Mar 29 2025 - Spring Cleaning? Yuk!

 

there are a lot of articles on spring cleaning.  How to get started is the most common.  Who wants to "get started" on cleaning?  It would have to be tied to a religious festival, don't you think?  Making things ready for the big event.  With Christians it would be Easter. Some articles say the original festival was the Iranian Nowruz, the Persian new year, which falls on the first day of spring.   And how does it relate to Christianity? There's lots of occurrences of the word "unclean" in the Bible, but I don't see any of them relating to "house unclean."    I hadn't realized how much emphasis there was on using unclean as a euphemism for sin or similar things - eg. a state of impurity or moral corruption.  These things need cleansing or purification.  So is unclean a euphemism? Typically it is meant to be an innocuous word or expression used in place of one that is deemed offensive or unpleasant. What is the oldest euphemism?  Bruin: A euphemism for "bear" used in Northern Europe, where people feared naming bears directly.  Cemetery: Originally a euphemism for "graveyard," meaning "dormitory" or "sleeping place".  Dis-ease: A polite way to say someone was sick, now a mainstream word for "sick".  I expect there is a national euphemism day in which we speak in silly expressions.

This is one of my favourite pictures - it is the weeping cherry tree on Niagara St. at the heritage Vineland Research building.  Some years it is brighter pink than others and with the clear blue skies that day, the colours were the best I've ever taken pictures of.  I drove past last week - it won't be blooming for a few weeks. Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Mar 27 2025 - Do this every night

 

If you were in a contest and had to give advice on what things a person should do every night, what would you advise?  My only suggestion:   Brush your teeth.  Am I out of the picture on this. Other people have a whole lot more advice than this:  Prepare Your Breakfast. One of the biggest time-sucks in the morning is preparing breakfast Lay Out Your Clothes For the Next Day. You can save precious time in the morning by … Put Everything You’ll Need by the Door. Pack your bag or briefcase with everything that you’ll...  Review Your Day. You’ve probably heard that journaling for a few minutes is a good way to … There are 6 more things you should do in this top article.  There are 15 things that womensalphabet.com thinks we should do every night.  That's 5 more than the first article.   And which of the following  articles draws your attention? Remember to complete each sentence with "every night" 6 easy cleaning tasks 10 awesome things  12 super relaxing things 11 things successful people do 6 little things sleep doctors actually do 7 things men should do 7 stoic things you must do  5 movements to do  Once you wake up, then there are things you should do every morning: 5 things to do for an amazing day 15 healthy things 30 morning routine ideas for a happy 5 best should and neck stretches 9 morning routine habits for a happier start 10 things highlight successful people do  6 little things sleep doctors actually do  13 things the happiest healthiest women do So you went to bed doing these "n" things, got up and did these "n" things and now the day is underway.  Do these "n" things: 30 things you should do every day to make your life better 74 examples of daily activities 60 daily routines examples 10 productive things 7 life-changing exercises And Google?  It lists 250 articles out of a supposed153,000,000 results in the big cloud database. Its conclusion at that point "There are no results for do this every day during the day."

Orchids at RBG. Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Mar 26 2025 - More Bad Portraits

 

