Well it is Friday and I sometimes like to do something a little different – maybe a wee bit on the lighter side for the last day of the week. Today I have special surprise sent to me by a friend here on Mayne Island. I have a short film taken from a street car going down Market Street in 1906 just four days before an earth quake destroyed the area. There are cars, people, horse, teams of horses and this amazing interaction with the street car as it moves along.
The video is posted in a gazillion places on the web with this paragraph but I could not find a definitive source to credit.
This film, originally thought to be from 1905 until David Kiehn with the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum figured out exactly when it was shot. From New York trade papers announcing the film showing to the wet streets from recent heavy rainfall & shadows indicating time of year & actual weather and conditions on historical record, even when the cars were registered (he even knows who owned them and when the plates were issued!). It was filmed only four days before the quake and shipped by train to NY for processing.
If anyone has a good source link, let me know and I will add it in.
Sprout Question: If you could time travel where would you want to go and in what year?
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From Mayne Island, British Columbia, Canada
Creative Potager 
Terrill – That was pretty darn slick, thank you!
Sprout Question: If you could time travel where would you want to go and in what year?
Without a moment’s hesitation I would go to San Diego, California in 1990 to have one more year with my mother who died in 1991 at the young age of 53. The caveat being that I KNOW WHAT I KNOW NOW. I would like to be given the opportunity to change that outcome.
You are welcome Laurie… I have waited patiently until today to share this film. I was so thrilled with it and the thoughtfulness of the person who sent it to me.
Thank you for your sprout response… I think your caveat is one of the reasons I enjoy getting older.
The film is an amazing piece of history! It is also fun to watch the people, cars, horses driven carts interweave and play off each other… If you check the line up on youtube, there are other old films as well, some through the years!
Sprout: If I could time travel where would I go? I would want to go everywhere, in all times and places… Yet mostly Egypt during its hey day!
Thanks Jeff… Egypt during its hey day… interesting. I wonder what you might be doing on that day?
Here is a link.all I could find… http://www.encyclopedia.com/video/NINOxRxze9k-air-la-femme-dargent.aspx
Where would I travel in time?
I would travel back to 1942 and try to understand the way m father lived and didi nit live, what he learned and did not learn and understand why it affected his whole outlook on everything so much.
I would also travel on a second trip back to the days of the 1800’s in europe when there was so much change in religions, countries, and a lot of immigration. Just to reaally understand the reasons that led people to leave thier countries and flee for reasons that were very difficult at the time, and to also meet some great saints of the era that formed a lot of institutions that we still know about today.
Thank for the link and the sprout response Snoopykg1. Just what I like to see. Someone who is offered a time travel opportunity so she takes two trips – perfect!
It is so much fun to see where people would go and why.
For a three hour visit, I would go back to 1966, when I was four years old. I would go to my hometown in Manitoba — to my mom’s kitchen. She’s making cookies. I can smell them now. I would stay for a chat, and dip a cookie in some milk. I would stick around until my dad got home from work. We’d all talk a little more and then, although it would be hard, I would come back to Mayne Island and to my husband. Because despite the ups and downs here and now is the best place I’ve ever been.
What a great time travel Leanne (I dipped my cookie in your milk because the crumbs make me gag when they are all soggy in the bottom of the milk glass) Coming back to the here and now, clear about just a short time away…. sigh, so good to enjoy our today.
Wow, that video was so cool! Reminds me of Sudbury drivers the way they just pull out in front of you to do a U’e.
It made me feel like I was right in the scene. The music fit right in with the many activities that were going on as well, just an awesome clip.
Sprout Question: If I could time travel, I would like to go back when Mary Magdalene and Jesus were on their many journey’s to teach civilians the meaning of God.
Given the choice I see you have chose a big even mumstheword:)))) Thank you for your sprout response and I’m glad you enjoyed the shot film.
Terrill, I would travel to California next week. Specifically, to visit a friend atop a mountain near Yosemite, and then to visit another friend in Tahoe City. And you know what…fingers crossed!…it may just happen…
Kathy I hope it does happen:) Thanks for your sprout and coming by.
This is an absolutely extraordinary post, especially for people like myself (and others here in this inspired fraternity) who are history buffs, but what makes that amazing film so ironic is the subsequent revelation that the famous San Francisco earthquake is just days away. It’s really a priceless trip down memory lane.
Your sprout question is a superlative, open-ended one, that I used two months ago with my fifth-grade writing classes. Needless to say a good number were going back to the prehistoric age or even some to the night Abraham Licoln was assassinated in ford’s Theatre to try and ‘prevent’ the tragedy from unfolding.
I am moved by some of the responses here with the desire to spend fleeting moments with loved ones, and am tempted to do the same, but I would divide myself in that sense in too many directions.
Hence, at the risk of comingoff as some kind of an elitist snob (but I bet there isn’t a single person in this lot who doesn’t have similar passions) I’ll go back to the year 1590, and visit Stratford-von-Avon to see firsthand what William Shakespeare is up to. At that time his great tragedies are being penned, and what an incomparable ecxperience to be watching them at the Globe.
It’s truly one humankind’s defining moments.
Sam your sprout response has me wanting to travel with you as well but I want to travel as a young man. I want to have a room where someone brings me my meals, makes my bed, does my laundry and keeps my one small room with large window bed, desk and chair neat and tidy. All I need to do is create… the rest of my needs are taken care of by patrons of the arts who pay for services to ensure I can keep them entertained. I know it probably wasn’t that easy – especially if they didn’t like the work I was doing or if I had a dry spell but for a week or two I would like to give it a try.
Sam what a great time travel. Watching Shakespeare work — I’m there. : )
Ah but we could have some fun couldn’t we Leanne?
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Oh, Terrill, in no way was I thinking either or. I was thinking both.
You have me laughing with delight Leanne – both/and has so much more to offer than either/or.