering London, Ontario, come some time in July.

For more info on the trip see the Digital Journal.


Cheers!

Why this blog is on hiatus

A B&B breakfast!

Why am I not blogging? Because I am traveling!

My wife and I are booting about the United States and Canada in a 42-year-old Morgan. It seems ancient until you realize that I bought it new and I am now 21 years older than the Morgan. We grew old together.

Yes, those are people along the bottom left.

I have been posting daily updates of our travels to the Digital Journal. Just look in the blogs area and you will easily find them. I am starting each blog title with the day and the number. e.g. Day 08_Sheridan, South Dakota.

We left Canada and entered Michigan a week ago. We took a ferry from Michigan to Wisconsin and then we started west. We are now in Wyoming and tomorrow we will be in Yellowstone.

For me, the high-point of the trip may be the two days that we are staying on a military base in a former residence built by William Randolph Hearst. The place is known as the hacienda.

Sometimes even my Morgan needs a break.

Welcome!

Hi! This blog is officially on hiatus until sometime in July. But Saturday The London Free Press published my letter (Restoration story was a facade) on the 'stunning' restoration of the Capitol Theatre and neighbouring Bowles Building. With that publicity I thought I better put out the welcome mat.

As you may know, my name is Ken Wightman and I worked for the past thirty some years as a photographer for The London Free Press. A little more than a year ago I took a buyout and I am now retired.

After decades of running about London taking pictures, I thought it might be fun to do the same thing in retirement. The big difference is there is very little money in blogging. I wouldn't recommend blogging for retirement income.

When I left the paper, they took most of my camera gear. This was fair as they owned it. I now shoot everything with a seven-year-old Canon SD10 digital ELPH. I am rather proud of the quality that I have been able to achieve with such a basic, single lens, no telephoto, slide-in-you-pocket camera. Please check out the images that I have uploaded to artwanted. To get back here:

1. Please click the Alternate Website Link at the bottom left.
2. You'll be at Rockin' On: London Daily Photo. Click Rockin' On: the blog at the top right.
3. You're back.

Now as I was saying, I was a photographer. I was not a reporter. I wrote a photo column some years ago. I also did Celebrate the Thames a few years later. But that does not make me a writer. I used to have some excellent backup in the form of some fine editors: Susan Greer, Gary May, Al Chater and others. At times, if I had a question I had folk like Bill Eluchok, now also retired, to run to.

I'm somewhat on my own now --- a one man band. If you find a grammatical error, no surprise. The same goes for spelling. I can be quite creative or careless depending how you want to look at it. I take criticism well, but don't use naughty words. I'll just delete you, well at least your words. (Oh, I use my commas poorly but there is a bug in this software that makes it a lot of trouble to clean up the comma errors. If I get enough complaints, I'll try and do something.)

Now, if you want to read more of my thoughts on the Capitol Theatre and Bowles Building facade rehabilitation, please check out the following links:

London lost its theatre district to the 'burbs

Irreplaceable Buildings: can't be made today

There are more, but really haven't you read enough on this. At least we have two handsome facades. It is time to move on.

I'm the photographer who had the open heart surgery done robotically by da Vinci. Dr. Alan Menkis was at the controls as he performed the first mitral valve repair done robotically in Canada. Because of this, I think about death now and then and smile. If I had not had the surgery, I do not think I'd be here. I'm on overtime and it feels good. Read my post, Something to look forward to..., on facing death with humour and strong wine. The winery in Australia that I featured liked the piece enough to place it on their Facebook page.

Or do a search for Fizzies, or spurtle (there's a search field at the top left of the blog) or check out the cute baby and listen to the taste-corrupting music to which I have been subjecting this child.

If you are still with me, I'm not with you. I'm sorry but it's late and I do have a life --- honest. If you like, you can check out my YouTube video, Giggle Me Baby (Very poor quality but a lovely moment. Listen for the little girl's squeal of delight as the video fades out.)

Or check out some of the food stuff that I've begun uploading to Group Recipes.

Or check out my post on Paris Hilton, or don't, but do watch the YouTube video. Just love the arrangement of Big Spender that they use. (This video is becoming difficult to find. Many copies have been taken down from the Net.)



Cheers!
Ken Wightman
(Rockin' On)

Other blogs to tend

Hello!

A little more than a year ago I took a buyout after working for more than three decades as a news photographer. It was a shock to the system. No job. No daily demands. I had to hang up my cameras as I walked out the door.

A year ago, the economy was in tatters along with my retirement portfolio. Both were bleeding oodles of green; This was serious financial hemorrhaging. I kept enough money to weather the financial disaster and then I dumped all my spare retirement change into the market. If the financial world was coming to an end, I wasn't going to miss it. We were going down together.

