April 19 2022 - Snow in April?

 

Snow in April is discouraging and disappointing.  It isn't unusual, though, in Niagara.  The average snowfall in Ontario is around 3 days in April.   It seems to me to depend on whether it is at the beginning of April or the end of April.  By the end of April, winter is finished in our minds, and we are moving towards much warmer weather.   Headlines like  "record snow falls for Easter Monday..." make me turn the page on spring thoughts.  In doing so, I found this headline in Science Daily. Do you know that there are new scientific guidelines for 'near-death experiences'? The article says: "for decades, people who have survived an encounter with death have recalled unexplained lucid episodes involving heightened consciousness and awareness. These have been reported using the popular -- yet scientifically ill-defined -- term "near-death experiences."  There is a newly published "guidelines and Standards for the Study of Death and Rea-called Experiences of Death".   Among their conclusions: Due to advances in resuscitation and critical care medicine, many people have survived encounters with death or being near-death. These people -- who are estimated to comprise hundreds of millions of people around the world based on previous population studies -- have consistently described recalled experiences surrounding death, which involve a unique set of mental recollections with universal themes. The recalled experiences surrounding death are not consistent with hallucinations, illusions or psychedelic drug induced experiences, according to several previously published studies. Instead, they follow a specific narrative arc involving a perception of: (a) separation from the body with a heightened, vast sense of consciousness and recognition of death; (b) travel to a destination; (c) a meaningful and purposeful review of life, involving a critical analysis of all actions, intentions and thoughts towards others; a perception of (d) being in a place that feels like "home," and (e) a return back to life. There's more HERE.  In the same article is this statement: "Cardiac arrest is not a heart attack, but represents the final stage of a disease or event that causes a person to die," lead author Parnia explains. "The advent of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) showed us that death is not an absolute state, rather, it's a process that could potentially be reversed in some people even after it has started. "What has enabled the scientific study of death," he continues, "is that brain cells do not become irreversibly damaged within minutes of oxygen deprivation when the heart stops. Instead, they 'die' over hours of time. This is allowing scientists to objectively study the physiological and mental events that occur in relation to death."

Here's a picture from last year's April snowfall - that was a lot more snow and was on April 21st. R

March 30 2022 - Dollarama Deals or Not

 

It seems like Dollar Stores such as Dollarama have been with us a long time.  The first all-dollar store began in Montreal in 1910.  Salim Rassy (later Rossy) was the founder. His son George took over in 1937 and then grandson Larry assumed the lead after George's death in 1973.  The first store with the Dollarama name happened in 1992 and has grown to over 1400 stores in Canada.  We have the most in Ontario. I have a notion that Dollarama products are significantly lower quality than their counterparts in traditional retail and grocery stores.  Things like detergent - is the product watered down? Do the products follow our food and safety standards?  I decide to find out what the situation is. This is one of the sorts of internet topics that many people have weighed in on. From Reader's Digest to Bob Villa.  Here's what they say about Dollarama (we're excluding Dollar Tree in the US).  This is what not to buy: Electronics - PVC content Plastic cooking utensils - BFRs Canned goods - BPA in the lining Toys - untested for consumer safety Tools - poor quality Knives - poor quality, i.e. not sharp Batteries - poor quality Back-to-school - poor quality Pet food or treats - pet safety due to expiry and ingredients Makeup, toiletries, medicine - expiration dates, contents  What might the good deals be?  Household products and cleaning supplies  Party supplies Seasonal decor Brand name candy Notebooks, colouring books Home storage and organizing supplies Vases and decorative bowls Greeting cards So I am safe on the vast amounts of Christmas decorations (for the Fantasy of Trees), the greeting cards, and all those plastic containers storing the decorations. I had previously questioned how Dollarama could sell name brand items at big discounts. A MacLean's article from 2017 HERE outlines their knock-off practices which infringe on patents.  The contents or quality of these products cannot be assured.  Dollarama says it is not trying to "trick customers".  So much for some of the "good deals". Today's image is our April calendar - a multiple exposure picture of the garden around the corner at the end of April last year.  These multiple image pictures are created in the camera which has a setting for this.  Somehow when they are merged in the camera they appear more abstract than if 6 images were taken separately and merged in Photoshop.  It seems like magic to me.

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April 1st 2021 - Foolish Fish Day!

