Nov 1 2024 - Ocean Blobs

 

The news today tells us there are things besides waterfalls and rivers under the surface of our seas.  There are "blobs".  They stretch thousands of miles - scientists have found one in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.  it extends from the tip of Brazil to the Gulf of Guinea. Its name is the Atlantic equatorial water.  Would there be rivers, waterfalls and blogs in Lake Ontario?  It is deep with a maximum depth of 802 feet and average of 283.  But finding out about rivers and waterfalls below Lake Ontario doesn't seem to be a top priority on the internet. I would likely need to contact the experts.   Could the Niagara River have such water formations?  The depth of the water below the falls is the same height as the falls - 170 feet.  And the depth of the Niagara River gorge is 300 feet deep and 7 miles long.  The depth at the Whirlpool is 125 feet.   There is a "ledge" in the Whirlpool - a rock formation. But finding out about the ledge is difficult.  I've been told that retrieving bodies at the Whirlpool Rapids (that's where everything ends up) can be difficult as things lodge under the ledge.  So I wondered if there could be a waterfall at the Whirlpool Rapids.  I wonder if there can be rivers within the river with such depth.  There aren't any articles on water formations below the River.  It may be there are none, or that these are highly technical sorts of articles. So while I haven't found anything out about rivers below the river, it has been a journey into curiosity.  And I did find this amazing aerial view.

Isn't this aerial view stunning?  Look ag the ledges all along the way.  And there's another Victoria Harbour picture - such a contrast.

Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Sep 4 2024 - Angry Speeders

 

It is back to school week.  The ticket-giving camera across from the school has been knocked to the ground. It is a large contraption about 8 feet in the air on a pole.  It photographs the license of a passing car going over the speed limit to give a ticket for going over 40 kp/h in a school zone.  It generated lots of tickets so far.  Or at least there are urban legends of how many tickets have been generated.  It takes a while - about 30 days - to receive the ticket notice in the mail.  The urban legend I heard is that one person got 8 tickets or more.  Typically they are around $70 or $80 each. So I wonder who was responsible for the vadalism.  Here are  three options of who might have damaged the photo radar for September's start: a) young people vandalizing things b) angry speeding drivers furious about slowing down c) a/some very angry ticket recipient(s) The traffic-calming initiative has regularly made the news.  Typically with vandalized cameras, vitriolic postings on social media, and voluminous complaints to regional representatives. "Although the initiative was intended to calm traffic in the areas, increase awareness about speeding and reduce collisions and injuries in the areas as part of Niagara’s Vision Zero road safety initiative, Chiocchio said it’s instead being perceived as “a cash grab.” I guess if you got an $80 ticket for going 50 in a 40 zone, you would experience a thought of it being a cash grab. This is not a one-time effort - it is the start of lower speed limit.  St. Catharines has installed signs city-wide in residential neighbourhoods that it is now a 40-km/h maximum.  Here are the statistics: "It is for good reason that speed limits are getting lower:  A 10% reduction in average speed in a city achieved through lower speed limits can result in 19% fewer injury crashes, 27% fewer death and serious injury crashes, and 34% fewer fatal crashes." Each day I check on whether the camera has been repaired.  We'll see what's up today. I found this picture in the archives.  It is Linda, Brian and me with Candy our dog, washing the car.  How much speeding would this car have ever done?  The first Ford car could go 65 - 70 km/h and that was in 1920.  Maybe we've been speeding for well over 100 years.

I found this pictureI took of a Pacific Ocean beach near Monterey.  Makes me think that summer might never end.

Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Sep 14 2023 - Garbage Day

 

Garbage day used to be simple.  One garbage can.  Everything thrown out.  The yard waste went into the compost in the back garden.  Plastics?  What plastics?  Glass, cans and paper in the garbage.   How did it get to be that plastic is so dominant now? There was only an inkling of it in the mid-1950s when Saran Wrap came on the shelves.  Remember how it "clings like magic". It was in 1979 that plastic bags spread to North America.  In the early 1980s, all grocery stores switched to plastic bags. By the end of the 1980s, plastic bags were everywhere.  Now is is hard to escape plastic. Plastic seems to be part of every product.  We consumers didn't think about this.  It was researcher Charles Moore who discovered the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" in 1997.  It was a chance discovery. They've mapped them all now - there is the Western Garbage Patch which is closer to Japan and the Eastern Garbage Patch which is closer to southern California and Mexico. There really are 5 of them.   The trash pile in the South Pacific is estimated to be more than one million square miles in size - larger than Mexico. But they can't be seen by satellite as they are widely dispersed fingernail-sized or microscopic pieces of plastic. Some of the plastics are over 50 years old.  They could have originated from our own saran-wrap or grocery store bags from the 1970s.  Or from ships going through the Welland Canal when I was a child.  The estimate is 20% from ships. And the world map now?  How strange to have ocean maps showing the many "gyres" of plastic garbage. I got to thinking about this as the garbage trucks today will come by a few times - to pick up all those separated wastes - with the special plastics bin.  I wonder where it really goes to. Here's an abstract that seems to match the theme of the plastic "gyrating" in the ocean.

Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

July 27 2023 - How Hot is the Ocean?

 

There's a lovely Jazz standard by Irving Berlin.  How deep is the ocean?  How high is the sky? Diana Krall interprets it perfectly.  I hadn’t thought of it turning into How Hot is the Ocean? But there is the headline today.   “Ocean temperatures around South Florida hit hot-tub levels”. I seem to have a sense of how things would go with the temperature rising.  Or perhaps a fantasy sense - that ’s because I remember a Rod Serling Twilight Zone episode where the temperature was so high that an egg could be fried on the sidewalk and the paint melted on a painting. The episode was The Midnight Sun. This is the opening narration - and doesn’t it come to life with Rod’s voice in one’s imagination: The word that Mrs. Bronson is unable to put into the hot, still, sodden air is 'doomed,' because the people you've just seen have been handed a death sentence. One month ago, the Earth suddenly changed its elliptical orbit and in doing so began to follow a path which gradually, moment by moment, day by day, took it closer to the sun. And all of man's little devices to stir up the air are now no longer luxuries—they happen to be pitiful and panicky keys to survival. The time is five minutes to twelve, midnight. There is no more darkness. The place is New York City and this is the eve of the end, because even at midnight it's high noon, the hottest day in history, and you're about to spend it in the Twilight Zone. And how does this segment end? The scene cuts to the same apartment at night with heavy snow outside the windows. The thermometer reads −10 °F (−23 °C). Norma, who has been bedridden with a high fever, is being cared for by a doctor and Mrs. Bronson. The Earth moving closer to the sun is revealed to be only a fever dream, while in reality the Earth is moving away from the sun, and the world's inhabitants are actually freezing to death. Read the plot and story HERE.

Here is another favourite front yard/garden for me.  Bold shapes and colours make it seem very modern and stylish.  Or perhaps it fits a notion of 1960s modern for me.  Same time frame as Twilight Zone.   Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

July 15 2023 - The Highest Wave

 

I am getting used to the foxes' barking sounds.  It isn’t so strange anymore. On the other hand, Millie has decided these are not desirable friends and she has taken to being on window alert. I don’t know what made me think of the biggest wave.  I remember looking into this in the past. The biggest wave every recorded?  It is 1,720 feet high at its peak. That is taller than the Empire State Building. It is close in height to the CN Tower which is a bit taller.   It was at Lituya Bay in southeast Alaska, triggered by an earthquake creating a megatsunami.  That was in 1958.  Rocks, glaciers and other debris fell from an altitude of 3,000 feet. The megatsunami measured between 100 feet (30 meters) and 300 feet (91 meters), but the subsequent breaking wave became much bigger.   Other modern day megatsunamis include the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa and the more recent Vajont Dam landslide in Northern Italy in 1963. That was a story of government corruption and about 2000 people died in the valley below. It is one of UNESCO’s five “cautionary tales” caused by the failure of engineers and geologists. What about the Wahoo Wave?  It was a test conducted in 1958and was 3,200 feet below the surface of the ocean.  Supposedly it was to evaluate the weapon’s efficiency against surface ships and submerged submarines.  That wave reached 800 feet. There’s a cautionary tale as well. Of course, there are the surfer records:  Sebastian Steudtner was recorded surfing the biggest wave at 86 feet - that is an eight-story building. Here are our popular tallest buildings.  There’s the CN Tower at the far right.   A wave the size of the CN Tower would make a lot of noise.

