Showing posts with label cottage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cottage. Show all posts

Thursday, April 3, 2025

Apr 3 2025 - The Golden Age of Airplanes

 

Something that seems signficiantly different now compared to 70 years ago is air travel.  It might have evolved slowly, piece by piece.

Take a look at the milestones in air travel history.  The milestones are jet engines going over 300 mph, the Concorde taking its first flight at 1,354 mph, and jumbo jets carrying more people.  

What are the passenger's milestones?  We don't see it that way - going faster.   It is more how we feel it.  Squeezed and squashed - narrower seats and denser cabins, with difficult walk spaces.  And with all that squeezing and squashing, dealing with other passengers - some are loud and aggressive, some are loud because they are screaming, crying babies.  

Here's a picture of the difference in a Boeing 747.  Those inches difference between the 80s and 2010 seemed to have ruined comfort. 

We're going to protest that there's more that has changed.  We're in a closed space with nothing much to do for a few hours, and so eating seems important. There was a meal on a plane back then.  With cutlery that functioned.  There's a picture of 1960s service with the chef servicing and greeting first-class travellers.  There's another picture of passengers in the 1970s being served coffee in china cups. 

That article says that flying was such an important occasion that passengers came in their finest clothes.  And there were lounges on board planes.  And then people were smoking in the lounges, so a little low bit there. 

Low-fare flights "took off" into the 1990s. I consider that the real milestone for passengers.  Price pressure changed everything. With the lower prices, came huge volumes of people flying, larger airports with huge numbers of gates to walk to. Everything now seems an ordeal when it comes to flying. 

 


This was supposed to be a comparison of meals then and now.  I suggest we in North America should remove the right hand picture.  That seems reserved for Asian airlines. I found a website where people post their airline meals - the site is HERE. You can read the reviews of people saying things like - the pastry was tasty and would have been better if they had heated it up.  As we move past the Asian airlines and into British Airways, the ratings vary all over "the map."  I can't image what they are for U.S. airlines.
 

Here's a cottage picture from a few years ago.  Now there's something that has changed in 80 years - cottage living.  No more outhouses, water from wells or brought in from the spring, wood-burning fireplaces for heating, no showers.  That trajectory is the opposite of airline travel. 
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Wednesday, July 12, 2023

July 12 2023 - Fireflies are Out

 

The fireflies were out last night.  They were accompanied by a chorus of singing tree frogs.  The tree frogs have been singing since the spring, but I haven't seen one, even though there is one very close by in the weeping pussy willow tree.

At least we can see the fireflies.  Little flashes of yellow or yellow streaks going by. Even Millie noticed them.  There are fireflies that are extraordinary in size compared to ours.  The size of your palm. That's a big beetle.  I expect it is from Australia, but National Geographic says Thailand.  Australia has its share - 25 of the 2,000 species are found in Australia.  

I would expect a large net is needed to catch a firefly, as they are very fast. There are instructions on catching fireflies - Firefly Catching 101. This seems laughable - particularly the "scoop" instructions:
  1. Scout for the perfect spot
  2. Find a stationary female
  3. Gently scoop the firefly
  4. Let it do its thing
  5. Put it back when you are done

We missed World Firefly Day - it was July 2nd.  Various varieties flow orange, yellow or green and firefly eggs glow as well. 


Here's an old-fashioned cottage on King Street in Niagara-on-the-Lake.  I drove around the corner and the streets are filled with giant new-build houses in various 'heritage' designs. It was a bit shocking in comparison.
 



 

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Friday, February 10, 2023

Beb 10 2023 - Pausers and Fillers

Pausers and fillers seem to be more common now than the words they are pausing between.  And there are lots of them.

Google says:  Scholars have narrowed down the causes of filler words into three categories: divided attention, infrequent words, and nervousness. Each of these activities can cause an increase in verbal disfluency, thus resulting in filler words interrupting speech.

Now Bing, in its "NEW" version looks like this below.  On the psychology of filler words, it says this: Filler words also appear in speech when an individual uses words that he or she uses infrequently. In the International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, Dockrell et al. state that infrequent words are a major cause of the appearance of filler words. Infrequent words are simply words that we do not use on a daily basis and are therefore somewhat foreign to our mental dictionaries. Filler words, then, appear when someone is having difficulty processing a word. This means that a person’s brain cannot locate a word, which will cause him or her to pause, frequently throwing um in its place until the word, or a synonymous word, is found and used in speech.

