Marilyn's Photos - July 13 2025 - Wimbleton Towels

 

Famous events bring forth famous swag.  Wimbledon is famous for: a) being the oldest tennis tournament in the world b) strawberries and cream c) only Grand Slam still played on grass courts d) its towels You likely know the first three answers.  But Wimbledon towels?  I guess I am not attentive enough to the social beat.  AI says these are: "iconic, collectible, towels, particularly the traditional green and purple "Championship" towels, which have become synonymous with the tournament.  Players often take these towels home as souvenirs, despite them being intended for use during matches and then laundered. " I prefer them to take them home rather than reuse them.  How cheap.  Actually, aren't they expensive at $200.00.  But then, they have hand towels and face clothes for $94.00 so something for at least two price groups.  There are many products for the fans far away.   Go to the website to purchase and here's what you will find: "The Official Wimbledon Towels have achieved iconic status here at The Championships where they have featured in some of the biggest matches in memory. Instantly recognisable, the classic colouring of the green and purple championships towel is as at home on the beach as it is the tennis court. Made by Christy, using their exclusive Hygro cotton technology, the towel features a soft handle and a high absorbency that make it a perfect partner for those 5 set show downs. As used by the players on court at The Championships, Wimbledon Excellent absorbency Highly durable Soft handle Low linting Classic Wimbledon Colours 100% combed Hygrocotton pile 70cm x 133cm / 500 GSM" I've included the pictures so you can "instantly" recognize them next time. There is a Wimbleton tote bag for $430 - that feels cheap compared to that recent Birkin Hermes Bag.   Those TikTok stories of Wimbleton players "stealing" towels - the videos show them stuffing them into duffel bags.  Real or AI?  Now I've started to wonder about all kinds of things. Here's the Ostrich Parade at the Ringling Circus Museum.  It looks normal compared to the Wimbledon towel.

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Marilyn's Photos - July 12 2025 - Burger Time

Mairlyn's Photos - July 11 2025 - Birkin Bag

 

I must have forgotten who Jane Birkin was.  British and French.  Actress, singer and designer.  Somehow she was mighty famous to have her original Hermes bag sell for over $10 million.  She died in 2023.   There are lots of pictures of her - very photogenic- something important in the 1960s.  She was in the cast of "Death on the Nile" - what a cast that was - Bette Davis, David Niven, Jane Birkin, Lois Chiles, Mia Farrow, Olivia Hussey, George Kennedy, Angela Lansbury, Maggie Smith, Peter Ustinov, Jon Finch, I.S. Johar, Simon MacCorkindale, and Jack Warden in Death on the Nile (1978). Veranda.com has a year by year picture gallery of her from the 1960s to 1977 HERE.  It is all black and white images.  We could go to Vogue.co.uk to see the 25 looks that made her the ultimate summer style muse HERE.  Again, these are mostly black and white images.   And the Birkin bag?  You can see lots of pictures of her with her Birkin Bag througjh the years.  She must have liked that bag a lot. And our picture for today takes us towards the garden. I am very pleased to find this floral design from the Annual Lily Show - it is a handbag made of leaves with a lily decoration.

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Marilyn's Photos - JNuly 10 2025 - Pool Boy vs Golf Course Brawl

 

One year we went to Florida for Gerry to teach a lighting course.  We were at the famous PGA Golf Association resort.  There was an old guy there at the pool who told me he was the oldest pool boy in Florida - he was over 70 years old, he said.  But there is no news of the oldest pool boy - it isn't interesting.  Instead, there's lots of news about golf course brawling in West Kelowna.  An ex-NHL enforcer brawls slowpoke golf player.  I guess with that background, the news will get repeated over and over.   The "assailant" was thrown into a golf pond, and then "tossed him high through the air and onto some grass." Someone videoed all of this.  Was that a friend of foe? It is hard to guess, isn't it?   Brawling at golf courses doesn't make the headlines. OK, there's one:  "Insane six-man golf brawl breaks out during Father's Day round" June 2024.  That was at the Raccoon Hill Golf Culb in Kent, Ohio.   Mostly golf news is about top golfers "in search of first win of season" and "in a fight against himself" and  "counting memories before defense of Scottish Open" and so on.  And what about this one:  "The golf bug infects everyone eventually, and LeBron James is the newest star athlete to receive a bite."  In the repair shop at Strasburg Railroad.

