May 11 2025 - Mother's Day Legends

 

What do people do for Mother's Day to get in the Guinness Book of Records?   The oldest mother to conceive naturally turns out to be Dawn Brooke, of the U.K. in 1997.  That's a record about giving birth rather than about Mother's Day. And that's where the Guinness Book of Records goes for Mothers.  Here's the weird one: In 2008, when she was 56, Jacelyn Dalenberg agreed to be a surrogate mom for her daughter, Kom Coseno. Jacelyn successfully carried and delivered three healthy granddaughters, who were delivered by C-section at a Cleveland hospital. That makes her the oldest woman to give birth to grandchildren.  And then there's the record for the most number of children - in the 1700s (supposedly and highly unlikely) - the wife of Feodor Vassilyex (she has no first name on record) is claimed to have given birth to 69 children - 16 pairs of twins, 7 sets of triplets, and 4 sets of quadruplets.   But that's all about giving birth.   Are there strange celebrations? Yes, in Peru, they visit their mothers who have past at the cemeteries. In Australia, they give "mums" to mums (chrysanthemums). Mexico's Mother's Day starts with Las Manzanitas serenade.  In Nepal, they visit Mata Tirtha Pond - which is dedicated to showing love and respect to mothers, living and deceased.  Ethiopia has a three-day celebration for Mother's Day. Thailand combines its celebration of their queen with Mother's Day.  In Japan it is red carnations that are traditional on Mother's Day.  Aren't these all sort of sweet, but tame?  Compare that to Chicago breaking the record for the biggest game of catch on Father's Day with 2,000 people participating.

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May 10 2025 - Build Me a Blobbery

 

Do you remember the Monty Python movie with the "you must find me a shrubbery" scene?  It is "Scene 17:  How to Find that Perfect Shrubbery"  and you can read it HERE.   And I recommend you read it as it is hilarious. My favourite moment is Roger the Shrubber's short but excellent "soliloquy": "Oh, what sad times are these when passing ruffians can say 'ni' at will to old ladies. There is a pestilence upon this land. Nothing is sacred. Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history." Scene 18 follows with an escalation of the shrubbery demands: "First you must find... another shrubbery! Then, when you have found the shrubbery, you must place it here, beside this shrubbery, only slightly higher so you get a two layer effect with a little path running down the middle." I have found a third scene that could be inserted.  A decades later sequel to the movie.  This comes from the middle-sized garden weekly blog, and this week is showcasing blobberies.   Here's the possible scene: "And now build us a blobbery. One with balls, clouds and lollipops.  They give a garden structure and interest all year round.  And they are easy to clip and maintain." "And mix them together – different types of plants as blobs – and sometimes they’ll merge together over time." Wouldn't that be a perfect sequel to the shrubbery scene? I think of this tree as being a haze of blossoms.

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Marilyn's Photos - May 9 2025 - Vulgar Language

 

One of the articles in the Globe and Mail today compares  the relationship between presidents and prime ministers.  It had a quote from Lyndon Johnson that was vulgar to me - Lyndon Johnson yelling at Lester Pearson to not come into his house and piss on his rug when Pearson suggested the bombing of Vietnam should be paused.  That was an example of a difficult relationship.  We have a difficult relationship now.  And it seems that quoting Trump or showing a video clip often comes with vulgar language.  Is this the new normal in the U.S in the Trump second term?  I guess the answer is yes.  Trump's first term brought  many articles on his vulgar language.  Most of the articles point to Lyndon Johnson as the most vulgar president in U.S. history.   Quoted expressions that demonstrated how vulgar he was are in the Nation Post article  HERE.  Its main theme was Trump's vulgarity in 2018.   Once I started to look, for Johnson's vulgar expressions, it is clear that they are not collected in  one place - they are scattered.  No one seems to want to gather them together for history.   I don't remember any of these expressions when I was young.  I would remember them as they are distinctively shocking.  Why didn't our newspapers have any of these in print?  Maybe newspapers thought they were protecting us.  Maybe they were protecting Lyndon Johnson. Maybe protecting themselves from lawsuits.  There is even "the story where Lyndon B. Johnson showed "jumbo" to a ..." group of journalists.  That was in response to questions about Vietnam.  Here's a "what if" scenario:  can history repeat itself on something like this? Little violets in the lawn.

