I've Been THINKING OUT LOUD!

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.

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.

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.

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".

Wasps' Favourite Songs

We had to have a wasp nest removed - it was in the soffits at the back porch where people walk.  A tiny hole was their entrance door.

A wasp's stinger is smooth, like a needle, so it can sting your skin many times.  Why would it have that capability? It preys upon other insects for food or as a host for its parasitic larvae.  The venom in wasps contains a pheromone that causes other wasps to become more aggressive and so many stings can happen.

The only wasps that survive the winter are young fertilized queens.  They emerge from overwintering in the spring to build new nests.  Initially the queen lays up to a dozen eggs and when they hatch into larvae she feeds them until they become workers. The workers then forage for food, feed the new larvae and defend the nest.

In late summer, the colony produces males and new queens.  They fly away to mate and the queens then find a place to hibernate.

In the world of wasps, here are a few jokes:

What is a wasps favourite film?
– Sting-ing in the Rain!

Who is a wasps favourite singer?
– Sting!

What is a wasps favourite song?
– Sultans of Sting!

What sport do wasps play?
– Sting-pong!

What is a wasps second favourite film?
– Lord of the Stings!

Dezi doesn't have anything to say about wasps in her house rules.

Dogs and Children

I got to wondering how dogs compare to children in size and weight.  I guess there are dogs that compare to adults as well - think of a male Bullmastiff at a 110 to 130 pounds.  That weight would be a female human adult at five feet four inches.  Chihuahuas weigh around 6 pounds, so that would be a newborn baby girl (of low weight as newborn weight starts at 7 lbs) and almost 20 inches tall. The average Golden Retriever is 70 lbs so that translates to a 10 year old boy.   Whatever a dog's size, they are willing partners for an outdoor walk in the woods.  We can't be sure what a 10 year old boy would want to do this Saturday. Where will we go to get the best Fall colour experience? The ontarioparks.com website has a Fall Colour Map HERE.  You can go to Algonquin Park right now and see good colour due to cool temperatures over the last few days.  The information includes the report date, dominant colour, colour change and best viewing.  Colour change looks like a percentage colour and percentage leaf fall.  So in Algonquin right now the colour change is 50% and leaf fall 10%. There were no Niagara parks included in the report. So I checked out the Fall Colour Progression Report from this SITE.  The colour change in Niagara is 0%.  Included is Beamer Conservation Area - that's Grimsby's park on the escarpment.  Also covered are Brock's Monument, Ball's Falls and Niagara Falls.  Burlington's Royal Botanical Gardens has its own entry with 0% change.  So we're not yet into the Fall colours here in Niagara. So we'll use the colours of pumpkins for our Fall image today.  This is Hildreth's on Greenlane, a fruit and vegetable stand.

Grimsby's Best Known Door

Grimsby's best known door is straight-forward - it is the front door to the Museum.  The regency-style entrance of the Grimsby Museum was the original doorway from the Marlatat Inn (1855) that once stood on Main Street.  Nothing gets retrieved for Toronto's best known door.  The majority searches bring Doors Open Ontario results from over the years. We can find the world's most famous doors: 221b Baker Street, London St. Peter's Basilica, Rome The Columbus Doors The Gates of Paradise, Florence 10 Downing Street, London We can identify some famous movie doors: The round hobbit door The Wizard of Oz door to the Emerald City Noting Hill's blue door The wood entrance gates to Jurassic Park It does seem unusual that there aren't more articles on specific doors to see.  Doors hold a special place in literature - a metaphor or allegory symbolizing change and transformation. To be given the key to a door is significant.  There are many designs and embellishments to doors over the millennia   The oldest door?  A Neolithic wood door was found in Switzerland that is more than 5,000 years old.   So here's our wonderful Museum front door at Open Doors last week, and then its representation as an ornament on last year's "Doors of Grimsby Christmas Tree" at the Fantasy of Trees. I took the picture and the next day the door ornament was gone.  I guess it was too cute - I thought it was.

Open the Doors to Petal Power

I got to only a few of the stops of Grimsby Open Doors Day on Saturday.  I definitely made it to Van Geest Greenhouses - growers of Gerber flowers for the floral trade. They are located close to the Museum on the western side of town.  I can imagine it would have been farmer fields when they built the greenhouses on Kerman Avenue. The greenhouse dates back to 1890.   This would make it less efficient than today's high-technology operations.  In talking with one of the owners, I found out that their second location is on Seventh Avenue in St. Catharines in a modern facility. That's very close to Brian's Lilycrest Gardens hybridizing field.  It is located on Fifth Avenue. This pretty picture is not the scene that awaited us for Open Doors Grimsby.  I realized it was the setting for a Petals and Plates dinner.  This is an initiative of Flowers Ontario and the Toronto Botanical Gardens.  Gourmet meals from the chef at Grand Oaks were served in 2 greenhouses in Niagara and a third location near Guelph in 2018.  I hope this is something to look forward to in 2019.   You can see that Gerberas are great big daisy flowers - they popular in florist bouquets.  They are showy, long-lasting and come it a lot of colours. In the greenhouse, the plants live about 2 years in pots and continuously bloom.  They are fussy, though, and take a lot of skill to grow. I learned  this when I planted some Gerberas in the garden this year.  I wanted a continuous line of red along the front of the garden bed.  In the shade were Begonias, but they burn in the sun, so I put in Gerberas to keep that line moving.  I knew from last year that they needed a lot of water.  I had them in pots on the outside kitchen windowsill.  Even in the garden I found they needed watering every day.  They wilted quickly whenever water was needed.  And they wanted a lot of fertilizer to ensure a continuous bloom of red flowers. For my colour line next year, I am counting on the red annual Salvia as a good choice. It comes in a brilliant orange-red and is continuously blooming.  That's if I stay with the orange red colour line.

From Far and Looking Across

How far can the human eye see?  I looked across the lake yesterday and saw sky rather than Toronto.  Is the following true? "The Earth's surface curves out of sight at a distance of 3.1 miles, or 5 kilometers. But our visual acuity extends far beyond the horizon. If Earth were flat, or if you were standing atop a mountain surveying a larger-than-usual patch of the planet, you could perceive bright lights hundreds of miles distant. On a dark night, you could even see a candle flame flickering up to 30 mi. (48 km) away". It comes from livescience.com     CLEVELAND – Scientists say it's a mirage, but others swear that when the weather is right, Clevelanders can see across Lake Erie and spot Canadian trees and buildings 50 miles away. Eyewitness accounts have long been part of the city's history. Jul 31, 2006.  This article is HERE.  I find out that you can see the Toronto Skyline from the Lake Ontario Shoreline in New York. I found a YouTube video of the Toronto skyline from New York State -  it was great as the lake waves were large and turbulent, so it looked like Toronto was sinking below the furious waves.  The distance is 30 miles. The distance from Niagara-on-the-Lake is 32 miles or 51 kilometres, so Toronto is often visible. And it is just a little farther to Grimsby at 55 kilometres or 34 miles.  Can we see Buffalo from Toronto?  I read that the answer is no - seems to me that is quite the distance.  Buffalo is 95 kilometres - 59 miles, so is much farther. Niagara Falls is visible from the CN Tower at 68 kilometres.  Of course, we've got the advantage of the height. Here's a post that shows Toronto from various locations across the lake.    My view across the lake yesterday at Flat Rock Cellars showed nothing at all - if one is looking for Toronto.  It shows the wonderful vineyards and the rusty shed down below.  So I've included a wonderful scene from the Watering Can in Vineland.