Tag Archives: history

Another Company Name Change… Cue the Eye Roll

A collage of "Hello my name is..." stickersOne of the greatest ironies about getting older is that despite the whispers of life experience and wisdom through which we can better take life’s drama with a grain of salt, and to view it with the perspective and acceptance that prevent our heads from exploding on a daily basis, there is one troubling reality: new situations to replace them… which still hold the power to make our heads explode.

To me, a recent bugaboo has been company name changes.

A few weeks ago, my partner and I received an email from a company we deal with, announcing their name change. Frankly, it wasn’t a big change. They just dropped a few letters from the end of their name.

I felt empathy for the poor employees having to drop everything to update all of their forms, templates and signature blocks, at a time when their plates were probably already full. It brought back memories of a position I have been in more times than I wanted to recall.

I sometimes wonder if it’s just me who thinks that company names seem to be changing at a faster pace than before.

But the evidence speaks for itself when watching a vintage episode of “The Price is Right” on YouTube and noticing that many company names that were household names in the 1970s have completely disappeared.

I have to admit that remembering names is not my strongest attribute. Continue reading

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Filed under 50+, Humour, pop culture, stories

A Renaissance of Storytelling

As a little dude, I remember that both my parents were avid readers. And as far back as I can remember, I was surrounded by books, not only in my parents’ library but in the growing library in my bedroom as well.

As an only child with an inclination for “the great indoors”, it didn’t take much coaxing to get me to share in their joy of reading and the love of a good story.

This love followed me around for a lifetime, in all of its forms whether movies, TV dramas, soap operas, biographies, classic novels, contemporary novels, plays, musicals, operas or even newspaper articles. You could say I have been a glutton for good, well-told stories.

Good stories have tugged at my heart and have inspired me. Good stories made me love some characters while I loathed others. Good stories have taken me to places near and far, real and imagined.

Stories have been a constant in my life, no matter how busy I got. There was always time for a good story here and there, for those moments I needed a little escape… or even a big escape.

I don’t know why, but lately I have noticed that my appetite for good stories is growing, bordering on insatiable. The more I see great stories, the more I want to see.

I savour every moment of stories of triumph, stories of personal growth, stories of courage, stories of social change, stories of love, stories of gratitude, stories of survival and stories of our ancestors.

When I hear a great story, I sometimes pick up on one idea, one character, or one thread of the story line and think that you could throw the spotlight on just that one element and create a whole new story around it. There is really no end to the potential of storytelling. Continue reading

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Filed under books, TV, Writing

50 Reasons To Love Travel

1. Travel offers a change of pace from the daily routine.
2. Travel can be a temporary escape.
3. Travel can be an opportunity to disconnect for a while.
4. Travel can be an opportunity to knock things off our bucket list.
5. Travel offers an opportunity to see random things we wouldn’t normally see at home.
6. Travel offers an opportunity to experience landmarks we have only read about or have only seen on television or in movies.
7. Travel offers an opportunity to admire natural and man-made wonders.
8. Travel offers an opportunity to admire the endless beauty of our planet.
9. Travel offers an opportunity to try different foods and beverages.
10. Travel can be an opportunity to experience music we wouldn’t normally hear at home.
11. Travel can be an opportunity to experience games and sports we wouldn’t normally see at home, or to experience a favourite sport in a different setting.
12. Travel offers an opportunity to enjoy life without having to cook, clean or run household errands for a few days.
13. Travel offers an opportunity to experience and appreciate different traditions and customs.
14. Travel offers an opportunity to meet new people and make new friends. Continue reading

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Filed under Inspiring, Lists, Travel

Where Have All the TV Theme Songs Gone?

This season, the American television network “The CW” launched a reboot of the favourite 1980’s prime time soap “Dynasty”. In watching the very first episode, I was delighted to see several nods to its original series, including having kept its great orchestral theme song. The only thing was that it was a much shorter version of it.

Similarly, Netflix has recently rebooted “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.” Again, a really unique theme song, but chopped down to just a few bars of its original.

Have you noticed how the opening themes for many American TV shows have gotten shorter and shorter over the years? Now, some shows don’t even have them at all.

If I mentioned the names of program like “All in the Family“, “Golden Girls”, “Three’s Company”, “The Brady Bunch” or “Gilligan’s Island”, even if you weren’t a huge fan, I’m sure many of you would be able to recite a few words if not the whole theme song.

These theme songs became deeply entrenched in our pop culture, and some have become synonymous with the decades when the shows originally aired. In doing so, they also became entrenched in our hearts and minds.

As young kids, we couldn’t play “Batman” without singing few rounds of the famous theme from the 1960s. Continue reading

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Filed under 50+, music, pop culture, TV

Jeans and the Generation Gap

When growing up in the 1970’s, while in school in the 1980’s, and when launching my career in the 1990’s, the expectation was to have clean, neat and crisp clothes anytime I set foot outside the house, because we were told that “you never get a second chance to make a first impression”. Even if we look back at pictures from that era and question the wisdom of some of our fashion choices, neat and tidy clothing were a common denominator.