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May 8 2025 - Wrong Turn Exit to Canada

There's a Kafkaesque story where a woman from Guatemala and her two U.S.-born children made a wrong turn in Detroit to go to the nearest Costco. They ended up on the international bridge connecting them to Windsor. Of course they were detained as she is not a U.S. citizen without legal status.The woman's mistaken-GPS story is not uncommon.  More than 200 people have been detained at the same location since January with more than 90 percent mistakenly driving onto the bridge's toll plaza.  It doesn't say so but I wonder if they were all looking for the nearest Costco - which turns out to be on the Canadian side of the bridge.   There are some "epic failures" of GPS failures. The article points to human failure in continuing to follow the instructions despite what they are seeing.  Salon magazine covered them in 2014 HERE.  GPS sends elderly German man into sand pile. Girls drive down boat launch into lake. Japanese tourists drive rental car into Pacific Ocean.  GPS nearly sends drivers off a cliff. Buzzed driver follows directions onto railroad tracks.  Limo driver follows GPS down flight of steps. There hasn't been similar stories or coverage since.  It looks like the wrong turn Exit to Canada is this decade's variation.

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Marilyn's Photos - May 6 2025 - Red Carpet Fever

 

There was a "red carpet" event last night - the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Met Gala.  It raised $31 million.  Its theme was black style.   There seems to be a lot of red carpet events.  So I thought I would ask google how many there are in a year. This is one of those questions that AI doesn't like.  It doesn't want to do the work of counting.  It is trained to "lift",  steal and plagiarize.  But actually do some real work?   So its answer to how many red carpet events in the U.S. each year? "It's difficult to pinpoint an exact, official number of red carpet events in the US annually. However, it's estimated that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of red carpet events each year, ranging from major award shows to film premieres, fashion events, and other high-profile gatherings. These events often include the Met Gala, Golden Globes, Grammys, Oscars, and Emmys."  Do you notice the bit of pompousness?  "exact, official" number - did I ask for that?  No. Why would an AI answer emphasize such a thing?  I consider this a way of avoiding the real question.  Ask the question again, and AI doesn't show up with an answer.  Maybe it has gone off counting the number of major red carpet events.  Then there's an odd self-consciousness with the headline "Here's why it's difficult to get a specific number."  Getting creepy to me. Last night's Met Gala showed off the epitome of surreal clothing that shows up all over the media.  You can scroll through the 100 pictures to see what I mean - go to VOGUE HERE. Scroll down to the pictures at the bottom and you can see lots.  People with names such as Dapper Dan, Charli XCX, Usher, Doechii, Dynasty Ogun and Soull Ogun, Doja Cat, Central Cee. That's Andre 3000 in the piano below. Don't you want to look up these names to see how the got them?  The Met Gala/Vogue presiding royalty is Anna Wintour - she was there.  She's now 75 years old, and was not wearing sunglasses in the picture. I guess she's had surgery to fix those lines under her eyes that were the supposed reason she wore sunglasses for decades.  In 2019 she told CNN they were useful because "you avoid people knowing what you're thinking about" and about 3 or 4 more reasons, all a bit pathetic justifications.  And then the final one was that she'd just had eye surgery.   Looking at the picture, there might be a bit of surgery going on. Here are two outfits to figure out - the first is an "overcoat" that was removed later.  The second is what it looks like.

The last of the cherry blossoms on the weeping cherry tree on Niagara Street.  There was so much moisture in the air that everything was dreamy and hazy. Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca