Nov 13 2024 - Winter is time to stockpile

 

Winter weather has set in.  I am surprised the Coleus has survived the night temperatures.  Maybe it is frozen in place by the cold air.   Winter makes me look in the cupboards, especially before Christmas. Something about cinnamon and spices for Christmas treats.  I  started to wonder what things should I always have a backup of?  And there today is the headline:  "20 important items actually worth stockpiling at home."   It is the "actually" that gets my attention, along with the "stockpiling."   How many is stockpiling?  What is it about "actually?" Does that distinguish stockpiling from hoarding?  I haven't found out. "From sources across the web,"  the story of what to keep includes: Peanut butter, granola bars, canned fish, toilet paper, beans, cereal and 15 more.  We don't have quite a few of the items at all.  Should I have dry milk?  What for?  Canned fish?  Little tuna sandwiches are part of Church events so I don't need that.  The list of canned meat and beans, canned vegetables, canned fruits, etc.  is fort an "emergency pantry"  - or perhaps an "emergency party."  You can have the neighbours over and open cans together. One article says stock up on candy - it will last a long time.  "The wrapper of a Jolly Rancher will go bad before the candy does" is the quote.  No one suggested stockpiling chocolate.  That seems like a transgression of an omission. There are two motivations for stockpiling: the first is an emergency with a disease outbreak where we are told to stay home. The second is saving money by having extra on the shelf at the cheapest price. Hurricanes or floods seem unlikely as people will likely be at an emergency shelter.  The surprise article retrieved has this title:  "Composting or Stockpiling - what's the difference?"  It was for farmers and  stockpiling is a passive management of solid manure.

Perhaps my database of images is a stockpile.  I returned to this wonderful Lily image to create a new interpretation.

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Aug 18 2024 - Socialist Canada

 

An opinion piece in the Globe and Mail today referred to Canada as "socialist Canada". Is Canada socialist? Isn't that an interesting question? From the Canadian Encyclopedia:  "Socialism is a political doctrine that criticizes the existence of social, economic and political inequality in society. Seeking to lessen class inequality, socialists call for a redistribution of power from the affluent owners to the working class. "Socialists favour collective action by workers to overcome their unfavourable condition. They advocate direct economic organization (eg, the formation of trade unions, labour protests and strikes) and political action (eg, the formation of socialist and/or labour parties) with the goal of reorienting the state from defending the powerful few to protecting ordinary workers."  There are countries that have constitutional references to socialism, and can be considered to be socialist states - Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Portugal are a few with these references.  As I move on looking for the characteristics that define socialist countries, I find a number of organizations that measure this.  The top 5 as Iceland, Norway, Finland, Denmark and Sweden and others as Netherlands, Ireland, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Moldova, Armenia.  The report describes its methodology and the country listing HERE.  This review uses 4 metrics - and the one that gets my attention is the Gini Coefficient - it measures income distribution across a population and the wealth gap.  A Gini coefficient of 9 indicates perfect equality and a coefficient of 1 indicates perfect inequality.  Greater than .4 is a large income gap. So I find my way to the authority - the World Bank - where you can imagine there are countless measure (so it seems as I scroll through them).  Canada's Gini score - In Canada, the Gini coefficient for 2021 increased to 0.353 (+0.017) following a drop in 2020.  It was 31.7 in 2019, so is declining.  That's not great news, but it isn't catastrophic.  Compare that to the U.S. - The World Population Review says 41.1.  What to think.  I think that maybe that's part of the socialist label.   Too much insight gives me reason to look for distractions and here's a wonder little lily to do the job.

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Apr 12 2024 - It's All About Chili

 

Yesterday's question "Who is my mother's husband?" revealed a number of hilarious stories.  The one that stood out is from Reddit and you see the screen shot below.     Do you know what AITA is?  It has its own Wikipedia entry.  Here it is.   Do you know how dominant Chili is in the world of things gone wrong in the family, things going right in the family and the general status of things in the family in the U.S.? It seems astonishing.  Statista says that 125.35 million Americans consumed chili in 2020.  So that's a lot of families to have stories.    The best-known chili story is the one that starts with "His mother's husband" - it continues with the mother's husband eating the son's wife's chili with the resulting "can't hide his disgust" and conclusion of the son kicking them out of the house.   The story's preface is AITA?  That is an invitation for all kinds of involvement and opinion.   Here's an example of how this has inspired so many to participate.  The site is AR15 HERE and the prompt is:  My wife is making chili...It's her first time.  Should I bring up the elephant in the room? Some of the answers are in the screen shot below:   The first lily beetle was in my garden the other day.  They don't have any opinions about the recipes for lilies.  They eat them all.

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Dec 22 2023 - Around the Clock

 

Do clocks seem simple to you?  Do you wonder why they are round, and why they divide time into two 12 hour chunks and not a full 24 increments? Sundials come in different shapes - round, square and "neither" - there are odd compositions- they all contain the "gnomon" - that's the pointy thing that casts the shadow.  There are vertical and horizontal sundials.  There are declining-reclining and declining-inclining dials.  There are a lot of variations.  There has been many thousands of years to figure these out and develop new variations.  Clocks have to be round for a scientific reason: It turns out to be because the circle is the most efficient shape for measuring time.   "This is because a circle has a constant circumference, which means that each point on the circle travels the same distance in the same amount of time. In other words, a clock with a circular face can accurately measure time regardless of where the hands are positioned." And what about the 12-hour clock? I had no idea that when the darkness came, a water clock was used for night-time.  What is a water clock?  It uses the flow of water to measure time.  Water clocks are old - 16th century BC old.   "There are two types of water clocks: inflow and outflow. In an outflow water clock, a container is filled with water, and the water is drained slowly and evenly out of the container. This container has markings that are used to show the passage of time. As the water leaves the container, an observer can see where the water is level with the lines and tell how much time has passed. An inflow water clock works in basically the same way, except instead of flowing out of the container, the water is filling up the marked container." How interesting our everyday things are.  Science project 101:  Build a water clock to show the drip, drip, drip of time. And humour and sundials? Queen Elizabeth and Sir David Attenborough are walking through the gardens at Buckingham Palace, when they come across a sundial in the shade of a tree. The Queen: Maybe we could move it...  Attenborough: Depends whether you want to know the time or not.  The Queen: Best leave it be then, as a joke. The best jokes are timeless, after all.

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Nov 21 2023 - How to Spot Putin's Doubles

 

There's a June 2023 article on how to spot Putin's body doubles.  Ukranian official, Yusov says: "Putin uses doubles," "This is a fact that is based both on operative intelligence and on the assessments of physiognomists and many other specialists." Yusov continued: "He would never sit in that car and would never dress like that. He would never talk to alleged local residents, as we know that access to the real Putin in the Kremlin is restricted even for his own entourage—a meters-long table that becomes longer and longer, mandatory quarantines people undergo before meeting him." One article headline in the Mirror is:  People convinced Vladimir Putin is using doubles as his chin keeps changing.  Another picture heading is:  "A ledge in Putin's earlobe constantly changes." I wondered about this and am shocked by the dozens of pictures - real and unreal - who knows. What is and isn't a real picture?  We are lost in the misinformation ocean. The body double is a well-used approach in politics off the past - one article listed Joseph Stalin, Bernard Montgomery, Saddam Hussein, Manuel Noriega, Fidel Castro, Indonesian President Sukarno.   That article included Queen Elizabeth II, but she had a stand-in for rehearsals, not a body double. (This seems to magnify my concern over misinformation.) Wikipedia has a great entry on this subject with excellent detail.  The article is HERE.  The term used is political decoy.  And in that article is the story about Queen Elizabeth I: "For many years, the story of the Bisley Boy tempted people into believing that Queen Elizabeth I of England was really a man. According to the legend, Elizabeth (then a princess) had died aged 10 while staying at Berkeley Castle, Gloucestershire. Her minders, terrified of the retribution of her father, Henry VIII, made a substitution. They tried to find a lookalike girl of sufficient education, but could not find one, so a lookalike boy from the nearby village of Bisley was put in her place and sworn to secrecy. This legend "explained" why Elizabeth never married, why she went bald in middle age, and why she said she had the heart and stomach of a king in the Tilbury speech. Proponents of the "Bisley Boy" story included Bram Stoker in his 1910 nonfiction book Famous Impostors. According to Laurie Lee, his mother always referred to Elizabeth as "the Bisley boy". Isn't that legend so tempting. Check out the dozens of Putin body double pictures. Here's an image that matches today's subject.

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June 6 2022 - Ideal vs iDEAL!

 

Ideal used to be something that was a model of perfection, excellence and beauty.  Now it is iDEAL - some domain name for something related to buying things. It is an e-commerce payment system used in the Netherlands.   I seem to be fascinated by the transformation of words from meaning something into being products.  Once Redbubble took down one of my photos of a Dahlia saying it conflicted with a Disney trademark.  It might have been the word enchanted.  I wonder if we might get to a point of not being able to write freely in public.   At least with this transformation, there's a distinction based on lower and upper case. "iDEAL is an online payment system that circumvents the need for the Dutch to have credit cards. Instead of inputting your card information, paying with iDEAL takes you directly to your personal online banking website where you transfer the money directly to the business owner." And we think we know why the Dutch don't want to use credit cards - cost of the card and cost of credit interest. I suspect it is that Dutch concern over money.   Here's the answer they give: "Let’s start by taking a look at the Dutch word for debt: schuld. Schuld is a word that has a second meaning: guilt. That’s right. Because the Dutch still hold some characteristics from their time as a primarily Calvinist society they believe in only taking what they need." Grimsby is home to many Dutch who arrived after the war. So my opinion is based anecdotal and individual observation.  I found a website that wanted me to know the generalized answer to What is Dutch mentality?  The website is  aboutthenetherlands.com  "The Dutch are known to be very direct and opinionated, generally happy, realistic, punctual, and greedy. Besides, the Dutch really like to split bills, have an early dinner, and they love to complain." "Even though every person is unique, Dutch people seem to have common behavioral patterns that stand out. It is not for nothing that there is a famous dutch saying that when directly translated says: When you act 'normal' your behavior is crazy enough." The website is the work of Leon van den Berg who describes himself as a Dutchman, extremely proud of the beautiful country in which he lives. Lilycrest Gardens is abundant and beautiful this year and there may even be some first blooms - particularly if Brian has one of the earliest lilies - Enchantment.   Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblog.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Dec 6 2021 - Christmas Cake vs Wedding Cake

 

Christmas Cake. Wedding Cake.  How did it come about that they are dense, dark, 'matured' fruit cakes with marzipan and royal icing? This is a Commonwealth tradition.  What will Barbados do now? So Christmas cake is the same as Wedding cake to me.   And then there is Christmas pudding - rich, steamed pudding made with flour, suet and dried fruits.  What is the common element of both of these English Christmas traditions?  Rich! Very rich. And what about the French Buche de Noel?  Now that's a traditional French sponge cake layered with a rich, butter cream frosting, all made to resemble a decorative Yule log.   The Italians have much lighter and less sweet Pandora and Panettone Christmas breads.  They fall for the fruit cake trap too and have Panforte - a traditional Italian rich nut and fruit cake. Everyone seems to fall for the marinated mature fruits as part of their Christmas cake tradition.  You can tour around the world in Christmas cakes HERE.   And how does Johnny Carson fit into the Christmas tradition? With his famous fruitcake joke.  “The worst gift is a fruitcake. There is only one fruitcake in the entire world, and people keep sending it to each other.” The article says that "For many, that wisecrack sliced like a hot knife through soft butter. Almost immediately after the jokes airing, fruitcake sales drastically declined." Today's picture is from a few years ago - a colourized lily - the impossible blue.

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Oct 3 2021 - Fall Food like Apple Pan Dowdy

 

Fall is harvest time, so we think of this as a great time for food.  Everywhere I look there are pumpkins and squash.  And the bushes of apples are beside them.  There must be thousands of apple dishes and here's one I have never heard of - Apple Pan Dowdy. What is an Apple Pandowdy? I had to look it up to find out that it is a kind of spiced apple pie baked in a deep dish. There's a popular song from 1945 named Shoo-Fly Pie and Apple Pan Dowdy.  It is about Pennsylvania Dutch cooking.  It was a hit for Dinah Shore.  I find out from Wikipedia that the song is frequently mentioned in John Updike's 1988 novel Rabbit at Rest as a favourite childhood song of the protagonist, Pennsylvania native Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom. The 'Two Fat Ladies' refer to this song in their cookbook Obsessions, as well as singing the song and cooking apple pan dowdy on an episode of their television show. I seem to have only a minor connection to Pennsylvania Dutch cuisines, even though it reflects the influences of the German heritage and agrarian society.  My Mennonite/Lutheran past doesn't seem to have a sense that the Amish and the Mennonites shared their cuisine.  Except for Cabbage Borscht.   Things like Amish macaroni salad, whoopee pies, custard cottage cheese pie, Dutch corn pie - these are American dishes to me.  Mind you, a lot of these look delicious. I expect they have lots of calories, as in between every recipe and picture is an ad for getting a new body in 20 days.  I guess it is just as well that we didn't get both Mennonite and Amish cooking. So back to Apple Pan Dowdy.  The picture looks like an apple pie in a square pan with the pie crust thrown on top in little squares.   Lilycrest Gardens lily season is completed this year - here's a colourful interpretation of a lily stem from the field.

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Aug 25 2021 - Pop-up Time

 

There's a big push on for vaccinations here in Niagara and residents are invited to "Pop into" an upcoming vaccination clinic, or to check out "pop-up vaccination clinics" and to check out "walk-in vaccination locations".   Pop-up is a big thing these days.  There are all kinds of pop up shops and the trend was big by 2019.  Forbes says the trend is here to stay in the retail sector.  There are pop-in stores in an already existing department store, experiential pop-ups, media and entertainment pop-ups (often tied to TV shows), and so on.  That's all the marketing hype from retail consultants.   There must be some  strange and unusual pop-ups given we're in COVID times.  What turns up the bizarre bazaars.  That is because of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. This is a "Japanese manga (comic book) series". It is catching on outside Japan. There are quite a few bizarre bazaar events this summer for JoJo lovers. Here are the top strongest characters in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Giorno Giovanna. GER is the strongest stand in jojo making Giorno the strongest character. Enrico Pucci. With made in heaven. Johnny Joestar. Funny Valentine. Weather Report. Snail hax. Kars. Ultimate Kars. Diavolo. Now that's a line-up.  And I thought that Weather Report was a jazz fusion group and Funny Valentine a jazz song. Some Lilies on Brian's patio table a few weeks ago.

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Dec 8 2020 - The Christmas Risk Assessment

 

