VINTAGE AUTOMOBILE'S IN CLANGREGOR SQUARE.....BAYFIELD ONTARIO, CANADA

We did something rare to-day..........we got in the car & actually went somewhere. For people who follow our travels in the southwest during the winter that statement may be a little hard to understand. Kinda hard for me to understand too but it seems from the time we return home in the Spring until the time we leave again in the fall we just never go anywhere!! Kelly's heavier work schedule has a lot to do with it & when she does get a few days off she's just happy to spend relaxing time at home. I'm not nearly as busy with my mobility van job as Kelly but I just don't seem to have the same travel urges as I do when we are in the southwest. Could have something to do with our over familiarity with this area. In last night's blog I had mentioned a couple living near St. Marys Ontario who I used to do a lot of gardening & groundskeeping for 10 years ago. It had been over 6 years since we saw Pat & Bernhard so to-day we headed off on a 45 minute drive to their place. Don't know how they do it but these people did not look one day older than the last time we saw them. Guess it's just that good old country living plus the fact they fly to their other home in Portugal every winter to escape the horrid Canadian winters. Winter is enough to age anyone!! Before leaving Bayfield we noticed a bunch of old cars lined up so made a quick stop at Clangregor Square where an antique car rally was underway. I'm not familiar with the makes, models, & years of these vintage cars but they were all clearly from the very beginning of the automobile era. A Hupmobile, a White, & an Oakland were mixed in with Fords, a Rolls Royce, & Cadillacs. Probably 50 or 60 cars in the park with many proud owners nearby. I managed to crack off a few photos & you can find them in a photo album I uploaded to-day. http://picasaweb.google.com/stargeezerguy/VINTAGEAUTOMOBILESINCLANGREGORSQUAREBAYFIELDONTARIOCANADA
I didn't caption the pictures because none of the vehicles had any information about them posted & I didn't know the years. Would have been nice if the owners could have set up some kind of info board in front of their vehicles. PROUD HUPMOBILE OWNERS

The annual dreaded pine pollen menace has descended on us the past few days. Every year in June the Pine trees give off a fine pollen powder that wafts through the trees in fog like yellow clouds. It gets into every nook & cranny imaginable & if it rains we'll have small yellow rivers & puddles on the ground. It was something we never new of before moving here just as we hadn't realized that in the Autumn multiple pine needles fall to the ground & have to be raked up just like leaves. At the top of my pet peeves list regarding television garbage is LOUD TELEVISION COMMERCIALS!! Came across the following article a few days ago. Am I convinced this "volume" problem will be solved?? No I am not........broadcasters greed will probably prevail & the commercials will only get louder:((

By Carrie Wells, McClatchy Newspapers Carrie Wells, Mcclatchy Newspapers – Wed Jun 10, 4:27 pm ET

WASHINGTON — Congress soon might mute screaming TV-ad announcers who press viewers to "buy now!" — if broadcasters don't beat the lawmakers to the volume button.

Under a proposal to be taken up Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission would squelch ad volumes to the average decibels of the TV show during which they appear.

Currently, TV ads can't be louder than the loudest peak in a show, said David Perry , the chairman of the broadcast production committee of the American Association of Advertising Agencies in New York . Ads often seem louder to viewers, he added, because a program's volume peak rarely comes just before an ad.

"Every time the ads came on they blew me out of my seat," said Rep. Anna Eshoo , D- Calif. , who introduced the bill last June. "It really turns you off, makes you think, 'I'll be damned if I give them any of my money.' "

She's a member of the House Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet, which will consider the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act, aka CALM. It has 63 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives and two in the Senate .

Broadcasters say they have their own plan to lower TV ad volume, which could take effect within a couple of months. The switch to digital TV on Friday, they say, also could help by enabling advertisers to use a wider range of sounds, instead of relying on pure volume to get attention.

Dan Jaffe , the executive vice president for government relations of the New York -based Association of National Advertisers , said that advertising and broadcasting industry leaders knew that loud commercials annoyed customers because they'd received numerous complaints.

To resolve them, broadcasters and advertisers want to set their own standards, in which a commercial would be "loud enough that a reasonable person can hear it, but not so loud you can hear it in Mongolia ," Jaffe said. "Our members don't want to offend viewers."

Eshoo concedes that her bill isn't as high a priority as, say, health care or war funding, but she's confident that it will pass.

"People practically throw their arms around me when they hear about it," she said.

However, an aide to Sen. Roger Wicker , R- Miss. , who introduced the bill in the Senate last year, said Wicker wouldn't reintroduce the bill because he was working with broadcasters to hold down the volume.

"The senator is monitoring the progress being made and will consider reintroducing legislation if the industry cannot fix the problem on its own," Wicker's spokesman, Jahan Wilcox , said in an e-mail.

Perry, the ad agency association's spokesman on the matter, agreed that broadcasters should set their own loudness standards.

" Congress will inevitably make it more messy than it needs to be," he said. "It's like going after a fly with a pistol."

Britain set similar restrictions on loud ads last year.

OUR PHOTO ALBUMS http://picasaweb.google.com/stargeezerguy/