 

What do you do for Aril Fool's Day? Do children do things at school?  We adults don't seem to do much anymore.   However, major product brands do things every year, and we reported on them last year.  This year I found an April Fool's Quiz from the Guardian, and it is most entertaining.   Here's my favourite question: In 1972 researchers claimed to have found the body of the Loch Ness monster. What, in fact, was it? A dead bull elephant seal  A prop left over from filming the Doctor Who Terror of the Zygons serial, which was set around Loch Ness  The results of a local school craft project  A giant eel    This particular April Fool's joke has been told a number of ways - the first is via News:  DUNFERMLINE, Scotland. April 1 1972 (AP)—The director of an English zoo said a young scientist explained today that a private joke had set off police chase through Scotland in search of the Loch Ness monster. Don Robertson, director of the Flamingo.Park Zoo in Scarborough, reported that the zoo's education officer, John Shields, had given him statement saying that he had tried to hoax a few friends on April Fool's Day, which happens to be Mr. Shield's 23d birthday, The joke was to dump frozen bull elephant seal in Loch Ness for seven monsterhunting colleagues to find, the statement said. But it got out of hand yesterday when the team tried to rush their discovery back to the zoo on England's northeast coast. The police chased their truck, slopped it and brought the “monster” to this Fifeshiro County town where two scientists identified it as a),South Atlantic seal. The second version is a much longer and more entertaining rendition HERE.     Our picture today was taken at the Ringling Museum - it was a beautiful wall mural of all the famous clowns.   Purchase at: FAA - marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

April 1 2020 - Rooster Fools

April 1st as April Fool's Day is associated with the vain rooster, Chauntecleer, in Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales.   But this is not the Chaunticleer that Chanticleer Gardens is named for.   And there are large rooster statues at the entrance gates, and throughout the garden.  So one wonders how this pretty garden in the Philadelphia area got its name. "The Chanticleer estate dates from the early 20th-century, when land along the Main Line of the Pennsylvania Railroad was developed for summer homes to escape the heat of Philadelphia. Adolph Rosengarten, Sr., and his wife Christine chose the Wayne-St. Davids area to build their country retreat. The family's pharmaceutical firm would become part of Merck & Company in the 1920s." "Mr. Rosengarten's humor is evident in naming his home after the estate "Chanticlere" in Thackeray's 1855 novel The Newcomes. The fictional Chanticlere was "mortgaged up to the very castle windows" but "still the show of the county." Playing on the word, which is synonymous with "rooster," the Rosengartens used rooster motifs throughout the estate." Chanticleer was used as the proper name of the cock in the literary cycle of Reynard the Fox.  Its definition refers to this:  a domestic rooster or cock, especially in fables and fairy tales.   On to rooster jokes, as there aren't any Chanticleer jokes. They are mostly profane, given the job of a rooster.  On jokes sites this is the approach:     This is pretty well it for the rooster jokes.  A long, long listing of this box.  And generally, it is the same joke with variations. So here are the remaining two jokes: What do you call a rooster that stares at lettuce all day long? Chicken sees a salad. Why didn't the rooster tell Dad Jokes? He was afraid his kids would crack up! It's railroad day today.

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March 29 2020 - Google's no Pagan Fool

Here's a question?  Is April 1st a pagan holiday?  Every holiday seems to have 'pagan roots'. The 'pagan' term comes from Christians describing the Roman Empire who practiced polytheism. Equivalent terms were hellen, gentile, and heathen.  So it is a label that Christianity applied to others. "Anyone not Christian" is how it started out.  So was April Fool's Day a pagan tradition? The first written reference to April 1st as a day of tricks comes from Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales.  This reference is disputed.  What is confirmed is the French poet Eloy d'Amerval refer to a poisson d'avail in 1508, considered the first reference to the celebration in France.  Wikipedia says this: "Although no Biblical scholar or historian is known to have mentioned a relationship, some have expressed the belief that the origins of April Fool's Day may go back to the Genesis flood narrative." Reader's Digest claims that the likely origins are the Roman Festival of Hilaria.  It took place around March 25 in honour of the first day of the year longer than the night (equinox).   Because the origins are unknown, there are lots of articles and sites who weigh in on their version. And so it goes.   However, with this year's Covid-19 concerns, there is April Fools' news!  Google has officially canceled its April Fools' joke. Here's the list since year 2000.  We'll have to revisit them instead of getting a new one.  This turns out quite fun. Google's first April Fools' Day hoax, the MentalPlex hoax, invited users to project a mental image of what they wanted to find whilst staring at an animated GIF. Several humorous error messages were then displayed on the search results page, all listed below: Error 005: KUT Weak or no signal detected. Upgrade transmitter and retry. Error 466: Multiple transmitters detected. Silence voices in your head and try again. Error 05: Brainwaves received in analog. Please re-think in digital. Error 4P: Unclear on whether your search is about money or monkeys. Please try again. Error 445: Searching on this topic is prohibited under international law. Error CK8: That information is protected under the National Security Act. Error 104: That information was lost with the Martian Lander. Please try again. Error 007: Query is unclear. Try again after removing hat, glasses and shoes. Error 008: Interference detected. Remove aluminum foil and remote control devices. Error: Insufficient conviction. Please clap hands 3 times, while chanting "I believe" and try again. Error: MentalPlex™ has determined that this is not your final answer. Please try again. And our image today is the flower 'Statice' - this came from the greenhouse tour last year (on this weekend).  This was the Prins greenhouse.

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The Spaghetti Harvest Celebration Day!

Before we find out if there are any amazing April Fool's Jokes today, let us revel in the past. Here is the link at CNN telling us their top ten April Fool's jokes of all times.  Number 1 on the list is pasta growing on trees.  It is a BBC joke from 1957 showing the Swiss spaghetti harvest.  This has been ranked Number 1 by the Museum of Hoaxes.  The Museum's listing is HERE. This is the pinnacle of the year for this website and its day to shine.  At this site you can read the top 100 April Fool's Day Hoaxes of all time, or find out the early modern hoaxes from 1500 - 1700, Hoaxes of the 1990s, Television hoaxes, Journalists hoaxed, and so on. They are listed by decade - all kinds of listings and stories. After the Swiss spaghetti harvest, the Instant Colour TV of 1962 is the second joke - tv viewers in Sweden were advised to pull a nylon stocking over their tv screen and the images would appear in colour. I liked the Taco Liberty Bell hoax of 1996, in which the Taco Bell Corporation took out a full-page ad that they had bought the Liberty Bell and was renaming it to the Taco Liberty Bell.  "The best line of the day came when White House press secretary Mike McCurry was asked about the sale. Thinking on his feet, he responded that the Lincoln Memorial had also been sold. It would now be known, he said, as the Ford Lincoln Mercury Memorial". Look out for our hoaxes today - and all completes by noon.

And Then April Arrives

Which is it?  April Fools' Day or April Fool's Day.  Grammars.com tells me that it is plural possessive, and that the singular is a variant spelling.  I figured that it must be plural.  However, the usage is split evenly for each spelling.   What is the earliest reference? There is a dispute over Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales (1392) reference to "Syn March bigan thritty dayes and two." The discussion is whether Chaucer meant this to be April 1st or whether it was a copying error. In 1508, French poet Eloy d'Amerval referred to a "poisson d'avril." There we have it - the expression used in France and other European countries.  In the past, the idea was to attach a paper fish to the victim's back without being noticed. In the U.K. the holiday 'ceases' at noon, according to Wikipedia. One can be called a 'fool', 'noodle', 'gob', 'gobby' or 'noddy' in England.  That's a lot of choices.  Other countries consider April Fools' jokes to finish by noon. After that they are considered inappropriate and not classy. Here's a preview of how outrageous April Fools' jokes have been: "I never did anything wrong, and I won't do it again," said former President Richard Nixon, announcing that he would run for president in 1992." National Public Radio’s piece on Nixon’s 1992 presidential run is one of its most famous April Fools’ Day pranks. Not only did people believe it, they were outraged. Here's today's image.

April Fool's Easter

Do you remember Easter Sunday and April Fool's Day occurring on the same day? It occurred together in 1956, this year 2018, and next in 2029. With the Easter Bunny taking over the secular part of Easter, we should be able to see some April Fool's Easter Eggs. Instead of Easter Candy Carrots? Chocolate covered brussel sprout cake pops. What about Niagara Grape eggs?  Cover grapes in coloured foil to look like chocolates. Easter Eggs in colours - hollow out egg shells and fill with jello Chocolate bunnys?  Fill them with mustard. Pinterest has visual delights for Easter - jello easter eggs, glow eggs, shaving cream easter eggs, for us adults, bunny money, and then the toilet joke - jelly beans.  Here are two for April Fool's Day.        In the purist world of April Fool's here's boredpanda.com for some ideas. These pranks come with a final score - check out the first one - insects on lamps.  They were a 154 score - right on top and lowest work effort.

Daffodils

Spring time in Niagara has such wonderful surprises.  I found a growers field of daffodils and have photographed it over the last few days.