Feb 22 2025 - Potholes vs Sinkholes

 

Pot holes have appeared by the score in our roads, following the big ice and snow storm.  They were filling them yesterday, trying to bring them into a semi-normal state along Highway 8.  I wonder what they'll be doing on the highway, as there are problems there, too. Compare that to sinkholes.  Look at the pictures of how wide and deep the sinkholes are in California and Florida.  Sinkholes happen when underlying rock layers collapse or erode and the surface gives way.  They become more common with extreme rainfall.  A burst water main or with sewer systems collapsing can also bring about sinkholes. Potholes on the roads are not covered in the Guinness Book of Records.  Natural, glacial ones are. But the biggest natural formations of this type are sinkholes and they are in the Guinness Book of Records.  The biggest is Xiaozhai Tiankeng in China and is 2,171 feet deep and 2,054 feet wide.  Its nickname is The Heavenly Pit.  The next is Sima Humboldt in Venezuela and it is 1,148 feet deep and 1,155 feet wide.  This gives me a queasy sense.   There is a National Pothole Day. We've missed it - January 15th. Just as well.  Who would want to raise awareness of the impact of potholes on motorists and advocate for better road conditions - considering everything that's happening in the world.  I was hoping for some pothole jokes.  There are lots and lots - but they shouldn't be listed as jokes.  There is a consistent and persistent joke from the UK: In the UK we used to drive on the left of the roads. Now we drive on what's left of the roads.

Here's a summer's garden.  It is only a week till March and a month till spring.  There likely are a few potholes to arrive before then.  Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

July 24 2024 - Summertime Bucket Lists

 

We'd better get doing things that are memorable in the summer.  Summertime is a time for fun.   So what are some funny things that would be in a person's "bucket list".  Summer has us reconsider all those "serious"  and "self-important" bucket list ideas - you know banzai skydiving, bungee jumping, walk the entire wall of China - well maybe not that one as it would actually take some time to complete and we'd be well past summer.. But what about these? Call someone to tell them you can't talk right now Have an argument with a mannequin at a store Hire two private investigators to investigate each other Only speak in song lyrics for a day Most of theorems on the  list are unpleasant - it is HERE.  That's because it is composed of pranks.  Questionable ones would get a person into various kinds of trouble.  But then summertime is a better time for pranks than winter.  We can cherry pick through the dozens of offerings and make up a summertime list: 50 Easy Things You Can Check Off Your Bucket List Today Birthday Bucket List: 60 Fun Things to Do on Your Birthday! Best Friend Bucket List: 50 Fun Things to Do With Your BFF Fashion Bucket List: 36 Must-Do Goals for Every Lover of Style Weird Food Bucket List: 60 Strange Foods From Around the World At Home Bucket List: 50 Fun Things to Do Without Leaving the House On the other hand, bucket lists have a purpose - they are a code phrase for a plan, a schedule and a set of activities.   "They teach us about ourselves and what is important to us, not what society says should be important to us. The act of creating a bucket list takes us out of our comfort zones and throws us into a realm of possibilities and questions." "A bucket list is an attempt to make life memorable and is consistent with Daniel Kahneman's peak-end theory, which holds that what people remember from hedonic events are their peaks. No peaks - no memories, or at least not very crisp ones." There are reverse bucket lists (looking at what you've already done", the bucket list effect (delaying things till retirement), annual lists vs D lists (before you die).  You can get a bucket list template to get is all done faster.   And then you won't miss out on the key memorable moments of summer.  Here's a hazy summer morning picture - James Park gardens in Toronto from a few years ago. This would be the kind of day where the bucket list wouldn't be considered.

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July 7 2024 - Summer "Time" Flying By

 

This is the start of what I call summer "time".  Everything gets faster - "time flies".  And then it is August - and that for me is the month before "school starts".  Not so much the zenith of summer.   "Tempus fugit (Classical Latin pronunciation: [ˈt̪ɛmpʊs̠ ˈfʊɡit̪]) is a Latin phrase, usually translated into English as "time flies". The expression comes from line 284 of book 3 of Virgil's Georgics, where it appears as fugit irreparabile tempus: "it escapes, irretrievable time". There's a calculation for time movement. This from a cbsnews.com article:  "From the standpoint of a clock or calendar, each standard temporal unit is exactly the same: Every minute contains 60 seconds; every day contains 24 hours. However, standard temporal units vary in what I’ve dubbed “the density of human experience” – the volume of objective and subjective information they carry." Time is perceived to pass slowly (high density) in situations where there is almost nothing happening or a great deal is happening. In other words, the complexity of the situation is either much higher or much lower than normal. The situation seizes our attention - filling each standard temporal unit with the experience of self and situation. Often things appear to move in slow motion. Time seems to pass quickly when the density of experience per standard temporal unit is abnormally low - a compression of time. Here's the CBSnew.com article explanation: "Say you have a busy day at work. You might be doing complex things, but they’re routine because you’ve been doing them for so long. Given that we behave more or less unthinkingly, each standard temporal unit contains very little memorable experience. The “density” of unique experience is low. And at the end of the day, time seems to have passed quickly. We’re pleasantly surprised to discover that it is already time to go home." The author says the routineness leads to forgetting experiences - for example,  from the entire day, month, etc. And doesn't that seem to apply to us as we get older.   Older people say - "how time flies".  I haven't heard a young person say this. Why is that?  An older person can recall something from 10 and 20 years ago (and more at my age) and realize how long ago that was - and with it the perception that time has passed so quickly.     This is the completion day of the Ontario Regional Lily Show.  I took this picture of my picture on the cover of the Let's Grow Lilies Handbook from a previous show.  It came from Brian's Lilycrest Gardens growing field. I started taking pictures of it in 2007.  The field was filled with thousands of plants and hundreds of thousands of blooms.

