May 23 2025 - The Smallest Towns

 

A town in Newfoundland is known as  the "smallest town in Canada".  With only 4 people left, I wondered if that is the case.  How does a place with 4 people get to call itself a town.  There would be no mayor or councillors and where would the emergency services like fire and police be?   It has made the news everywhere as the last inhabitants are leaving.  The many repetitions of the article say nothing of that.  They talk about how Tilt Cove, Newfoundland has dwindled since the copper mine closed in 1967.   The nearest towns are Shoe Cove and Snooks Arm.  Shoe Cove is closest at 13 km and 16 minutes away.  There's a small grocery store in Shoe Cove and 10 minutes away from there is La Scie (population 820) with shopping. Are there other smallest towns around the planet?  The list comes up with Hum, Cratia with 30 inhabitants, as a widely recognized smallest town.  A town gate, cemetery, two churches and a restaurant.   Then there is Monowi, Nebraska - a town known for having a single resident. Next up is Mazar, Kansas with a population of five.   Who keeps the lights on and the water running?  I guess I am a big town and big city person - I can't fathom what services aren't likely available.

Here's a great :Longwood Garden scene at the entrance.  It is unlikely we'll get there this year, given the border issues. But one can enjoy the pictures of the past.

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May 22 2025 - Queen Landslide

 

wo days ago a landslide occurred in Quebec - the CBC coverage is HERE.  Can you spot the house at the bottom?  It is next to the tree at the bottom.  It is a 300 metres across. A loud noise alerted the residents who fled.   I associate a landslide with a slope, but it is hard to see a slope in the pictures.  Rain was the cause for this landslide where slate exists.  You can see the grey in the picture.  A factor in Quebec is the clay soil which can retain a lot of water. The warning signs?  Big cracks in the ground, bulging ground appears at the base of a slope, changes in landscape such as water drainage on slopes, land movement, progressively leaning trees.  What about this?  Doors or windows stick or jam for the first time.  What are you supposed to do with this much land missing?  I haven't found any answers beyond call your insurance provider and similar activities.  What do you do?  Maybe put a thousand metre fence around the "big hole".  There are provincial and federal initiatives to stabilize slopes and support revegetation.   Landslides occur all over the planet. The worst landslide in terms of recorded devastation was the Frank Slide in 1903 in Canada.  It buried the town of Frank, Alberta under an 92-million tonne rock avalanche. There were 75 deaths in that landslide.  In Haiyuan, China in 1920, landslides resulted in 200,000 deaths.  There were 50,000 landslides at the epicentre of the Gansu earthquake, with 675 big landslides that spread throughout the province.   There were aftershocks that lasted three years because of the widespread breaking of the ground. And the death toll of 200,000 lives is an estimate because it happened during the Chinese Civil War.   I wonder what that our Quebec farmer is going to do with the new big hole in the ground.

I checked out the Wisteria in Jordan on Monday but it didn't have the floral display worth photographing.  This year with the warm/cold variations, the leaves have started to come out while the wisteria is blooming, interrupting the pure purple blossom display. This picture is from last year.

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May 21 2025 - Norm then and now

 

George/Norm has passed away and his obituary says he was 76 years old.   Last week I saw an article on how much younger people look now compared to 30 or 40 years ago.  The picture used as the demonstration was Cheers' Norm.  They showed what a 34-year-old Norm looked like during the Cheers series which ran from 1982 to 1993 and how he would look today at the same age.  Today's Norm looks younger.

I found an article that showed pictures of the main characters at the beginning and then the end of the series.   "A 33-year-old George Wendt first perched himself up at the bar as Norm Peterson during season one of Cheers. Greetings of "Norm" continued each time he arrived at the bar throughout the series 11-season run until he was 44."   Doesn't he sort of look the same age at the start and the end?   And why do we seem to look younger now? Here's an answer:  "Yes, it's generally accepted that people today are looking younger than they did 50 years ago. This is due to a combination of factors, including advancements in healthcare, changes in lifestyle (like better nutrition and smoking cessation), and increased use of sunscreen and skincare." Here's another answer: "Our skin, hair and teeth are benefiting from less cigarette smoke and physical toil, as well as an ever-expanding collection of cosmetic interventions designed to make us look younger." The studies say that people of the same chronological age are also biologically younger than fifty years ago.  There are some pretty irises blooming in my garden.  Irises have a long season of bloom - there are early bloomers with the snowdrops right through to June when the bearded varieties bloom.  These beautiful bearded irises are at Royal Botanical Gardens and will bloom in a week or two.

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Marilyn's Photos - May 20 2025 - Dishwasher Detergent

 

There are over 43,000 products on ULINE, and dishwasher soap is one of them.  But my question this morning is what is that weird little red ball called the powerball in the Finish dishwasher detergent. It fell apart when I put it in the little holder this morning.   Detergent is different than soap.  If we washed dishes with soap, they would have scum on them. So what is detergent if we had to make it ourselves?  Homemade versions include ingredients such as borax, essential oil, eucalyptus oil.  Borax, soap, washing soda, salt, lemon essential oil, citric acid are ingredients.  Lemon would not have been available until recently, so wonder what our pioneers did. They left it out. So zooming ahead 100 years or so, our powerball is a specialized compartment with compressed detergent to provide a "concentrated boost of cleaning power." The powerball is one of three chambers for breaking down all types of food residues.  There's a chemistry lab in that tiny cube.  I wonder how many chemists worked over the decades to get to that seemingly simple product. Simple?  Just type in 20 uses for dishwasher tablets and you will get more than 20 uses for it:  clean the toilet, wash the washing machine to freshen it, brighten white clothes scrubs the oven, revitalize patio furniture, soak pots and pans to remove burnt food, deodorize the trash can, soak silverware... an "all-clean" set of scenarios. A picture from the past of a steam locomotive from the past.

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Marilyn's Photos - May 19 2025 - Fireworks?

 

This is a fireworks day.  But things have changed in 70 years.  We had firecrackers going all day long - playing cowboys and indians with extra gusto.  I can remember met Dad having the bigger sized firecrackers and playing with them.  And then there would be a huge display in the school field at night. There would be a big crowd to see the display.  All gone now.  Hardly any fireworks for sale.  They used to be in all the stores, easily available. When I searched for what happened to fireworks, Wikipedia shows up as the top hit with the list of fireworks accidents and incidents.  I bet they are something!  Check them out HERE.  They start in 1869 with a fireworks factory explosion and  continue to the latest in North Macedonia in March 2025 with a nightclub fire that killed more approximately 60 people. Somehow they lit fireworks indoors.  The deadliest one looks like 1977 in China with 694 people killed at a public hall.   Last year, Toronto had a stor of a "fireworks fight" on Victoria day with young people shooting off fireworks across Bloor Street West - one of Toronto's mai streets.   Here's how fireworks are managed in Canada today:  "Fireworks are not allowed in parks or on beaches," the city's website says. "You are also not allowed to set off fireworks in a street, a parking lot, on a balcony, or on any private property that is not your own." On the positive side, this would be Niagara Falls' big night with both sides likely having fireworks displays.  Watch out for the traffic on the QEW! Maybe my "Blue Dahlia" looks enough like fireworks.

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