There are days like yesterday and today where, despite lousy night sleeps because of the heat (wave 30 c +), I have woken up with boundless energy.

Honestly, I’m not sure which is worse. The tired days I don’t accomplish much but I feel human the next day. High energy days I accomplish amazing amounts of work. Today and yesterday I trimmed and mowed three acres of our farm, cared for our horses, and more. Tomorrow I won’t be able to get much done and I’ll feel bad.

Guess its an endless catch 22. Everything comes with a price.

New adviser has a long history on the other side of the city council table
By: Darren MacDonald – Sudbury Northern Life

Journalism allows reporters a level of independence most workers don’t enjoy. You can argue regularly with your boss, the people you cover don’t have to like you, but as long as the stories are good, you’re golden.

Not so in the world of public relations, a popular choice for former journalists looking for better pay and new challenges. Managing the message and keeping the boss happy is the priority. Instead of looking for the manila envelope with details of a scandal, you live in dread of such leaks, which can reflect badly on the people for whom you work.

The transition from watchdog to keeper of secrets, I would think, must be difficult. In recent years I’ve seen many talented journalists cross the floor, so to speak – former colleagues at Sun Media, such as Denis St. Pierre and Lara Bradley; Dan Lessard and Conway Fraser, both of CBC; and, very recently, Todd Robson, of CTV.

And so it was with mixed feelings June 12 that I looked across city council chambers to see another longtime colleague and friend take up his new position at the city.

Mike Whitehouse, a fiercely independent, award-winning journalist who has drawn fire from many municipal politicians over the years, is now working for Mayor Marianne Matichuk, as her communications and media adviser.

I worked with him at Northern Life years ago and, more recently, at Sun Media’s newspaper in Sudbury, where he earned Ontario Newspaper Awards for his city council coverage, as well as a National Newspaper Award nomination for his work uncovering scandal at Sudbury Transit.

He’s uniquely qualified for the post, considering not only his background covering city hall, but the fact he studied city planning at university before making the switch to journalism. So, I asked him, what’s it like on the other side?

“It’s been quite an adjustment,” he said. “It’s only been two days, but there are times that I feel like I’m Daniel in a den of lions.

“But it has been really, really exciting. Journalism, you know what it’s like. There’s a lot of stop and start, stop and start. You work really hard for a while, and then not so hard for a while. Here it’s just, go, go, go, go.”

This isn’t the first news story about his transition. A local TV station ran a story that insisted Matichuk was breaking her own hiring policy. Whitehouse, who has a two-year contract, denies this, saying the attrition policy doesn’t ban all hiring at city hall, and he certainly isn’t the first person hired since the policy came into effect.

“The mayor’s office has a budget for four people. She’s had three … since someone retired at Christmas,” he said. “I think she felt constrained and short-handed not having someone in this role all this time … The work that needed to get done, wasn’t getting done, and she recognized that.”

The TV report also infamously ran a photo of a Mike Whitehouse, but it wasn’t the Sudbury version. It was of a candidate for local government in England.

Showing off his wry sense of humour, his Facebook site has a photo album entitled “Will the real Mike Whitehouse please stand up?” containing several pictures of other Mike Whitehouses of the world he’s found on Google.

He’ll need that sense of humour, I suspect, as he tries to convey Matichuk’s message to city council and the public. He was often at odds with some councillors while he was a reporter, but that was then. So far, so good, he says, when it comes to building relations with them.

“I’ve talked to a handful,” he said June 12. “And it’s all been positive so far.”

Ward 8 Coun. Fabio Belli said he expects Whitehouse can be an asset to the mayor, given his background in newspapers and city planning.

“Mike is very good at what he does,” Belli said. “And he comes into the job with some impressive credentials.”

He said improving communications at all levels is priority for the city and Whitehouse can be a “big factor” in that process.

Ward 9 Coun. Doug Craig also supports the hiring.

“I’ve known Mike for a very long time, and he’s always been very good at his job,” Craig said June 15. “His skills will only enhance the work of the mayor’s office.”

