Showing posts with label Longwood. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Longwood. Show all posts

Sunday, June 1, 2025

Marilyn's Photos - June 1 2025 - Another Op'nin', Another Show

 

Another Op'nin', Another Show is the number that opens Kiss Me, Kate.  I saw the start of it on PBS - on Performances. 

Written by Cole Porter,Another Op'nin' of Another Show is considered one of the great show business anthem classics - along with No Business Like Show Business, and That's Entertainment.

We've heard it so many time, and "American Show Business" is such a vast industry now - the largest in the world worth $649 billion for media and entertainment.  Here are the lyrics:

Another op'nin, another showIn Philly, Boston, or Baltimo'A chance for stage folks to say hello!Another op'nin of another show.Another job that you hope will lastWill make your future forget your pastAntoher pain where the ulcers growAnother op'nin of another show.Four weeks, you rehearse and rehearseThree weeks, and it couldn't be worseOne week, will it ever be right?Then out of the hat it's that big first nightThe overture is about to startYou cross your fingers and hold your heartIt's curtain time and away we go -Another op'ninJust another op'nin of another show!

That was 1948 - a world away from here and now.  Such "youthful" and aspiring lyrics then, so much hope for success.  

Consider today where the world's richest entertainers are Steven Spielberg, worth $8.3 billion and George Lucas $6.92 billion. The wealthiest actors are listed as Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson or Zhao Wei, depending on which articles you read, then Arnold Schwarzenegger, Shah Rukh Khan, Tom Cruise, George Clooney - all of these have at least $500 million to almost $1 billion.

It won't be long before we start into the multi-trillions.  And after trillions, what is it? It's Quadrillion.  


The beautiful Paulownia trees in blossom at Longwood at the entrance walkway.
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Friday, December 27, 2024

Dec 27 2024 - Buy Nothing Time

 

Now that we've spent money buying Christmas presents, we can start a new chapter and join the Buy Nothing Project.  Started by Liesl Clark and Rebecca Rockefeller,  it sponsors communities everywhere and anywhere.  There are 7.5 million community members, 13,000 community builders, 128,000 communities around the world, and 850,000 BuyNothing app downloads.  That's quite a bit going on.  Local group members offer things for free and  look for things for free.  It is called a gift economy - no money is exchanged and no trades are required.  

There is a lot of press about the "Buy nothing movement" - there are rules and administrator roles that people complain about.  

There are guides for beginners, advice on how to take part and lots of gratitude and generosity talk.

Of course, there are the Reddit posts on the "best thing you've scored in a buy nothing group. "

Someone was so happy to receive - school uniforms before the age of 5?  And lots of baby and children items and toys. Especially squishmallows.  Remember the squishmallow tree at the Fantasy of Trees.  

And there are the Reddit posts of complaints and rants, of which there are plenty.  

I've joined the Grimsby group so will keep you posted on what develops. Let me know if you belong to a group.

Here's a pretty sight - Longwood Garden's Christmas display.
 
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Friday, July 5, 2024

July 5 2024 - Copycat Layoffs

 

Here's a new buzz term:  copycat layoffs.  This is what the article says:

Unless you’ve been living under a rock this year, you might have noticed that lots of companies – including Google, TikTok and Spotify – are laying off employees. The term “copycat layoffs” represents some people’s suspicions that many companies are only choosing to cut employees after seeing their rivals do the same. "

 That was in 2023. There was no dot-com crash, no market crash -  8.7 million Americans lost their jobs between December 2007 and early 2010. 

Executives justified the mass layoffs by citing a pandemic hiring binge, high inflation and weak consumer demand. With the upturn in 2024 and all of those items addressed, there have been significant numbers of layoffs in the tech industry.  Here's what the analysts say is really happening: 

"One of the more interesting concepts we see play out here is the herding effect. Larger tech companies, even those sitting on substantial cash reserves and enjoying profitability, are engaging in rounds of layoffs to get a piece of a boost in their stock prices. Some suggest that this trend has become the “new normal,” with companies getting away with it because others follow suit."

