This is my day, so far

Yep, that pretty much sums it up.

Fabulous photography

H 1. A FedEx Boeing 757, without any cargo. 2. This is the clearest photograph of Mercury that has  ever been taken. 3. These things are octopus eggs. 4. What the Northern Lights look like from space. 5. Bavarian town of Noerdlinger built in a 14 million year  old meteor impact crater 6. This is an illustrated grocery list Michelangelo would  create for his illiterate servants. 7. This is a view from Mars. 8. Inside one of Google's data center Mechanical Systems. 9. A look at Hitler's office. 10. These are the teeth of George Washington. 11. A ginormous statue of Genghis Khan in Mongolia. 12. A comparison showing fat vs muscle. 13. This is the desk of Albert Einstein just a few hours  after his death. 14. This is Daytona Beach in 1957. 15. Climbers going up Mount Everest in 2013. 16. Cancer cells under  microscope. 17. Bagger 288, the largest land vehicle in the world. 18. An aerial view of a tire dump. 19. A watch belonging to Akito Kawagoe which stopped  at 8:15, the exact time of the Hiroshima bombing in 1945. 20. A 360 rainbow, which was captured from an airplane. 21. A zoomed in view of the human tongue. 22. A huge dust storm just before it hit Australia in 2013. 23. A geyser just barely before it erupted. 24. A cross-section of an undersea cable

The Canadian General Election

Our Prime Minister called a general election to be held on October 21st.  I'm glad in this country the circus only lasts six weeks.  Watching the politics south of us makes me even happier I'm Canadian.  I have no idea who I will vote for.  There was an all candidates meeting last Wednesday night but I already had plans.  I have not received ANY information from any of the six political candidates running in my area.  I only know one, the guy whose been our MP for the last four years.

I don't like any of the leaders of any party......oh help, I guess I'll figure it out before election day.  I'll hold my nose and cast my ballot.  I've never missed an election yet.  I've voted for almost every party and my favorite vote was for the Marijuana Party who ran provincially a few years ago.  None of the parties were worth voting for so I gave these guys my vote.  It wasn't because they wanted to legalize marijuana but their best idea was to build a much needed bridge to Vancouver Island.  They would put people to work and it would be lovely.  They were planning to build a macrame bridge!   That was one of the most ridiculous ideas but I thought creative and funny.  There were a lot of unemployed loggers who could put their macrame skills to work.  I threw away my vote, but I could not vote for any of the other candidates. 

A bit of Canadian History:

The British Columbia Marijuana Party (BCMP) is a minor political party, in the Canadian province of British Columbia that advocates the legalization of cannabis.

The BCMP was formed following the 2000 federal election, Marc Emery, the founder and current president of the party, formed the party the day after the 2000 vote. The BCMP made provincial history during the 2001 provincial election that came six months later, by being the only party to ever field candidates in all of the province's ridings during their first election campaign.

Brian Taylor served as the party's first leader during the 2001 provincial election. Taylor had been a prominent cannabis activist and was the former mayor of Grand Forks.

The Marijuana Party was excluded from the televised leaders' debate, even though they were running more candidates than either the Green Party or the Unity Party, both of which were included. BC Marijuana Party members protested during the televised debate.

In 2001, the party won 51,206 votes, 3.22% of the popular vote. Teresa Taylor, daughter of leader Brian Taylor, captured the party's highest popular vote total with 1,136 and polled 5.6% in the conservative Okanagan-Westside district.

At 4:20 PM, April 20, 2009, Marc Emery folded the party and gave his support to the Green party. 

Being a Christian

Donations to charity

I found this very interesting. 

Ray Saunders

Gastown Steam Clock
in downtown Vancouver

My longtime friend Margaret told me about her cousin who built the Gastown Steam Clock.  He's also built many other clocks around town, this one being the most famous.  I saw him on the news last week!  Margaret called me last night and gave me an update.  He's going to be in the hospital for a long time.

FROM THE VANCOUVER SUN

The man who built and maintains one of Vancouver’s iconic landmarks, the Gastown Steam Clock, is recovering in hospital from grave injuries suffered in a five-metre fall from a ladder.

Ray Saunders, 79, known as “Father Time” to friends and family, fell from a ladder onto concrete while servicing a clock in Ladner a week ago, said his son, James Saunders, also a watchmaker. He suffered a fractured pelvis, broken vertebrae, three cracked ribs, a dislocated and fractured shoulder, a gash to the head that required 15 stitches and internal injuries, including a nicked spleen and damage to an abdominal artery.

