Sharon Temple - a London day trip

By no stretch of the imagination can one say that the Sharon Temple is in London; It isn't. But London has the advantage of being very centrally located in Southwestern Ontario. The Sharon Temple is just a little more than two hours east of London and can easily be visited as a day trip from London.

One of the pleasures of living in London is being able to slip away easily and yet be back in our own bed that night.

In the Upper Canada of the 1820s, with simple tools but consummate skill and artistry, a small community known as the Children of Peace crafted a dramatic architectural testament to its vision of a society.

The Temple of the Children of Peace in the village of Sharon – with its Ark of the Covenant, inspirational Banners, Pipe and Barrel Organs and Jacob’s Ladder – was completed in 1832. It lives on as the centerpiece of the Sharon Temple National Historic Site, which encompasses nine historic buildings in a park setting.

The architectural elements of the Temple combine to express a singular religious vision of the most striking beauty. Its three tiers, four-fold symmetry, lanterns and pinnacles all take their inspiration from the Bible. Its three stories represent the Trinity.

The Children of Peace integrated a unique social vision with distinctive artistic and architectural works and an unparalleled musical tradition: they commissioned the first organ built in Ontario.

Unfortunately, the Sharon Temple was closed the day I was there. But I'm heading back. I want to see another of leader David Willson’s architectural curiosities – the round outhouse.

Pavement rainbow

All it takes is one litre of gasoline to contaminate 1 million gallons of water, enough water to half-fill an olympic sized swimming pool. That is why just a few ml. spilt on this London, Ontario, rain-dampened roadway creates such a rainbow of colour.

Local colour

Sometimes you don't have to travel far for a picture with local colour. From 1894 until 1999 Wallaceburg, Ontario about an hour's drive from London, Ontario, had a glass plant. In fact, Wallaceburg was known as the Glass Town of Canada.

The first plant was run by the Sydenham Glass Company and the last operator was the Libbey Glass Company. The plant closed after being bought foreign competitors.

Very sad. People with decades of service thrust out of their jobs. A small town losing a major employer. Why? All to save a few cents. I still use glasses made in Wallaceburg and they cast beautiful shadows on my table. When these glasses are gone, sadly they will be irreplaceable.

For more information about Glass Town check Virtual Museum Canada.

Moss - it may outlast even the cockroach

Moss. My wife hates the stuff. She has spent hours removing it from between our paving stones. At one point, paving stones were the most popular way to pave driveways and patios in London, Ontario. The love affair is waning but some of us have stayed true. I think the moss looks great and I love the way it returns when pulled. When the world as we know it comes to an end, my guess is moss like this will outlast even the cockroaches.

Forgotten art

This large, red, twisting sculpture sits in a small pocket park between the a federal building and the Bell building in downtown London, Ontario. The picture was shot on a weekend and all the surrounding buildings were closed. With no one to approach for details, the sculpture itself does not seem to have a plaque, the Internet was searched but nothing. 

A city map was searched and the little park did not seemed to be marked, the pathway through the park seemed to be forgotten and the art work itself does not appear to be considered part of London's heritage. (I guess it is just art. It is not as if it was a home with a fancy Victorian porch. Now you're talking heritage.)


It appears this is just a large, red piece of forgotten art. Possibly this explains why the area around the art looks poorly maintained and the art itself is beginning to look a little shabby.

Geek Dinner

One comment inspired a post on my other blog: Rockin' On: the Blog.

Last night was the monthly Geek Dinner. It is a misnamed event, at least according to my Canadian Oxford Dictionary.

geek: 1. an uninteresting, ineffectual, socially inept person; a nerd. 2. a person thoroughly devoted to one usu. technical interest, study, etc., often to the expense of social interaction.

The people attending this London, Ontario, event do not suffer from limited interests. Nor are they socially inept. The two pictured above are both bloggers and they run sites with a heavy slant towards knitting.

The one woman also knows her way around cameras, apertures and f/stops, as well as knitting needles and all that pearl one, knit two stuff. I checked her site and some of her pictures are so good that it makes me embarrassed to post this image taken with a camera clearly being pushed past its quality limits.

The truth is that the computer world attracts some of the most creative people around. It is a world of true discovery and many of the people at the dinner are the people pushing the edges of this new world — pushing the edges and expanding the territory.

When I was young, I discovered that some of the most creative people were physics majors and not art students. I think today it is possible the torch has been passed by the physics types to those with a strong interest in computer stuff — hardware and software. It was a short, clean hand-off.

Images from a mall soon to close...

The Jones New York women's fashions factory outlet is closing. Come January it will be gone. Like so many of the stores in the mall at the intersection of Wellington and Exeter Roads, it soon will be empty.

My wife and I stopped by there the other day. Retired, we seek out bargains and the Jones store was filled with them. Marked down women's wear, marked down again.

My wife tried on this and that and bought more this and that than I would like. I felt we couldn't afford it; We're retired. She felt we couldn't miss these bargains; We're retired. Ah, the same shade of grey but it looks different to each of us.

While my wife shopped, I took pictures. Surrounded by beautiful fabrics and clean light, I took out my little camera and set to work.

The staff watched, obviously curious. I got down on my knees for one pictures and stretched out over a round rack of dresses for another. I held my little camera up, down and rotated it diagonally.

Unable to keep their silence, they asked me politely what I was doing. I told them and I showed them the pictures on the camera-back monitor.

"Oh." They understood.

Now art was in the air. It filled the store and the staff was infected. "Have you looked outside?" A couple of the sales clerks were really getting into this and they had discovered their own art moment. "Those clouds won't last," they told me.

I slipped out the door into the parking lot. They were right.

This was originally posted to Rockin' On: the Blog, but I thought I should share these images with the followers of the "Daily Photo" international group of blogs.

Cheers,
Rockinon