Feb 15 2023 - Don't Touch the Polar Bears

 

Libraries have special collections where rare and valuable books are kept, where  collections on "special subjects" are kept together and so on.  I thought of this when I tried to read a National Post story - "Canada is a dangerous, racist and cold place to travel" - a compelling headline, but very circuitous to find how to open up and read. That's what got me thinking about access to special collections.  The internet as open access is over, and we've entered the pay to play age.  Not like public libraries at all.  You don't pay to access a special collection.  You show your intent and credentials to care for the collection. Back to our "Top Story"   Last week, Russia’s Ambassador to Canada issued a travel advisory to fellow Russians, warning them that Canada is a “dangerous,” racism-filled hellscape that is best avoided. “Canada today is a very dangerous country for Russian citizens,” Oleg Stepanov told the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti on Friday. He added that Russians are frequently the target of racism on Canadian streets. “I would not recommend it for tourism, education or business,” he said. The comments add to the official Russian government travel advisory for Canada, which warns of roving street gangs and a “rather harsh climate.” The latter warning being particularly strange given that much of Russia, on balance, is actually colder than Canada." You can read more on the story HERE.  It is considered retaliation for Canada's sanctions against Russian businesses and aid to Ukraine.  We remember the 2019 Meng Wanzhou incident that prompted the retaliatory Chinese detention of Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor.  At that time the Beijing government issued a travel advisory warning that Canada was now arbitrarily detaining foreign nationals.  But the article points out that many countries give stern official travel warnings. “Terrorists are likely to try to carry out attacks in Canada,” reads the official U.K. guidelines on travel to Canada. “Attacks could be indiscriminate, including in places visited by foreigners.”  British citizens are warned that “severe snow storms are a regular occurrence during winter.” The Australian government tells travellers to Canada to steer clear of “dangerous wildlife” and to exercise caution on ski hills. “Winter sports can be dangerous, even fatal”  France, in its Canadian travel advisory, takes special care to warns its citizens of the dangers of snowmobiling. “Given the high number of snowmobile accidents, including several fatal incidents each year, extreme vigilance should be exercised when using them. And what about the U.S.? Wouldn't they get the same warnings and additional ones about gun violence?  Here is the CNN article on what 9 countries warn about the U.S.  So I've checked out our warnings and we're just as cautious as the rest.  Fraud, cybercrime, terrorism, parked vehicles, residential break-ins.  All these things are the stuff of advisories. Isn't this a fantastically coloured flower?  Jade Vine with the latin name Strongylodon macrobotrys.  This one was at Longwood Gardens blooming in early spring.   Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

July 13 2021 - Billionaire Branson Blasts into Space

 

I was scrolling past the Branson headlines yesterday to find out about banana slicers.  what did Branson do? He 'soared more than 50 miles above the New Mexico desert.'  He was joined by SPCE.N employees - who unstrapped themselves and floated in and out of cabins with bezerkly goofy grins.     "We’re here to make space more accessible to all," an exuberant Branson, 70, said shortly after embracing his grandchildren following the flight. "Welcome to the dawn of a new space age." The race was on between Branson and Jeff Bezos, according to the Globe and Mail on the weekend. There are lots of headlines on 'the feud' getting petty. This is a highly publicized rivalry with fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos, the Amazon (AMZN.O) online retail mogul who had hoped to fly into space first aboard his own space company's rocket.  There are tweeted comparisons of Bezos' "better" rocket vs Branson's. There was a congratulations on Instagram. Bezos said on Instagram. "Can’t wait to join the club!" The flight was moved up to occur before the Bezos flight scheduled for July 20th. A big party was held afterwards with space industry executives, future customers and other well-wishers  Joining the reception was another billionaire space industry pioneer, Elon Musk, who is also founder of electric carmaker Tesla Inc Branson says 600 wealthy would-be citizen astronauts have also booked reservations, priced at about $250,000 per ticket for the exhilaration of supersonic flight, weightlessness and the spectacle of spaceflight. Branson has said he aims ultimately to lower the price to about $40,000 per seat as the company ramps up service, achieving greater economies of scale. Colglazier said he envisions eventually building a large enough fleet to accommodate roughly 400 flights annually at the spaceport. I wonder what the reviews will look like. I am still thinking about the banana slicer.   At the bottom of one of the articles is a "Litter-Robot" ad for automated cat litter collection.  I don't know if this is a comedic video or an ad. The cost is $660. It is at litter-robot.com and has 8,247 reviews.  Here we are at reviews again.  I scrolled through a few - my estimate is that out of this enormous number of reviews under 10% have correct grammar, spelling or even make sense.  If I pick out the silliest, this could be a rival to the banana slicer. Our picture today - ripe tomatoes. This is a tomato year at Lilycrest Gardens.  There are around 40 - 60 plants in the field.   Each is staked and pruned perfectly.  This picture comes from Cole's Garden Centre where tomato plants this year showed up with a full crop.

