Marilyn's Photos - Feb 13 2026 - Is this Friday?

 

It seems unusual that we have so few superstitious days - Friday the 13th.  Why don’t we celebrate the number 12 which is considered “complete” and be positive rather than something that is bad luck? Everywhere it says the origin is likely the 13th guest/disciple being Judas Iscariot at the Last Supper, along with Jesus dying on a Friday even there’s no explicit reference in the Bible that Friday the 13th “carries a curse.” The Bible generally condemns superstitions and says the opposite -  that nothing is done outside of “god’s sovereign control”. Don’t mind me thinking that’s even scarier.  I guess this superstition would be an “afterthought” superstition - something that made sense in the rear-view mirror.   Thinking of the idea of the rear-view mirror metaphor, the rear-view mirror was invented in the 19th century.  It was first patented in 1921 for regular cars. It was called a wing-mirror.  It was known as the “Cop-Spotter.”  There may have been rear-facing mirrors on horse-drawn carriages, and it seems to me this would be likely.  How else will the Americans know that their stage coach is being overtaken by robbers? There’s a reference in Wikipedia that one of the motor racers claimed he got the idea from seeing a horse-drawn vehicle with one.  That was in 1904. We have three of these Friday the 13th this year.  That’s the maximum in any year.  The next is March and the final one is November.  I checked that out thinking of Port Dover and its place in history as the motorcycle convention capital on every Friday the 13th.  Good thing it happens in Canada where the weather is mostly too cold.   There are two lesser known superstitious days.  Tuesday the 13th in Spain and Greece, and December 28th in Britain, France and Spain. In Italy Friday the 17th is considered more unlucky that Friday the 13th. So I guess they won’t be worrying about their gold medal standing today as much as the other countries. These are all Western traditions.  There are many superstitious days in Eastern cultures - way too many.  It seems like the opposite of Western cultures. And what about this ironic headline for today:  “Funny Friday the 13th Jokes to Brighten Your Day.” I didn’t find any Paperwhite Narcissus bulbs this fall.  They would be blooming now in the greenhouse.  We’ll have to make do with a picture.

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Marilyn's Photos - Feb 12 2026 - Prehistoric

 

Prehistoric.  When did history start? And do most of those headlines start with things like “Prehistoric discovery in … cave … rewrites human history?” I saw that headline today. Prehistoric is basically “before writing.”  Written records of “early civilization” started around 5000 or so years ago.  Do a little searching and we find out there is a precise sense of time spans, but for us non-academics and general lay people, prehistoric covers the time from the appearance of Homo Sapiens - 315,000 years ago in Africa to the invention of writing - 5,000 or so years ago.  So the span of Prehistory is Paleolithic (Old Stone Age) to the beginning of “ancient history. “ Moving on to more precise terms for time, here’s something I’ve seen for the first time today:  kya.  This is an abbreviation for “kilo years ago” - a thousand years ago.  We didn’t learn this expression in school - it came into common usage in the mid-to-late 20th century.  Radiometric dating made it standardized.    Each of us could have our own timeline terms and abbreviations - after high school - ahs or maybe before undergraduate university - buu.  What about the graduate degrees?  Maybe before masters degree - bmd and amd.  That’s got a Tolkiensian quality to it, don’t you think? There’s a scientific term called Before Present (BP) - and it is a time scale used in archaeology, geology, and similar disciplines.  They account for a million years ago - abbreviated as Mya, Myr or Ma - equal to a million years (or approximately 31.6 teraseconds). No quoting me here, as there’s a debate over this terminology. And there are conflicts with the International System of Units. As the planet is billions of years old, I assume there is also a bya - yes there’s a billion years - however, that’s ga, and a trillion years - that’s ta, one quadrillion years - that’s pa, and one quintillion years - that’s ea.  So now that we know we can go a long way back, what was this prehistoric discovery news?  The oldest known pieces of sewn clothing are from a cave in Oregon. This will rewrite the log of human history.  The items were approximately 2,000 years old. That dates advanced skills working with plants, animals and wood thousands of years before the Great Pyramid of Egypt was constructed. Do you think it will change the chart below? This is a re-examination of a collection first dug up in the 1950s and stored in a museum. Current modern lab tests were able to date them accurately.  Pictures of the discoveries are HERE.   I see some ma years in this geologic time scale chart - isn’t it a beautiful one page view of things? Given it is geological, it won’t get any updates from this discovery. Here’s one of my wreaths that goes to the Grimsby Garden Club meeting on February 26th meeting where I speak on Nearby Gardens to Visit in Ontario.  If you are nearby, please come - it is free to all.

