When you come to a fork in the road …
… drive around it because it could puncture your tires.
Cecil Scaglione, Mature Life Features
Timeless Melbourne Keeps Up With the Times
By Tom Morrow
Mature Life Features
MELBOURNE —- A visit to Melbourne, Australia’s second-largest city, is more than just a jaunt 600 miles south from its big brother, Sydney. It’s a leap back to the mid-20th-century of electric-powered trolley cars and a Victorian England ambience emanating from government buildings and churches that trumpet the town’s history from amidst its gleaming new high-rise complexes.
An age-old tradition in Melbourne is meeting with friends at the copper-domed Flinders Street Station for a day of shopping and dining. This Victorian/Edwardian-designed structure built in 1910 is the most popular gathering place in this city of 4 million. All of the city’s suburban and cross-country trains flow into this terminal overlooking the Yarra River that runs north-south through the city. The Victoria state government launched a $1 million international design competition that closes Aug. 1, 2012, to refresh and rejuvenate this iconic hub.
Melbourne is the capital of the state of Victoria and is to Sydney what San Francisco is to Los Angeles. Like the City by the Bay, it offers just about any type of cuisine to satisfy both gourmet and gourmand. You’ll seldom meet a stranger here. Nearly everyone is eager to visit with visitors and ask if they’re enjoying the city and country. Melbourne offers everything you can buy in Sydney at lower prices. A new downtown showpiece is the sprawling riverside Crown Entertainment Complex, which includes a large casino, luxury hotel, restaurants, and shopping center with such luxury labels as Gucci, Prada, and Versace.
While half of the Australian population of 20 million live in the Sydney and Melbourne metropolitan areas, there is an abundance of wild life and open spaces. The best place to see most of the fauna native to this continent is the Healesville Wildlife Sanctuary 35 miles northeast of Melbourne. You can drive there, but beware of a traffic twist besides having to adjust to the left side of the road. There are toll roads in the freeway system but no toll booths. Maneuvering your way through this system even gives residents rashes so check online and with your rental-car agency to see about prepaid passes and other methods of payment.
Much of Australia is still what early America was like several decades ago — rugged with non-paved roads. Guide books caution about passing Outback “road trains.” These are huge trucks pulling three and four trailers. That’s how remote regions of the nation get their supplies.
It might take a while to learn about their games, which are mainly Old World — cricket, soccer and rugby. They also play and watch basketball, baseball, and football — they call it “gridiron” — but the national passion each fall and winter is Australian Rules Football. It’s a cross between rugby and soccer with just enough gridiron tossed in to create an exciting contact sport the locals call “Footy.”
Mature Life Features, Copyright 2003
Saving a Buck Here and There Adds Up
By Cecil Scaglione
Mature Life Features
Every so often, Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine publishes lists of such need-to-know topics as how to keep more cash, invest $1,000, or retire as a millionaire without having $1 million. Among the most prevalent pieces of advice is how to get out of debt. You start by paying off all credit cards and then shopping around for cards with lower interest rates. You might consider a no-points home-equity line of credit to pay off those cards and then pay off the loan, which should be at a much lower interest rate than the credit-card debt.
Opportunities to save around the house are legion: switch to flourescent light bulbs, turn down the thermostat on your water heater, unplug that old refrigerator in the basement or garage, and install low-water-use shower heads and faucets. You can make a buck or two by holding an on-line yard sale.
Review your insurance premiums. Get rid of mortgage insurance if you don’t need it. Shop around to see if consolidating your auto and property coverage will cut down on premium costs.
Clip coupons for shopping and buy store brands as well as generic drugs. You can save a lot of money by buying a used car rather than new one. The higher the price of a new car, the more you save on a used model.
Also add to your assets by consolidating your investment portfolio to avoid multiple management fees. Tax breaks are available in the form of medical expenses, charitable donations, and mileage deduction for volunteer work. Don’t forget to deduct business expenses if you do any type of work or business out of your home. This includes phone bills, dues for professional memberships, and subscriptions, stationery, computer equipment, and postage.
Bear markets are an excellent time to make investments because stock prices are low. Lean times are good times to fatten your portfolio. Remember the first rule of business and investing: buy low, sell high. You also can invest small amounts of cash in items that you think might appreciate – wine, Persian rugs, or other collectibles-to-be.
Consider investing some time and money expert economic advice. Have a financial planner review your investments and prepare an opinion for you on which direction you should follow.