In the meantime, the fox has come around  to the office window “barking” at us (me and Millie on the office desk) from about 10 feet.  It has gone away and things are quiet again.   What a contrast to our picture of a calm morning ocean.   Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Jan 18 2023 - The Ghost of Bereavement

 

Yesterday I recalled a CBC interview with Emily Urquart, bestselling author and journalist, and the daughter of acclaimed Canadian painter Tony Urquhart.  She was interviewed by CBC on the subject of ghost sightings related to grieving death.  She had this experience - seeing her brother in passing strangers after he had died.   "I don’t remember the first time I saw my brother in a passing stranger, but I do know that it went on for years." As a journalist, she decided to investigate the area - known as post-bereavement hallucination.  This area has been studied for five decades and is found across cultures.  She writes that in Scandinavian folklore there is a belief hat the unsettled dead wander into the lives of the living. Here is a compelling excerpt from her Longreads.com article which is HERE:  "The living, for their part, are more likely to experience visitations from their lost loved ones if the death was traumatic, sudden, unexpected, or untimely. This might explain why I have never seen my grandmother, who died peacefully at 96, in the faces of passing nuns or in the eyes of the blue-hairs at the bus stop. Tragedies, the personal, and in particular those on a mass scale, tend to breed ghosts, like those seen in post-tsunami Japan. A few months after the disaster, a taxi driver picked up a young woman near Ishinomaki station in Japan’s Fukushima district. She asked the driver, a man in his 50s, to take her to Minamihama district, but he protested, telling her there was nothing left in that region. “Have I died?” The woman asked. The driver, stricken, turned to face his passenger, but, of course, she was gone and his cab was empty. This was one of seven cases of ghost passengers documented by a sociology student, Yuka Kudo in her study.   Urquhart covers many of these stories and folklore tales in her book Beyond the Pale:  Folklore, Family and the Mystery of our Hidden Genes.  Emily is Jane Urquhart's daughter.  A family of writers and painters of great talent.

Here's a visual explorations of the edges of things. Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblog.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Facebook Twitter Website Email

Jan 15 - Pebble Beach arrives on the Golf Course

 

Lake Ontario has some big waves - that would be in November during the storm season.  But imagine California's waves.  We've been to Monterey and Carmel, and the waves are beautiful, rolling in one after the other.  A few weeks ago a 45 foot wave crashed onto the Pebble Beach golf course.  This was caused by atmospheric rivers that have "pounded" California over the past several weeks. There's nothing like the Pebble Beach course overlooking the ocean. You can see below that we've driven by, and you can see it easily from Carmel beach. I can't imagine how one actually gets a golf game in with that spectacular view.   To golf there?  It starts with a green fee of $575 US, a cart fee of $45 and a caddie fee of $145 plus gratuity for a single bag. To book a round, one must be a resort guest - and that starts at around $570 a night.  The Lodge at Pebble Beach is more expensive - $990 and up a night. So these fellows who took the video of their wave experience likely paid the minimum cost of a round of $1,445 plus travel.  And what did they experience?  Priceless! One of them captured a video of the experience on the 14th hole - here's the quote: "It's going to hit us, dude," someone in the video says, and then the video begins shaking as Butler runs away from the incoming waves. "Go, go, run!" See the wave - here's the LINK.   There is a professional tournament January 30 - February 5th - in a few weeks, so they will be working hard to clean-up.     This first picture is, indeed, the Pebble Beach golf course. The second is motion blur  in the Monterey Aquarium wave exhibit. Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblog.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

