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.

Squares and Rectangles

I experience our industrial and post-industrial society as having an orientation towards squares and rectangles.  These are prevalent around us in every day things - mores than circles, ovals, and waves.  Our houses, tables, pictures, paper - all kinds of things are square and rectangular - so many things come in those shapes.  The folders on my computer and the window I am typing in - these follow the pattern.  What makes this predominant? The predominance of the right angle in architectural plans is the topic of Why are most buildings rectangular?  by Philip Steaman.  He answers the question: "A geometrical demonstration comparing room shapes and room arrangements on square, triangular and hexagonal grids indicates that it is the superior flexibility of dimensioning allowed by rectangular packings that leads to their predominance".  His article is HERE.  So rectangular it is for many things - efficiency.  There might be more than this.  In a tutorial on how to use shapes creatively at visme.co  the ideas and feelings of shapes are outlined : Squares and rectangles are reliable, give stability and suggest order Circles represent completion, wholeness and harmony Pentagons, hexagons, octagons give designs a unique feel.  They can also be used to portray an already known use of the shape.  So in addition to efficiency, we get reliability, stability and order.  Squares and rectangles seem to be our chosen sensibility. I would think this has been the case since ancient Greece and Rome when geometry was explored and recorded.  I wonder what would change this progression? Can we evolve to another set of shapes?  I don't see easy answers in my search, so will pursue this in the future. We move to our pictures today -  taken in the Niagara Street arboretum where the weeping cherry tree is located. It is the subject of the last picture.

Pumpkins in Niagara

This must be pumpkin festival weekend.  Halloween is this week and there are a number of big pumpkin farms in Niagara.  A few years ago I was doing on the escarpment and came upon a traffic jam and gridlock.  It was Howell's Family Pumpkin Farm.  This is a farm amusement park, with sand boxes, bunnies, animals, tractor tire play area, hay play area, straw ump barn, haystack jumping pillow, a tricycle track, the giant maze, and so on.  These are all activities for little ones. Their website is ahowlinggoodtime.com  At Warner Ranch and Pumpkin Farm in Welland, there is something every season - for  winter activities there are horse drawn sleigh rides of various sizes of sleigh. For autumn, their pumpkin patch is extensive, and they distinguish themselves from Howell's with free admission to the park.  Various activities have prices - pony rides $4.00, petting zoo and corn maze, $2.00 and so on. They have Rainbow the Unicorn for birthday parties.  Here's what they say:  "Rainbow does not live here at the farm, being a Unicorn he resides in the enchanted forest and can be reached at 289-673-1729. And close to us is Puddicombe Farms, right on Highway 8 with a train around the orchards and fruit wine production.  The train ride is a "scenic 30 minute ride around our 100 acre estate".  Here are two of the models from the Minneapolis Show this year.

Grimsby Breaking News

Grimsby is in the news today - I know the headline is there every day to catch 'your eye'.  But Grimsby's hospital will lose its surgical facilities and obstetrics because they don't meet current standards.   That would likely mean it becomes an urgent care centre/emergency unit only. Hamilton Health Sciences (HHS) runs the Grimsby hospital, and informed staff that it has applied for funding to upgrade the surgical department.  This is $8.6 million in provincial funding needed. The Medical Director, Gary Benson, has resigned.  There hasn't been  board approval for the move of the Obstetrics, Surgery and Endoscopy programs over to HHSC.  He says he was blind sided in a meeting with HHS where it was announced as a done deal. There is a meeting tonight for townspeople to organize a response.  The meeting is organized by the Medical Director of Niagara West Palliative Care Team and McNally House Hospice - Dr. Denise Marshall. This little hospital has been an orphan for decades.  As hospitals got organized into regional systems,  Grimsby resisted for many years.  It raised many millions of dollars - there is $15 million in the fund - to rebuild the hospital, only to be refused the go ahead every time.  This has happened as recently as 2011 when it was number 2 on the list for rebuild approval.   And then Grimsby has always been a Conservative riding - during the many Liberal years it had an uphill battle politically.   This seems to be a Ground Hog Day scenario - a never-ending process to get approval to rebuild.   The news articles are Here and Here.

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.

Chicken on Tap

Do you remember it was just last week and food would be scarce by 2050?  This week I saw a story on PBS about cultured meat.  This is synthetic meat that is produced by in vitro cultivation of animal cells instead of from slaughtered animals. I turned to Wikipedia and found out that the formal name for this is cellular agriculture. And there is a lot happening right now in this area.  New Harvest is the world's first non-profit organization dedicated to supporting in vitro meat research. Jason Matheny authorized a seminal paper in the early 2000s and progress has been made ever since. Dr. Mark Post produced the first cultured beef burger patty that was eaten at a demonstration for the press in London in 2013. How much did it cost the burger to be made in 2013 and how long did it take to produce it?  $300,000 and 2 years. Now skip forward to February 2017.  How much did it cost to make?  $11.36. Are you curious about what the experience was to eat it?  I certainly am. Here is critic Hanni Rutzler's experience in 2013: "There is really a bite to it, there is quite some flavour with the browning. I know there is no fat in it so I didn't really know how juicy it would be, but there is quite some intense taste; it's close to meat, it's not that juicy, but the consistency is perfect. This is meat to me... It's really something to bite on and I think the look is quite similar." Both fat and muscle cells are now produced, giving a closer result, and the prediction is that 'test tube burgers' could be on sale by the end of this year - 2018.  That would be in time for Christmas dinner, or perhaps celebrating 2019 with a 'clean meat' start on New Year's Day. Here's the conclusion of a recent article at Fast Company HERE.  “That’s not to say that there are not going to be specialty restaurants producing meat traditionally–more expensive restaurants–but I think the burgers that we’re going to put on the grill, and the chicken nuggets that we’re going to eat at McDonald’s, and the barbecued chicken that we’re going to eat in Chipotle is mainly going to be cultured meat decades from now,” he says. Our picture today shows the Third Street Overholt orchard.  It has been demolished.  The same has occurred along a section of Victoria Ave in Vineland at the Cherry Lane orchard. They are planting new trees.  The Cherry Lane orchard across from the United Mennonite Home on Twenty-Third Street has also been demolished.  It is sorry to see the ancient, gnarled trunks disappear, though.  They do make great pictures in the spring with their wonderful blossoms.