Helpful Ways to Hold Down Your Heating Bill This Winter

The #1 way to keep your heating costs under control is to discover places in your home where air from the outside can easily make its way inside and fix them. That includes caulking and weather-stripping doors and windows. If you have a fireplace, keep the flue closed when you’re not using it.

Many area power companies offer free energy audits. They’ll inspect your home, alert you to any problem areas and suggest ways you can resolve them.

Make sure your HVAC system gets regular seasonal check-ups. This includes changing out the air filters in the system. Older, dirty filters can reduce your energy efficiency significantly.

Consider a programmable thermostat. With one, you can drop your homes temperature by 7 to 10 degrees at night while you’re snug beneath the covers, gaining as much as a 10% savings on your heating bill.

Medical experts agree there are things you can do to make sure your immune system is at peak performance during the coming flu & cold season. (Not to mention, the always presents threat of another bout of COVID.)

A Good Night’s Sleep – Getting a good 6 hours or more of sleep each day can reduce your risk of catching a cold by a factor of 4.

A Little Sunshine – Spending some time in the sun stimulates the production of vitamin D, which in turn, increases your protection against the flu and respiratory illness.

A Bit of Hugging – While the contact created by hugs can increase the chance of infection, studies have shown those who hug frequently experience less severe symptoms should they contract something because hugs reduce stress levels in the body, improving your disease-fighting capability.

A Diet Filled with Fruit & Veggies – Those on low-carb, high-protein diets are more likely to develop moderate to severe COVID infections compared to those who eat more fruit, vegetables and whole grains.

For a lot of male Baby Boomers, our first celebrity crush may have been Hayley Mills, who appeared in a string of very successful Walt Disney pictures during her adolescence

She's aged pretty well, hasn't she?

If you want to remain mobile for the rest of your life, make you’re staying mobile now! Experts recommend that you have your body in motion at least 30 minutes a day. Studies have shown that can do you more good than a weekly gym session. If you can hit that goal every day, at least try to rack up up 150 minutes in motion a week.

Backpacks? We don't need no stinkin' backpacks!

We’re carrying less cash these days. That means we’re actually relying on our bank more than ever. Still working? Receiving Social Security? That money goes directly into your bank account. Most of us are also paying our bill through the bank or other forms of online payments, so you need to ensure your bank is working for you.

Most banks charge a monthly maintenance fee. The average is $12/month. You may be able to get that fee waived if you keep a minimum balance (the average minimum balance for fees to be waived is $540). If you’re paying more than that, you may want to look for a new bank or talk with current bank about other types of accounts they may have that would lower or eliminate your fees.

The mayor of Margaritaville, Jimmy Buffett has passed away at the age of 76 of unspecified causes.

While Jimmy had only one song reach the U.S. Top 10 (the aforementioned “Magaritaville”), he enjoyed considerable success with his long players, becoming a staple of album rock radio stations from the mid-seventies through the mid-eighties.

He also developed a substantial following of perpetual concert vagabonds, similar to the Grateful Dead, known as Parrotheads, who followed him from show to show. Most youngsters probably know him for the successful string of Magaritaville restaurants that now dot the landscape.

When we first moved to Florida (lo, those many years ago), we learned you could not consider yourself a true Floridian until you had seen Buffet perform live at least once.

We had that privilege a little over a year later when he was on the bill of one of the first, legendary "Rock Superbowls," held at Orlando's Citrus Bowl stadium. The previous act had been plagued by a typical summer thunderstorm (Hall & Oates, who nevertheless persevered, turning in a killer set of their own). But the rain stopped moments before Buffett took the stage. It remained sunny for his entire set. Once he left the stage, the rains returned. You may take that for whatever sort of omen you wish.

It sort of sad that "Margaritaville" overshadowed the rest of his output because he produced a great, substantial body of work. But then again, without "Magaritaville," would we even have Yacht Rock?

Do we even have to say that we will miss him and that his music will live on here at Boomtown America?

Baby Boomers were not just the first generation to grow up with television, we were first to experience the magic of Saturday mornings. Back in those dark days of no cable and no home video, TV programming aimed at kids aired for only about one hour before school in the morning and maybe another hour after we came home from school.

But on Saturday mornings, there were at least 4 hours of uninterrupted programming aimed just at us! If you were fortunate to grow up in a big city, you had your choice of three network affiliates and at least 1 UHF station. In smaller towns, you had a minimum of one station that would dedicate its Saturday mornings to pleasing us kiddies.

Because made-for-TV cartoons were in their infancy, the networks were often broadcasting older (and better) theatrical cartoons like Bugs Bunny and Mighty Mouse. Local stations also broadcast theatrical fare like Popeye and the earlier black & white Looney Tunes. As there weren’t any reruns of older children’s shows, there was also a huge market for first-run syndicated kid-vid like The Adventures of Superman and Sgt. Preston of the Yukon.

Westerns had been popular with kids during the 1930s and 40s, so with the advent of television, most of the gun-totin’ he-men who rode the range of the Saturday matinee (and their trusty stallions) made the jump to TV including Roy Rogers, Gene Autry and Hopalong Cassidy. But those hombres all were outstripped by a buckaroo who came from radio to TV – the Lone Ranger. Starting in 1949 and running for years and years after, the Lone Ranger’s TV adventures helped ABC establish their Saturday morning line-up.

The rise of 24/7 children’s channels on cable TV along with home video and now, on-demand streaming content from the likes of Disney and others, have made the ritual of Saturday mornings a thing of the past.

But if you’re feeling nostalgic, next Saturday, get up at the crack of dawn, pour yourself a big bowl of Sugar Smacks or Cap’n Crunch, plop yourself down in front of your TV and pop in a DVD on any of your favorites of yesteryear – they’re nearly all available in some form or other.

Hi-Yo Silver, awaaaaaaaay!

Robbie Robertson, who rose to fame as the principal songwriter and often spokesperson for the Band has passed away after a long illness at the age of 80.

Robertson was born in Toronto, Ontario in 1943. Late in life he learned that his biological father had dies in a highway accident while his mother was pregnant with Robbie. She married James Robertson before he was born, so Robbie never questioned who his father might be.

At the age of 16, Robertson joined Ronnie Hawkins’ back-up band, the Hawks. Five years later, in 1964, the Hawks would strike out on their own. Consisting of Robertson, Levon Helms, Rick Danko, Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson, the band became Bob Dylan’s back-up during his first, very tumultuous tour as a rock & roll act – often playing before hostile crowds of heckling folkies.

When Dylan wrapped up that tour and sustained his infamous motorcycle accident, the Hawks holed up near Dylan at a house in Woodstock, New York in 1967, working on recordings with him that have since become known as “The Basement Tapes.”

The group finally decided to change their name to the Band and became extremely successful with their first two albums for Capitol Records – “Music from Big Pink” and “The Band.” Robertson’s songwriting was essential to the band’s success. He wrote most of their big hits, including “The Weight,” “Up on Cripple Creek,” “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” and more.

Drug use and personal problems led the Band to call it quits in 1976. But not before their farewell concert in San Francisco’s Winterland was filmed by Martin Scorsese and released as The Last Waltz. That event produced a lasting friendship and professional relationship between the director and Robertson. Robbie has served as musical director on Scorsese’s Raging Bull, The King of Comedy, The Color of Money, Gangs of New York, The Departed, Shutter Island, The Wolf of Wall Street, Silence, The Irishman and the forthcoming Killers of the Flower Moon.

Robertson was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame along with the rest of the Band in 1994. He received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Songwriters in 1997.