Never spend more than four percent of your retirement portfolio in any given year --- this is an oft repeated rule of thumb which has some validity. Note the word some. This is a very conservative approach and as one gets older, one can comfortably get bolder.

I'm up almost 30 percent since retiring --- the world didn't come to an end --- and I'm well prepared mentally and financially for the next correction. I'm not that old but I am that bold. I'm grabbing a babe, my wife, strapping a suitcase to the back of my Morgan and heading west come the end of May. I'm sure our daughters, son-in-law and granddaughter will keep the home fires burning for us --- then maybe not; It'll be summer.

Come July, maybe earlier, this blog will be revived. It has just been too much fun. But long before that, the end of May, Rockinon: Travel will carry a day by day account of my adventure crossing the States and Canada by English roadster.

This blog was an experiment and in some ways it has failed. It gets thousands of hits and has been linked to by a small but eclectic mix of websites. I'm still getting referrals for my post on preparing for the inevitable after my post made it onto the Anvers Wines Facebook page.

I now have a bottle of Anvers fortified shiraz gathering dust in my 'wine cellar' waiting for the moment. I figured a very good, and also very strong, drink might be in order. (FYI, a friend read my piece and insisted on sampling a bottle. I went back to the wine store and bought a second bottle. It is a very nice wine. I served it before dinner with some cheese.)

But blog visits do not translate into money if the folk doing the visiting are not also hitting the ads --- and you are not. I don't blame you; I rarely hit ads on blogs. But there have been some good ads and those have attracted attention. My best day times 365 would be a very nice sum for a retired blogger but it is not happening. It is much closer to my worst day times 365.

And so I am turning my attention to my photography blog, my financial blog and my travel blog. All will be fun to tackle and all may attract a better, more focused class of ad. The blogging experiment moves into its second year. My goal is to pay the insurance on my two cars with the return from my online stuff. We'll see.

My 'London Daily Photo' has been picked up by two sites tracking the daily photos posted by bloggers all around the world. This has made LDP worth continuing. It gets enough hits to make it worthwhile and it gets me out walking, running, exercising. LDP is good for my health.

One thing I must say before ending this is thank you to all those who have made this year a gas. I do hope we can connect, at least world wide web-wise in the future.

I cannot get over the immense number of comments that I received, and am still receiving, for the stuff I posted to Art Wanted. This is a site for selling art but I just display my stuff. Everything I shot in the past year was done with a little point and shoot; The file sizes are too small to make large, good quality prints.

And I have also enjoyed posting to Group Recipes, the food social network. After one posts enough recipes, the site starts suggesting visits to

other foodie bloggers with whom you appear to share food interests. The algorithm seems to work well as I have found some good recipes in this manner.

I have also learned why journalists like Paul Berton, editor-in-chief of The London Free Press are pulling out their hair. I file stories occasionally to the Digital Journal. I posted a silly little story about a fellow being ejected from a Jazz flight because he had such awful body odour. This little, silly piece of fluff is outdrawing every other news item I have posted. We're talking more than a thousand hits in 24 hours! Aaauuugghh!

As Digital Journal pays better than any of my other online endeavours, I'm going to be devoting a bit more of my time to citizen reporting. I'm slowly building up contacts and getting on various local mailing lists. It's fun.

In closing, if you are new to this blog, please check out some of my favourite posts.

Cheers,
Rockinon

Where were you when . . .

I'd love to get this post out to journalism schools everywhere. It is a good story.






To big to succeed. This one has been hit regularly by newspapers. I wonder how they find it.

Your meet the nicest people on a Honda.

That's me on my Honda. It was a killer machine with a 305cc twin cylinder engine pumping out 33 hp. I rode this bike down to Daytona Beach one Easter break. I have pictures from that week in a box in my basement.

My blog on I.F.Stone was a pleasure to write. Don't know I.F.Stone? Read my post.

More red is redder than less red. I believe this post was hit by governments around the world. Their computers thought it was a post on communism; It isn't.






My post on the factory farming of pigs is still getting a steady stream of hits. Although it got the most hits when the H1N1 flu was on the front pages of the world's papers every day.

Newspapers get so many stories wrong. This should not come as a surprise; Newspapers are simply the daily reports of a staff of fellow human beings. But it does come as a surprise doesn't it. And it will get worse before it gets better as the media giants show more and more staff the door. I like this post on a story that got so mangled and so consistently that the story will never be straightened out.

Lastly, the video, Giggle Me Baby, is terrible. It just screams out for decent lighting. But the moment is beautiful. Don't view this critically. Just view it for the pleasure of watching a baby laughing with pure, innocent pleasure. I love the little squeal of glee as the video fades at the end.


Cheers,
Rockinon