Whitehouse said his duties are limited in scope, focused on getting the mayor’s message out, not on crafting policy.

“No,” he said. “The mayor is very much her own person. She has a pretty clear idea of what she wants to do, and how she wants to do it.

“So I’m dealing with media inquiries, writing press releases, attending (Matichuk’s) public engagements, her speeches, briefing notes. And every now and then, giving advice.”

He said he sees areas where communication can be improved, and is anxious to get going.

“I think there are a lot of opportunities for the city to communicate better – within city staff, and the community at large,” he said. “I can just speak for the mayor’s office, and I think she recognizes that her communication with the media has not been perfect, simply because she has been short-staffed. That will change.”

But at the end of the day, it’s Matichuk who is setting the course, he said.

“She is the CEO of the city, and she is doing it the way she wants it.”

So what was he feeling, I asked him, as he looked over at the media table, no longer part of that fraternity?

“Equal measures of regret and relief,” he said, after thinking for a moment. “Regret because I enjoyed sitting there. You had nothing invested, you were just an observer. It was like watching something at home on TV.

“And relief because, when the meeting’s over, I get to go home, at least on some days. Whereas you guys all have to get writing.”

Posted by Arron Pickard

Warren Country Fair

Complete with parade, food stands and pony rides for the children. Learn how to milk a cow!!!!!!!!!

After working with the police for 29 years, I know how much they cover up.

Well the signifigant other did it to me again, just moved the last batch of chicks out and low and behold she moved a new batch in.
This cycle isn’t likely to end soon since I believe she has another 30 eggs in the incubator, downstairs.
The newest additions are 7 dark  and 15 lights peeps.

I swear this raising chickens has escalated to an addiction.

The parents are Red Sex Link hens bred by our two roosters, which we recently obtained. I’m told they are Rhonde Island Red x Polish.

June Chicks

Its the little things that count.

Personally, all I need from my family is a well chosen card. Other appreciated acts are breakfast in bed, an offer to cut the lawn or wash the car.

We dads love our children and just appreciate a reminder that the feelings are reciprocated.

@cdndadonline

This is an article from the Northern Life.

Greater Sudbury is dead last among Canada’s 30 biggest cities when it comes to people’s satisfaction with municipal services, a new survey has concluded.

Only six per cent of respondents said they were very satisfied with the services they receive from the city. By comparison, in Quebec City, which topped the survey in most categories, 52 per cent of residents said they were very satisfied. And the trending is bad for Sudbury: the Nickel Capital was second from the bottom in 2011, when 12 per cent of respondents said they were very happy, meaning a drop of six per cent in just a year.

“I think Sudbury needs to take a hard look at the way it’s doing things,” said Dr. Lorne Bozinoff, president of Forum Research Inc., which conducted the survey.

This is the second year the company has conducted the survey, which Bozinoff said is done for their own information, and isn’t sponsored by any of Forum’s clients. The company conducts about 600,000 surveys a year for the private sector, as well as federal and provincial governments. The company employs 1,000 people, and conducts surveys in several languages.

Forum talked to people in Canada’s largest 30 cities, asking them their overall rates of satisfaction with their municipal government, as well as their thoughts on specific services, such as fire, police, taxation, etc. With the exception of roads and snowplowing, Sudbury came close to most cities in terms of overall satisfaction, although still near the bottom in most categories.

What that indicates, Bozinoff said, is that the results don’t mean municipal services are necessarily bad. Instead, there is something bothering Sudburians about their local government.

“Public opinion is always subjective,” he said. “And in most of the categories, Sudbury isn’t that far off the average.”

City council, past and present, has faced a barrage of negative coverage that began in 2008 when it was learned that councillors scooped up dozens of Elton John tickets for themselves before they went on sale to the public.

Other scandals followed, including delays rebuilding at Pioneer Manor following a major fire, and the sale of the former St. Joseph’s Health Centre, located next to the politically sensitive Bell Park, which was complete before the public and city councillors knew what was going on.