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Marilyn's Photos - July 9 2025 - Fear of Missing Out

 

The New York Times has an article on AI int he classroom and reference the tech companies' sales strategy as being based on the "fear of missing out" - that students will be set up for failure if they don't use AI.   My generation is genuinely marvelling at what can be done by chatbots.  For people with low skills for composing, they are amazed at what is written on their behalf.  I listened to a conversation amongst people who I thought were educated. They had math and science skills and felt they didn't have good composing skills for emails and correspondence.  AI gets them up to and beyond the threshold of good writing.   That makes me think this is about the fear of missing out - of not being "good enough" or  being able to "keep up."  So would we expect it to improve their general writing skills?  I expect it will replace their correspondence and they will be dependent on it.  Is that what we want of school learning?  And I sure hope AI gets better at writing.  To me, a lot of what it writes is ingratiating, unctuous, flattering, insincere, obsequious, and fawning. There needs to be some AI to develop authenticity. Me, I seem to be going backwards. I've turned off spell-check. Gerry showed me where I could do this in my MAC so there's almost no word replacement, except for some programs online. I would rather have to read my work carefully than just blast along with a trail of weird words dangling behind.  Some of them were fun, though, and I will miss those surprise moments.  There's a colourful array of Muskoka Chairs.

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Marilyn's Photos - July 8 2025 - Hospital Opening

 

Our new hospital  just a block away from us - is opening in October.  Here's a picture of it from the back.  The old hospital is  the tiny y-shaped building int he distance.  We live a street beyond the left side houses.  They face Lynwood and we are a crescent which curves into Lynnwood.   I wonder how the old hospital will be demolished.  So the new hospital is opening in October 2025 and the old hospital is scheduled for demolition to complete in October 2026.  Demolition will "involve crushing the brick and concrete on-site to minimize the number of trucks needed to haul debris to the landfill. The resulting chipped aggregate may be used for the property, such as for roads or foundations."  That means that there is another year of construction - this time deconstruction.   In addition to the hopsital, there is a new crane located just beyond the lower left buildings.  It is constructing the new McNally House Hospice.  It says that the facility will be completed in April 2026.  I   I found a construction picture so you could see what's happening there.  This  picture shows the McNally Hospice House foundation three days ago. Yesterday a big new crane was added.   The street going out of the top of the picture is Sunnylea Crescent.  Drive around the crescent, and there's my house.   Our McNally House is named after Grimsby residents.  It you search on the internet you might find Andrew McNally House - of Rand McNally - in California.  It was a heritage house built in 1887 by architect Frederick L. Roehrig,  it is octagonally shaped.  There are lots of pictures of it, as it was on the real estate market in 2020.  Sadly, it was destroyed in the Eaton Fire in January 2025.  So back to little Grimsby with our big cranes and construction for the next year and a bit.  I wonder if I will miss those little beep-beep-beeps and whether Millie will be wistful of having the guys way up on the roof that she hears so clearly that she thinks she can visit them.   Tomorrow is the Fun Run Porsche Day, and they will be stopping on Sunnylea for a garden tour.  This is Gerry's car from two years ago.  That was when the Topaz Lab filter was functioning and I could add the "speed blur" as he came around the corner.

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Mairlyn's Photos - July 7 2025 - Pinks and Quarts

 

Those little pink and quart boxes are the standard for fruits - especially tender fruits such as strawberries, raspberries, and cherries for as long as I can remember.  And I know they were made of thin wood prior to being moulded paper or plastic. The original approach was called a pottle and it was a conical wood chip basket with a handle.  Wikipedia has a picture from 1688.  What were they replaced by int he mid-1800s?  Punnets - that was the name for our current little square wooden box.  Beamsville had a punnet factory - but it was called the Beasmville Basket and Veneer Company. "Logs were soaked in boiling water, and then peeled strips were dried and assembled into various sizes of baskets. The factory's output was crucial for the region's fruit industry, enabling growers to transport their produce to market." "The Beamsville Basket and Veneer Company operated until December 1981, when a fire caused its destruction. Despite the fire, the company's impact on the region was substantial, particularly in shaping the fruit-growing sector and the town's economy. The factory's history is intertwined with the growth and prosperity of Beamsville and the surrounding fruit belt." And we haven't mentioned six-quart, nine-quart, and 11-quart baskets.  That's for stone fruit - peaches, apples, pears - things that are bigger or are not tender.  What about those tough little blueberries - they can handle a big basket. And didn't I forget bushel baskets?  There they are filled with pumpkins and squash.  From beginning to end of the growing season, baskets are with us.