There is lots of advice saying it's not the end of the world to use these words, and at the same time there are lots of tips of avoid them.  There isn't anything on whether they are more prevalent today.  My theory is that we live at hyper speed, so a slight pause is an invitation for an interruption to take over the conversation.  This seems to revolutionize the speed and rhythm of speech.  Who knows how we actually spoke 500 years ago?

Is this a contemporary filler word on the wall?  Love!
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Sunday, July 3, 2022

July 3 2022 - Summer Bugs

 

I assume that Millie ate something disagreeable for her at the July 1st party as she hasn't felt well the last two nights.  She had to go outside in the middle of the night, and I stood on the porch watching her.  An amazing firefly was out - it was making streaks in the night - like a tiny shooting star.  I'd never seen streaking fireflies before.  It got me considering how our summer is so active. 

It is bug time.  There are great bugs, ok bugs, irritating bugs and terrible ones - that would be ticks.  And that's just a human view.  Plants must have a more extreme reaction to the bugs that take care of them vs the bugs that eat them.  

I was watching the fly on the kitchen counter and there's all that foot rubbing that they do.  House flies taste with their feet, which are millions of times more sensitive to sugar than the human tongue. House flies also generally stay within one mile of where they were born.  Darn! They keep coming back into the house.

But house flies are small things,  just irritants.  I was thinking about all the bugs that are in cottage country.  That brought up  dock spiders.  There is a video of a gigantic dock spider being hand fed.  The spider's name is Larry.   It isn't "hand feeding" actually, but a stick is used to feed it a grasshopper, and then a fly on a stick, and then another.  And so on.  Larry likes to eat and it is bigger than the signal reflectors on the dock.  Here it is in its own video.  


One becomes aware of how many bugs there are in cottage country.   There seem to be more of more varieties - horse flies (the biggest), deer flies, moose flies, mosquitoes everywhere.  Itchy!  That's one of the cottage country experiences.  

So it seems to me that we are lucky in Niagara to have some insects and not a lot.  I'll take the Monarch butterfly in the front garden yesterday.  It was flying around the Milkweed plants.   If we had a true Carolinian climate here, there would be many more bugs and mosquitoes.  I read that the early settlers did a lot of clearing of the land to get rid of all the bugs.  It worked.

Daylily season has started. 
 

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Saturday, July 2, 2022

July 2nd 2022 - Cottage Cooking

 

Acording to the CBC, cottage living is meant to be relaxed time so cooking is a problem.  Many people consider cooking unrelaxing and too much work.   So a cottage "getaway" involves all kinds of planning ahead for "crowd-pleasing prep-and-pack meals".  

Got me on this when I read through the CBC version of what to take to a cottage.
  Who in Ontario would make lobster rolls at a cottage?  That is one of the recipes.  I consider it an American tragedy that such a beautiful shell fish is subjected to hot dog rolls and too much mayonnaise.  But my guess is that the article had to include East Coast cottagers.  But I'm told they don't call them cottages there.   Maybe this is for us Ontarians, after all.

I turned away from the CBC suggestions.  I decided  this is not cottage country eating .  We are looking for new twists on pancakes, kid-friendly sandwiches, hot dogs, and chocolate chip anything - especially in the morning as in muffins.  And then all kinds of food on the grill and bbq.

Shouldn't there be French toast rather than granola bars? And one could start the day by  grilling them with nutella and marshmallows?  Now we're talking indulgent cottage eating. 

Wouldn't there be potato chips as a side to every sandwich - who wants a  kale salad at the cottage? Pair that sandwich with marshmallow milkshakes.  This would be the kinds of lunch drink for those sandwiches.  Gooey grilled cheese would be a good lunch choice - the grill in at least two meals is ideal.

There's no mention of butter tarts - this seems a cottage tragedy.  This should be a day trip visiting all of the bakeries and comparing the results along the way and when you get back to the cottage.  And enough for snacks the next day - toasted marshmallows on the top.

That's because "Up North" eating involves ice cream and popsicles, so a rocky road pudding pop with marshmallows and chocolate is a match for indulging at the cottage.  And what kinds of pie do kids want?  Brownie pie - covered in toasted marshmallows. Not some rhubarb almond thing.  That's for big city eating by adults.

It seems to me that marshmallows are an essential ingredient in post-dinner dessert eating.   For the adults, one would toast marshmallows,  hollow them out and fill the little shot cup with Kahlua.  For the kinds it might be a second helping of the brownie pie.

My version of cottage cooking obviously involves childhood favourites. At least one meal has food grilled and bbq'd.  The day should end in popcorn followed by toasted marshmallows.  

