Archive for the ‘News / Events’ Category
The Neat Thing . . .
. . . about weekends
is that
they keep coming back
about every seven days or so.
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Elegance Frames
Rockies Train Trip
By Pat Neisser
Mature Life Features
CALGARY, Alberta —- Smiling staff members greeted us with “Would you like some champagne or a lemonade, madam?” as we boarded what was to be our home-on-wheels for the next three days. Given the aura of elegance, I could have been on the Orient Express, but the atmosphere of this train was a bit more casual and friendlier.
We were aboard the Royal Canadian Rockies Experience round-trip out of Calgary, one of the several itineraries offered by Royal Canadian Pacific. The 32 passengers on the five refurbished
1930s executive cars relaxed quickly amid wood inlaid paneling in true luxury on rails.
My compartment had two beds and a desk, a complete bathroom with shower, and plenty of storage space. The large windows looked out onto the passing scenery of deep rivers, soaring glaciers, forests, small towns, and, of course, the majestic Rockies.
Squeezed in between excursions tailored for this train’s passengers were three gourmet meals and afternoon tea daily.
Our first stop was Banff and a visit to the historic Banff Springs Hotel. Then we were off to lovely Lake Louise, where a naturalist guide led us around the mirrored waters. Fond memories of skiing this site came rushing back. We reboarded and slid through the Spiral Tunnels along the Kicking Horse River to our overnight stop at Golden, British Columbia.
The next morning, we took a short motor coach ride up to Kicking Horse Resort, where a gondola carried us up to Eagle’s Eye Mountain for a view from the 7,700-foot level along breakfast in the Eagle’s Eye Restaurant.
Back on the train, we headed south in the Columbia River Valley to Cranbrook, British Columbia, where we stopped directly behind a museum and stepped down for a tour.
Lunch was served after reboarding, lunch was served. Our menus matched those of a four-star restaurant. Our dinner one night included sautéed shrimp with jalapeno chutney, orange and ginger glace, baby spinach salad, and crusted rack of lamb. Chocolate pate with spun-sugar crowned the banquet.
Next day, we visited Head-Smashed-in-Buffalo-Jump, a World Heritage site and explored the museum before peering over the cliffs where natives drove bison herds to their deaths for 10,000 years to provide food and clothing for a whole year.
The next morning, we visited Homeplace Ranch where we had lunch after riding horses and before boarding our rolling home for our ride back to Calgary.
Ladies’ Tea Time . . .
. . . today at 3 p.m. in the Sun Room.
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Have you ever stopped
to think about this:
the average person is really mean.
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Big Meetings Today
If you want to know what’s going on,
get to the 2nd floor theater at 3 p.m. for
the first-Tuesday-of-the-every-month
Food Service Meeting
followed by the first-Tuesday-of-every-month
Town Hall gathering at 4 o’clock.
Welcome To June . . .
. . . and your new monthly calendar. Read it and then check it every morning. Then check the mailroom fliers for any changes, additions or deletions. More people and more activities add up to more things that can go wrong, so keep checking.
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And, I just was awakened by the sniffling-scratchy-throat-dry-cough that everyone else has been battling around here so I’ll be in and out of service for the next little while.
A Busy Day . . .
. . . that includes an “Events of May” presentation
by Ken Sorensen at 10:30 a.m.
after getting your blood pressure checked at 10 a.m.
but before lunch,
after which you can catch up on
the latest news from the kitchen
during the food-service meeting at 2:30.
Dry or Wet
You select.
There’s Functional Fitness with Lyn
in the dining room at 2:30 p.m.
or you can wait for
water aerobics at 4:30 —
in the pool, of course.
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IT’S THE WEEKEND ! ! !
The Verena Voices tribute to the fallen
is scheduled for 10:45 a.m. tomorrow
before a BBQ starting at noon that
closes with live entertainment
from 2:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.
Have fun.
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If . . .
. . . you’re planning on grilling Sunday,
you’ll have to do it yourself because
the Grillin ‘n’ Chillin’ session on the monthly calendar
has been cancelled,
as was yesterday’s Super Supper Shuttle
because of family emergency – – more later.
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Chatted With . . .
. . . the wine-tasting guru
t’other evening and
he said he gets
a lot of his news
through the grapevine.
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Golden Age Depends on Your Age
By Tom Morrow
We often hear the phrase “that was back in the ‘golden age’ of” – fashion, cars, Hollywood, you pick it.
Remember Collier’s, Saturday Evening Post, Life, and Look? If you don’t, you didn’t arrive on earth until after the 1950s because these popular weekly publications were the People magazines of their day. News magazines such as Time and U.S. News & World Report were vogue by mid-20th century.
One could say the golden age of newspapers stretched from the late 1800s through the first half of the 20th century. Every major city in America had at least two newspapers. New York City had seven until the late ‘70s. Today, Los Angeles has just one, down from three just a couple of decades ago.
The automobile’s golden age began in the 1920s and lasted through the ‘60s. Some of the most inventive vehicles were born and sold during that era.
There was the Stanley Steamer. Yes, it was powered by steam and went very fast. There was the luxurious hand-built Duesenberg, which was a “real doozie.” There were a number of electric-powered cars way back then – one-third of all cars on the road in 1900 were powered by electricity.
One of America’s first transportation companies, Studebaker, built horse- and oxen-drawn wagons during the Civil War and many of the so-called “Prairie Schooners” for the great migration to settle the West.
A friend writes that his family owned a 1929 four-door Studebaker-Erskine, named after Erskine, the president of Studebaker during the late ‘20s. The sedan was turned into scrap metal during WWII since gas-ration cards limited gasoline availability. One of the best-built but ugliest automobile might have been Ford’s Edsel. Its gruesome grille might have had something to do with its short life.
Radio’s ruled the air waves from the late ‘20s through the 1940s. Many of television’s star performers, sit-coms and drama formats were developed during this period. We would rush home from school to listen in on “The Lone Ranger,” “Sky King,” “Sergeant Preston of the Yukon,” and “Straight Arrow.” On Sunday afternoons it was “The Shadow” and “Nick Carter, Private Eye.” Weeknights it was “Johnny Dollar” and “Lux Radio Theater.” Every night “Fibber McGee & Molly,” “Bob Hope, “Jack Benny” and “George Burns & Gracie Allen” made us laugh.
The coming generations might look at the present time as TV’s golden age with sets bigger, better and lower-priced than ever before. Added to this is the array of computers, cell phones, and video games. They might say this was the “Golden Age of Indulgence.”
(Tom Morrow’s books are available at Amazon.com and on Kindle.)
For Those of You . . .
. . . still interested
in our weekly 1:30 p.m. Tuesday
writing session,
gonna be out of service today
with med appointments.
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Mature Life Features 