He’s had three surgeries so far and spent most of the past week in the trauma ward at Vancouver General Hospital, where he’ll likely remain for months.

Saunders will have to enrol in a physical rehabilitation program at the GF Strong centre for up to eight weeks “before I can even walk,” he said in a phone call from his hospital room Thursday. “You can’t put pressure on the bones until they’ve had a chance to heal.”

Despite the injuries that have incapacitated him for the first time in his long career of building and maintaining large public clocks, which require him to climb high above the ground to access, he’s jovial and talkative on the phone.

“My family has forbidden me to go up ladders,” said the father-of-five grown children and five grandchildren. “I think it’s time to hang up my safety vest.”

Saunders has contracts to service the many clocks he maintains and some of which he built or rebuilt, including those in Mount Pleasant, Kerrisdale, Queen Elizabeth Park, at Vancouver City Hall, the Sinclair Centre, Birks and the Heritage Hall on Main at 16th Avenue. He’s making alternative plans for the switch to standard time on Nov. 3 — “it’s a big money-making weekend” — for the dozen of clocks he has to adjust back an hour.

“I lubricate them and service them at the same time,” he said. “My plans are to train my new apprentice, Dylan Scott, to do all the ladder-climbing for me.”

Saunders usually visits his most famous clock, in Gastown, about twice a week.

“I like opening the clock and talking to the children,” he said.

Saunders is upbeat and anxious to return to work, but James said it will likely take six months to a year, during which he’ll have reduced income. His apartment will also require extensive and costly modifications to allow him to continue to live there, including, a stair lift, bed rail, shower rails, shower chair and adapted furniture, including a specialized bed and reclining chair.

There is a Go Fund Me Page.  As of writing he's received $33,000.00!

Go Fund Me - Ray Saunders

Tuesday smiles

Rent

Yesterday, Cec, Nancy, Carol and I went to Rent.  It was presented by "Broadway Across Canada" at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre.  I didn't know the story and wish I had read this before I went.  I had trouble following the story at the beginning but caught on.  The music was wonderful!   It's been performing for 20 years!

Rent, the Broadway musical that ushered in a new age of pop-rock music on the Great White Way, has finally arrived. The rock opera’s uplifting message still strikes a chord with audiences everywhere. Before you rock out to the live version, study up on these facts about the original play.

IT'S LOOSELY BASED ON THE 1896 OPERA LA BOHEME.

The story of Rent began with playwright Billy Aronson, who moved to Manhattan's Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood in 1983. Homelessness was a huge issue in the city at that time, as was the emergence of AIDS, which would affect 1096 new victims by year's end. One night, Aronson caught a performance of La Boheme. The opera, written by the Italian composer Giacomo Puccini, is a four-act masterpiece about a group of penniless, starving artists in 19th-century Paris. The four main characters share a crowded living space which sometimes gets so cold that they must burn their own works for warmth. To make matters worse, their city has fallen prey to a raging tuberculosis epidemic. Still, in their strife, the artists find camaraderie.

"I remember walking home … and noticing the contrast between the luscious world of the opera and the world I lived in," Aronson told Mediander. Soon, he hatched the idea of adapting La Boheme into a musical that would be set in New York during the AIDS crisis. Many plot points in Rent mirror La Boheme, including the relationship between Mimi and Roger (in Puccini’s opera, much of the drama stems from Rodolfo, a poet, and his rocky affair with a poor woman named Mimi, who ultimately dies of tuberculosis) and Angel’s decision to kill an obnoxious dog for money (in La Boheme, one character earns some badly-needed cash by doing away with a pesky parrot).

BILLY ARONSON PROVIDED THE INITIAL LYRICS FOR THREE OF RENT'S MOST BELOVED SONGS.

"I love working with musicals and dance, but I don’t write music," Aronson said. To enlist some help with his La Boheme project, the writer approached some acquaintances at the theater Playwrights Horizons, who put him in touch with composer (and part-time restaurant waiter) Jonathan Larson. Eventually, other projects drove Aronson to leave the show behind. Larson—who felt the show might well become his generation’s answer to Hair—also stopped working on it for a time, but he eventually came back to it, with his ex-collaborator’s blessing.  Before the two parted ways, however, Aronson penned the first lyrics to "Santa Fe," "I Should Tell You," and the titular song, "Rent."

Aronson wrote on his website that sometime before the off-Broadway premiere, he asked Larson what was left of his work. Larson responded, “the lyrics for 'Rent' were basically his, the lyrics for 'Santa Fe' were basically mine, and the lyrics for 'I Should Tell You' were half and half.”

Happy Sunday

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