I'm from that lost generation: too young to be a beatnik; too old to be a hippie.

I'm a grand-father again. My son's wife gave birth to a son early this morning.

Don't put yourself up.
Don't put yourself down.
Just see yourself as you are, without judgment.

Uh, oh. I've been tagged for the first time in my mindsay history. By aravis. Don't you guys know I'm too old to play tag?
Oh well, 6 things about myself:

1. Today I turned 68 which puts me just one year away from that real sexy age: 69.
2. I've got two 20 inch iMacs sitting next to each other on my office desk. My estranged wife, who moved out recently, is getting custody of the older one while I'm keeping the new lightning fast one.
3. When I was 3 I used to walk a mile down the road to Grandmas house cause she always had cookies.
4. I won a Governor Generals medal for the best marks in grade 9 in Vulcan County. My first and last award for academic achievement
5. When I moved to Toronto for my first job in 1962 I shared the top floor of a rooming house with a guy who went on to become Pierre Trudeau's speech-writer when he was Prime Minister.
6. A psychic once told me I must have been an alter boy because she could see some of catholic church paraphenalia around me. In actual fact I was working in a government office which had previously been part of a Jesuit seminary, and there was still some of the paraphenalia in my office.

Great news. According to todays Ottawa Citizen, bues matriarch Etta James might be playing at this years BluesFest. This is great news to me because I think she does by far the best version of "Hound Dog", even better than Big Mama Thorntons. The song really needs to be sung by a woman, since its really a song about a man not a dog (except in Elvis's version).

There is a lot of talk about when and if the planet will run out of oil and what the consequences will be.

It came to me the other day that the "oil era" will be just a tiny blip in history (maybe less than 100 years) and the "end of oil" will just mean "getting back to normal". I suppose those of us old enough to remember a neighbour who still used horse and buggy to get around, and horse-drawn milk delivery on the streets of Calgary will see things a bit differently than you young folks born into the peak of the oil age, who therefore think that it is normal.

There's a Saudi saying that said it best: "My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-airplane. His son will ride a camel."

Not that we need to go all the way back. During the oil-blip we've made huge strides in building energy-efficient housing, high-efficiency wood and coal burning stoves, solar and wind technology. The end of oil won't mean the end of the electrical grid, though we should expect a severe cut-back. (Anyone know what proportion of our electricity is produced by burning petroleum?)

Survival at the end of oil is clearly possible, but there are ways in which things will be majorly different.

Food: we'll have to get back to producing food locally and preserving it for the winter. The era of importing fresh fruits and vegetables from California (and beef from Alberta or Texas) will be over.

Travel: the era of being able to go anywhere in the world with relative ease will be over. See the world while you still can.

Amongst the links you can find with a google search is this one which is more constructive than scary: http://www.survivingpeakoil.com/index.php

For us old folks who will probably be gone before the crisis hits, the best thing we can do make sure our kids understand the situation. (And don't throw out our old copies of "Mother Earth News". Pass them on.)

I notice a lot of bloggers like to post their favourite song lyrics. Well, I warn you right up front, my favourite songs are from the 60's or earlier. There are very few from later decades that turn my crank.

My favourite verse from the largest selling record of 1924: "The Prisoners Song" by Vernon Dalhart

"If I had the wings of an angel,
Over these prison walls I would fly,
I'd fly to the arms of my darlin'
And there I'd be willin' to die."

From a String Band song from the '30s:

"Tell it to me, Tell it to me,
Drink corn likker let the cocaine be.
Hey, hey, buddy yet the cocaine be.

... made for hosses, not for men
Doc said it'd kill you but he won't say when"

From a Flatt & Scruggs song from 40's or 50's I guess.

"Dig a little deeper in well boys,
Dig a little deeper in the well,
If you want a good cool drink of water,
You gotta dig a little deeper in the well.
...
Life is what you make it, sometimes a livin' hell,
If you want to find that promised land, dig a little deeper in the well."

There's such a plethora of good candidates in the Ottawa Centre it's really hard to decide who to vote for. Do I vote for the Communist Party, the Marxist/Leninist Party, the Marijuana Party or the Green Party?

Well, I ended up voting Green, though judging from the election posters the NDP candidate is most likely to win. (For all you non-Canadians -- thats the socialist candidate.)

Maybe all you dream experts can help me out here.

Two days before Christmas I was singing the old song "I ride an old paint" in my dream.
"I ride an old paint, I lead an old dan,
I'm off to Montana, for to throw the hoolian..."
It sounded a lot more profound in the dream than in real life, the words seemed different than the ones I knew. Maybe the only reason I recognized it was the last verse:
"When I die, take my saddle from the wall.
Put it on my pony, lead him out of his stall,
Tie my bones to his back, Turn our faces to the West,
And we'll ride the prairie that we love the best."

Christmas night/boxing day morning dream: I was at the farm where I grew up in Alberta. (Used to dream about the farm all the time but seldom do any more.) Across the road from the farm there was a guy working on a combine. The field had plants in it that I interpreted as flax, except for the corners facing the road which were grass. I decided to pace off the field to determine its size. Went to one side and paced off 73 paces to the other side (really hard to keep a count going in a dream). Found a scrap of paper and a pencil on the ground in which I wrote down 73, then I woke up before I started pacing in the other direction.

Possible interpretation of the second dream: the day before I sent my sister (who now lives on the farm) a link to an article saying that grass-fed beef is healthier than feedlot beef because it has a far greater percentage of Omega3. She sent back a link to another article expressing the same thing. Flax is a good source of Omega3, if I remember correctly.