Did You Know?

Did you know that the tenth president of the USA, who has born in 1790, has a grandson living today?

John Tyler, the tenth president, was born in 1790 and has a grandson, Harrison Tyler, who was born in 1928 and is alive in 2024.

John Tyler had a son, Lyon, at age 63 in 1853.

Lyon had a son, Harrison, at the ripe old age of 75 in 1928.

According to Wikipedia, Harrison Tyler is still alive, 234 years after President John Tyler was born..

 

 Did you know that Charles Darwin and Steve Irwin owned the same tortoise?

The tortoise, Harriet, was reportedly collected by Charles Darwin during his 1835 visit to the Galapagos Islands.

Harriet was taken to England before ending up in Australia, where she eventually lived at the Australia Zoo which was owned by Steve and Terri Irwin.

Harriet lived until 2006 when she was thought to be 191 years old.

Harriet (Wikipedia)

Did you know that the first successful airplane flight and the moon landing were only 66 years apart?

The Wright brothers flew the Kittyhawk for 12 seconds in 1903

Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin walked on the moon in 1969, four days after after launching from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

From 12 seconds to 4 days through space. Amazing. 

I watched the moon landing live on a black and white television. I wasn't allowed to stay up for the Kittyhawk telecast.

 

I found this information and much more in a tweet by Time Capsule Tales.

When School Clocks Went Metric

When Canada went metric around 1980, I remember that the custodians came into our classrooms and added red stickers* to our wall clocks one night. They left the standard hour settings the same, but using red numbered stickers, they affixed the numbers 13 to 23 on the inside of the circumference. Did they put a 0 as an alternative under the 12? I can’t remember, but they should have. 

Inexpensive stickers or not, they stuck. I am sure that if I were to return to my classroom of 45 years ago, the same clock and stickers would be there.

Some of the clocks seen on my search for images have a 24 at the top instead of a 0. No matter what the miliary might call it, there is, technically, no such time as 24 o’clock. As soon as it passes from 23:59:59, the time becomes 0. 

We were prepped to say 13 o’clock instead of 1 o’clock or 1 pm, but we never did. I taught for more than 20 more years with clocks like that in the classroom, but no one ever used so-called metric time. To this day, in practise, people don’t use the 24 hour clock. My grandkids verify that it continues this way in their schools. By the way, I don't know why tine was considered metric, but it was at the time. I mean metric runs in unties of 10, not by twelves or sixtieths or whatnot.

I asked the grandkids if similar clocks (with the 0, not the 24) are in their current classrooms. They are, but my kids are in newer schools, so I suppose the clocks were purchased that way, for I can see them advertised on Amazon and elsewhere as in the above images.

Having said that, when I take a photo at at 1pm, my camera and software will record as 13, and it really is better than bumbling about with am and pm. For record keeping, the 24 hour notation does seem superior.

* I had always assumed that they added stickers, but maybe they replaced the covers completely. I don't think the schools would have sprung for completely new clocks, but I don't know. Whatever the truth, I have always believed that they were stickers, and I  have ... um ... stuck to the stickers theory in this post. 

An Odd Delivery

Late afternoon, and I am out front watering the flowerpots. A FedEx trucks pulls up. The neighbours get their share of delivery trucks, so I carry on. The driver walks up the driveway and deposits the box by our door. I exclaim my surprise to this pleasant and friendly man We exchange a few words, and off he goes.

A little while later, I am done with my chore. I regard the box more closely. I see that it is a Walmart container. We do not order from Walmart.

My birthday is impending. Has somebody sent a gift? But who would? It could only be Sha, but she'll be here with us on that day: Labour Day, as it turns out.

If it is a birthday gift, I don't want to open it prematurely. I check with Shauna. It is not from her.

Sue opens the box. Once she sees the contents, she partly repackages it.

She presents the box to me. It contains a bottle of soap – a large container to refill our dispensers as required.

I had recently made an order of various items from Amazon. As we thought of items we might soon need, we had added soap to the list.

It is quite puzzling. I order soap from Amazon. It is delivered by FedEx and not by an Amazon truck. It is in a Walmart container of all things.

I can only surmise. Not all Amazon deliveries come directly from the Amazon warehouse. That part of my order much have gone to a third party supplier: an affiliate, if you will. That suppler must also ship for Walmart, and they must have had a Walmart box readily available.

That has to be it. Doesn't it?

I still find it odd, though.