How many selfies do you take each day?  Each week?  Supposedly, the world population takes 92 million selfies a day. There's a type of selfie named a .5 selfie.  That's the picture that is angled above one's head and the taker's arm uses up quite a lot of the space in the picture. It is a wide-angle lens picture so the photo will have distortions.  You could be very w-i-d-e.  Maybe it is previous generations who complain about how they look in photos and that they don't like getting their picture taken?  Looking at the headlines, it seems that if one has a "photogenic" face with symmetrical proportions, etc photography is a good thing.  And for the rest, too bad, lots of complaining. Besides the overall statistic, I wondered the "how many pictures could there really be" question.  Here are some answers from Pixsy.com - they looked at a getty Images data.    Donald Trump - 463,574 images Barack Obama - 336,823 images Queen Elizabeth II - 230,495 images Kate Middleton - 155,505 images Roger Federer - 149,576 images Prince William - 148,784 images Joe Biden - 143,412 images Hillary Clinton - 135,501 images Andy Murray - 132,295 images Prince Charles - 130,334 images Serena Williams - 125,257 images Elton John - 123,080 images Prince Harry - 119,379 images Jennifer Lopez - 107,997 images Paris Hilton - 101,438 images Jimmy Kimmel - 100,520 images Bill Murray - 92,194 images Rihanna - 86,247 images Jimmy Fallon - 82,464 images Camilla Parker-Bowles - 79,602 images Who would guess Donald Trump would show up as having the most photographs on Getty Images. Do a search for pictures of donald trump and click on the images view. The array is astonishingly awful.  His hair is prominently in all directions and then there's that orange makeup on his face. It seems uncanny how he seems to show up in so many places.

This is a close-up of a Gerbera flower - they always take wonderful pictures.    Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Mar 25 2025 - Don't like that portrait?

 

Trump's "personal" news story is his dislike for a portrait hanging in the Colorado State Capitol. It's been there for 6 years, but he has suddenly decided it is "truly the worst."  The artist is Sarah Boardman.  Her quote: "I consider a neutrally thoughtful, and non-confrontational, portrait allows everyone to reach their own conclusions in their own time..." Another version of the story from newrepulic.com goes like this:  "President Donald Trump threw a temper tantrum Sunday, demanding that an unflattering portrait of him be taken out of the Colorado state Capitol.  “Nobody likes a bad picture or painting of themselves, but the one in Colorado, in the State Capitol, put up by the Governor, along with all other Presidents, was purposefully distorted to a level that even I, perhaps, have never seen before,” Trump wrote in an outraged post on Truth Social. To me, he looks like there's food in his mouth.  My guess is there's a substantial portion of a muffin in there. Food that he doesn't want to swallow.

If we turn to photography, people hating their picture is common as 95% of people hate having their picture taken, and one answer is that we are used to seeing our mirror image that seeing the real one seems strange and odd to us.  The author is a photographer and included these two images of himself as a demonstration.  Isn't this so fascinating to see a mirror image.

Here's a mouse-view of crocuses.   Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Mar 24 2025 - And the word of the day!

 

Is this a feature of the Globe and Mail's Editorial each day?  A word that is so novel and uncommon that it requires research.   I hope it is a feature of the paper - that somewhere, each day, I will find a word that compels me to look it up and find out more.   What is this word?  "Ron DeSantis tried to mock the idea of the maple-leaf tourism boycott earlier this month, saying that 3.3 million Canadians had visited his state.  "That's not much of a boycott in my book," he said." "We agree, Governor - because the number you cite was from 2024, before a US President launched a trade war against his country's biggest trading partner and closest ally.  Mr De Santis's misplaced braggadocio actually served to underscore the vulnerability of his state to a Canuck exodus"  "Braggadocio," originated from the name of a boastful character, Braggadocchio, in Edmund Spenser's epic poem The Faerie Queene (1590).  a. : empty boasting. b. : arrogant pretension : cockiness. the air of swaggering braggadocio that all important men are expected to show in fighting C. W. M. Hart. originates from brag or braggart + the Italian suffix -occio, denoting something large of its kind. Doesn't that make us wonder about  more words - flibbertigibbet?  And cattywampus, gardyloo, collywobbles, gubbins, and malarkey?   OK, I've got a few days worth of words to start the game myself. It would be great if this would be a regular Globe and Mail feature.

I went on a crocus hunt yesterday.  Not in the garden as the squirrels, mice, voles, and chipmunks have eaten the hundreds I planted, or replanted them next door.  I went through the database of pictures and found the wonderful crocuses that I had in the Toronto garden where there probably were more predators and fewer rodents.  Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca