Snow Place Like Home and a Betterphoto Finalist

Wake Up on the Bright Side      We're here in December with its many activities and beautiful displays.  While today is a rain day in Niagara, December marks the start of snow and a transformed landscape. There are a lot of pun jokes with snow in them...perhaps it indicates the appeal of winter to children.   1. What time is it when little white flakes fall past the classroom window? Snow and Tell. 2. What is a mountains favorite type of candy? Snow caps. 3. What is it called when a snowman has a temper tantrum? A meltdown! 4. What do you call a snowman with a six pack? An abdominal snowman. 5. What do you call a snowman that tells tall tales? A snow-fake! 6. What do you call a snowman party? A snowball. 7. What did the snowman eat? Icebergs with chilli sauce. 8. What did the snowman and his wife put over their baby’s crib? A snowmobile! 9. What do Snowmen call their offspring? Chill-dren. 10. How do you find Will Smith in the snow? You look for Fresh Prints! 11. Today isn’t the day to be making jokes about the weather. It’s snow joke. There are more HERE at the Thought Catalog - there are 50 of them.  Today's image was a Finalist in the Betterphoto October contest.

I've Been THINKING OUT LOUD!

Work and Play and Boomerang!

"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy"   Boomerang from Instagram. This is an app that "makes everyday moments fun and unexpected.  Create captivating mini videos that loop back and forth, then share them with your..."  We're working on the Fantasy of Trees and one of the Museum staff  just found this app, something that might get attention to the upcoming event - our little version is HERE. This 'all work and no play' phrase is centuries old, so there are a number of quotes that reference it. I've included the ones that are thought-provoking and come from interesting and notable people.   All work and no play makes Jack a dully boy - and Jill a wealthy widow. ~Evan Esar, 1899 - 1995, American humorist, author of 20,000 Quips & Quotes All work and no play makes jack.  With enough jack, Jack needn't be a dull boy. ~Malcom Forbes, publisher of Forbes magazine As if a man's soul were not too small to begin with, they have dwarfed and narrowed theirs by a life of all work and no play:  until here they are at forty, with a listless attention, a mind vacant of all material of amusement, and not one thought to rub again another, while they wait for the train.  ~Robert Louis Stevenson, 1850 - 1894, British novelist, poet, essayist, musician and travel writer of Treasure Island You may try your experiment for a week and see how you like it.  I think by Saturday night you will find that all play and no work is as bad as all work and no play ~Louisa May Alcott, American novelist and poet, Little Women (1868) All work and no play may make Jim a dull boy, but no work and all play makes Jim all kinds of a jackass. ~William Randolph Hearst, American newspaper publisher, partial inspiration for the movie Citizen Kane We have two pictures today of play and then of work.

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All Work and No Play - The Novel

When I researched our expression on all work and no play, the movie The Shining was retrieved - pages and pages of references.  There is extensive writing on this movie, considered in the top ten of greatest horror movies. The book that Jack was writing contained the one sentence (“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”) repeated over and over.  There isn't any evidence of the original remaining. Kubrick had each page individually typed.  "Kubrick realised the importance of the scene and how it would lack impact in foreign language versions of the film if explained via subtitles. He didn't just translate the original phrase however, but came up with different stacks of repeated sentences, many of which can be seen in the Stanley Kubrick Archive" These are at a site dedicated to the Shining that is run by the director of Toy Story 3 at this site HERE: Italian: Il mattino ha l’oro in bocca (The morning has gold in its mouth) (“He who wakes up early meets a golden day”) German: Was du heute kannst besorgen, das verschiebe nicht auf morgen  (Never put off until tomorrow what can be done today) Spanish: No por mucho madrugar amanece más temprano (No matter how early you get up, you can’t make the sun rise any sooner) (“Rising early will not make dawn sooner.”) French: Un Tiens vaut mieux que deux Tu l’auras (What you have is worth much more than what you will have) (“A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush”). In 2009, an 80 page book  All Work and No Play Makes Jack a Dull Boy by Jack Torrance was created and published.  The author is Phil Buehler, a  well-published photographer whose work focuses on modern ruins. This would make a 'novel' Christmas gift and has a purchase site HERE.   About the Book Jack Torrance's first novel, finally published after his untimely death at the Overlook Hotel. Dramatized in the Stephen King book, "The Shining," as well as the film by Stanley Kubrick. See the clip at www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dit-7hu1jKg " All Work and No Play Makes Jack a Dull Boy is nothing short of a complete rethinking of what a novel can and should be. It's true that, taken on its own, All Work is plotless. But like the best of Beckett, the lack of forward momentum is precisely the point. If it's nearly impossible to read, let us take a moment to consider how difficult it must have been to write. One is forced to consider the author, heroically pitting himself against the Sisyphusean sentence. It's that metatextual struggle of Man vs. Typewriter that gives this book its spellbinding power. Some will dismiss it as simplistic; that's like dismissing a Pollock canvas as mere splatters of paint." Matthew Belinkie Overthinkingit.com: 80 unique pages, the first lifted directly from the movie and then getting progressively crazier... (alternative plain text cover also available) Features & Details Category  Humor Size 5×8 in, 13×20 cm 80 Pages Publish Date Dec 22, 2008 Here I am pondering a book on All Work and No Play, and outside is the largest snowfall of the season, with light rain and snow on the charts for Grimsby today.  It is so dark out that I can't tell, so we'll wait to see our mixed precipitation. There are autumn leaves on the trees and the lawn, along with lots of snow, so we'll see what there is for pictures today.  These two pictures come from 2008 in Toronto.

