Well Said!

Too many young people are resenting Boomers, claiming that Boomers had it " easy " financially in their youth. Here are a few fun facts about growing up Boomer. 

1. Almost everyone grew up with one bathroom. Mom, Dad and all 3-6 siblings. 

2. If you did get to take a vacation, you drove. With no air conditioning. No cup holders. No iPads. Just black vinyl seats and bologna sandwiches.

3. There were no club sports. No Parks and Rec activities. Summer camp was for rich kids. Get yourself a bike, a stick and a few friends. If you were bored, you laid in the grass and looked at clouds. 

4. You ate what was served. Even if it was chicken livers.  No DoorDash, no backup Totino's rolls.

5. No AP classes, no PSEO, no "fun" elective. They assigned you to a class. You went. You did what they asked. Or else.

6. Unless you had rich parents, you had a nice VFW wedding. Maybe rent a room at a modest hotel. 

7. Most Boomers got their first pedi and mani in their 50s (when their feet got farther away). We didn't even know people got massages in real life, only in Hollywood.

8. You packed your own lunch for decades.

9. No one knew what red light therapy was, a facial, a spa day, or a cold plunge. Your gym was the YMCA. Usually in a rather old building.

10. We grew up with 18 percent inflation, 14 percent mortgage rates, 3 million continuing unemployment claims, and 200 other applicants competing for the same job.

Now, this is not to say Millenials and Gen Z have it easy or don't face problems. It's just to say, nobody has it easy or doesn't face problems. 

My only hope, as my mom would say, is I live long enough to see my kids' kids complain about how easy they had it! 

Weekend Roundup

  Welcome to The Weekend Roundup...hosted by Tom The Back Roads Traveler

1. Starts with "N"

2. A Favorite

3. NUMBER - Chosen by Tom

Starts with N 

NOTES Hanoi Vietnam

FAVOURITE

The sign lists "Orange Juice" (NHƯ HUỲNH), "Pho" (NHƯ PHỞ), and "Nail Box" (GỘI ĐẦU NAIL BOX - note: "Gội đầu" means shampoo/hair wash, though the focus here is juice and nails).

CanTho Vietnam - delicious orange juice!

NUMBER

Roman NUMERALS at University of Toronto sundial

Video - Oahu, Hawaii

Our video from 2009 trip to Hawaii

There We Are Then

 

KikKat 2.0

 KikKat 1.0

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Signs

 Joining Tom at Signs2

Wordless Wednesday Wordless

 March 2026 - Toronto ON

I did a post on the Mercer Women's Reformatory this week, and I came across this photo in my archives.

A.R. Williams was born Alfred Ruggles Williams in 1848, in Troy, Pennsylvania. He came to Canada sometime in the 1860’s.

In Liberty Village, the faded “A.R. Williams Machinery Company” ghost sign can still be seen on a building that incorporates part of the former Central Prison’s woodworking and ironworking shop. After purchasing the property from the decommissioned men’s prison, company founder A.R. Williams hired prominent theatre architects Kaplan and Sprachman to design a new warehouse on the site. Williams remained president of the company until his death at age 79 in May 1917.

The Hidden History of 1800s Prisons in Liberty Village is great reading!!!

Women's History

 

Before there was a President Vigdís, there was a strike.

On October 24, 1975, approximately 90 percent of Iceland's women walked off their jobs — every job, paid and unpaid — and gathered in the streets. No cooking. No childcare. No office work. No factory shifts. The country ground to a halt in a single day, and the men of Iceland were left to manage their own children, their own meals, and their own realization of exactly how much work women were actually doing.

The Women's Strike of 1975 didn't just make headlines. It planted a seed.

In the years that followed, Icelandic women began asking a question: if women hold up this country, why shouldn't a woman lead it?

The answer they settled on was a theatre director named Vigdís Finnbogadóttir.

Vigdís had spent years turning the Reykjavík Theatre Company into one of the most celebrated cultural institutions in Iceland. She had taught French on national television. She was known for her intelligence, her composure, and her deep love of Icelandic language and heritage. She was also a divorced single mother — she had adopted a daughter — and she had undergone a mastectomy for breast cancer.

When women's organizations approached her about running for president in 1980, she agreed — not because she expected to win, but because she believed it was important to prove that women could lead political campaigns.

The questions she faced on the campaign trail were something else.

How could she govern as a single mother? Would she be distracted by childcare? Was she — one journalist actually asked — a virgin? And would having had a mastectomy, would having, literally, one breast — affect her fitness to serve?

She answered every question. Calmly. With humor. With the quiet authority of someone who had decided that the question itself revealed far more about the questioner than any answer could reveal about her.

On June 29, 1980, Vigdís Finnbogadóttir won Iceland's presidential election in a four-way race, prevailing with 33.6% of the vote Wikipedia — a plurality, not a majority, but enough. She had not expected to win.

On August 1, 1980, she was sworn in as the fourth President of Iceland — and the first woman in the history of democracy to be elected head of state of any country in the world.

She served for 16 years. She was re-elected without opposition in the 1984 presidential election Wikipedia, ran unopposed again in 1992, and in 1988 won her only contested re-election with nearly 95 percent of the vote. She used her presidency to champion Icelandic language and cultural heritage, to advocate for the environment, and to represent her nation with a dignity and warmth that made her one of the most beloved heads of state in Icelandic history.

In 1986, she hosted the historic Reykjavík Summit between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev — a meeting widely credited with beginning the end of the Cold War.

She retired in 1996, having served the longest tenure of any elected female head of state in history. In the years since, she has continued working on behalf of languages, human rights, and women's empowerment around the world.

She is still alive, now 95 years old, and still speaking.

Her personal motto, throughout all of it, has been reported to be simple: "Never let the women down."

She lived by it.