Marilyn's Photos - Apr 19 2026 - Talking a lot

 

While I may think that people are talking more, it turns out that we are losing our words at an alarming rate.  That was according to a researcher interviewed on the CBC Brent Bambury's Day 6 radio show yesterday morning.  We're losing 338 spoken words every day.  Between 2005 and 2019 there was a 28 per cent decline in spoken words.  That's 120,000 words per person on a yearly basis.   So what makes me think that I hear people nattering away more and more?  Maybe I am in the company of older people.   This is part of the psychology of older adults who do a lot of  reminiscing and moralizing. This is considered a complex blend of developmental, emotional, and cognitive needs.  Not mere nostalgia but an active, functional, and deeply rooted psychological process designed to bring meaning, coherence, and comfort to the later stages of life.  Those are the positives and then the negatives such as being on the receiving end of often repeated stories and themes.  Particularly now, older people want to control the fast-changing social and technological narrative that is becoming unfamiliar and even foreign.  I've been listening to many people since we got Millie. I take Millie to the Watering Can and Michaels on Saturdays.  She has a great affinity for people and is extremely social with them.  People tell me of their current dogs, and in the case of older people, they reminisce on those pets who have passed on.  Millie gets pets and hugs, and snuggles into their legs like she's known them "since forever."  This snuggling is her forte. This instant emotional bonding was apparent when we made our first therapy visit to Albright Long-Term Care in Beamsville.  Millie has a cute factor that evokes little squeals of pleasure from even the oldest resident or most sophisticated-looking staff member.  She bonds immediately with everyone. And that seems to be the benefit of bringing therapy dogs to facilities rather than humans visiting humans. Dogs don't need to "get to know us" to enjoy us right away. And conversation? Human conversation can move quickly into general reminiscing and then descend into moralizing - asserting values, validating choices, and wanting to give advice based on the wisdom of the years lived.  There's no point doing this with dogs. Dogs either don't have any capacity to gain from moral teachings and wisdom, or don't have the interest.  Training Millie to come when called or to not bark falls into the second category.  That's what makes me distinguish the two. So a possible conclusion is that older people should have a pet.  And the alternative is to give them access to enjoy one on a regular basis.  Hence Millie's new adventures.  You've seen this picture before. It continues my own reminiscing of neighbourhoods from times gone-by.  I am not alone in finding pleasure in nostalgia, as this is one of the most-looked at pictures on my Fine Art America website - 8,000 views.  And then this location is a nostalgia seekers paradise.  This is Niagara-on-the-Lake.

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Marilyn's Photos - Apr 18 2026 - Eat that Packaging like it's Meat

When I buy a whole chicken, there is always excess fat at the tail end.  I often wonder how much extra profit happens when that fat that is intentionally left on the bird.  And I am the one who has to remove it, so there's also labour involved.  A CBC article out of Halifax says that Sobeys and Loblaw are pricing their meat with the packaging included.  That's known as underweight meat.  doesn't that unrecyclable plastic seem so lightweight? Yet the CBC article found that it resulted in a 4.3% overcharge per item in that expose article. And the highest overcharges reported in the article were at Farm Boy in Toronto.  The chicken was in a clear plastic container.  The container weighed 24 grams. The price of the chicken was $9.42 so being charged with the 24 grams of container, the result was 16.75% overcharge -  $1.35 out of the total of $9.42.  That's a lot of pure profit to me. The grocery giants claim innocence due to things like they don't do the weighing in-store - it is done by the supplier.  Fingers point in various directions with who is supposed to be inspected by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) for meeting standards.   There are fines with a maximum fine of $15,000. It isn't clear to me who will be fined.  And take a quick calculation of that maximum fine - it doesn't seem like much to me compared to the thousands of containers of meat sold every day/week/year. And the CFIA says we are supposed to file a complaint when we experience this.  I'll just go run out and buy a kitchen weigh-scale now and start my underweight meat tracking project.   Instead, I think I'll reminisce on the past:  When I lived in Toronto, we shopped in Bloor West Village and our butcher was Ed who had a real butcher store.  Things didn't come pre-packaged.  We pointed to and picked out our chicken, it was weighed, and then wrapped in old-fashioned butcher paper.  And so on.   One can reminisce on a picture of a tree-lined street like this.  We would have walked along it 60 years ago.  Pop out into the street and there might be a horse-drawn milk wagon delivering milk to your neighbour.