Nov 13 - Serious Mistakes

Do you read the second page of the Globe and Mail for the corrections?  Here is a gathering of the funniest corrections in newspapers.  Our first reaches levels of the sublime: Our second involves the mundane: And another truly notable mistake: It must be because this newspaper is located in our nation's capital: I would expect that person might get a few phone calls before this correction was made: After yesterday's story of atheist ministers, this headline doesn't seem so ridiculous now: This Daily Mail correction must have been giving lessons to the current U.S. President: The full article is at  thethings.com - each headline has a humorous commentary.  One of today's trending stories is a topic I covered yesterday.  I thought it was unusual that someone would own a cat cafe. I underestimated what is possible, particularly in Japan.  You can look at the 10 Most Unique Animal Cafes From Around The World HERE. I find out there are racoon cafes, hedgehog cafes, a nature cafe with sheep, goat cafe, reptile cafe, alpaca petting cafe, rabbit cafe, bird cafe, owl cafe, baby chick cafe. Here's one of my images that will be in an art show coming up in March 2019.  The show will open March 2nd 1:00pm at The First Unitarian Church of Hamilton, 170 Dundurn St. S. Hamilton.  This is an informal meeting area in the church where art is displayed on a rotating cycle.  I'll keep you posted on the show.

Russia - a Nation of Humour!

Did you know there is a very long tradition of Russian Political jokes?  I find this out from Wikipedia.  The jokes start with Imperial Russia and conclude with Post-soviet Russia.  They are HERE.  A Bloomberg article with the best jokes is HERE. Bloomberg's article, as with Wikipedia, demonstrates that Russian humour about the way the country is run is an unbroken tradition from the czarist era to the present day.  The article's author, like me, finds that many of them aren't funny.  But there are some great jokes in the article.  Here is Reagan's joke. "The CIA-Reagan Soviet joke pipeline was no secret at the time. One from a list declassified in 2013 was a particular favorite — Reagan told it repeatedly, once adding he’d shared it with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and gotten a laugh from him. The CIA version goes like this: An American tells a Russian that the United States is so free he can stand in front of the White House and yell, “To hell with Ronald Reagan.” The Russian replies: “That’s nothing. I can stand in front of the Kremlin and yell, ‘To hell with Ronald Reagan,” too. Two more from Wikipedia: A Gulag joke: Three men are sitting in a cell in the (KGB headquarters) Dzerzhinsky Square. The first asks the second why he has been imprisoned, who replies, "Because I criticized Karl Radek." The first man responds, "But I am here because I spoke out in favor of Radek!" They turn to the third man who has been sitting quietly in the back, and ask him why he is in jail. He answers, "I'm Karl Radek." A Stalin joke: Stalin reads his report to the Party Congress. Suddenly someone sneezes. "Who sneezed?" Silence. "First row! On your feet! Shoot them!" They are shot, and he asks again, "Who sneezed, Comrades?" No answer. "Second row! On your feet! Shoot them!" They are shot too. "Well, who sneezed?" At last a sobbing cry resounds in the Congress Hall, "It was me! Me!" Stalin says, "Bless you, Comrade!" and resumes his speech. Our pictures today come from Moyer Road - this is the road that Vineland Estates Winery is located on.  This silver barked bush along the side of the road is very photogenic as it is.  It becomes the texture for an abstract pattern created in photoshop.

Tootsie Rolls!

Today's topic is how to make Tootsie Rolls: Ingredients: 1/2 cup honey 1/4 cup plus 2 Tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1 Tablespoon coconut oil OR butter, melted 1/4 cup powdered sugar  pinch of fine sea salt 1 cup tapioca flour (may need slightly more or less) 1/8 teaspoon of orange extract (optional- it gives that “fruit-flavor” which is reminiscent of traditional Tootsie Rolls) Tootsie roll's popularity was due to the fact that it didn't melt in the heat, and was a low cost candy.  Who came up with the tootsie roll recipe?  Leo Hirschfeld - a poor Austrian immigrant with some family candy recipes.  This was at the turn of the last century.  The story varies about how Leo got to being a wealthy candy industrialist.  One version as he made Tootsie Rolls, named after his daughter's nickname, in his Brooklyn shop in 1896, and then 'merged' with Stern & Saalberg   The one he gave was that he worked his way to the top of the Stern & Saalberg company, invented the Tootsie Roll along with other candies and machines for which he he had U.S. Patents.  However, mergers and changes pushed him out of the company, and he wasn't as successful on his own.  He committed suicide in 1922.     He is in the Candy Hall of Fame.  Did you know there is a Candy Hall of Fame - candyhalloffame.org?  It looks like they had their 2018 event this past weekend.  Inductees come from companies like Jelly Belly Candy Co and IT'SUGAR.   The glorious days of candies seem to be past to me. We may have seen the rise and fall of sugar candy:  sugar content is now the subject of controversy - articles like 'war on sugar' indicate demand for sweet snacks has dropped and that sales are slowing with a bleak outlook ahead. We'll find out. On to our rust pictures today.  These were taken at Calamus Winery last year - macro images of  the rusty shed.  Such delightfully new rust.

The Glistening, Glittering, Shiny!

What is shiny? This is a word that was first recorded in 1580 - 90 -  a smooth surface reflecting light, typically because very clean or polished.  I wonder how many shiny things an ordinary person saw in a day in 1580 - even those who lived in the Royal Palace? this topic came about as Gerry's car was perfectly polished this past week and became exceedingly shiny. Doesn't the star on the front gleam 'shiny'? This word has taken on sizeable proportions in our current usage - movies, music, video games, software development frameworks, Pokemon, and all manner of things.  Fro example, one headline is "How to build R Shiny apps that update themselves". In the wiktionary definition, there is a slang usage of the word that points to its current usage.  It is a contraction of a disparaging term "Shiny arses",  originating during World War Two to describe a desks worker. We might look to Shakespeare as giving us this insight into things that are 'shiny'.   “All that glisters is not gold; Often have you heard that told: Many a man his life has sold But my outside to behold: Gilded tombs do worms enfold Had you been as wise as bold, Your in limbs, in judgment old, Your answer had not been in'scroll'd Fare you well: your suit is cold.' Cold, indeed, and labour lost: Then, farewell, heat and welcome, frost!” ― William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice Shakespeare's words have been referenced over time.  All that shines is not gold - has become a well-known phrase.  So we come to how shiny is used today.  It seems similar to Shakespeare - though hundreds of years have passed. "A company shouldn't get addicted to being shiny, because shiny doesn't last. Jeff Bzos "I think that wealthy white people would like to have a country that resembles the Fifties, when all the minorities were tucked away in ghettos and paid in very low wages but on the surface it was very bright and shiny and free and the rest of the world would look on it longingly. Alice Walker "I'm not a particularly shiny, happy person. I'm fairly cynical, and that's what draws me to comedy. Elizabeth Banks "Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night? Jack Kerouac These come from brainyquote.com So we look at Gerry' shiny car - while that beautiful shine won't last, it's been captured forever.

From 2 billion to 7 billion and then...