July 11 2022 - Sand Art Summer

 

Look at that picture from the CBC article on Jim Denevan's sand art in Tofino, B.C.  The artist creates these to be washed away, but preserves the art with various pictures - especially from a helicopter.  There will  be satellite images to capture it too.   The intention was for this one to be washed away on the weekend.  There's the news story rush before it happens and then silence.  I assume the tides came in on time.  His website bio says he is an artist, chef, and founder of Outstanding in the Field.  "His life and art are the subject of the recently released film Man in the Field (2021), wherein director Patrick Trefz charts Denevan’s experiences over a period of eight years, exploring themes of process, grief, and discovery. Denevan lives in Santa Cruz, California." At the other end of the scale is sand artist James Sun in Toronto who uses a needle and a spoon to create sand art in glass jars.  His website is Fallinginsand.com and he showcases his work with time-lapse photography  of the creation of the art.  You can see this at tiktok.com/@fallinginsand.

You don't get to Niagara-on-the-Lake without crossing over the Welland Canal.  The bridge was up when I got to the Carlton Street bridge. The wait is usually 10 - 20 minutes. It is a long enough wait that there's a sign that says turn engine off.   So I got out of the car and went over to the fence to watch this boat come through.  I  turned around the car and went to the Lakeshore Bridge.  That's because another boat was coming the other way into the lock and it was going to take another 15 or 20 minutes before the bridge came down again.  That was garden tour in Niagara-on-the-Lake day, and no time to contemplate the Great Lake tankers. Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblog.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Facebook Twitter Website Email Share Tweet Forward

Remembering Halloween Candy

Those of us who grew up in the 1950s had a Halloween that was abundant with all kinds of candies - particularly homemade taffy apples and caramel corn. I expect that people will recall the other side of Halloween candy - those Halloween kisses - over-chewy  with a funky sort of flavour that didn't resemble what it was made with - molasses. We considered them the worst Halloween candy.  And that turns out to be the case still.  In 2017, a National Post newspaper article derided Kerr's Molasses Kisses as the worst candy ever.  The battle played out on Twitter. "This Halloween don't scare kids with that wretched Kerr's molasses candy that you hated as a kid," wrote one user who goes by Terry, linking to the article. Kerr's responded with its own dose of sass. "You're right, Terry, you should keep Molasses Kisses all to yourself. Don't let the kids have the good candy!" the candy company's account tweeted back." The recipe has remained the same for 75 years.  This means that if you are looking for a bit of Halloween nostalgia, you can still buy them.  Kerr's boasts that they made of 10% real molasses, no artificial colours, real sugar, no modified or hydrogenated fats or oils, peanut free, tree-nut free, gluten free, vegetarian and Halal. The ingredients of Kerr's Halloween kisses do not make them more desirable to me. This view from Villa Eyrie, in Malahat, on the east side of Vancouver island, is definitely a candy apple view.  One could wake up to this every day.

Read past POTD's at my Blog: http://blog.marilyncornwell.com

Click to Pray

Even the Vatican is adapting.  Last week the Vatican announced you can "Pray With Pope Francis" using their Vatican-approved app. What's it called?  NOT PrayPal!  That would be too fun. It's called Click To Pray.  It is the official prayer platform for World Youth Day 2019, taking place now in Panama.  On Facebook it has 163K likes.  You can 'connect with thousands of people who pray every day.'  Google shows it has 4.4 on the reviews, with 2,440 people reviewing it. The latest today from the Vatican on the Click to Pray app is: Jan 30, 2019 - 04:12 am .- Everyone should pray the Stations of the Cross, Pope Francis said Wednesday, revealing that he always has with him a pocket-size book of “Via Crucis” meditations to pray with when he has a spare moment. I don't see any press coverage other than the announcement.  We wait to see what they have to say.