More recently, the city called in police to investigate when it was learned a vendor in charge of selling Sudbury Transit tickets continued to be paid, even though he failed to remit revenue from the sale of those tickets. By the time the contract was cancelled, the contractor owed the city more than $1 million.

Bozinoff said such scandals can play a huge role in the way the city is viewed by the public, and can skewer its perceptions of city services.
“Absolutely,” he said. “There does seem to be something bothering people there that we’re not asking them.”

A spokesperson in Mayor Marianne Matichuk’s office said she wouldn’t be available to comment on the survey until June 11, but Ward 7 Coun. Dave Kilgrour said he wasn’t surprised to hear people are unhappy.

“People are very dissatisfied,” Kilgour said. “I don’t think we deserve a six-per-cent rating … but I do think we need to be more honest and upfront with people.”

He’s frustrated with the way stories are handled, and said the city always seems to be reacting rather than getting out in front of negative stories. However, some criticisms are unfair, he said.

For example, the most complaints he has received this year came after the last major snowstorm in March. While snowplowing will never be perfect, he said the city plows a huge city geographically, with the population thinly spread out across a wide area.

“If we provided snowplowing services that everyone wants, not a person in this city would be able to afford their taxes,” Kilgour said.

And problems with infrastructure – not just roads, he said, but water pipes, bridge repairs, etc – is a huge challenge beyond the city’s ability to pay. Estimates of how much it would cost to fix the problem exceed $500 million.

“Our infrastructure is bad,” he said.

Ward 12 Coun. Joscelyne Landry-Altman was taken aback by the survey, and said she wanted to examine it closely for herself before commenting on it at length. However, she said she’s not hearing anywhere near that level of dissatisfaction from residents in her ward.

“I do hear complaints,” she said. “But it’s usually from the same 10 people … So I don’t know what to say, really, without reading the survey for myself. There could be a lot of variables at play here.”

The poll was conducted by Forum Research, with the results based on an interactive voice response telephone survey of 12,319 randomly selected residents aged 18 or older in Canada’s 30 biggest cities. The poll was conducted from May 16-27 of this year. Results based on the total sample are considered accurate within 0.88 per cent, 19 times out of 20. The full report is available online at forumresearch.com.

Sudbury ranked at the bottom in terms of satisfaction when it comes to fire services (57 per cent, compared with Sherbrooke, Que., where 81 per cent are very satisfied); ambulance and emergency services (43 per cent for both, compared to Sherbrooke and Quebec City, at 65 and 63 per cent respectively); garbage collection (37 per cent, compared with Quebec City, at 67 per cent); public health services (14 per cent, compared to 39 per cent for Quebec City); and parks and recreation services (19 per cent, compared with 63 per cent in Quebec City).

Only three per cent of Sudburians are happy with road maintenance, in which Oakville, Ont., received the highest mark at 31 per cent. Only three per cent are happy with property tax levels, compared with Quebec City at 20 per cent. Satisfaction with snowplowing came in at 14 per cent in Sudbury, with Quebec City again coming first at 41 per cent.

If you enjoy applications that adds captions to your images, then you just might like the I’d Cap That iOS app, this application is rated by many as the number one app for captioning photos on iphones, ipads and ipods.

Take your everyday photos and slap hilarious captions on them. You can save and share your photos. Some samples of which are posted on my blog.

The I’d Cap app serves one function, it automatically places comical, sometimes crude, captions onto your pictures. There is an age restriction of 17 to download this app.

I look over on the couch and have to wonder why a dog can plop down and, with no effort,  find instant confort, even in this position.

If we get reincarnated,  I want to be a dog like Keira. A lady of leisure.

When most men don’t know why their wives aren’t home is because they have gone out with the girls, they’ve gone shopping or they are visiting with friends.

When my spouse disappears its because she has stolen my tractor, again!
She’s building another chicken yard.
I knew there was a catch when I agreed to her buying all of those new chicks.

Is there anything that the Kobuta BX25 tractor can’t do?  It was moving manure yesterday and today it’s my wifes construction tool.