Dog On A Root

Who’s Got Time To Pick Guitars In Nashville? - jim Young “I sure am glad I got a chance to say a word about the music and the mothers from Nashville.” - John Sebastian In 1966 there were “thirteen hundred and fifty-two guitar pickers” in Nashville. How do I know that? John Sebastian and the Lovin’ Spoonful told me. Well, they didn’t tell me that directly. It wasn’t like John came up to me and whispered in my ear and said “Psst. Hey jim, did you know there are ‘thirteen hundred and fifty-two pickers in Nashville’?”   It wasn‘t a secret, as the Lovin’ Spoonful babbled it to everyone who bought their records or just listened to them on the radio. The song “Nashville Cats” was a tribute to the Nashville A-Team. The Nashville A-Team were a group of studio musicians in Tennessee that backed artists like Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan and Jerry Lee Lewis among others. They were kind of Nashville’s answer to L.A.s Wrecking Crew that backed artists from Frank Sinatra and Sonny & Cher to the ...

- jim Young    “Every morning we are born again. What we do today is what matters most.” - Buddha From 1994 to 2020, tourists had to exchange their home country’s currency into Cuban Convertible Pesos (CUC) to spend when visiting Cuba. The exchange rate for the CUC was usually valued pretty close to the U.S. dollar. As of January 21, 2021 the CUC has been discontinued. Tourists typically now exchange their home country’s currency into U.S. dollars prior to visiting Cuba. Manufacturing money that is difficult to counterfeit is a costly process to say the least. In addition to the initial costs of printing currency, the average lifespan of paper currency is 4.5 to 8.5 years depending on the denomination, after which it needs to be replaced. While I could find no data to indicate how much Cuba actually spent on manufacturing the CUC for the past 25 plus years, the U.S. 2023 annual budget, has allowed $265.5 million for variable printing costs such as paper, ink, labour and d...

- jim Young “When you have exhausted all possibilities, remember this: You haven’t.” - Thomas Edison Recently a Toronto Officer recommended “that people leave the keys to their vehicle in a faraday bag by the front door,” as a deterrent to home invasions.  The idea being, the car thieves are only interested in your vehicle, so once they find what they are looking for (your car keys), they will not proceed to rob your home or confront your family. So as wild as that may seem, that suggestion may actually be effective in reducing home invasions in Toronto; however it does nothing to reduce the car theft problem. Brainstorming, “a creative thinking technique for coming up with new ideas and solving problems” uses a process which encourages everyone to offer any and every idea they may have as a solution, no matter how wild it may seem. The hope is, from all the ideas, no matter how crazy they may seem, the collective group can strip away the craziness and piece together one sensible ...

 

- jim Young “Based on the state of politics in the world today, is there really any such thing as ‘political correctness?’” - jim Young Dear Journalist Katie: (Or whoever is the true originator of this meme.) While I recognize your right to interpret anything I say or do based on your personal, past life experiences, I hope you will not be disappointed by my total disregard for this opinion you have shared. Actually, I kind of resent the fact that you are automatically including me in a group without knowing anything about me, based solely on my gender. Isn’t that in fact counteractive to the very point you are trying to make? I hold doors open for women and I will continue to do so regardless of your misinformed interpretation of what that might mean to you. I also hold doors open for men; and children; and the elderly; and the physically challenged; and people of any race, colour, age, sex, religion or political affiliation. Why? Because unlike you, my first assumption about everyone...

- jim Young  "Don't let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment, that was known as Camelot." - Alan Jay Lerner I think if I had to compare Donald Trump to any previous U.S. President, it would be John F. Kennedy. They have a lot in common and they both have a very loyal fan base.  Kennedy and Trump are both man-whores that cheated on their wives. And let’s face it, Kennedy and Trump were both elected for pretty much the same reasons. Kennedy was elected in 1960 primarily because he wasn’t Richard Nixon. Trump was elected in 2016 primarily because he wasn’t Hillary Clinton. I’m not saying Kennedy wasn’t the best man for the job but I’m not saying he was either. What I’m saying is, Kennedy didn’t win his election based on his ability to do the job.  Kennedy was young, fresh and vibrant. Nixon was perceived as a dishonest used car salesman.  Nixon looked shady when he appeared in the first nationally televised presidential debate sporting ...

- jim Young  “Good fences make good neighbors.” - from “Mending Wall” by Robert Frost Good fences make good neighbours. Living next door to the U.S. has been kind of like living next door to a pretty nice family. New families come and go every few years but they’ve all been pretty nice. Until a few years ago. Oh, the family is still really nice but the dad is a bit wonky. He lies all the time and cheats on his wife as well as all his business associates. The dad’s a bully and a fraud and prone to temper tantrums. He doesn’t have any respect for anyone, not even himself. Some of his family are willing to overlook his faults when he fools them into thinking he’s doing it all for the good of his family.  We don’t agree with how he treats his family a lot of the time but for the most part, that’s not really our business. He’s pretty rude to most of our neighbours though and sometimes even us and when he crosses those lines, it does become our business.  A few years ago some o...

- jim Young 20200701 “I'm just a soul whose intentions are good Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood.”                                    - Bennie Benjamin, Horace Ott and Sol Marcus  The first thing we learn to do as babies is how to communicate. If we are unhappy or uncomfortable we instinctively cry and our parents will attempt to soothe us. Sometimes, however, they don’t soothe us in the way we want to be soothed. We quickly learn that if we cry one way, they will feed us. If we cry a little differently they will change our diapers and yet another cry will get us rocked. With that communication comes power. Just from crying. As we grow older our needs become more complex and our sounds develop into words to accommodate these needs. The average English speaking adult today knows and uses about 20,000 words and probably knows and understands another 20,000 words. ...