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Marilyn's Photos - Feb 11 2026 - Redacted

 

How does redacting work?  Are there automated tools to do this?  How many people would it take to do manual redacting? Automated redaction has been possible for easy things like Social Insurance Numbers and similar structured information.  There are advertisements for AI-powered redaction tools.  Microsoft has a find “redact” and “mark for redaction” - that seems like old school to me as find and replace has been present since the beginning of time.  There are article on the reversibility and visibility of redacted words.  There isn’t a number given to the Epstein files - “collection of millions” - and 300 gigabytes of data doesn’t sound that big to me. Perhaps we saw 3 million as a recent number of released files.  So many to go through for Personally Identifiable Information (PII). The method or tool used for redaction is automation tools - digital redaction tools within PDF software. And then there is human intervention - called manual “crude” methods.  The Epstein redactions are criticized as being inconsistent and ranging from over-redaction (entire pages) to under-redaction - allowing text to be recovered. Suddenly an editing technique is in the spotlight.  There have been many more photo editing scandals - replacing and changing images than text scandals. Text editing redaction scandals of the past include whiting out the Haiphong Massacre (1946), removing it from public records entirely,  Marilyn Monroe’s communist sympathies, Nixon Oval Office Tapes, and wait for this one:  the CIA redacted WWI-era documents about secret ink until 2011.  It looks like one could write the book on what “not to do” by outlining the methods that the Department of Justice used.  Here’s the essence of it  HERE.  There are techniques in my photo editing software that I use to bring out “hidden” images structures like clouds.  Here’s the prime example of before and after.  You can see that texture has been brought out in the windows,  that what was blurry or hazy has been dehazed and that there are clear details of the background.  It was a nice surprise discovery for me in this case.

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Marilyn's Photos - Feb 10 2026 - Olympic Broken

 

We might be complaining about the Olympics - the strangely complicated events, the quality of judging, the unattractiveness venues, booing of JD Vance at the opening. There’s the backlash against Czech Ice Skaters using AI generated music.  Did the “Minion music”ice skater get to use his music?  If he didn’t that sure is a strange outfit. It’s ok - he got approval.  Skating is getting a lot of attention - this morning’s article on ice dancing by Cathal Kelly in the Globe and Mail: he would not be comfortable dancing on the ice in his underwear in front of 5,000 people. Another comment on the outfits in skating. Perhaps this is the highlight - given the whole point of the Olympics is to win a medal. That makes the headline this morning more arresting than anything else:  “Olympic Medals are falling apart, and we’re not even a week in” Yes, the medals are breaking. The ribbon to break away  and the medals are falling off - that’s what happened to the USA alpine ski racing gold medallist Breezy Johnson. “I’m sure somebody will fix it…It’s not like crazy broken…” I wonder how many medals have broken. Mostly the stories are anecdotal so no total numbers are given. Don’t worry.  “We are fully aware of the situation” says Andrea Francis, who serves as the chief operations officer. I find out this isn’t new news.  The 2024 Paris games had replacement requests skyrocket after athletes returned home and the prizes “began to age.”  That was more than 220 (4%) medals - by luxury jeweller Chaumet. They were tarnishing and chipping. Makes you wonder what you get for a Chaumet watch costing between $2,000 and $180,000. And in search of Olympic medal jokes… What kind of music do Olympians listen to?  Heavy “medal”. My friend Ty came first in the Beijing marathon 5 years ago, but still has not been awarded his gold medal … China refused to acknowledge Ty won. It’s ironic that in 2020 the first gold medal won by the U.S. was for … Shooting That last one doesn’t seem like a joke, but was included in quite a few of the lists and made me laugh.  What about you? This was in my Toronto garden and is Japanese Forest grass - it was so tiny there.  This was its winter version with a bit of colouring to bring out the gold.  Here in Niagara The garden has huge clumps of it.  I’ve noticed it doesn’t all last in my garden, despite the large size it gets to - that’s because the bunnies and voles eat it - maybe right now as I type.

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Marilyn's Photos - Feb 9 2026 - Spring/Summer Fashion

 

The Globe and Mail’s Saturday edition alerted me to a fantastic art show.   It is the spring and summer women’s clothes collections of Chanel and Dior.  So I went online and found the Chanel Show.  The Chanel Runway show video is HERE.  And yes, it is a stunning display of artisan skill and exquisite beauty.  We mock haute couture fashion today, as representing wealth excess and failure to be practical.  In response to that, cynicism, our museums all have clothing collections and displays - historical and present.  Below is an aerial view of the seating pattern of the Chanel Show.  The large decorative mushrooms indicate a major design theme.  There are weeping cherry trees in the background.   The information about the shows tells you the “signature” looks - for Chanel it says 21, 28, 37 and 41.  I hope this works - if you go HERE you can see them all by number.  A striking note to the Chanel show is the presence of a model who is above the 16 to 25 age range - the lead model is 49, something they showcased in the press.  She’s in the photo bottom left. As I researched this, I found out the youngest model for a designer wedding dress was 13 years of age.   Oh dear… or perhaps Yuk is the response. Chanel has ensured it will be the premium creator as it purchased the artisan shops who used to supply them.  That explains the feathers, beading, jewels , embroidery and weaving that is present.   The most common fabric was mousseline - very light ,see-through silk. Here’s the Dior Show - the opposite venue style - darkness with the orchid flowers overhead and straight lines for the show walkways. I thought that these dresses might be called bubble dresses.Again, embroidery, feathers, embellishments so striking and artistic.  I was surprised by what looked like almost a hundred models and hundreds - it said 600 people in the Dior Show.  The report said the Chanel show had 2,300 attendees.  A walking art show. I don’t have pictures of dresses - Ii went looking for this picture from years ago on Queen Street West - white paper folded into fans to make a dress.

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