Baby-Boomer Radio now has a blog

I have created a separate blog for the show and it can be found here:-

BABY BOOMER RADIO

Returning to broadcasting

UPDATE 14-October-2012
On-air sessions: Mondays 0900 - 1200 and Fridays 1400 - 1700

Back between December 2002 and January 2006 I had a two-hour radio show with local Community Radio station Valley FM 89.5.
The show centred on music from the 1960s, although the edges were fuzzy and included stuff from the 1940s, 1950s and 1970s. "Easy Listening" music also formed a part, as did old BBC radio shows such as "Hancock's Half-hour", "Round The Horne", "Take It From Here" and "The Goon Show".

I received a lot of enjoyment from doing my thing and I know, from what feedback I had, that others also enjoyed hearing the type of music that we listened to every day as teenagers and young adults back in the 1960s.

In 2006 I re-entered the conventional "nine-to-five" workforce and dropped the show which at that time was being aired between 3:00 and 5:00 PM.

Just recently I retired after 48 years as a full-time employee and had the opportunity and desire to return to Valley FM and resurrect what I was presenting six years ago.
With over 200 LPs and a similar number of CDs, the contents of many of which I have converted to MP3s, the resources are capable of providing "Baby Boomer" material for some time to come, and that is the name I've chosen for this current foray into community radio.

We were very fortunate to have been born in what became known as the "Baby-Boom" period, the era usually considered to be between 1943 and 1960, coined by author Landon Jones in his book Great Expectations: America and the Baby Boom Generation.
This is an era in which music (amongst other things like fashions and social mores) changed dramatically, in both who was creating it and who was listening to it.
And it was sparked by the invention and mass production of a tiny electronic device - the transistor.

Until radios became portable - and that was only possible with the introduction of transistors, printed circuit boards and small batteries - music was heard on large mantle or console radios or played on gramophones/radiograms - furniture pieces - utilising large 78 rpm bakelite records.
So it was the adults who were not only the producers of popular music (large bands and orchestras with vocalists) but also the buyers of the records and the devices on which they were played.

The transistor changed all that because music became portable (and cheaper) at the same time as younger performers started doing their thing. They go hand-in-hand.
With music now being targeted at the younger generation, who could now listen to it on their transistor radios and play the new smaller and lighter 45rpm records on their portable record players, the Baby-Boomers determined the future of the music industry.
Once a young man by the name of Bill Haley came up with "Shake, Rattle & Roll" (1954) and then "Rock Around The Clock" (1955), popular music and radio became a whole new ball game and our parents coined the term "generation gap"!

We Baby-Boomers can feel very proud of our status.
We have had a profound effect on music and what started over 50 years ago is the basis for popular music today. Wonderful songs and arrangements were composed and written back in those fabulous 1960s and they continue to provide pleasure to our generation.
I like to think that when I am in a nursing home, instead of singing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat", we will be having sing-songs which include "It's Been A Hard Day's Night"!

My new show - now dubbed "The Baby-Boomer Show" - commenced yesterday, going to air between 9:00 and 12:00 midday, which will be the timeslot until the end of the month, when it will probably start an hour or so later.
I will update this information when that occurs.

Internet streaming is currently being tested by the station management.
Once it becomes established then no matter where you are located, if interested you will be able to listen to the programmes on your home or laptop computer via the internet - both of which, incidentally, were invented by baby-boomers.

After the first month.........

Retirement isn't too bad, actually.
I've been keeping myself busy over the past 3.5 weeks since leaving my employer of six years; plenty of things to be done around the home as we ease into springtime.
The garden has been attacked, with roses pruned, shrubs and trees cut back, dead annuals removed from garden beds.
The first lawn mowing of the season has been carried out, winter grasses and weeds treated and edges done.

The house has had its gutters cleaned out and a broken roofing tile repaired (no spare tile, so had to apply a patch) and all the windows cleaned, inside and out.
Next is to have the bi-annual spider and termite treatment carried out.....in October.

Housework is a natural for me.....carpets vacuumed, dusting done, clothes ironed (usually with a good DVD movie on the wide-screen) and laundry washed and hung out to dry.

So the almost-a-month that has elapsed hasn't been boring at all....even with the above tasks on my agenda I've still found time to read, do the daily crossword, browse the internet, go to the local shops and relax with a cup of coffee and the paper. All the little things that I only ever managed to get to on weekends and then ran out of time.

Yep....there's something to be said about being my age and finally easing out of a full-time job after nearly 50 years in the workforce.
I can recommend it. :)

That Life-changing Event

I went into retirement yesterday after my position with the business for whom I've worked since 2006 was made redundant.

Retrenched for the second time in my life - the first was in 2001 when my employer shut up shop here in Canberra in a knee-jerk reaction to the World Trade Centre disaster, where they had their New York offices.
So in 2002 I left management for a while - five years, to be precise - until February 2006, when I commenced the job from which I've just been dumped.

This time I'm looking at the retrenchment as being life's way of easing me out of the workforce, at least on a full-time basis.
After nearly 50 years earning a living, I suppose that it's time I accepted that I am now allowed to step back and relax.

A Giant Leap into Retro-technology!

(All images enlarge to full size when clicked)

One of the technical marvels of the 1960s, all of the 1970s and most of the 1980s was the IBM Selectric typewriter, with its innovative "golfball" font element which travelled across the paper, instead of the traditional method of all typewriters up to that point, where the paper travelled past the point struck by the type levers.

