What Every Mother Wants

I often find funny jokes in Boys' Life Magazine.  They seem to get all the jokes.  Girls' Life Magazine is an American teen magazine similar to other magazines directed to women - advice about friends and familiars, stories on popular culture, fashion, and celebrities.  Boys' Life is the monthly magazine of the Boy Scouts of America for boys from 7 - 17. It began in 1911 and when it started was edited by 18-year-old Joe Lane.  Fast forward to today and Boys' Life is targeted towards older boys and features buying guides, video games, things to do, sports,  and still features scouting activities.  It still contains jokes in every issue.  I looked through the Boys' Life Mother's Day jokes.  And then I found this one - it is NOT in the Boys' Life Compendium of Mother's Day Jokes. Boys' Life Magazine remains a general interest and wholesome magazine - it describes its style as crisp, punchy writing in relatively short, straight-forward sentences.  So as you read this joke, it would clearly not appear in Boys' Life Magazine. Three sons left home, went out on their own and prospered. Getting back together, they discussed the gifts they were able to give their elderly mother.  The first said, "I built a big house for our mother."  The second said," I sent her a Mercedes with a driver."  The third smiled and said, "I've got you, both beat. You know how Mom enjoys the Bible, and you know she can't see very well. I sent her a brown parrot that can recite the entire Bible. It took 20 monks in a monastery 12 years to teach him. I had to pledge to contribute $100,000.00 a year for 10 years, but it was worth it. Mom just has to name the chapter and verse, and the parrot will recite it."  Soon thereafter, Mom sent out her letters of thanks: "Milton," she wrote the first son, "The house you built is so huge. I live in only one room, but I have to clean the whole house."  "Marvin," she wrote to another, "I am too old to travel. I stay home all the time, so I never use the Mercedes. And the driver is so rude!"  "Dearest Melvin," she wrote to her third son, "You were the only son to have the good sense to know what your mother likes. That chicken was delicious." I stopped at Sunnybrook Winery on the Lakeshore in NOTL, and took this picture of the orchard on Lake Ontario. Our second picture is the Weeping Cherry tree on Niagara Street.

The Bright Side of Mother's Day

We're on the Bright Side of Mother's Day.  It is ok to go to the Dollar Store to buy a greeting card...what about all the other things you find there. I had no idea that Dollarama originated in Montreal in 1910.  It started as S. Rossy Inc. and then progressed to a store similar to Woolworth's.  Generations of Rossys have run the store - the most famous is Lawrence Rossy.  In 1992, the first Dollarama store opened in Matane, Quebec, with all items offered for $1.  There are over 1,000 Dollarama stores in Canada by 2015.  Its value has risen 600% since 2009. One can find out how well people like their jobs at Dollarama - go to ca.indeed.com and see the more than 1,000 reviews by workers. I am fascinated by their  ability to sell cheap versions of well-known products.   "The difference between a classic Dixon yellow pencil and one made by Dollarama is a matter of fine print. They both have green bands near the eraser; they both read “HB” and “#2,” and they both come in translucent packages, sharpened." Their success is attributed to dealing directly with suppliers, no advertising, cash or debit card only.  And basically there are no returns, unless one can prove beyond doubt something was faulty. One article identified them as "occupying a crumple zone between frugality and anti-consumerism...The frugalist in me would suggest to look for decorations that are cheap at dollar stores if you were looking for decorations, but the anti-consumerist looks at these as ephemeral items, just months away from occupying a landfill or at best some remote corner of the house, gathering dust." Didn't I have a lucky day with the gorgeous clouds in the sky above the orchards.  This is at Mountain Street, Grimsby.  I've taken pictures of this barn and pear orchard during the autumn.  And what a view of Toronto from up here.

Wisteria Starting in Niagara...

We haven't left Mother's Day yet.  We found out about Mother's Day in the US. It is very different from Mothering Day in England.  In England it is celebrated far earlier in the year.  From Wikipedia: Mothering Sunday is a holiday celebrated by Catholic and Protestant Christians in some parts of Europe. It falls on the fourth Sunday in Lent (For Orthodox Christians in Europe and elsewhere, the fourth Sunday in Lent remembers St. John of the Ladder). Secularly, it became an occasion for honouring the mothers of children and giving them presents.  During the sixteenth century, people returned to their mother church, the main church or cathedral of the area, for a service to be held on Laetare Sunday. This was either a large local church, or more often the nearest cathedral. Anyone who did this was commonly said to have gone "a-mothering", although whether this term preceded the observance of Mothering Sunday is unclear. In later times, Mothering Sunday became a day when domestic servants were given a day off to visit their mother church, usually with their own mothers and other family members. It was often the only time that whole families could gather together, since on other days they were prevented by conflicting working hours, and servants were not given free days on other occasions. By the 1920s the custom of keeping Mothering Sunday had tended to lapse in Ireland and in continental Europe. In 1914, inspired by Anne Jarvis's efforts in the United States, Constance Penswick-Smith created the Mothering Sunday Movement, and in 1921 she wrote a book asking for the revival of the festival; Its widescale revival was through the influence of American and Canadian soldiers serving abroad during World War II ; the traditions of Mothering Sunday, still practised by the Church of England and Church of Ireland were merged with the newly imported traditions and celebrated in the wider Catholic and secular society. UK-based merchants saw the commercial opportunity in the holiday and relentlessly promoted it in the UK; by the 1950s, it was celebrated across all the UK. The Wisteria are showing colour on Yates Street in St. Catharines so will be blooming in the 2 weeks.

Did Mother's Day Start Happy?

Did U.S. Mother's Day Start Happy? We look into history today.  And what do we find? The official holiday’s founder Anna Jarvis boycotted the holiday. Jarvis, a native of West Virginia, organized the first Mother’s Day celebration at a church in Grafton, West Virginia, in 1908 in memory of her own mother, who died three years earlier. She successfully campaigned to have the day adopted nationally, but by the time of her death in 1948, Jarvis had spent most of her personal wealth fighting the holiday she helped conceive. She apparently found the commercialization of Mother’s Day deplorable and sued groups that used the name “Mother’s Day” name to promote consumerism. She even lobbied the government to remove it from the U.S.’ official calendar. “Everything she signed was Anna Jarvis, Founder of Mother's Day. It was who she was," historian Katharine Antolini, author of “Memorializing Motherhood: Anna Jarvis and the Struggle for Control of Mother's Day,” told National Geographic. So much for a Romantic beginning!  Enjoy our day and the Niagara blossoms.  This orchard is on Highway 8 between Vineland and Beamsville.  It is the best white blossom orchard so far.  What makes it so is the distance between the trees and length of the rows so that the convergence happens at the end.  My name for this is "Blossom Heaven".

Did Mother's Day Start Happy?

Did U.S. Mother's Day Start Happy? We look into history today.  And what do we find? The official holiday’s founder Anna Jarvis boycotted the holiday. Jarvis, a native of West Virginia, organized the first Mother’s Day celebration at a church in Grafton, West Virginia, in 1908 in memory of her own mother, who died three years earlier. She successfully campaigned to have the day adopted nationally, but by the time of her death in 1948, Jarvis had spent most of her personal wealth fighting the holiday she helped conceive. She apparently found the commercialization of Mother’s Day deplorable and sued groups that used the name “Mother’s Day” name to promote consumerism. She even lobbied the government to remove it from the U.S.’ official calendar. “Everything she signed was Anna Jarvis, Founder of Mother's Day. It was who she was," historian Katharine Antolini, author of “Memorializing Motherhood: Anna Jarvis and the Struggle for Control of Mother's Day,” told National Geographic. So much for a Romantic beginning!  Enjoy our day and the Niagara blossoms.  This orchard is on Highway 8 between Vineland and Beamsville.  It is the best white blossom orchard so far.  What makes it so is the distance between the trees and length of the rows so that the convergence happens at the end.  My name for this is "Blossom Heaven".