There must be a lot of etiquette rules for Christmas, if thank you cards had that many rules yesterday.   What are the most important rules, given there are so many?  I guess this is a risk mitigation moment. Rather than fulfill all the rules, go after the critical ones. My attention got drawn to Regifting.  There's an ad for something on the radio and it is sung to the tune of Unforgettable (Nat King Cole) with Unregiftable the replaced word.  This regifting scenario from the Spruce seems to capture the spirit of Christmas risk: If someone gives you something you can't use or don't care for, it's okay to regift it later, as long as you don't give it back to the original person. To prevent this from happening, attach a note with the original giver's name. I went in search of risk mitigation at Christmas and found this satiric entry  from Barry Spud (2013) in Safetyrisk:   "All employees planning to dash through the snow in a one horse open sleigh, going over the fields and laughing all the way are advised that a Risk Assessment will be required addressing the safety of an open sleigh for members of the public. This assessment must also consider whether it is appropriate to use only one horse for such a venture, particularly where there are multiple passengers.  Please note that permission must also be obtained in writing from landowners before their fields may be entered.  To avoid offending those not participating in celebrations, we would request that laughter is moderate only and not loud enough to be considered a noise nuisance.  Benches, stools and orthopaedic chairs are now available for collection by any shepherds planning or required to watch their flocks at night.  While provision has also been made for remote monitoring of flocks by CCTV cameras from a centrally heated shepherd observation hut, all users of this facility are reminded that an emergency response plan must be submitted to account for known risks to the flocks.  The angel of the Lord is additionally reminded that, prior to shining his/her glory all around, s/he must confirm that all shepherds are wearing appropriate Personal Protective Equipment to account for the harmful effects of UVA, UVB and the overwhelming effects of Glory.  Following last year’s well-publicised case, everyone is advised that Equal Opportunities legislation prohibits any comment with regard to the redness of any part of Mr R Reindeer. Further to this, exclusion of Mr R Reindeer from reindeer games will be considered discriminatory and disciplinary action will be taken against those found guilty of this offence. While it is acknowledged that gift bearing is a common practice in various parts of the world, particularly the Orient, everyone is reminded that the bearing of gifts is subject to Hospitality Guidelines and all gifts must be registered. This applies regardless of the individual, even royal personages.  It is particularly noted that direct gifts of currency or gold are specifically precluded, while caution is advised regarding other common gifts such as aromatic resins that may evoke allergic reactions. Finally, in the recent instance of the infant found tucked up in a manger without any crib for a bed, Social Services have been advised and will be arriving shortly. Enjoy the holiday season!" Here's one of my favourite Christmas images - one of Lilycrest Gardens lilies, made a little red for the seasonal colours.

March 12 2020 - Hash it Out

#FlowerCount is over in Victoria.  We're waiting for the final count. Number sign - now called hashtag -# - is with us many times a day. And what an inconvenient spot on the typewriter.  I assume that was because it was  hardly ever used so got relegated to the number row. Maybe if you were writing music and needed to write something in a key with sharps. Or Possibly pounds - but then we use lb as an abbreviation for pounds and that's where it started in Rome- meaning pound weight.. It is also used in proof-reading to indicate that a space should be inserted, and a few lesser uses.  The telephone keypad has the symbol and got a special name for it - Octothorpe. Special characters have a history of being adopted for special meanings in computer languages.  I assume this comes out of its use in mathematics. Our first word of our post, though, gives us the clue to how we got to using # so many times a day. The hash tag got the stratosphere boost with Chris Messina to create topics of interest. Look at all these other uses: tic tac toe, crosshatch, (garden) fence, mesh, flash, grid, pig-pen, tictactoe, scratch (mark), (garden) gate, hak, oof, rake, crunch, punch mark, sink, corridor, capital 3, and waffle.  Plus all those others in computing.  Shouldn't there be some jokes?  Perhaps, but what pops up are #jokes and not jokes about #'s.  Here the only two that relate so far and can be included without profanity. I got an interview and told them I was proficient in C and C-sharp. Turns out that wasn't good enough to be a pianist A lot of people call # a Hashtag but back in my day it was the pound sign Which makes the movement #MeToo a bit awkward This is a picture of Brian's Lilycrest Gardens lily hybridizing field.  It was taken a few years ago when his field was at its peak.  Isn't that a sight of lilies!  Let's hope to see it on the screen at RBG during the Plant Faire, coming up at the end of April.

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