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Jan 7 2020 - Travel Delirium

 

Our Globe and Mail has pages and pages of coverage of "The Day the US Stood Still" and the storming of the Capital, in addition to all the political and health executives/leaders who "travelled" for vacations during the lockdown at Christmas. There must be travel delirium taking hold as the New York Times had a few additional headlines besides the storming of the Capital - one that encourages us to think 'Travel' with 52 places to go.  So I went looking for a virtual travel site.   Forbes gives me a list of virtual tours to take: so I clicked on the Guggenheim Museum in New York.   It is HERE.  That didn't take long to leave - the art work reminded me too much of the banana duct-taped on the wall.   Next I went to the top of the Eiffel Tower - no one up there at all -  it was spooky.  On to the Georgia Aquarium where all the cameras are "off-line for the night" - at 7:00am in the morning.  Legoland?  This is a booking site not a virtual tour site. Yosemite Park - I look out from the top of Glacier Point and then Half Dome Summit (June 2017 as it pans the horizon.  Check it out HERE as that was OK. I am starting to wear out, as Yosemite isn't interesting for very long as a still picture coverage tour. My last stop is Boat International HERE with another article on all the virtual tours to check out -  Arundel Castle, U.K.  and 3 minutes of images of the Annual Tulip Festival 2020 - too short, so sad. It is only a half hour of research and I now want the answer to my question: why are virtual tours boring? And here it is at "Boring Virtual Tour"  HERE. This is an electronic marketing site that makes house selling visually glorious.  They call is 3D Matterport photography.  This is the link to actually look at.   Rental properties, residential real estate, customer tours of businesses.   Getting virtual tours into the realm of the interesting and out of the boring?  All the advice is  HERE at the nngroup.com - just think of this as soon we'll get some interesting virtual travel tours. Isn't this a pretty house?  A nice traditional British tudor style.  It is located on Yates Street in St. Catharines. A surprising 'vacation' moment nearby. Purchase at: FAA - marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Sep 19 2020 - Snake Cake vs Travel

 

There are people who think travel will open up soon.  I think there's a better chance of all of us making a snake cake. The travel writer jury's out on travel.  Yes, you can travel, but should you travel?  FODORS.com took up the question this past week and let us know that there are countries that have had zero COVID cases. Fodor says: "The Cook Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Nauru, Niue, Palau, Samoa, the Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu. North Korea and Turkmenistan were also on the list with caveats that both countries are known to be secretive." That's most helpful to consider  travelling to countries that are secretive.  And what about this tourist news?  Would you travel to India right now to see the Taj Mahal?  The Taj Mahal, closed since March, is set to reopen on September 21, despite India having the world’s highest numbers of daily new COVID cases.  Book a hotel in Japan now?  The International Olympic Committee announced September 7 that the Tokyo Olympics, postponed to summer 2021, will go ahead regardless of the state of the pandemic. I suggest we return to our kitchens instead to make a Slinky the Snake Cake.  We won't need a test or insurance.   There are lots of snake cakes.  I see posts since 2016, so they've been around for a while.  That explains the abundance and variety:  some are life-size pythons extending the entire length of the table.  There's a python cake in the grass. Cobras rising up cakes, snakes making their way up tiers of cakes.  In comparison frog and slug cakes are cute and appear more edible.  That excludes the Jabba the Hutt Cake.  To indicate a slug has visited your cake?  There are slime cakes. These have cups of slime above the cake, pouring the slime icing over the cake. Our picture today:  swans on the shore of Lake Ontario!  Makes me think about the Whistling Swans who will be flying south soon.

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June 14 2020 - What makes the Lake turn pink?