It is much simpler than the CBC makes it out to be. 

Here's an abstract picture today - looking at the Food Basics sign (lowest prices always) with the rain on the car windshield.


 

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Monday, June 20, 2022

June 20 2022 - Summering

 

It is time to summer somewhere.  That's a well-known notion.  Everyone wants to go somewhere where the skies are big, the lakes are clear, and the air smells of Eastern White Pine.

We are into  the next 2 generations of cottagers.  A big boom started in the 1950s.  My grandfather built a cottage near Killbear Park in the late 1950s.  The landscape there was beloved by many immigrant Germans. 

Before they took to cottage country,  it was inhabited by the wealthy or the eccentric.   The eccentric would be equivalent to off-the-grid types today.  Rustic, rudimentary living.  Often with the facilities of the 1920s and 1930s - no electricity, a refrigerator with a block of ice, and an outhouse.  Or maybe a generator, so they'd have some electricity.


But a lot of decades have passed for cottage country to fill up.  Today cottage country is more in the realm of luxury living rather than rustic cabins. There's high demand for cottages that are built for the four seasons.  Multiple offers and high prices.  

In Southern Ontario, we have many places within easy reach.  However there are many people to reach them.  Ontario has 10 million residents.  That's a lot of swimmers and boaters. 


How well-off do you have to be to own a cottage today?  The average price of a Muskoka cottage is $737,890 in 2022.  That's up from $653,000 in 2021.  So I guess you need to have more than a little extra money.  And remember that's the average of all the cottages on all the lakes, not just the Muskoka Big Lakes. - which are Lake Joseph, Lake Muskoka and Lake Rosseau.   So once the money has been spent, what next?

The next thing is how long is the commute and how bad the traffic is, or isn't.  

And then how peaceful is a cottage?  With the jetskiers, motor boats, the power mowers, and so on all competing on the weekend.

And would you relax?  Or would you be maintaining that "cottage" house, the dock, the boat, and so on?  

It doesn't seem to matter, though.  The dream of that glorious sun sparkling on the lake as one skims the water in a motorboat.  That is quite an experience.


Today's pictures give that sense.  They were taken in the Kingston area where Lake Ontario's shores get rugged and rocky with the granite terrain of cottage country.  

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Wednesday, December 16, 2020

Dec 16 2020 Beethoven Christmas Birthday

 

This picture comes from Bing the Microsoft search engine.  It celebrates German composer Ludwig van Beethoven's 250 birthday today.  I don't know what makes wikipedia include his height as a statistic to his fame.   It does include his most popular piano compositions, and the name of his assumed illegitimate daughter - Minona Maria Theresia Selma Loisa Cornelia von Stackelberg.  Isn't that a mouthful.  

Bing says "this scene at Bonn's Münsterplatz features the city's enduring Beethoven Monument (at rear), seemingly swarmed by an additional 700 green- and gold-coloured Beethoven statues. Created by German conceptual artist Ottmar Hörl, the colourful statues were placed in the square last year in the run-up to the composer's birthday. Beethoven concerts and celebrations had been planned in Germany and around the world throughout 2020 in honour of this milestone anniversary. Most have been pushed to next year due to the coronavirus pandemic, but with a quick Bing video search for your favourite symphony or sonata, you can join the world in appreciating Beethoven's radical creativity."

Are there Beethoven Jokes?  With 250 years to come up with things, there certainly are:

When Beethoven passed away, he was buried in a churchyard. A couple days later, the town drunk was walking through the cemetery and heard some strange noise coming from the area where Beethoven was buried. Terrified, the drunk ran and got the priest to come and listen to it. The priest bent close to the grave and heard some faint, unrecognizable music coming from the grave. Frightened, the priest ran and got the town magistrate.

When the magistrate arrived, he bent his ear to the grave, listened for a moment, and said, "Ah, yes, that's Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, being played backwards."

He listened a while longer, and said, "There's the Eighth Symphony, and it's backwards, too. Most puzzling." So the magistrate kept listening; "There's the Seventh... the Sixth... the Fifth..."

Suddenly the realization of what was happening dawned on the magistrate; he stood up and announced to the crowd that had gathered in the cemetery, "My fellow citizens, there's nothing to worry about. It's just Beethoven decomposing."


This little building is behind the Good Earth restaurant. It was given a stormy sky for a moody look, and seems to be a good fit with Beethoven today.  I expect I could take its picture in the snow later today. 

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