Mature Life Features, Copyright 2003
Movin’ Madness ‘n’ Manners
By Cecil Scaglione
Mature Life Features
The next person requesting assistance for a move will have to speak with my attorney. Everything in, on and around me hurts from dragging boxes, lifting furniture, climbing stairs, jumping off trailers, dodging characters carrying stuff, and just trying to stay alive. The soft warm rain we had Wednesday made the entire week survivable. As an aside, on our way to Phoenix, the saguaros that began appearing alongside Highway 8 east of Gila Bend looked scrawny and scorched. On our return trip to our soft and comfortable beds, they appeared saucy and sated and green with the water soaked up during the week’s storms.
Having moved into a half dozen homes during my married-with-kids period, several rules and reminders popped up as we transferred a household acquired by two adults and two youngsters over the past decade.
1 – If you’re not carrying anything, get out of the way.
2 – If you are carrying something:
don’t drop it
don’t bang the walls with it, especially in the “new” house
don’t leave it sitting in the middle of the floor — get it out of the way
3 – Make sure relatives, friends and neighbors who volunteer to help show up.
4 – Make sure they show up on time.
5 – Start early; moving stuff after dark is boring, tiring and unnecessary…
6 – … unless you’re moving in the desert, in which case you should start early, take off for siesta during the heat of the afternoon, and resume in the cool of the evening.
7 – Move ALL the big stuff first (see No. 8).
8 – The exception is COMPUTERS. Get them up ‘n’ runnin’ asap.
9 –Stay out of discussions on where things should go – “put the dining table there, the big mirror on that wall, the entertainment center in this room, etc” Let the moving family square up on that stuff.
10 – Before moving, measure all your beds and dressers and appliances and furniture to see if they will fit where you would like to put them. (e.g. The fridge hole in the new house was almost a quarter-inch too small for the fridge being moved. It had to be squished into its stall. A sofa set was too large and bulky for the site the family selected originally so it had to be taken back down the stairs it was laboriously manhandled up and replaced by a less formidable sectional set.
11 – Don’t forget the moving dolly at the “new” house because you need it to manhandle stuff onto the trailer or truck (or moving vehicle) at the old house.
12 – Plug in a fridge at the new house to cool water, lemonade, beer and other refreshments to make the experience more bearable.
13 –Pack a toothbrush in your pocket so you can handle that chore on the first night and morning in the new house without having to scramble through piles of boxes, bags and bins to find it.
These rules apply primarily to short moves done by families and relatives and friends and neighbors who know nothing about moving and for which moving vans and moving people have not been hired.
Still Sizzlin’
Made it Monday through the heat accompanied by dozens and dozens of sand spouts that erupted about mid-way between Yuma and Gila Bend and kept decorating the landscape right into the southern portion of metro Phoenix. We even drove through one that danced onto Highway 8. Fortunately it was a baby but it did “whump” the Highlander a good one.
Moved the kitchen fridge with a dolly onto a trailer and to the new home right after our arrival. It had to be squeezed into the fridge space created by the kitchen designers. We creased the fridge but didn’t break it or jeopardize its integrity and operation.
Tuesday was up-and-down-stairs day with sectional sofas, an exercise anyone who’s moved that type of furniture will readily ID with. And you’ll also recall that sectional furniture — just like refrigerators — fits best only into the first place it was purchased for. After squeezing the massive three-section corner sofa/sleeper out of the old house and into the new house, it was decided (after a lengthy committee meeting) that it would fit and feel best upstairs in the new house. So that’s where it is now. It took with it several thousand calories, a few quarts of sweat, an aching arm, and a dead shoulder .
Most of the kitchen cupboards have been cleared in the old house and filled in the new. Next come beds and computer furniture and nits and gnats. The old house has to be ready Thursday for a week-end real estate open house. Wish us luck.
MTK
This is crazy!
It’s one thing to take pride in not following the crowd but it’s stupid to head into a burning building just because everybody is running the other way. So we announce with profound pride — and substantial stupidity — that we’re going against the flow.
We’re leaving our pleasant Pacific Ocean-cooled community to spend the week of the frying Fourth in Phoenix at a time when the cosmic collective has known for decades that ‘Zonies have been escaping the Hades heat of Arizona by flocking to California beaches since wheels were round.
We’re dashing headlong into the Valley of the Sun to help kids and grandkids move into a new home. The mission is meaningful, but the brain boggles just visualizing heat waves shimmering off the simmering stuff being toted from one set of closets to another.
There is some good news: the new place has a pool and it’s filled with fresh water.
MTK
Slip, Slop, Slappin’ Your Sun Tan
By Cecil Scaglione
Mature Life Features
As long as a tan is considered cool, the risk of contracting skin cancer will continue.
More than 1 million new cases of skin cancer are diagnosed annually. Malignant melanoma, which is easily preventable by wearing sun-protective clothing, using sun screen and seeking shade, will kill some 7,500 Americans this year. While melanoma accounts for only 5 percent of skin cancer cases, it causes 80 percent of skin-cancer deaths.
Social acceptance — indeed, favor — of tanning is at fault, said Dr. Martin Weinstock, chairman of the American Cancer Society’s skin-cancer advisory group. More than half the population believes people look better with a tan.
“A hundred years ago it was a very unfashionable thing,” Weinstock said. “It signified that you were the type of person who had to work for a living, usually out in the field under the sun. People who owned farms and big plantations could spend the day inside.” Industrialization changed all that, as workers moved inside large manufacturing plants and the wealthy began lolling along tropical beaches. So tans became a fashionable sign of leisure.
That image must be changed and Weinstock thinks there are signs of a pendulum swing. A tan is evidence that your skin has been damaged and this damage accumulates with each tan. “Unfortunately, a lot of people simply do not use sun screen correctly. One of the findings in a survey we did was that a lot of people, when they got the worst sunburn of the summer, were using a sun screen of SPF (sun protection factor) 15 or greater. If someone goes to the beach, plays a couple of games of volleyball and then says, ‘My skin is turning red, I’d better put on some sun screen,’ well, obviously that’s too late. Most of the damage has already been done.”
Added problems are that too little sun screen is used or it may be washed off by sweat or swimming. An SPF of 30 or greater is Weinstock’s recommendation. He also emphasizes that “it’s not the tan that’s the problem; it’s the ultraviolet radiation used to get a tan. ” What causes the problem is the ultraviolet radiation from the sun that triggers a reaction in pigment-producing skin cells to produce a browner color in the skin. This same radiation “causes damage in the DNA of skin cells as well as other types of damage to the skin, and that is what has been related to the risk of skin cancer” as well as premature aging of the skin.
There are two reasons tanning salons are not safe, even though they may advertise that they use innocuous UVA radiation and not the UVB that causes sunburn. First of all, UVA is not totally harmless. Secondly, most tanning booths give users some UVB also.
If you use an artificial tanner – tan in a bottle – it probably will give you a tan in color only. “They don’t protect you against sun exposure,” he said. ” They don’t protect against ultraviolet light.”
“We have a slogan at the American Cancer Society. ‘Slip, Slop, Slap:’ slip on a shirt, slop on sun screen, slap on a hat. “
Mature Life Features, Copyright 2003
I have much better things to do …
… than to purchase a papered pooch to promenade proudly around the neighborhood to watch it poop.
— Cecil Scaglione, Mature Life Features
Doctor, Dentist Visits Quell Smoking
By James Gaffney
Mature Life Features
If you see your doctor and dentist on a regular basis, you’re more likely to quit smoking and to remain a non-smoker, according to a study published in the Journal of Gerontology: Medical Sciences.
“Having a regular physician and seeing a physician recently seems to have an important association with whether or not an older patient is a current smoker,” according to Mark S. Kaplan and Jason T. Newsom of Portland State University and Bentson H. McFarland of the Oregon Health & Science University. “Older adults’ contacts with physicians and dentists are strongly negatively associated with smoking among older adults.”
Kaplan and his colleagues base their conclusion on a study of one of the largest samples of older adults in which correlations of late-life smoking have been investigated. The sample also included one of the largest arrays of social and demographic variables as predictors of smoking behavior. The analysis is based on data from the Canadian National Population Health Survey conducted by Statistics Canada of 73,402 households across Canada. Kaplan and his associates used the health files of 13,363 persons aged 65 and older who had complete data.
In the study, 15 percent were current smokers, 41 percent were former smokers, and 44 percent never smoked. The majority of older smokers had not visited a dentist in more than five years. More specifically, individuals without a regular physician and with infrequent physical and dental checkups were more likely to be smokers.
Kaplan and his associates hope the study will help guide physicians and dentists when they see older patients. “Although physicians have a unique opportunity to intervene when their patients need help to quit smoking, previous studies have shown that fewer than half ask their patients about tobacco use,” he said. While dentists are more likely than physicians “to estimate their patients’ tobacco use accurately, they were less likely to assess and intervene, and less supportive of tobacco cessation, according to prior studies,” said Kaplan.
“Given the frequency of dental-care among older smokers, communication and cooperation between physicians and dentists are of crucial importance with respect to the management of late-life smoking.”