- jim Young 1993/0621/20080227/20130227 It’s funny how many things we accept without question. Like the theory that no two snowflakes are alike. Whoever said there are no two snowflakes alike? We've heard it since we were children and were taught it was an absolute truth until we no longer questioned the reasoning behind it. I think there is a very good possibility that there are, somewhere out there, two snowflakes that are alike. Not 100% identical maybe, but very much alike. After all they do have some things in common. They all have 6 points (although that is another “truth” that I might challenge at a different time) they are all made of crystallized water, etc. Who has examined so many snowflakes that they can categorically state there are no two alike? Did this person take a cross section percentage of snowflakes in the same manner that Neilsen determines TV ratings to arrive at this conclusion? Did he examine a determined number of snowflakes and does he conti...

- jim Young “I was never obligated to growing UP, but I had no choice in growing OLD.” - Steve Greeley Calculating my age. I don't know about you, but I literally have to stop and do the calculations whenever someone asks me how old I am. And even then, because I was born at the end of the year, I usually have to deduct 1 anyway. Minus-ing even 1 in my head is sometimes a mental challenge these days. Maybe it wouldn't be so hard if the number didn't change every year. Why can't we celebrate birthdays just every 5 years instead? Sure, our age would then be recorded in 5 year increments, but it might be easier to remember. We’re 60 for 5 years, then 65 for 5 years and so on. To let people know we are using the “5 year aging scale” we could qualify that by adding a plus sign to it. Let’s face it, if you want to be technical, even one day after our 65th birthday we are really 65.0028 years old (rounded to 5 digits). Telling someone we are 65+ is really mor...

- jim Young 2019405 “The only real things in life are the unexpected things. Everything else is just an illusion.” - Watkin Tudor Jones Security cameras are one of the most effective ways to prevent your home from being burglarized. Although the likelihood of being burglarized in a small town in Northern Ontario is somewhat lower than when we lived in Barrie, I suppose you can never be too careful. But the simple truth is we did not install our home security system for home security purposes. The sense of security and added protection it provides is really just a bonus, while the real intent of our security system was to keep an eye on the critters that come around at night, for no other reason than we enjoy watching them. What we didn’t know when we installed these cameras was just what kind of critters we would be watching. Our expectation was to capture footage of raccoons, skunks, deer, foxes maybe even an occasional bear or moose and whatever else might be lurking o...

- jim Young (20190323) “To everything, turn, turn, turn, There is a season, turn, turn, turn…”    - Book of Ecclesiastes / Pete Seeger I’m not sure what my favourite season is. It’s a toss up between summer, autumn and winter. But I know what my least favourite season is. It’s spring. Spring is ugly. Dirty and ugly. I hate spring. There is nothing good about spring. It’s ugly, it’s dirty and it’s teasingly disappointing. I get that some people don’t like winter but that’s no reason to delude themselves into thinking that they welcome spring. Welcoming spring because it’s the step between a season you hate and a season you love is like welcoming a needle because it’s going to get rid of your pain. The problem is, the needle will inflict more pain before it relieves the pain. You really hate the needle as much as you hate the pain. So why do so many people insist they love spring when all they really love is that winter is almost over? It’s like your...

- jim Young 20101203 A house catches fire every 45 seconds. Tonight while I was in my favourite reading room, perusing one of my beloved research materials - Uncle John's Bathroom Reader - I came across this little tidbit at the bottom of the page. "In the United States a house catches fire every 45 seconds." I found this very alarming. I mean, just think of the poor people who live in that house? Why don't they move? I guess it would be hard to sell the house because you would have to be very quick to get a picture of it for the real estate listing between fires. And you would think the fire department must be very discouraged. They wouldn't even have time to get back to the station before they were called out again. Maybe they should build a fire station right beside that house. This is just one of those little reminders when we are feeling a bit down. No matter how tough our life is, it could be worse. We could be living in a house tha...

- jim Young 20190321 “Kale is a superfood and its special power is tasting bad.” - Jim Gaffigan “Grow some kale,” they said. “It will be fun,” they said. I guess they were right because it kinda was  fun growing the kale. At least it was easy. And when it comes to gardening, easy = fun as far as I’m concerned. The kale that year was our best crop. The only problem was, what do we do with it? As it turns out neither My Shirley nor I are particularly fond of kale so we gave most of it away to our friends and neighbours. Be we did give it an honest shot first. Knowing my love of potato chips and other assorted junk food, a friend of mine sent me Gwyneth Paltrow’s Recipe for Kale Chips. According to both Barry and Paltrow, Kale Chips are “as satisfying as potato chips”. Gwynnth Paltrow's Kale Chip Recipe I decided to give it a try and I quickly discovered 2 things: 1) Kale Chips suck. 2) Gwyneth Paltrow is an idiot. (Barry is not an idiot - he was just misin...

- jim Young 20190316 “There are strange things done in the midnight sun, By the men who moil for gold.” - Robert W. Service. What IS it? We don’t really live in the land of the midnight sun and we certainly don’t do any moiling for gold. Still it’s been a “long cold lonely winter” and “it feels like years since (the sun’s) been here.” 1  in our little corner of Northern Ontario. This is the longest, hardest, coldest winter with the most snowfall we have ever witnessed in all our years of living in Loring. Of course we’ve only lived here a couple of years, but it’s been hard, I tell ya! It’s been a hard winter. And long and cold and lonely. And when you are shut in in for days at a time, sometimes the mind and the elements start to play tricks on your senses. Isolation from human contact can bring distress to the most sane and mentally competent minds. I only need remind you of Jack Torrance’s descent into madness in “The Shining” to make my point. Of course on...