Throwing in the Towel

I had a habit that I seldom use any more. If I needed to remember to do something, I would displace an object, often tossing it on the floor. Later, it would help to remind me of whatever it was that I should do. It worked for many a year.

Of course we now have Alexa and Siri and texts to remind of of things, but I reverted to the old method on Sunday evening.

I did it for Sue's benefit this time, just in case she would wake up and see me gone and then worry.

I have a dish towel that hangs of my den door. It's a team logo towel, so we don't use it for dishes. When I would head out with the camera in the early morning in years past, I would drop it by my den door. It would tell Sue that I was out on a shoot.

This recent night, I was not on a shoot, but the timing was so unusual that I also left a message.

← Shoppers is a ubiquitous Canadian pharmacy. I knew it would be open until midnight, and I desperately needed floss.

This sort of flossing predicament hadn't happened for a long time because I have been using better floss. It had been so long since I haven't had a flossing incident that I had forgotten about the issue and purchased a cheaper brand.

What is the issue? You ask.

It is that cheap floss is prone to shredding in some of my crowded and perhaps somewhat jagged teeth. It gets stuck in there, and it feels terrible.

I couldn't get it out, so in some desperation, I decided to go the Shoppers to purchase good floss.

It took a lot more flossing with the good stuff before I finally extricated the bad floss from my teeth.

Sue slept through it all, but it was worth taking a minute to drop the towel and write the note, just in case.

Turtle and Bog

I was hoping for waterlilies, and I guess we found them, but if they had flowered, the blooms were long gone.

Too bad, but then Sue spotted a wee turtle who made its way to the log that we see above and below. What a cutie!

We hiked back over the footbridge. It's boggy over there but not usually this wet in late August. I took a sweeping video and then some photos trying to look at shapes and spots of light. The video was too big to upload through Blogger, so I used the YouTube path. I was able to enlarge this YT video just as I had those that I inserted directly into Blogger earlier as posted here recently.

A few photos from within the above scene.

As we headed back toward the car, we noticed a bit of colour here and there. It's too early! Doncha think?

Of Hard Spaces and Things

Before I begin to compose a blog, I hit the backspace key. That gets rid of the space that blogger puts in there for us. I suppose they are trying to help, but it isn't needed. I could understand a double space better that a single because that would be a proper paragraph indentation as was standard in the past. Indenting was always two spaces, not one. 

With modern typography, indentations are not required although some people still use them by habit.

The next time you go to compose a blog, look under the html tab and you will see this tag: <nbsp;> . That is there to give us a hard space, even though we can't see the code in the compose window.

I can see &nbsp; when I read your posts in Feedly, which I usually do before I link to your actual post to comment. I find that posts are often easier on the eyes in a reader program.

There's nothing wrong with leaving the hard space in or with me seeing the &nbsp; in Feedly. But I am just saying that it is there. I notice it and don't want to use it, and so I hit the backspace key very first thing in the compose window.

=====================

I was on the phone on hold for what seemed like a long while. After awhile I needed to use the bathroom. I feared that with my luck I would probably get a call at the most awkward moment.

Eventually, I had to go, so I took the phone with me.

Sure enough, I got the call the moment that I stepped into the bathroom. Fortunately, the main proceedings hadn't yet begun. Mercifully.

======================

When I posted the photos of the trucks last week, most of you liked the colour version better than the b&w, as did I actually. I decided to compromise with selective colour. I gave some of the yellow back to the trucks. I couldn't give it all back because then they then looked too bright against the mono background. I used a different amount of yellow in the each photo, for each looked better to me that way. I keep experimenting.

 

Memorable Pizzas

When Vicki posted of specific memories with food, I thought of pizzas: three specific pizzas.

We had a good youth group at our church in the mid-sixties. We often went out together, and one Sunday night after church, we went to a pizza place that, I think, may have been called Vesuvius.

Perhaps I hadn't been exposed to pizza very often because I didn't have my first one until I was 15, but this particular pizza seemed spectacular. If I had it now, I am not sure how it would stack up, but it was great on that Sunday night, out with the church youth. I am not even sure who was in the group that night, but I remember the pizza.

I had my second memorable pizza on our first anniversary. We had ordered pizza to our motel room in Stratford on our wedding night. I don't remember that pizza being special although the night was pretty memorable.

We've had pizza almost every anniversary since then, but that first anniversary dish was really good. We had been drawn to the place, Sir Pizza, because one of Sue's bosses had invested in it. That pizza was so good that we ordered again sometime later. We were disappointed, so that was that.

In 1998, just after New Year, perhaps even on New Years Day, but I forget exactly, we took both daughters across province to Ottawa. The youngest was going for a semester work coop, and the oldest, Shauna, was going with her in search of work.

I drove a U-Haul truck, also pulling a car on a dolly all the way. Including a two-hour stop in Waterloo to gather Allyson's belongings, it was a 14 hour trip. The last half of the journey was in terrible snowy conditions as we passed various cars who had run off into the ditch. I was not a truck driver, but somehow I managed to drive that miserable truck-plus-car to the girls' new apartment in Ottawa.

Shauna asked a neighbour across the hall for a recommendation for a good pizza place and returned with a recommendation for House of Pizza. It was close to their new apartment, so we ordered. It was sooo good, and it wasn't just because the day had been horrendous, for it was really a most excellent pizza. We had it several times afterward when we visited the girls in Ottawa, and it was always scrumptious.

One of the times was in 2001. We had stopped in Ottawa after driving home from the Maritimes. We picked up from House of Pizza and drove to a park by the Ottawa River. As we sat there enjoying the food and the pleasant day, flock after flock of Canada Geese took off flying into the wild blue yonder. It was a most glorious sight. 

Not everyone will think of pizza when they think of memorable food, but we are pretty plain folk, and that is what came to my mind.

Just a Cup of Water

Life is short and hard for some living entities. Every spring, the neighbour(s) hang(s) a nice potted plant: always in the same spot. Come  every darn year, I think that, just maybe, this will be the year that they might water it on occasion. Every doggone year, they don’t. Every dadgum year, it perishes quickly. Every freakin year, it saddens me.

It’s not a deep mystery. Potted plants need water in some form or another just about every day. And surely it isn’t all that onerous to deliver a cup of water. Or you wouldn’t think so  

The house is owned by a mom who only lived there for a short while before moving in with her boyfriend. Her three daughters have lived there ever since then. One young lady remains, possibly in her mid-twenties now. Twenty-five is not too young to know enough to deliver a cup of water to a plant. It is right on the doorstep after all.  

She’s young but not that young. I guess she deserves some credit for starting out in hope every spring, but really, a cup of water … just a cup of water …

=============

Now I am thinking of the gospel song, Follow Me, by Ira Stamphill.  "Just a cup of water" is major phrase in the song. He came to our church as an evangelist in maybe the mid-fifties. We purchased his LP: our first ever I believe. We later bought a record player so we could listen to it.

If anything I thought that I might find another artist doing the song on YouTube. Unexpectedly however, I seem to have have found, Stamphill himself, just the recording though. But is takes me back to our little, one bedroom, upstairs flat on Connaught Street, in Saint Laurent, Montreal.

The Helper

In '09 and in other surrounding years as well, we saw a lot of our grandkids. On this day, Danica was likely over for a sleepover, and she was happy to help her amma to water the flowers.

Sue recently wanted photos of someone helping for her daily prompt. When she remembered these pictures, we did a search and found them in the back drawer, as it were, of my photo files. I thought that I would post them as well. I don't think these made it to the blog at the time, but many other grandkid photos sure did.

Danica was two years old. Those were good days.

I'll begin with Sue's new composite and post the originals below. 

Look at the Stargazer lilies, below, Margaret. It's a pity that they only lasted for a few summers; they were both beautiful and fragrant.

Danica was and remains a sweet child although as a senior in high school it is probably inappropriate to call her a child.

.

Photo Variations

I have been roaming around in old photo folders recently. One day I found myself in July 2018. This photo jumped out at me, for I had recalled it recently. Sue and I had been to an outlook spot along the river, and I told her that I had a photo showing a big rock in the stream: a rock that is no longer visible, or perhaps the river is just running higher these days and covering the rock.

I already had a previously previously edited photo of this subject, but I had taken more more than one picture at the time, so I edited a different one than I did six years ago. This is the new edit.

I liked the photo then, and I like it now, but then I decided to experiment with the Adamski effect where one applies a motion blur. 

I made two versions, one with the rock removed and one with the rock remaining. 

As I understand it, we are supposed to use the second method with a foreground object in its original detail with the Adamski effect, but I like the version without the rock too. In fact, I like all three variations.

An August Cottage Vacation

For more than 20 years, we would visit Sue's sister's cottage in their cottagey near-north amongst the rocks and coniferous trees. Once I retired, we would usually go for a week or so in early autumn and/or winter, but I can't remember why were were there that particular August. Perhaps we lingered for awhile after one of the two family reunions that took place there. 

It was a good place for me to amble about with my camera,

Let's begin the photo reveal with our accommodation that summer.

Actually the tent was just where we slept: outdoors in the cool breezes amidst the sounds of the crickets. We had a very comfy air mattress, and with the cottage facilities just a hop, skip and a jump away, it was like having the best of both worlds.

During daylight hours this was the the eastern view from behind the tent.

One evening I took a long exposure from just outside the cottage, looking down toward the barn. The original exposure was actually darker than this, but knowing how a low-light photos tend to look very dark here in Blogger, I did lighten it.

Early the next morning, I took a photo from close to the same spot.

I believe that I also took the next photo on the same morning as I wandered about the acreage and saw the rising sun peeking over the trees..

A few mornings later, there was a grand sunset looking in the other direction, westward toward the front of the property.

The next night, the colours were exceptional. I took a variety of photos: this one on the road just outside the fence line. I was in photographic heaven.

There was a full moon that week; I think it was a supermoon, and I also think this may have been my first attempt at photographing the moon. I am pleased to say that I have had better results subsequent to this one, but this is also about my memories and experiences that week, and so I include it here.

A small river ran along the back of the property, but one morning I drove the car about 15 minutes to the nearest lake, hoping to catch a sunrise. My lake pictures were quite meh, so I shall move us along to my return trip to the cottage.

At one point I pulled over to photograph the crows on the road. I did not exaggerate the colour of the sky. It was impressive, as you shall also see in the photo after this one.

I took this next photo at another roadside stop. I love how the wires on the right are lit by the rising sun.

Those last two photos should give you an idea of the geography of the area. It is rural, rugged, and often appealing.

What pleasant memories we have from there and not just from this occasion.

The Return of the Bees

They're back!

I posted, worriedly, some time ago about the dearth of bees on the Joe Pye, but last evening  I saw one, and then I saw more.

I had gone out back to take some trash out and also to fill the birdbaths. After I filled the farthest bath, I saw a bee flying around the lilac bush.

So I checked our Joe, and I saw it again, or perhaps a different one. And then I saw another and then a whole bunch. I guess they just come late to us, perhaps as other food sources diminish.

I was greatly pleased.

The photos are not from last night but from September 2022. 

Oh . . . Since then, that sneaky scalawag, Sue, snuck out and took some current photos.

Caturday 68: Sabine is a People Puss

This is the third and final (for now) Sabine Caturday installment. She's kind of a people puss, in a way that Lacey isn't. It's an enjoyable change of pace.

That's it. That's the post.

Have a good weekend.

In a Field of Daisies

I frequently bemoan that I am no longer doing much photography, but I have another phone pic today, along with some editing in Photoshop. (I had a few posts in the queue and this was supposed to have been posted before yesterdays blog, which also contained photos.) 

About twice a year, we take heavier loads to the laundromat so as not to overburden our own washing machine. This time it was to wash floor mats.

While Sue waited inside, I went out to sit in the car. I looked up and saw a vintage car in a driveway just across the road.

I ambled over with my phone.

The hood was up, and I saw that the hobbyist was installing
quite a modern-looking engine.

Back home on the computer, I wondered if I could use AI to change the surroundings. After selecting the car I asked for a field of daisies to be placed around it. While I had pictured something different, this works for me.

Never look to closely when I do stuff like this because I don't get  into the painstaking details, so the shadows are wrong and perhaps other things too. I am just experimenting and am happy to have accomplished what I have.

As I often do, I also made a mono conversion. I think that was the best result on this occasion.

At least I am keeping my hand in the hobby to some degree.

Fixing the Light

While Sue dragged me about for shopping errands, I noticed interesting trucks on a construction site near WallyWorld. There is a truck meme/group on Flickr called HTT, Happy Truck  Thursday. The fellow who created the group is a Flickr friend, so I pay attention to the group to some degree although I seldom submit a photo.

But this was my chance, so I remembered to return with my camera. It was early evening, around 7:30, and I was surprised to see the sun already so low and the light so dim. The trucks were in shadow, and the sky was hazy (more info at the end), but of course, I squeezed the shutter regardless. 

Back at the computer, I did my best to breathe some life into the images, including adding a fake sky over the blank one in the original photo. I was trying to fix the light, as it were, and just for fun, I chose a sunset sky. As was the case yesterday, I don't mind playing around with photos when they were taken in poor conditions.

Once again, it is all for casual fun to share in passing. There is nothing exemplary about this stuff.

Of course, as is my wont*, I did mono versions as well. I can't seem to help myself.

At the very least, it was the first time in a long while that I made an effort to go out a photoshoot just for me. Lately, I mostly seem to tag along with Sue when she wanders about with her phone.

The next morning when I looked out, I saw that the atmosphere was still hazy. It reminded me a little of the smoke from last year's forest fires. I wondered if I was just imagining things, for I hadn't heard anything about it. Then, on social media I saw a map that showed that, yes, we are located within a vast area that is being affected by smoke from forest fires.

* Wont: one's customary behavior in a particular situation.

Then and Now

Telephone Operators in 1966: I came across this photo and messaged it to my grandkids to show them phone technology when I was their age and even older than they are.

from Montreal Golden Oldies Facebook group

Although most of us were never really in the presence of a telephone switchboard, the photo depicts  how it was back then. Just a year later than the above photo, in 1967, I personally became somewhat familiar and reliant on a smaller, one-operator switchboard.  I was at university and away from Sue. We would write regularly, but long distance calling was expensive back then. However, I found a work-around. 

My residence was in an old building. My room was on the fourth and top floor of the building shown below, but the ground floor had offices and housed the telephone switchboard for the whole university. I also remember that there was a barbershop in the basement, but I don't remember much else.

Johnson Hall, then called Admin (Administration Building), was my first residence at University.
I was up on the fourth floor. (photo by Bill Badzo*)

Once I learned that the university had a direct telephone line to Toronto and that it was just downstairs in my residence, I would periodically head down in the evening to see if the line was available to make a phone call to Sue. I'd make my request and wait around for the line to become available. Then, milady and I would have a brief conversation with me in the presence of the operator.

It only 50 years ago, but I think it must seem like almost prehistoric times to my grandkids.

Now I am thinking of other realities of that time, for although long distance was expensive, some things weren't.

I would take the bus home from university on most weekends. The fare from Guelph to Mississauga was only three dollars. Even as a poor student, I could afford that.

I am also thinking of the frequent letters that I wrote to Sue. I could afford the few cents postage cost and would write almost daily. Now that I am as a senior, a letter stamp costs more than a dollar here in Canada, so I avoid sending mail as much as possible. 

Meanwhile, Sue and I still don't have a proper long distance plan for our cell phones, but with email and messaging, we very seldom need it. If we do need to contact a business by phone, there is almost always an 800 number. Frankly m'dear, no one in our family likes being on the phone. We message each other in almost all cases. On most mornings, for example, Sue and her sister text back and forth at some length.

* I found the photo of my residence via a Google search. Oddly enough, it is by one of Flickr contacts although I don't remember seeing it in his photostream. It's a small world after all.

 

They Are Much More Than Weird

October 2016: Sue and I are driving back from an autumnal vacation at the cottage. CBC is on the radio, and they are interviewing Frank Schaffer. I've mentioned him here recently and already linked to one of his videos.

Back 2016, Trump was running for election. I didn't know much about him except that he was not a good candidate. In this CBC interview, Shaeffer exposed Trump and how awful and dangerous the man was.

Schaefer was right then, and he's right now when he exposes present-day Republicans.

Recently, the Left has been calling Trump and his minions weird, but Frank goes beyond that in this video, and he does so powerfully. He reacts strongly to the GOP for making fun of a man, Tim Walz, who made sanitary products available to school girls. 

He goes beyond calling them weird by adding the noun perverts. Listen for less than 12 minutes, and see if you don't agree.

This is not a political blog, so I promise not to go on and on, but I am impressed by this strong statement. We can lean left or lean right, and that is okay, but the right, especially, has done more than lean lately, and is not exactly covering itself in honour and glory.

Caturday 67: Sabine Recognizes the iPad

Ready to Pounce

After posting Sabine playing with the iPad last week, I wanted to catch her recognizing the tablet before I opened it up for her. She did and was quite anxious for me to set it up so that she could spring into action.

Pursuant to my post last Monday, you can see that I once again doubled the height (266 to 532) and width (320 to 640). I then fiddled (below) with the height to try to eliminate the black bars. By guess and by golly and by trial and error, I think I succeeded by changing the height to 360. This wasn't necessary; I just wanted to see if I could do it.

I know that some of you cannot upload videos to Blogger for some reason, and I can't understand why. Could it be that you are capturing a very high res video or that the format isn't to Blogger's liking? Blogger can be very strange. I am guessing that you could upload to YouTube and then insert into Blogger from there. I used to do it that way in the past, but I no longer use the YouTube route.