TIMEANDDATE Today!

Can you imagine that there are 'things you need to know' about fall?  That headline comes from National Geographic.  So I headed out to find the top 5 things I would really need to know.  I didn't find 5 things - I found one fact that was most interesting from timeanddate.com.   4.The Equinox is a Specific Moment... Contrary to popular belief, equinoxes are no day-long events, even though many cultures choose to celebrate it as such. Instead, they occur at the exact moment the Sun crosses the celestial equator – the imaginary line in the sky above the Earth’s Equator. At this instant, the Earth's rotational axis is neither tilted away from nor towards the Sun. And the moment?  10:21 am ET. Our pictures today come from the side of a passenger car at the Sandy River Railroad, showing the wear and tear of time on the surface paint.

The Universality of Curves

It is Ukrainian Christmas today.  With many Ukrainians in Niagara and Ontario, there's a tradition for the rest of us to leave our Christmas trees up for this date.  Ours came down earlier, due to the activities of Baxter the cat.  He started to consider the tree something to take down himself, perhaps a desire to get into the cat Christmas videos.   Our pictures today focus on curves.  As I take pictures of urban decay, I find that the shapes, patterns and lines of wear and tear are the same as those in nature's own processes.  The first picture is wear and tear  on a billboard sign.  The plastic material wears away in arcs and curves.  The second picture is ice, with some abstract filters applied to create the extreme colours.  It too has formed in arcs and curves. I found this explanation for the puddle freezing into ice: "The shallowness of this puddle suggests that it rapidly froze; only a thin water layer remained below the puddle. Then the fast-falling temperatures likely caused the ice to contract, which produced the cracking. Continued cooling widened the cracks. The ring pattern shows that the main direction of the stress force was radial, but the scalloped pattern along the rings shows that some stress varied with angle around the center. The small amount of water that didn't freeze rose into the cracks due to the hydrostatic pressure of the ice above and capillary action. Water in the rings then froze and expanded, and as it did it widened the rings and also directed the remaining small amount of liquid to the top of the ice. The slight bulges on the bottom of the rings were remnants of its last contact with the deepest water. In other words, the unfrozen water at the bottom of the puddle was, in essence, pushed and suctioned into the cracks." from Douglas Stith's website

Niagara's News

Marilyn's Photo of the Day  Niagara's News

Wear and Tear  I am fascinated by patterns, shapes and lines in abstract form, so find patterns of wear and tear interesting.  These signs are corrugated plastic or cardboard. Perhaps it is a combination.  The bright colours and geometric shapes caught my attention.  The first sign is for delivery of The Standard, the St. Catharines newspaper.  It has been in operation since 1891. Now owned by Southam, it was originally owned by W. B. Burgoyne and stayed in the family for 105 years. The publication and its debt was bought in 1982 by the paper's mechanical superintendent for $1.  Father and son, Henry, ran the paper.  It passed on through the generations of Burgoynes, all of them keeping the editorial independence thriving. Their dedication to St. Catharines is commemorated with a number of landmarks - a park, arena, and downtown bridge all still carry his name.  The St. Catharines Standards remains a lively publication and the largest in Niagara.  It is interesting how a sign with wear and tear and have such a story packed into it.  Now the tattoo sign, in Toronto, has no history so will be a mystery story.  One can create it from imagination.  Perhaps its location in the King Street West area can be the starting point.