The office out of which I worked in Sydney between 1977 and 1984 was equipped with these machines; every typist had one on her desk and the chatter of typewriters was part of the normal background ambient noise of our office, and zillions of others worldwide.

Quite recently I became injected with a dose of nostalgia whilst watching several episodes of "Mad Men", in which IBM Selectric's are quite conspicuous in the office scenes.
So after several attempts I managed to find someone in Australia who is an ex-IBM typewriter technician and who very kindly offered to refurbish one in his collection and sell it to me.

The opening photo (above) is the machine - an IBM Selectric II circa 1976 - as it appeared just a few days ago, prior to its disassembly.
(This machine was assembled right here in Australia, at the IBM plant that was established in 1976 at Wangaratta, Victoria).

The above photo was taken just today and shows the partially-stripped Selectric removed from its housing.
I never realised just how complex these things are, never having seen one in this state before today.
The amount of mechanical componentry is remarkable, as can be gauged from the photo below showing various bits 'n' pieces in the dishes and boxes on the workbench.

This final photograph shows the assembly soaking in a fluid to degrease and clean the parts before any reassembly can be undertaken.

I am really looking forward to being handed the keys to this amazing machine and can't wait to hear the hum of the motor and the chatter of the typeball when I fire it up for the first time here at home.
That event should be sometime in July, when she makes it to Canberra from Perth.

Here is a short (2 minutes) video - done for a friend of mine - of this marvellous machine in action:-

A sad evening - Friday 27th. April

Normie, our cat of 11 years, died this evening in rather sad circumstances.
I arrived home from work at 5:15 to find him laying on his side in our driveway, unconscious and hardly breathing.
He had been diagnosed with a heart condition less than a month ago and although on medication for same there was always the likelihood that something would happen.
I shot him down to our local vet - literally less than a minute away by car - but the verdict was that he was too far gone to expect recovery, with fluid on his lungs and faint, erratic heartbeat.
Rather than continue his distress I  had my little mate put to sleep.

Normie had a habit of coming into my study, jumping up on the desktop and then staring at me until I rested my legs on the desk, so that he could then climb onto his perch and have a snooze, or luxuriate in having his ears and chin scratched.

People say that cat's don't really attach themselves to you and that they don't show affection.
That may be true - I don't know. But I do know that tonight I really miss my little furry friend because if he didn't show affection then what he did show came bloody close.

"And how are you today?"

Don't you find this to be an odd greeting when attending a doctor's surgery?

I had an appointment this morning and the (very pleasant) receptionist greeted me with that line, to which I replied "Well, not really great, otherwise I wouldn't be here", which was met by a look of surprise.

What else did she expect? I was ill!

In a similar vein is the "Have a nice day!" that the checkout-chick throws your way at 5:30 in the evening.

In both cases it's habit, I know, but in the former "How can I help you?" and in the latter "Thank you." would be more appropriate.

Indy 500 1965 - Jim Clark's Lotus 38

Back in July I posted a small article about a model of the Ferrari P4 prototype sports-racing car and mentioned two others, one being this model - the Lotus 38 crafted by the (now defunct) Carousel 1 company.

Although rear-engined cars had been raced at Indianapolis prior to 1965 - Jack Brabham starting the trend in 1961 in a Formula 1 Cooper - it wasn't until Lotus and Ford mounted a major effort in 1963 that success finally eventuated two years later with renowned Grand Prix driver Jim Clark taking first place in 1965 in the Lotus type 38, seen in model form below. (All images enlarge to full size if clicked).

Generally considered to be one of the most beautifully-proportioned designs ever to race at Indianapolis, the Carousel 1 die-cast model, in 1/8 scale, replicates those lines perfectly and is looked upon as the Holy Grail of the Lotus 38 in model format.

It is superbly crafted and detailed - with even the individual buckles on the racing harness being accurately presented - and is finished in the exact green and yellow livery, complete with all sponsor's decals, as the real car.

Carousel 1 created quite a few models of the cars raced at Indianapolis and they have become highly sought-after since the demise of the business some years ago.
If you are looking for one, they regularly come up on Ebay, which is where I found mine.

Matilda's Last Christmas at Pre-School

My grand-daughter Matilda - who turned 5 in October - had her end-of-year Christmas pageant yesterday with the traditional nativity play, after which she received her "graduation" certificate.
Next year she starts kindergarten and a new chapter in her life's story opens up.

Matilda asked me last week if I would go to watch her in the play so of course I said yes and as well as videoing the performance for posterity - she played the inn-keeper and her lines consisted of "No, no" when Joseph asked for a room - I also took a few photos............

After the play was over there was a bit of a party, with appropriate food, balloons and face-painting.

Reflecting on the past 5 years?

Our peace has been breached!

Well, Mr. Obama has finally set foot in Canberra after two previously-cancelled trips and the usual semi-load of American hyper-crap has been dumped on us.

In a similar fashion to the Bush visit in 2003, we have a permanent - noisy - fighter aircraft circling the ACT for the next 24 hours, just to guard against sneak attacks on the American embassy.
Why can't they simply have an aircraft sitting on the ramp at Fairbairn, fuelled up and ready to go at a moment's notice?

There are 300+ security personnel here!
THREE HUNDRED!!!

At selected intersections throughout the capital sit black, unmarked and unregistered vans.
Why?

Perhaps the most insidious thing is that mobile phone reception around Parliament House/American Embassy has been disrupted.

Like many other Canberrans who don't give a toss about this visit, I will be glad to hear Airforce One depart tomorrow afternoon.