It's a Runners' Choice

18 miles --- That's the distance many of the runners out pounding the pavement in the southwest of  London Ontario were running Sunday. About 90 long distance runners from Runners' Choice on Dundas Street in the southwestern Ontario city were out enjoying, I think I can say enjoying, the cool late-winter temperatures accompanied by a warm, spring-like sun.

It was a fruitful photo morning. More pictures from the run tomorrow and the day after.

Cheers,
Rockinon

...and the lion shall lie down with the lamb

It is not exactly a lion; It's a tiger. And the tiger, sculpted out of snow, is lying beside the driveway of Peter Lam, no 'b', a well respected London Ontario artist.

. . . and the tiger shall lie down with the lam. Close enough.

Every year to celebrate the Chinese New Year, Peter Lam sculpts the appropriate work of art from a block of snow placed in front of his west London home. This year, 2010, is the Year of the Tiger.

The tiger had been on display for sometime when I discovered it. The warm February sun can be hard on snow tigers, the ones actually made from snow. To see Lam's creation when it was still fresh, check out his flickr page.

Cheers,
Rockinon

The telephone: invented in Canada

I know, I know, the Yanks brag the telephone was invented in Boston. In fact, there's a marker in Boston commemorating the birthplace of the telephone.

But Canadians also have bragging rights when it comes to the telephone. Alexander Graham Bell himself once stated Brantford, Ontario, was where he invented the telephone. He developed the concept at his family's Southwestern Ontario homestead.

Scotland, not to be outdone, also claims the invention of the telephone with pride; Bell, the inventor, was born in Edinburgh Scotland in 1847.

But one thing unites Boston, Brantford and Edinburgh - they all agree that in 2002 the U.S. Congress made a big error recognizing Antonio Meucci, an Italian immigrant to the States, as the true inventor of the telephone. 113 years after Meucci's death, the American Congress re-wrote history and declared the little-known mechanical genius the father of modern communications.

No one argues about the yellow pages, they were created in 1886 by Reuben Donnelly, a printer in Cheyenne Wyoming, when he ran out of white paper and used yellow instead.

At one time London, Ontario, had a strong connection to the telephone business. A massive Northern Telecom (Nortel) plant employing more than a thousand area workers was located beside highway 401 immediately to the south of the city. Today Nortel, the former stock market high-flyer, is gone, bankrupt, its shares dropped from a high of about $124 to a bit more than a nickle when trading stopped.

In our home we still use a Bell landline telephone. It is electronic but it emulates a dial phone. Our phone does not work on the touch-tone system. Alexander Graham Bell would be comfortable using our phone - not too high-tech.

In London it is only possible to have a dial phone if you've always had one. No new dial numbers are being assigned. A lot of folk have stayed on the dial phone system as it is costs less than the touch-tone one.When Bell tried dropping the service a few years ago, more than a 100 thousand customers complained to the CRTC and Bell dropped the plan.

For finding telephone numbers, we still use a phone book with both white and yellow pages. And it appears the yellow pages also taste quite good, at least if you're five-months-old. A moment after this picture was snapped, mom took notice and removed the tasty morsel from the fingers of our budding telephone book connoisseur. She isn't allowed to have solid foods, yet.

Kids!

How a child can lose a glove when the weather has been below zero for the past week is a puzzle. I can see a kid slipping off a glove while possibly feeding the ducks wintering in the pond at Storybook Gardens, but to walk away and leave it is curious.

Maybe someone chanced by and the kid had to make quick tracks; Feeding the ducks is frowned upon by those in charge of the park.

Merry-go-round in winter

I've noticed that many of the other pictures posted by photographers around the world as part of the daily photo movement are very artistic images. Some of these shooters set a very high standard. Shooting in London, Ontario, and not London, England, I've got to work just a little harder.

There is a merry-go-round in Springbank Park. I ran a picture last year shortly after the carousel horses were reinstalled in the spring. At dusk this evening I noticed that the framework of the ride made an interesting image with the fading blue sky, the clouds and the colours of the coming sunset.

Cheers,
Rockinon

St. George Parish

The present St. George Parish is the second church standing on the corner of Commissioners Road at Lynden Crescent. The original house of worship was a modern, for the time, 1950s A-frame structure.

By 1992 --- less than four decades after opening --- deterioration in the wood beams supporting the space for worship was noted. It was determined that repairing the structure would not be economical when everything involved was taken into account.

The original building was not equipped for the physically challenged, there was a definite lack of meeting space in the aging building and the growing population in the Byron suburb of London meant the church should be larger.

Clearly a new building was demanded. The last service in original church was held in January 1998. By April 1999 the first service was held in the present, much larger and much more traditional looking structure.

Winter in Canada means hot soup

In the middle of a Southwestern Ontario summer, one rarely thinks of steaming, hot soup. But in the middle of winter, in February, often the coldest month of the year, hot, homemade soup is just the ticket. This homemade potato and chedder cheese soup makes a perfect Canadian winter lunch when teamed with slices of avocado. The soup supplies instant warmth and the avocado fuels the body's furnace with its ample supply of heart healthy vegetable fat. After this lunch one's ready to finish digging out the driveway.

Cheers,
Rockinon