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Marilyn's Photos - Apr 17 2026 - Cats and Dogs are Politics

 

What is history?  How do we decide?  This topic seems like a field with land mines every two feet.  There's no easy way to get out of the field. So to my surprise, the topic of history came up in the news. Here's a headline from the National Post that got my attention.   No election, no imminent shuffle, no more talk of "cats and dogs" in committee, Carney says Reading the article, here's the section on cats and dogs and showboating. Carney says:  "There is a difference between real testimony, real substance, getting to issues, debating aspects of law...and showboating,"  he added.  "We're going to have less of that."   To illustrate his point, Carney pointed to comments by Conservative MP Andrew Lawton during committee debate on Bill C-9 during which Lawton discussed his preference for puppies while his wife preferred cats. In a statement to National Post, Lawton countered that his discussion of pet preferences was in fact on topic. “My point on cats and dogs was simple: free speech is necessary to protect debate on controversial issues, otherwise our society is relegated to expressing only harmless opinions about pets. Liberal attempts to twist my words in this less than 12-second clip are nothing more than an attempt to re-write history,” he said. In pursuit of "history", I wanted to find the original words in the original committee hearing.  It was on December 4th, 2025 regarding a justice committee.   "...the member for St. Thomas - London South shamelessly filibustered for hours, talking for two hours about dogs and cats, not about hate crimes, not about anti-Semitism, not about attacks on LGBTQ Canadians and not about threats against women." I have just been searching for more than 15 minutes in the Parliament of Canada website trying to find the Minutes of the Proceedings of the Committee on Justice and Human Rights, December 4th 2025.  This was interesting.  I haven't looked at Hansard since I worked for QL Systems in 1979 and we were the vendor that provided access to search through Hansard and other federal documents. I looked at Hansard a lot then. While I haven't come up with that December 4th meeting, I did read through the November 27th meeting.  Andrew Lawton could easily be accused of "crimes against committee efficiency" - interruptions, misrepresenting motions as points of order, and then consuming the meeting with numerous and very long filibusters.  I can imagine he can talk for two hours about cats and dogs.  Is that a useful skill for a politician?  I don't think so.

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Marilyn's Photos - Apr 16 2026 - Worms in the Pond

 

The pond water is cold, but not too cold.  I found out because I could see earthworms at the bottom.  It is a very shallow pond so easy to see them and get them out.  They do get very wiggly and would like to avoid rescue.  Were they looking for new territories or mates? Did they get disoriented and fall into the pond? How long have they been there?  They can survive for several days in water. Good thing for me it wasn't the Giant Gippsland earthworm of Victoria, Australia.  It is 3 feet long.  That would circle the pool - it is a tiny thing and wouldn't that look like a snake to me.  And remember how slimy earthworms are in defence mode? And when they stretch to travel, double the normal length. This Australian earthworm can live two decades, so I guess I would save it from the pond. It would be more of a wrestling match. Facts about this earthworm:  You know it's in your garden, as it makes a strange gurgling sound as it moves beneath the ground.  Wouldn't that be hilarious? I bet Millie would jump in the air out of surprise with such a serenade.  And I can count on this information as David Attenborough featured this worm in his 2005 documentary Life in the Undergrowth.   Here's a picture we can trust showing its size.  Those other pictures...look like AI to me. You can now search for AI-generated pictures of anything.  I searched for AI-generated images of this worm, and the ones that popped up for this worm look AI.  Typically, Getty Images and other picture sites have them labelled as such. I was moderating pictures for one of the groups I host on Fine Art America and testing them for whether they are AI-generated images. AI-generated images are out of scope for the group.  Here are the AI-generation sites that the image-testing site HIVE uses. That's a lot to me. And the object to the left of the list?   A strange and beautiful glass and light art work installation at the National Gallery.  It looks like alien barbed wire here.

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Marilyn's Photos - Apr 15 2026 - Cheese Monger

 

Why is monger such a seemingly ugly word? The word that t is commonly cited as the ugliest word is moist - due to its tactile sound. Monger is considered unappealing because of its harsh consonant sounds.  Monger originates from Latin mongo, meaning merchant or dealer.  There are fishmongers, cheesemongers, costermonger (fruit, vegetables, and fish from a street barrow)  and ironmongers (hardware), plus some more.  Then in the metaphorical world, there are fearmongers, warmongers, gossipmongers, hatemongers, and scaremongers.  And more still -  miraclemongers who feign or deal in fake miracles, drugmongers (self-evident) and whoremongers (also self-evident). A female fishmonger would have been called a fishwife, fish-fag or fishlass. A female cheesemonger was called a cheesemonger. I guess cheese is a universal thing.   Cheesemonger is still in use today although cheese sommelier and cheese steward are also terms that are used. It takes 4,000 hours of experience to get certified standing.  And then it isn't a high-paying profession.  But one has a thousand jokes.   What cheese do you use to coax a bear out of the woods with?  Camembert What cheese can you disguise a small horse with?  Mascapone. Why did the cheese lose a fight with a stone?  Because the Roquefort back There was an explosion at a cheese factory in France… all that was left was de brie And then a musical version: Sweet dreams are made of cheese, who am I to diss a brie, I Cheddar the world and the Feta cheese, everybody's looking for Stilton   Cheese at Pearl Morissette, located in Jordan.  Now Canada's #1 restaurant.

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