A-ril 1 2025 - the Non-Joke Day of the Decade

 

Jokes and joking only work when people know each other and trust each other.  Isn't it so uncomfortable to be in a U.S. economic war and think we can enjoy a joke together.  This makes things difficult. And then, the notion of "real fun" has been fading.  McDonald's and various brand do these things for publicity and sales.   Maybe luxury companies think distraction is a good strategy for the current situation.  A Mercedes vertical car, a McDonald's "McGettigan's" opening the Ibn Battuta gate (in Dubai), and Sofitel announced a spa membership that comes with a yacht - that's in Dubai, too.  I guess Dubai doesn't need to think much about the U.S. economic war.   The BBC asked if we are too suspicious now for a prank  They reference the spaghetti from trees story that has been heralded for 68 years.  Well, that is after the Second World War in 1957, when things were calmer than in the previous decade.  They indicate that one year the Guardian ran a pull-out guide to a fictional Indian Ocean island. This doesn't seem so funny in 2025.  We could easily wake yup with every ocean being renamed "America."  or "Trump."  And then everything has changed - now with social media, all kinds of fake stories abound every day, making it April Fool's all the time - and not a fun one.  "Silly you to believe that story!"  Or "There really is a pedophile ring at a pizza shop in New York!" Welcome to the thousands of instagram, youtube and facebook posts that google is displaying - 35 pages of them, with their concluding message:  "In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 328 already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included." I must have just scrolled through over 3,000 stories.  And that's my April Fools 2025.

I found this picture taken in 2011 - it is a reflection in front of the Canadian Tire store.  They didn't pave the parking lot very evenly, and it was quite the lake for a week or so. Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

July 1st 2022 - Half-Way

I've had a number of July 1st ideas.  For example,   those whose birthdays are  between Dec 25th and Jan 1st  should celebrate their birthdays on July 1st so that they get a real birthday celebration.  And that given July 1st is half-way through the year, there should be fund-raising festivals on the theme "Christmas in July".   These are based on the days of the year, and not the ceremonial importance of this day as a celebration of nationhood. Canada's "Day" has been contentious throughout our history.    Last year things halted as the many graves at the residential school sites made clear what the colonialists did, and how long colonialist behaviours with residential schools lasted.  Last year there was a call to scale back Canada Day and to cancel Canada Day.   So here we are a year later, with a bit of progress towards resetting our views of history. In April  2022 Ryerson University  was renamed Toronto Metropolitan University.   After reading Egerton Ryerson's biography, my view is that there could be no other course of action.  His role as "father of public education" was so lauded that his other actions were ignored.  They were very significant.  He was a primary architect of the residential school system.  He was persuasive in his writings - supporting converting Indigenous people to Christianity in order to assimilate them.  He wrote that it was "a fact that they could not be civilized".   And much more.  He was prolific in his writings.  We weren't prolific in our readings, being tone deaf to what doesn't match up with a colonialist view.    So I am back to my Christmas in July idea.  Hallmark is already on it.  It starts July 16th with three new movies.  It will feature 24/7 Christmas movies throughout the Fourth of July weekend.  Here are a few of the titles: Sense, Sensibility and Snowmen Dickens of a Holiday Christmas Comes Twice The Santa Stakeout So this isn't a flag picture day.  We've soured a bit on the Canadian Flag when it got conscripted to the Convoy protest.  That is supposed to be underway again today.   So instead, we look at the Christmas scene below - it is an amazing contrast to our colourful summer scenes.

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Sep 1 2020 - See You In September

That's a song from 1959 and then again in 1966.    What a wonderful story it has:  Sid Wayne, the co-composer, would recall the song's inception: "I was in the habit of going from my home on Long Island every day to Brill Building, on Tin Pan Alley to meet with different songwriters there. We'd eat at Jack Dempsey's or The Turf Restaurant and then we'd go up to one of the publishers' offices and work in the piano room. We'd sit around saying to each other, 'What do you want to write today? A hit or a standard?'" At 11 a.m. on a Friday in June 1959 Wayne thus met up with Sherman Edwards: "he said, 'What do you want to write?' 'I'd like to write a song called See You in September,"' I said. We talked it back and forth and I think I may have contributed part of the opening music, but with Sherman it didn't matter, because he could throw me back half the lyric — that's how he worked. I think probably by two in the afternoon we got the song finished. It needed to be written; it was like boiling inside of us."  By 4:30 p.m. that day, Wayne and Edwards had reworked their composition, simplifying it so as to appeal to the teen demographic, and proceeded to make the rounds of publishers to pitch the song which, after one rejection, met with an enthusiastic reception from Jack Gold, owner of the local Paris label; by 8 p.m. he had telephoned the Tempos in their hometown of Pittsburgh. The group had been flown into New York City by the next day, Saturday. Sid Wayne: "By Monday the record was cut [with the Billy Mure orchestra], test pressings were Thursday, and by Friday the song was played on WNEW in New York. The thing took off like wildfire… Five hundred dollars to split between the two of us [ie. Wayne & Edwards]… was a damn good week's pay in 1961." The writing and production process seems so simple and straight-forward - everything happened within days.  That's something for us to remember that the 1950s and 1960s were simpler times. What would a salary be in 1961?  In 1961 the average income was $5,700 so at $250 a day x 250 working days in the year, they would make more than 10 times the average income, and if they only worked one day a week they were still double the average income.  He's right:  "Nice work if you can get it" This motion blur Canadian flag is from last October's visit to Kingston.

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