Today our civilization is built not with just brick and mortar but also with code. We no longer rely as much on machines with carefully meshing gears but more and more we rely on computers with carefully meshing code.
The image today was created by my seven-year-old granddaughter. She used her iPad running a favourite app plus my white, blue-striped shirt. She moved the camera lens over my shirt, watched the resulting image on the screen and when she liked where it was going she fine-tuned the image, did a screen-grab and sent the file to my computer using wifi and Facebook Messenger.
Is this art? What do you think?
Reportedly, the first VW beetle sold in the States back in 1949 went for $800. I can recall buying a bug for something in the neighbourhood of $1600 a few decades later. I needed a dependable car for my first job as a photographer at a daily paper.
Today the bug is out of production. The last cars sold at the London dealerships for something in order of $35,000 Canadian. Yes, today a set of tires with rims can cost more than an entire car once cost. A great example of the power of inflation, yes?
Today was chilly and the wind drove the cold right through one's coat. Still, for the little kids on the street, it was still a good day for playing outside. If truth be told. there are not many days when it is not good to play outside. So grab a hoola-hoop and play.
Suburbs are not cold, impersonal places. Suburbs are filled with people. This should not come as a surprise. And people are gregarious. They like to get together. And they do.
Each fall some of the ladies on my court get together to do some Christmas baking. It was tough this year. COVID-19 made the ladies think twice. But their group is small, only three ladies, and all agreed to wear face masks. The province advises no more than four at such a gathering.
Despite the cold fall weather, windows were left open around the home and cool air moved constantly through the stove-hot kitchen. Much of the time, the ladies practised social distancing. And masks were worn constantly.
There are not many homes in the Hall's Mills neighbourhood, and there seem to a fair number of empty lots, all this would work to make this an enviable place for one's new home if it were not for one thing: water. Flood water to be exact. Hall's Mills was established before there were municipal laws restricting the erecting of buildings on flood plain lands.
Existing buildings are permitted to remain and these buildings can benefit from minor renovations, alterations or additions as long as everything is done with the approval of council in cooperation with the Upper Thames River Conservation Authority.
Clearly modifying the homes in Hall's Mills is difficult. I understand some homes have been purchased by the city, rented out briefly and then demolished. It appears more than the nearby river is out to sweep Hall's Mills away.
For all these reasons, a visit to Hall's Mills is a trip back in time. The homes appear very much as they did when built, sometime more than a hundred years ago.
Hall's Mills is one of the oldest neighbourhoods in London, located in the west end of the city, immediately to the south of the Thames River. There are not all that many homes in Hall's Mills and as homes come down it is very difficult to get permission to rebuild. This is flood plain.
When I worked at the paper, I had to enter one of the Hall's Mills homes while on an assignment. The home showed clear signs of flood damage. The floors thick, wood plank flooring was heaved and uneven. The owner told me the home had come through so many floods that they no longer knew the exact number of times the plane had been inundated.
The home pictured, is on a slope leading to land above the flood plain. But, this home may still be on the flood plain as the brick work at the bottom of the home has the look of something added to repair flood damage. If I ever get up the nerve, maybe next spring, I'll knock on the door and make some polite inquiries.