Mature Life Features, Copyright 2003
Baltimore Crab Lovers Take the Cake
By Beverly Rahn Scaglione
Mature Life Features
Baltimore’s Washington Square
— Cecil Scaglione photo
BALTIMORE — It was time to test the proclamation that this town on the Patapsco River is the “Crab Cake Capital of the Continent.” We’d sampled crab cakes over the years prepared in kitchens throughout Pennsylvania, New York, Louisiana, California, Washington and Virginia, to mention a few. Our only rule was: eschew any that involved the “F” word – frozen.
We set up our command post in the Peabody Court Hotel perched on the edge of Washington Square, the platform for the nation’s first official monument to our first president that caps the tony Mount Vernon District. You can climb the 228 steps inside the 178-foot white marble memorial for $1. It was built in 1829 by Robert Mills, the same man who a couple of decades later designed the D.C. obelisk honoring Washington.
We strolled south past sauces and scents of the world emanating from restaurants along a dozen blocks of Charles Street leading to the waterfront’s inner harbor. We initiated our crab-cake mission at Phillips Harborplace restaurant. This outlet is part of the family firm that opened its first dining room in 1956 and currently makes more than 100,000 crab cakes a day for distribution around the globe.
As we munched on the signature miniature crab cakes and a soft-shell-crab sandwich, our server explained that the key to these seafood succulents is simple: “They’re 98 percent crab meat and prepared with tender loving care.”
Back at our hotel, we crossed the square to Mount Vernon Place Methodist Church to read the wall-mounted plaque commemorating it as the site of Francis Scott Key’s death. As we ambled back to the hotel, a relaxing resident hailed us from the stoop of his townhouse and, after opening courtesies, said Phillips’ crab cakes were atop his list. He also referred us to Little Italy, eight inner-city square blocks that boast more than two dozen restaurants.
“I’ve never had a bad meal in Little Italy,” he said. He just finds a restaurant that isn’t busy “and get served well because the competition is so keen.” We decided to try the crab cakes at Aldo’s restaurant, which he and others recommended highly. It was our first jumbo-lump kind. No one worth their crab-cake credentials will settle for less. Every crab has two large cartilage-free muscles, one on each side, that power and propel their rear fins. These are used for the top-of-the-line jumbo-lump crab cakes.
The next morning, we trundled back down to the bayfront where the tall ship USS Constellation – America’s last all-sail warship – anchors the revitalized harbor. We hopped onto one of the water taxis that depot there.
Our first stop was Tide Point, where we boarded a jitney to Fort McHenry, the inspiration for our national anthem. The garrison at this fort three miles from the city’s commercial core rebuffed an attack by the British fleet in September 1814. The 25-hour siege was witnessed by a young attorney named Francis Scott Key. When he saw the 32-foot U.S. banner still blowing in the wind behind the fort’s cannons after the British departed, he wrote a poem called “The Defense of Fort McHenry.” The words later were tacked onto the melody of a bawdy British beer-drinking ballad and became “The Star Spangled Banner.”
Back at Harborplace, we followed the red-brick road that wraps around the inlet past the National Aquarium and Maryland Science Center to get to the Rusty Scupper in our pursuit of crab-cake perfection. The crab cakes there were tanged with sweet mustard. As magnificent as these were, we had saved the best for our last day.
The unchallenged “Queen of Crab Cakes” works daily at the Lexington Market, which hasn’t closed its doors since 1792. This longest continuously operating market in the country is a 15-minute walk from the Peabody, but we toook a 10-minute detour through the Westminster Church burial grounds. Edgar Alan Poe’s grave is marked here by a concrete stone carved with a black bird and one of the writer’s most famous lines – “Quoth the Raven, ‘Nevermore.'”
As we entered Lexington Market, Bill Devine was behind Faidley’s crustacean counter, which also sells muskrat and racoon during season. He introduced us to his wife, Nancy, whose grandfather opened the seafood stand in 1886. She was delighted to discuss her crab cakes. “Boiling takes the flavor and fat out of crabs,” she said, “so we steam them, or broil them. But my crab cakes are designed to be fried. That gives them the crusty exterior and moist interior. Fry them like a steak – very hot – to seal in the juices and flavors.” She said she makes the traditional claw-meat crab cakes as well as jumbo-lump.
“It takes about 24 crabs to make one pound of jumbo-lump crab meat. Each crab cake uses about six or seven ounces – whatever my hands can hold. They’re bigger than a baseball but smaller than a softball.”
The rest is Tender Loving Care. The results are Cosmic Crustacean Cuisine. And a new crab-cake rule: eschew them all until we return to Baltimore.
Mature Life Features, Copyright 2004
Mature Life Features 