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June 17 2024 - Summer Begins

 

I seem to have a few definitions of Summer.   The dominant one for me is the Meteorological version which started June 1st. That's based on temperature cycles. I guess temperature has a higher orientation than light to plants as I consider us past Spring. The plants that bloom in spring are done - all the blossom trees, daffodils, tulips, hyacinths.  Wisteria is done, and so on.  We are past frost by far, so plant-wise in Niagara, it has been Summer for a while. The Solstice is coming up this week.  It is Thursday June 20 at 4:50pm Eastern Time.  That is the measure of light - the astronomical view.  For me, being the longest day would mean it would be the "high point" of Summer rather than the start. Summer, for those involved in academics and schools, starts when school is finished.  In our school system that was mid-to end of June.  Our academia view of things coincides nicely with the weather. Finally, we have two celebrations to kick off Summer - May 24th Victoria Day and Canada Day, July 1st, another definition of summer's start.  That's the political/nation/government views of things.  Not sure which one, politics and governments are confusing these days. So on we go to a continuing enjoyment of our favourite season, statistically speaking. What does the sun drink out of? Sunglasses! Summer is here, so I'm moving all of my bad habits outside. If you saw a heat wave, would you wave back? I'm glad it's finally hot enough to complain about how hot it is. Here we have summer sun shines on summer flowers.

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Aug 20 2023 - Summer Songs

 

There are definitely songs that make us think of summer.  And the second half of the 20th century brought us a lot of them.  There are a quite a few lists that tell us the favourites.  I picked out these: (Sittin’ on the) Dock of the Bay by Otis Redding Under the Boardwalk by the Drifters Summer in the City  by the Lovin’ Spoonful  Summertime by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong California Girls by the The Beach Boys The Summer Wind by Wayne Newton  There are more, lots more.  Every genre has them. There are classical music summertime songs. They all seem to have "summer" in the name, like Vivaldi's Summer. Summer is the great season.  It deserves all this musical attention. It makes me realize that with the rise of radio, popular and jazz music has come to define a society's experience of summer, not just a person's.  That "collective unconscious" has been growing.  Do we know what that signifies?  Not me.  It seems a mystery. Today we have some summer leaves.

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Aug 1 2023 - Most

 

How many is most?  Most of the time, most people, the most iconic photographs, the most...pick a topic and you can find a headline that starts with this word. The greatest in amount, quantity or degree. It is a determiner, a pronoun and an adverb.  It forms a superlative -  "the most important event of my life".   And what percentage is considered most?  Quora commenters weigh in on this one:   "While “most” literally just means more than half, it is best used to mean something like 60% to 90%. Below 60% you should consider terms like “more than half” or “a small majority”. Above 90% you get in the territory of “almost all” or “a large majority”. Of course, this depends on context." But most isn't really a percentage word, is it?  Not anymore, it seems.  Looking at the headlines, it is a boasting word, a bragging term.  At the least it is a comparative based on opinion and draws our attention to it.   That's why I think we are so attracted to headlines with most in them.  There aren't any movies, songs, or websites named "Most".  There is a city in the Czech Republic, but none in the US or Canada.  Don't expect to find it recommended as a baby name. By itself, it doesn't have much to say. A search on the single word - most - reveals a lot about us it comes up with:  most beautiful women, most attractive men, most expensive cars and most beautiful places in the world.  There are lots of other mosts, but these are the top ones. Here's an iconic flower of summer - the sunflower.

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

 

Aug 16 2022 - Words Starting with Trump

 

There are lots of words that start with Trump, as in capital T.  Donald Trump gave rise to a very creative press.     Would the first one be Trumpism?  And along with it Trumpist and Trumpian?  These are terms used to refer to those exhibiting characteristics of Trumpism.  Supporters of Trump are known as Trumpers.  While Trumpism is a well-known phrase, it is considered complex and contentious by wikipedia.   "Trumpism is a term for the political ideologies, social emotions, style of governance, political movement, and set of mechanisms for acquiring and keeping control of power associated with Donald Trump and his political base." Alternately Trumpism describes Donald Trump's made-up words.  This gives rise to articles on how to talk like Trump. The big one for me is the Trumpometer.  This is a seemingly never-ending scrolling list of Donald Trump's lies.  However, it isn't being tracked much anymore.    Next is Trumpocracy - this one is the title of a book written by David From on the corruption the American Republic. From there we have Trumponomics.  This is a high-frequency headline  that reviews Trumps 7 biggest failures.    Trumpocalypse - this is another book by David From.  This time it is about restoring American Democracy and how to rebuild the nation after Trump.  Have I found all the Trump words today?  One would go on to the signature words of Donald Trump.  Perhaps another time.

This is Port Dalhousie's beach on Lake Ontario.  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

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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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