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www.insideHALTON.com · OAKVILLE BEAVER Thursday, October 13, 2011 · 6 The Oakville Beaver 467 Speers Rd., Oakville Ont. L6K 3S4 (905) 845-3824 Fax: 337-5566 Classified Advertising: 905-632-4440 Circulation: 845-9742 The Oakville Beaver is a member of the Ontario Press Council. The council is located at 80 Gould St., Suite 206, Toronto, Ont., M5B 2M7. Phone (416) 340-1981. Advertising is accepted on the condition that, in the event of a typographical error, that portion of advertising space occupied by the erroneous item, together with a reasonable allowance for signature, will not be charged for, but the balance of the advertisement will be paid for at the applicable rate. The publisher reserves the right to categorize advertisements or decline. Editorial and advertising content of the Oakville Beaver is protected by copyright. Unauthorized use is prohibited. Guest Column Discovering the joys of Twitter Jill Davis, Editor in Chief, Halton Division hey sat in a booth across from my husband and me. Before the menus had arrived both were using their BlackBerries with nary a word spoken between them. They briefly lifted their heads to order breakfast and then began texting with flourish. Okay, I tried hard not stare, but I was curious as to when they would speak to each other. Jill Davis Hubby gave me that look as if my staring was somehow impolite. Heck, these two didn't know I was watching, they weren't aware of each other let alone their surroundings. It wasn't as if they were older and, perhaps, had run out of things to say to each other. I figured they were in their early 20s and found BlackBerries an easy way to communicate with someone other than their partner. Maybe they were texting each other. Cell phones are an awesome invention and it is hard to imagine our world without constant communication. However, there needs to be cell phone etiquette. Not everyone needs to hear your conversations. Please don't yack to your kids while I am in the lineup at Fortinos. I am never sure if you are actually asking me something. If you don't know how to select a birthday card for dear old gran don't whip out your cell and repeat the contents of all the cards to the poor individual on the other end of the line. Oh, and please don't walk and text at the same time. It's dangerous. When you attend meetings, watch plays or find yourself in a group setting, you might want to switch the phone off. Give it a rest, as I am quite sure the world won't stop spinning if one of your BFFs can't speak to you for an hour or so. It might even add a little mystery to your relationship. Please don't get me wrong; I love communication in all its forms. Thanks to a few reporters, I am now addicted to Twitter. At first, being an older scribe I thought Twitter was only for people of few words or those who think it necessary to inanely Tweet they are thinking of having a coffee. But here I am into Week Two of Tweeting and finding it to be quite handy to let residents know what is happening in the community. Naturally, there is a friendly competition between staffers as to how many followers each boasts. One of the reporters, I believe, is busy rounding up relatives to add to his count. So back to this young twosome at the restaurant silently eating breakfast. They never did utter a word to each other; they let their thumbs do the talking. I turned to discuss this observation with my husband, but his face was already buried in the Star's Sports section. Some things really don't change. Jill Davis can be reached at jdavis@metroland.com or now on Twitter @ JDavis_Halton. NEIL OLIVER Vice-President and Group Publisher, Metroland West DAVID HARVEY Regional General Manager JILL DAVIS Editor in Chief DANIEL BAIRD Advertising Director RIZIERO VERTOLLI Photography Director SANDY PARE Business Manager MARK DILLS Director of Production RECOGNIZED FOR EXCELLENCE BY: Ontario Community Newspapers Association MANUEL GARCIA Production Manager CHARLENE HALL Director of Distribution SARAH MCSWEENEY Circ. Manager WEBSITE oakvillebeaver.com The Oakville Beaver is a division of T Canadian Community Newspapers Association Suburban Newspapers of America THE OAKVILLE BEAVER IS PROUD OFFICIAL MEDIA SPONSOR FOR: United Way of Oakville SUBMITTED PHOTO SALMON RUN: Emmett Serensits, 11, recently caught this Chinook salmon in Bronte Creek. Every fall, thousands of Chinook and Coho salmon make the journey from Lake Ontario up local rivers and tributaries in search of good habitat in which to spawn. Serensits revived his catch and released it to complete its life cycle. Giving g thanks to dishwasher that runs like Forrest Gump p We gathered in the dining room, hungry, happy, and thankful for our plentiful blessings ­ the fabulous family around our table and the bodacious bounty we were about to receive. But tell me, people ­ or, at least, all those who were hosting Thanksgiving and were thusly charged with the task of putting that bodacious bounty out on the table, and cleaning up afterward ­ if at the end of the day there was anything in the world you were more thankful for than your humble and tireless dishwasher? All day long, through the assorted stages of preparation, and through the night as the courses came and went, the dishwasher ran and ran. Like a mechanical Forrest Gump: "Run, Forrest, Run!" Throughout the day, as Forrest ran, I thought about my dearly departed mother, the long-time quarterback of our kitchen, and how she managed all those years without a dishwasher. She always insisted we did not need one. As Thanksgiving Day wore on, I could afford to get all misty-eyed with the reminiscence given how the onerous chore of dishwashing -- hours and hours of post-meal cleanup -- was being done by modern technology. Look, Ma: No dishpan hands. Yes, we can get all oddly thankful for strange things at Thanksgiving, everything from pilgrims to pie, from the grape growers in Niagara (or California, or Australia, or Chile) to pants with expandable waistlines. And, later in the evening, antacids. Speaking of oddities and getting misty-eyed: weather-wise, Thanksgiving weekend was a fabulous freak show. Temperatures soared into the mid-20s, and sunshine poured down from azure skies. Consider: we golfed twice, in t-shirts and shorts. We hopped on bikes and went for long rides. And every day we tore outside to happily work around the property. All in all, it was blissful, another blessing for which we could be hugely thankful. And at innumerable points in the weekend, I was taken back to warm, sunny October days in my youth, and to memories of my father who passed away 15 years ago, and who would have turned 89 on Oct. 5. My father, you see, loved autumn. He seized the season. He loved the beauty of autumn's colors. And he loved the opening of baseball playoffs. When I think of him -- and I still think of him frequently, embracing thoughts that tug at my heart -- it's often in a fall setting. Each autumn he would take time off work to winterize the house. Back then, this meant taking the summer screens off the windows and replacing them with storm windows. You could set your watch to his labors: he'd work hard all morning and into the early afternoon and then he'd drop whatever he was doing to rush inside and watch a baseball game. You could also count on experiencing weather similar to what we experienced last weekend. Maybe it's my memory playing tricks on me, but it certainly seems that every single year when he'd take those days off to putter about our property and then settle in the sunroom for some playoff action, the weather was sunshine-splashed and unseasonably hot. Such are the warm memories that were twigged throughout Thanksgiving -- memories for which I spent all of last weekend being fittingly thankful. Andy Juniper can be contacted at ajjuniper@gmail. com, found on Facebook http://www.facebook.com, or followed at www.twitter.com/thesportjesters.