August 6 2022 - Arriving on Time

 

What is a word for arriving on time?  Punctual.  The New York Times says that "fashionably late falls out of fashion after more than two years of remote work, when, for many people there was no good reason to be tardy." Who was famous for being on time?  Vince Lombardi was so famous for punctuality, the phrase was Vince Lombardi time.  The New York Times article on the subject  gives examples of how people are more punctual because of Covid - one motivation being they want to cram everything in.  Another is less time for chit chat at the office and "lolling-about".  Instead people are coming in, doing their work and getting out of there a soon as possible."   The theme of Psychology Today's article about punctuality post-pandemic is that more people are keeping time to avoid feeling lost in a chaotic world. Another key point of the article is "Being on time is strongly connected to believing that the world is a random place. Holding on to a stable, external cue reduces anxiety."  The Psychology Today article describes a complex relationship to time - either event-time where effectiveness is the goal, or clock-time where efficiency is the goal.   Prior to Covid, articles on punctuality looked at the qualities of people who were chronically late vs punctual and urged the chronically late person to develop those habits - e.g. being realistic on how long something takes, having buffer time - i.e. being early, being organized and structured, being comfortable with down time, or waiting.   Simple, straight-forward vs the  highly-nuanced analysis post-Covid. I wonder what the significance of the floral clock is in Niagara Falls. "' It was based on the famous 1903 clock located in the Princess Street Gardens in Edinburgh, Scotland. The clock is the largest of its kind in the world. It is three times the size of the clock in Scotland. The clock was completed in 1950 and was Ontario Hydro's floral show piece."

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Oct 7 2020 - What's Big is Wide

 

Is there a widest thing on Earth?  I find that we don't account for width - there is the tallest, longest, deepest and largest things around the world and in the universe.  There is a biggest thing in the universe. The biggest thing in the universe is the Hercules-Corona Borealis great Wall, first reported in 2013.  It is so big that light takes about 10 billion years to move across the structure.  In comparison the universe is 13.8 billion years old.  That is big and wide.   On the simple scale of us humans, there are lots of big things to visit nearby.  I found a website that lists all those 'big thing' statues in Canada - there are lots of them. Nearby is the Niagara Falls Flower Clock - it made the list.  There are Snowmen, Apples, Moose, Cows, Muskie, Muskoka Chairs, Saws, etc. all over the province. The big item really is the changing colours of the leaves across the landscape. The escarpment shows off the colours beautifully. The colours are moving past their peak in Algonquin Provincial Park with 100% change and leaf fall of 60%.  The Ontario parks.com site doesn't include any provincial parks in Niagara - perhaps our colours are not as dramatic as others in Ontario.  That certainly would be the case with northern forests. Here's their pretty chart on peak viewing.   I took a picture of the floral clock - so here it is  today - with the large hydro-electric grid in its background.  And then we have two examples of our pretty colour display in Niagara - the informal and extensive pumpkin and chrysanthemum festival.

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