ThatGrrl

I understand the idea about pulling down statues, burning books, and trying to change how history is viewed, but I am concerned about censorship.

Changing a point of view can be done without destruction, like burning books, toppling statues, defacing graves, and so on. People don't need to destroy things in order to change perspective.

The people in history had a different perspective, a different lifestyle. They lived in the times as they were. Their choices were based on what life was like, what they knew and understood about the world. In their world, at that time, they believed in what they were doing.

Times change, attitudes and ideals develop and evolve. That doesn't mean everything about the past is terrible or wrong, or should be destroyed. One negative should not cause the destruction of everything else that was positive and important and good.

A new, different perspective can bring fresh understanding of history, without attempting to vilify people or erase them from history. Talk about people in history, but without censorship or bias. Give people the facts, about the accomplishments and failures of people in history and see them as human beings, as people like ourselves but different.

In time, future people will look back on us, our deeds, ideas, and very likely have a different perspective than we do now. I hope they will also choose to have understanding and view us in perspective. I would not like us to be censored or erased from history because future people don't agree with our ideas or actions.

I looked at the photos of barns in this post. To me, most of them are inactive, not actually abandoned. They are still maintained, enough to not be falling down, don't look salvaged for barn boards, etc. So, they didn't really seem abandoned or derelict. Probably someone else would consider any barn not actively used to be abandoned. I guess it is all perspective. Are you someone using a barn or someone photographing it, looking at it for history, art, or industry/ agriculture or architecture?

I have not (so far) found a link to the photographer, John H. Busch or his fellow explorer, Mary Lynn Busch. There are good points in the post about exploring, history and photographing old places in Ontario. I've copied and pasted parts of the post, not in order so I can keep topics, like photographing the barns together.

Tips for Photographing Abandoned Barns

It’s interesting how you can photograph the same subject several times in one day and capture a different result each time, depending on the location of the sun, cloud cover, and location of the point of view. I learned through experience that my best colour photos are taken on cloudy days, but it is hard to exclude sunny-day shadows for good contrast.

I have shot and compiled a selection of these abandoned barns. For various reasons, it’s sometimes difficult to get the proper perspective while photographing these structures. Some are set far back from the road; there is often the presence of trees and foliage; and sometimes the time of day isn’t ideal. I believe some of my best photos of these barns were taken during the winter months, due to the absence of foliage, but ironically some of the best colours were during the summer months. Most of the barns are plain and unpainted, but a few are painted “barn red” while the odd one is white or green.

The Beginning of the End

The barns with missing boards or ones that have had part of their metal roofs blown off are the ones I refer to as doomed. Once this process begins, the barn will collapse relatively quickly. A year or two of rain on the dry hardwood beams, coupled with an entry for the wind to blow through, often speeds up the process. Gravity always seems to win in the end.

Another factor that contributes to the disappearance of these old barns is economics, including property taxes. Once the landowner realizes that the barn, which is often completely empty, is costing extra money in tax assessment, an excavator is brought in and the barn is dismantled quickly, often leaving the original farmhouse as the only building on the property.

To this day, terms such as “top plate, girt, corner post, brace, bent, mortise and tenon” still come to mind whenever I see different barns.

Source: Readers Digest: Abandoned Barns of Southwestern Ontario | Our Canada

There is, still, something I like about writing by hand that I miss when I'm typing on a keyboard. There is a smoothness to the pen and paper and I like having good penmanship. There is no penmanship at all with a keyboard.

Today I found a note from Perfect Pen, a site selling pens and etc. They say 95% of people write their name first, when they get a new pen. I don't know if its true. How would you find out about that. Chances are someone selling pens and seeing people test them before buying, would know. So it could be true. What did you last write, by hand? I wrote a grocery list. But I also sent out handwritten Christmas cards this year.

I write down ideas for stories or non-fiction ideas for posts to my sites. Sometimes they never become posts. Lots of ideas are written and just don't develop further, or get mislaid somewhere, one way or another. But, I still like writing ideas more than typing them. My brain works differently while writing.  A bit slower and not as directly focused on the idea while I have the distraction of the pen, paper and penmanship. More than likely that changes how the ideas develop. Typing is so instant.

National Ballpoint Pen Day is June 10th. It's the day the patent for the ballpoint pen was filed.

Have you ever gotten into calligraphy, with fountain pens? I did a little of that. In high school I had a fountain pen. It was fun to write with but not as clean as a ballpoint pen. Of course, there have been pencils since the age of the dinosaurs (not literally). Pencils are just not the same, though artists still draw with an assortment of them.

Today, even though it isn't Ballpoint Pen Day, take a look at all the pens you have collected, scattered, around your home. Get some scrap paper out of the recycling and test all your pens. Not many have the option to be refillable and reused now. Or, people almost never seem to do that. Too many freebie pens given away to take the time to recycle them. Unless you have a favourite pen. I did have a favourite ballpoint pen but it was kind of exotic and I couldn't find ink to refill it. If you can find a use for the pens that no longer work, got dried out, or broken, that's great. Most likely the best you can do is get rid of them and have that much less clutter around.

Happy pen testing. Will you scribble something or ring true to the theory that the first thing you write with a new (sort of new) pen is your name?

This is called a dawn redwood tree. In 2015, it was voted as the most unique tree in the Great Toronto Tree Hunt. Unfortunately this is now 404 on the site and I could not find the photographs of the winning, or nominated trees. This is a very strange looking tree. I hope it is still standing and lasts a very long time.

This type of tree has been around from the ages of dinosaurs and it can grow in zone 5 but likes lots of sun and water. I looked for more photographs of this tree. Not all were as red as this. It might depend on the lighting at the time the photograph was taken, or the conditions may have been just right for it where this tree is planted.

Interested in growing one in Ontario? I found a post about growing dawn redwoods, a variety called gold rush, for Ontario gardeners at Canada's Local Gardener magazine: Dawn Redwood.

Near the Children’s Centre and Teaching Garden sits a massive and rare find – a dawn redwood (aka metasequoia), believed to be one of the oldest deciduous conifers in Toronto. It was a winner in the uniqueness category of LEAF’s Great Toronto Tree Hunt, submitted by author Jason Ramsay-Brown. It’s said to have been planted in 1960 on a plot bathed in early-morning sunlight on June 20 each year – the birthday of the wife of the gardener who planted it.

Source: Hidden Toronto: a growing list of the city's best-kept secrets

I've been having a lot of trouble seeing clearly when trying to read websites. The style seems to be small, pale grey fonts which are very hard to read. No problem for a computer, or other machines. I wonder if these sites which are hard to read just expect machines and not human being to read the information? Are they just looking for web traffic for marketing. Content doesn't seem to be very kingly when you can't read it. Anyway, that's a bit off topic but the issue really frustrates me, personally.

I found a way to change settings in Firefox to make websites easier to read. It seems to be working, so far.

Go into your settings, click those three stacked lines in the right top bar of the web browser. Then Settings. From there you should be able to find the Languages section. See images below. Just click the "zoom text only" to turn that feature on. Then go into Advanced and set a minimum font size which your web browser should stick to when it opens web pages. The minimum font size may not work 100%. Some web developers choose to force font settings rather than letting readers choose what works for them. Again, likely valuing cosmetic looks instead of a readable site.

The zoom text only is great and has worked every time for me. Instead of enlarging the entire site, images and all, only the text is made bigger. So sites are not warping as much when I want to read them. Of course, this means zoom will not work for images now if you have been using it that way. But, I find it works well to open images in a new tab. Most of the time the image file is actually larger than the one used on the web page.

Zoom is a feature which allows you to increase or decrease either the size of a web page or the size of the text. This article explains how it works.

Source: Font size and zoom - increase the size of web pages | Firefox Help

I found this quote by Amy Tan:

“I did not lose myself all at once. I rubbed out my face over the years washing away my pain, the same way carvings on stone are worn down by water.”

People ask if you are sad or tired. I could say yes to those but neither is quite right. I am worn down, like a stone in a river. I try to hold on, be stoic and strong but I'm eroding all the time.

I feel this way more often as I get older. None of us are getting any younger of course. But, I don't think we should have to feel worn down. Does it happen from others or do we do it to ourselves. I'm trying to figure that out for myself.

I found this quote on an old site by Laurie Pawlik. She writes about writing, relationships, travel and living in a camper van. I started reading that post, first.