In 1951, the year of my birth, there were 2,58 billion people.  Today it is 7.6 billion.  No wonder everything is crowded and resources are being used up.  I had wondered if I should have a more positive view towards the future, but this seems to say it all.  This many people today are not doing a good job of living 'with' the planet.  Can you imagine how much better or worse it will go with more people? The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released their Climate Change report yesterday. It is what brought my attention to the population plight. That report gave 2030 as the defining year by which action must be taken. The well-used number for the maximum population that the earth can sustain is said to be 10 billion people.  It is based on food resources.  The common statement is that 2050 is the year that will happen. The statement goes:  "By 2050, the world’s population is expected to reach 9.1 billion, and the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) predicts that at that point, the world would need to produce 70% more food than today to feed all those people." This is considered contentious by the American Council on Science and Health.  They are pro-industry, but fact-based, and they think the 70% increase is an inflated number, along with the prediction discounting the advances in technology, and that it disregards the drops in population that are happening. The Economist says it is not time to panic yet - that the number of hungry people has fallen, that eliminating waste will raise food production by 60% or more, and so on. So the pros and cons for the maximum population are debated. Yet isn't that date looming near for those who will be alive in 2050? Anyone 18 years old today will be 50 years old then - perhaps just over half way through a typical lifespan.  And think of 2030 - those born in 2000 will only be 30 years old.  I wonder what our young people think of these urgent messages and concerns and how they will deal with them as the urgency grows. We are looking at the Sunnylea garden in an August rain.

Weather Report x 2

I was checking out the Weather Report for Grimsby - warm summer temperatures for the next few days.  At the same time, a Weather Report song was on the radio on JazzFM.  They regularly play two of the jazz fusion band's songs -  "A Remark You Made" and "Birdland".  I think it is Jaco Pastorius' bass lines that draw my attention to the songs every time I hear them. Our Canadian Thanksgiving is concluded - and what does every Thanksgiving meal finish with?  Of course it is pumpkin pie - it has to be one of the delicious desserts. Pumpkins are a member of the gourd family and are also considered winter squash.  Pumpkins have been grown in North America for about 5000 years Pumpkins were once recommended for removing freckles and healing snake bites  Pumpkins are 90-percent water The world record for giant pumpkins remains in Germany! For the second time in 3 years, the world record for giant pumpkins has fallen at the European Weigh-Off in Germany. German grower Mathia Willemijn brought this behemoth pumpkin weighing 2,624.6 pounds to the weigh-off on October 9, 2016. Here is a picture of a person paddling on a pumpkin in the water as part of the world record pumpkin pictures.  I thought I should insert it as you might not believe it could be true. Our picture is shows the garden rendezvous with night lighting, part of my experiments for "The Night Garden".

Cats at Work

There were a few cats out and about at Longwood.  All the cats at Longwood have names, and the docents assured me that they are well cared for. This one was mousing amongst the ferns.  Look at the tail - its position tells the story.  She was very friendly, even though she thought she shouldn't be disturbed from her work.  This would be important work - orchids are edible. I've had a few flowers disappear in my own greenhouse.  I was sure a while ago that there was a lady slipper in bud, and the next time I looked there was a stump of a stem.  Maybe Baxter should work harder in the greenhouse. I found a blog that covers the Longwood cats completely.    My pictures today show Persimmon. Take a browse through chatsworthlady's Longwood story of cats HERE

Incoming Epiphany

Today's the day:  Epiphany!  Here are 3 famous Epiphanies we learned in school: Ancient Greek mathematician and physicist Archimedes famously cried out "Eureka" ' "I have found it!" from the bathtub where he realized that his volume displaced the same amount of water in the tub and he could calculate the volume of gold in a crown. Isaac Newton was sitting below an apple tree when an apple fell on his head, which caused him to develop his Universal Law of Gravitation. Albert Einstein developed his Special Theory of Relativity after arriving home one night feeling defeated. He imagined having arrived home at the speed of light, and how the light from the town’s clock tower would not have reached him in his car, even though the clock inside the car would be ticking normally. This would make the time outside the car and inside the car just different enough to be striking. We can look up epiphany on google and immediately discover the seven ways to help you have an epiphany. It starts with: Be observant.  Look around you.  But there's more. Next article is The Atlantic.  It starts with: Go for a hike or a drive.  Walk around the city.  Psychology Today tells us: When one of these amazing gifts comes to us, the way to honour it is to put it to use".  The next is another Psychology Today article that questions what is an epiphany: "By epiphanies I mean the major, life-changing revelations that have the greatest impact on our lives."  Huffington Post says there are 8 Epiphanies everyone should have.  Others have different numbers -  18, 12, 9, 8, 17, or 10 epiphanies? We can take the easy route and google images of epiphany quotes. That is where I found the one that seems to apply to today given this is the Day of Epiphany.  Epiphany Day should be everyday.