My parents’ suit-and-tie generation set the bar pretty high, even for a child. Clothes were meant to be worn gently, and maintained carefully to keep looking new as long as possible. The rotation generally went like this: every September, we got me new school clothes and the previous year’s school clothes (if I hadn’t outgrown them yet) became the “play clothes”, for wearing as soon as I got home from school. That being the case, a batch of gently-used play clothes would go to charity.

Along the way, a little nick in clothing meant taking out the needle and thread and try to make an invisible repair to restore it to its original beauty. And if invisible mending wasn’t successful, it went into the donation box.

That’s just the way I was brainwashed… I mean, brought up. It wasn’t just my parents’ generation that instilled this way of thinking, but it was my grandparents’ generation too who declared open war on wrinkles and holes long before I was born. And just think of the staff on Downtown Abbey and how many items they’ve darned and mended through their six seasons.

About 10 years ago, I let myself get talked into buying a distressed pair of brand name jeans with a few strategically-placed pulled threads. I can’t tell you what a struggle it was each time to convince myself to wear them and that I supposedly looked like a cool, edgy, fashion-forward 40 year old. I may have looked it, but I certainly didn’t feel it. Continue reading

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Filed under 50+, Humour

How Creating a Character’s Family Tree is Like Sudoku

It’s midnight and I’m not sure whether it’s every writer’s dream or every writer’s nightmare, but the little writer’s voice is babbling details about the family tree for the characters in my screenplay.

On one hand, I am a little annoyed because it is a “school night” and I have a busy work day planned for tomorrow. On the other hand, with the heartbreak of writer’s block going on around the world, I really can’t complain when my own writer’s voice is in overdrive with ideas.

I grab a pen and a pad (tucked neatly in my nightstand for just such a literary emergency) and I start sketching out the ideas as they come to me.

Given that this is my first screenplay, this is all new to me, but if it’s anything like my process for writing blog posts, this probably won’t be a linear process from start to end.

The main characters start identifying themselves to me. Then, the main sources of tension between the characters form a neatly bulleted list. The resulting struggles are identified and even the desired end result becomes crystal clear to me.

Now… how do we get from “once upon a time” to “and they lived happily ever after”, while hitting all those marks along the way? Continue reading

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Filed under Humour, Misc blogs, Writing

Breathing New Life in Family Photos

beginfamilyIna  recent post, I mentioned how blogging became more than just about the writing, it also rekindled my love for photography.

In doing so, I found myself digging through old photo albums looking for photos to scan. Whether it was to add to my own collection of stock photography for future blogs or to post on social media to breathe new life into old memories, it has been a fun journey.

But along the way, I noticed that some of the albums from the 1970’s and 1980’s were starting to deteriorate. In a few albums, the sticky “magnetic” pages were starting to get yellow. In some cases, the pictures themselves were changing colour. In others, the pictures weren’t coming off the sticky pages at all. I then felt like a surgeon using any flat headed tool I could find in my tool box or art supplies, to delicately remove pictures from the albums without damaging them.

I was reminded that these albums probably date back to a time before photo albums mentioned “acid-free” pages. Who would have thought that the albums intended to save memories of family and friends might have a limited life span themselves. Did anyone see this coming?

And so began the unexpected project of taking all of the pictures out of the albums that were showing signs of age.

The activity became a fun walk down memory lane, reliving the good old days with family, friends and colleagues. But the clock was ticking as I did not want these precious photos to suffer from more damage. Continue reading

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Filed under How to, Humour, Inspiring, photography

Proud to be Canadian

Happy Canada DayOver the years, I have been very fortunate in being offered the opportunity to travel across Canada for business as well as for pleasure. Along with that goes the opportunity to experience the beauty of its sights and the pride of its people. From coast to coast, the beauty and majesty of nature through the four seasons is breathtaking to behold.

The people I have met along the way have been warm and welcoming and more than eager to show me the many facets of Canada’s magic up close and sometimes even behind the scenes.

Throughout these travels, I have always been thrilled by the richness in cultural diversity that Canada has to offer, without ever leaving home soil. All one needs to do is put aside their day-to-day routine, open their mind, open their eyes and the new things to see and do are indeed before us, everywhere we look.

We are unique in that we don’t have to go far outside of our respective comfort zones to sample the best the world has to offer, right here in Canada. The fact that we can respect and embrace those differences as part of the fabric of our Canadian flag is purely magnificent. That being said, let us not forget the rich history, heritage and traditions that are uniquely made-in-Canada which when combined, are sometimes the envy of other countries as well. We are most fortunate in having the best of both worlds. Continue reading

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Filed under Humour, Inspiring, Misc blogs, Travel