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Marilyn's Photos - Driverless Vehicles vs Stupid Drivers

 

We are skeptical of driverless vehicles.  Perhaps it is because we are comparing their driving to our own, rather than to the driving of stupid people.  No one considers themselves stupid, so it is about those other people. What do we mean by stupid people? And is that different than the worst drivers?  It seems that worst drivers is a more popular topic than stupid ones.  Stupid implies lack of intelligence, and worst points to their driving results.  Worst is so much easier to observe.  So on to the worst drivers. I found an article HERE that ranks the best and worst drivers in the world.  The best?  Japan, then Netherlands, Norway, Estonia and Sweden.  The worst? Thailand, Peru, Lebanon, India and Malaysia.  Where is Canada?  In the worst list.  Where is the U.S.? Also in the worst list.  The factors used for the rankings were road quality, speed limits, alcohol limits and traffic fatality rates.  Thailand is head and shoulders above the rest - known for speeding, reckless passing, and failure to obey traffic laws. Russia is known for the most viral videos of accidents.   Another article looked at male vs female statistics, age statistics and country statistics and amenities up with this conclusion:   "...if you’re a male teenager in Thailand thinking about driving, find you’re running late and start to feel aggravated…it’s best to just stay home." In comparison, driverless vehicles live a mundane life.  They don't pass on the right, speed above the limit, and so on.  The "worst" scenario is mostly missing.  Perhaps it is the notion of  "stupid" that applies.  Driverless vehicles seem to have fewer accidents under routine conditions.  They have higher crash risks when turning, or in dim light like dawn and dusk.  And this scenario? Driverless cars "roaming" the streets empty of passengers or cargo?  That was one headline.  I couldn't guess this future scenario.  And when I give it some thought - could it be that there's no honking, squealing of tires, cutting each other off, passing on the right, and all the myriad of human aggressions on the road? that was a tiny moment of bliss.  The futurists seem to think it is that time between the all driverless and the all human driver period that we have to watch out for.  They expect the human-drive cars to get more aggressive.  Here's the last paragraph of an interesting article tackling the topic: "Meanwhile, if you see a self-driving car coming down the street, be prepared for not what the self-driving car will do, but instead for what the human drivers nearby the self-driving car will do. Those pesky and inconsiderate human drivers will do what they do, including and especially when they come upon a self-driving car."

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Marilyn's Photos - July 4th 2025 - Prison Wear

 

I wondered about the prison wear that Diddy Combs would be wearing during his upcoming short stay in prison. It made me think of the prison wear from long past - the big wide horizontal stripes.  They were more circus wear than prison wear to me. However, their intent was  to create humiliation. Articles in May 2025 said that Diddy Combs was allowed to receive non-prison clothing for his trial.  "The singer, 55, can have five button-down shirts, up to five pairs of pants, up to five sweaters, up to five pairs of socks, and up to two pairs of shoes without laces."   We won't see pictures of Combs in neon orange jumpsuits. Orange jumpsuits are for high risk prisoners.  And he's no longer a high-risk prisoner, is he?  The orange suits are also used for court appearances, but not Combs with his special privileges.   Famous and infamous have similar exemptions.  I might be cynical, but I think the view is that the sex trafficking was really just a bit of prostitution, that the "victims" must have consented.  Victim consent is still the norm in the public's mind. The tradition of giving of privileges to criminals is long-standing.  The U.S. is given to idolizing criminals. Think Billy the Kid, Bonnie and Clyde, Al Capone, John Dillinger, and so many more. They have been romanticized over the many decades. Is that all in the past?  What about these criminals right here and now?  The consensus is that Diddy Combs will stage a career comeback.  Donald Trump just recently did this.  All those criminal charges and being convicted were found to strengthen his political position.  But there's a difference between a comeback and being idolized as a criminal. Diddy Combs will likely fade from view. Donald Trump?  Given Americans know he is a criminal: a YouGov survey found that 2/3 of Americans say Donald Trump has definitely or probably committed crimes, then what?  Hie is in the "line-up" for idolizing and adoration. It is just a matter of time.

Isn't this great!  A picture from the past when we were in Toronto and I took pictures through the glass block window in the dining room.

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Marilyn's Photos - July 3 2025 - Eye Contact

 

There's been constant coverage of Anna Wintour retiring at 75.  The picture in all the articles is remarkable - she looks to be 50 years old.  The world of cosmetic surgery and medical interventions has fully arrived. She isn't wearing her signature dark glasses in the photos. Supposedly in her younger days, it was said that she wore dark glasses because she had bags and dark circles under her eyes.  Much later she said it was "to hide what she's thinking or feeling."   She wore sunglasses "since the beginning of her career"  or maybe it was in the 1990s, according to another writer.  How attached is she to her glasses? She was so attached that she wore them while telling the staff of the Pitchfork that they were all being fired. “One absolutely bizarro detail from this week is that Anna Wintour — seated indoors at a conference table — did not remove her sunglasses while she was telling us that we were about to get canned,” Allison Hussey, a former staff writer at Pitchfork, wrote on her X social media account."   Such a powerful person in the fashion news world, and so much attention on something other than her accomplishments. Maybe her "caricature" in the movie The Devil Wore Prada was truer to life than one would like.

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Marilyn's Photos - June 29 2025 - Off the Beaten Path

 

Don't we all want to be off the beaten path these days?  Somewhere not known by others. Wouldn't that be "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost.  That poem seems to be speaking to a desire to be off the beaten track, too.  And thinking it may be written later in life as he refers to a yellow wood of autumn:   I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. Or maybe not.  He wrote the poem at age 44 and died at 88.  At the half-point.     He died in 1963, before John F. Kennedy himself died - at age 46 in November that year. John F. Kennedy led the tribe for Frost's funeral.  At Kennedy's inauguration, Frost had read  one of his poems as part of the ceremony.  This scene was described in a New York Times article from 1963: "Invited to write a poem for the occasion, he rose to read it. But the blur of the sun and the edge of the wind hampered him; his brief plight was so moving that a photograph of former President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Mrs. Kennedy and Mrs. Lyndon Johnson watching him won a prize because of the deep apprehension in their faces. But Frost was not daunted. Aware of the problem, he simple put aside the new poem and recited from memory an old favorite, "The Gift Outright," dating to the nineteen-thirties. It fit the circumstances as snugly as a glove. Later he took the unread "new" poem, which had been called "The Preface," expanded it from 42 to 77 lines; retitled it "For John F. Kennedy: His Inaugural" -- and presented it to the President in March, 1962."  I can't find the photo referred to.  The retrievals don't seem to respond.  But I came upon the Life article with pictures of the inauguration.  My goodness, that was Camelot! Here it is.

Here are our beaten paths - the Echinacea wWalk in the Rose Garden at the Royal Botanical Gardens.  The second is the Jordan valley path up to Cave Springs in the winter.  Here are our beaten paths - the Echinacea wWalk in the Rose Garden at the Royal Botanical Gardens.  The second is the Jordan valley path up to Cave Springs in the winter.

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Marilyn's photos - June 25 2025 - Is this heart attack season?

 

That's my question from the numerous headlines offering heart attack symptom advice.  Myheart.net says "No" - heart attack season is winter. They are least likely to occur in summer. And the most likely time of winter is over the Christmas and new years period.   And the day of the week?  Monday.  That's the case for various heart diseases and problems.  In the Middle East, it is Fridays and in Japan it is the weekend.  And the most likely time of day?  It is the mornings, and within the first few hours of waking.   So the worst scenario would be "a winter Monday morning in the setting of a natural disaster acting as a trigger" So we're home-free, aren't we?  It seems not so - the heat dome is dissipating slowly.  While the temperatures are going into the high 20s today, they will feel like the mid-30s.   And heat is a contributor to heart attacks. One article says that "experiments have discovered that for every increase in temperature of 1°C (1.8°F), the chances of a heart attack raise by about 2-4%. Every day, throughout lengthy heat waves, this danger adds up..."   There aren't that many terms related to heat in the weather dictionary - heat index, humid, heat wave, heat stress, and heat dome. There is a wet-bulb temperature - the combination of heat, humidity, wind strength, sunlight angle and cloudiness. To quantify this, scientists turn to the “wet-bulb temperature,” which is based on a reading taken using a thermometer wrapped in a damp cloth. So much for summer heart attacks.  What was the winning bid for the piano on which Freddie Mercury composed Bohemian Rhapsody?  Sotheby's auction says it was £1.74m.  That was in 2023.

Here's my summertime heat dome abstract.

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