They aren't sure what makes the lake turn pink, but famous Lonar Lake has turned pink this week.  They think it may be: increased salinity in the water, the presence of algae or a combination of both.  The lake is 500 kilometres east of Mumbai, India.  The video and story are HERE.  It is an impact crater lake, caused by a meteor hitting the earth about 50,000 years ago. The water in the lake is both saline and alkaline, according to Wikipedia.  The Lonar salts are derived from an unknown source in the bed of the lake. And the lake has two distinct regions that do not mix - an outer neutral and an inner alkaline.  Each has its own flora and fauna.  The lake appears green for most of the year.  You can go to the Wikipedia site, and see the lake green and then pink.  The link is HERE.  When I looked at the link, it said  "travel/2020". Can travel be a normal subject term anymore?  It has changed significantly in just a few months.  Now travel topics are about restrictions on flights and travel advisories from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.  A Wall Street Journal's article outlines how difficult "vacation travel" is right now and it does say that some countries are allowing in residents of neighbouring nations, creating a "tourism bubble."  There's an urgency to be able to reopen for tourists. That's because $2.9 trillion U.S. is at stake globally.  Did you know that the city and special administrative region of Macau (in China) generated the highest share of GDP through direct travel and tourism of any economy worldwide at just over 50%?  It is largely based on casino gaming and tourism.  My interest in travel and tourism is garden tourism.  And our picture today was taken at Butchard Gardens last September.  With the addition of one of the dramatic Skylum skies, a section of the garden with its composition of the plants and trees takes on a sense of drama.  Our second picture of a model railroad has its own drama - there's a strange skull collection in the bottom left.  I wonder what the railroad story is there.

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Feb 24 2020 - Dogs on Train...Seats

This is the last week of February.  Knowing our popular and unpopular months, there's a little cheer! Here's a satirical article in the press covering the reactions to a dog sitting on the seat in a train to Paddington.  Being TV news host Emily Maitlis' dog, it got some attention.  The attention of this writer takes a satirical twist.  It was in theguardian.com - outlining the rules of train travel int regards to seats.  The basic rules is that pets are allowed on trains. Should pets be allowed at all? "Yes – as long as you remember that not everyone likes being on trains with animals, even their own pets. If you see me on a train with my dog, you can assume that something has gone badly wrong with my travel plans. I know my dog is adorable, but I am only prepared to talk about that for a limited amount of the journey. Getting an adorable pet was not my idea. Because my dog is also small and needy, it will probably insist on spending some time standing on my lap. This is not the same as a dog on a seat, and again, it will not have been my idea. I go on trains to take a break from my dog." What about children? "I have travelled with small children, and in my experience most passengers would rather sit next to a dog than a toddler. On a crowded train, you should give up your seat for a toddler if you have for some reason come to dislike the person you are sitting next to. Older people should be offered your seat, depending on how old they seem, and not how old they are. Do not ask for ID." Is it ever acceptable to put a bag on the seat? "No. A bag on a seat is worse than a dog on a seat. At least the dog is enjoying the ride. Even worse than bags is feet on seats. Any attempt to cushion yourself from the possibility of having to sit next to someone is both antisocial and prone to backfire – you end up sitting next to someone who hates you and they will give up their seat to the first toddler to come along." Should you chat to your neighbours? "It is almost never acceptable to make eye contact with a stranger on a train, even if you are facing them across a table for a five-hour journey. I am very sorry my dog does not understand this." This made me think of how a context can make "the" difference. In comparison, dogs sit on seats at the animal hospital I go to with Dezi. Most of them, like Dezi, would rather hide under the seat and disappear. The orchid today won't be for sale at the vendor table at the RBG orchid show this coming weekend.  This is an exotic and rare lady slipper orchid typically sold between expert growers only.

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Travel Adventure

Longwood's outside gardens are often surpassed by the inside conservatory displays.  One travels the world with its inside conservatory gardens.   It gives the experience of travelling the world on a plant expedition adventure. Last evening I heard the story of Mark Quattrocchi from Mark himself as he finishes his two-year grand adventure - "One Adventure Please".  He has travelled around a good part of the world on a bicycle, raising funds for Free the Children.  He is fulfilling a life goal and dream.  See Mark's last post here and his route here.  I took away his sense of optimism and wonder.  He has seen some of the most beautiful sights on the planet, and his greatest appreciation is for meeting so many caring and kind people on his trip. His travel adventure seems to have been to meet the world as well as see the world. Most of us don't live like Mark has for the last 2 years.  He engaged in every moment, good and bad, up and down. It sounded like there were lots of moments of both wonder and hunger.  Just imagine how many languages were spoken to him.   If you would like to help Mark complete his campaign to build schools in the Adopt-A-Village program here's the link.  He's very close and would appreciate your support.