 An update article in June said that there were 50,000 job cuts across 254 companies in 2024. It lists the layoffs by month. I took a list of the list in Canada HERE. It is a long, long list.  This is definitely the age of copycat layoffs.

The NPR article gave this analysis: Layoffs are an instance of "social contagion" in which companies imitate what others are doing. They are contagious and a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

Shulman adds: "They're getting away with it because everybody is doing it. And they're getting away with it because now it's the new normal," he said. "Workers are more comfortable with it, stock investors are appreciating it, and so I think we'll see it continue for some time."

And what about the people being laid-off. Some have been rehired.  But others?  I haven't found the stories on them.  I wonder if the current cohort of the "laid-off" workers will have the legacy of past ones.  Studies find that they earned 20 percent less than their peers years later, and that they live with the stigma of "laid-off" throughout their work careers.


 
Here's a beautiful Longwood display from a few years ago. 
 
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Sunday, October 8, 2023

Oct 8 2023 - Traditional Thanksgiving

 

What makes your Canadian Thanksgiving traditional and classic? While Butter Tarts are considered the iconic classic Canadian dessert, we likely still want pumpkin pie for the holiday.  I think I might be on track here:  it is the dessert that we most think about for Canadian Thanksgiving.  

Why is that?  Well, my opinions that many people don't really like turkey.  There are lots of articles with the headline "People hate turkey: Admit it" or This article seems the best one of all: "There are 2 Types of People. Those Who Hate Turkey and Those Who Are Wrong"  - this headline comes from a website named ricemedia.co, and the author has more to say:

"But that’s not the main issue. The real issue is size. Buying Turkey is like buying an American SUV in Singapore. 

"Turkey’s problem is twofold. 1) The bird is so large that heat cannot reach all parts of it, resulting in an uneven done-ness 2) The meat has so little fat that any amount of overcooking is unforgivable. You have to walk a precariously thin line between indigestion and diarrhoea—in short, to pray for a thermodynamic miracle."

"This is the reason why most commercial brands (Butterball, Norbest) inject their Turkey with a sodium phosphate solution to keep the flesh moist. It is also the reason why many home cooks, finding the saline injections inadequate, shingle their Turkey’s breast with a layer of bacon to protect it from direct heat."

Such whit and sarcasm in this article, resulting in a refreshing point of view from this writer. It brings laughter to the table of turkey. It was written by Pan Jie in 2019 - for Christmas.  The article is HERE

So likely there is nothing else to really say about Canadian Thanksgiving.  We seem to have a handle on what to put on or in every dish:  the Turkey is Maple Roasted, the Cranberry Sauce is Maple Cranberry Sauce, the Squash is Maple flavoured.  So what goes in the Pumpkin Pie?  Yes.


Using DuckDuckGo as my browser, I get this message every time.  My question is why doesn't Facebook present better content if is tracking me on Safari.  It seems to me it is failing at its task - the one it said it would never do when it started.

If you want to view commercial-free videos on YouTube, use DuckDuckGo as the commercials are blocked.  Now that's a Thanksgiving tip to remember all year.


Here's the whopping Thousand Flower Chrysanthemum of Longwood Gardens - like the Thanksgiving Turkey - over the top in size.  Unlike the turkey, it takes the award for beauty as well.
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Friday, September 8, 2023

Sep 8 2023 - Prisoner Escape!

 

You can't guess the message from Longwood Gardens (near Philadelphia) this week.  Here it is:

Gardens Closed
 
As the search for the escaped prisoner from Chester County Prison continues, our Gardens are closed until further notice. We apologize for the inconvenience but know the health and safety of our Guests and Staff are our top priority.


This has been ongoing for a week.  Longwood is North America's largest tourist destination garden. How big is Longwood? It is 1083 acres.  That's a lot of room to hide in.  They have been searching for him for 9 days.  He is Danwela Souza Cavalcante, a 34-year-old from Brazil who was convicted of murder.  The break-out wasn't detected for an hour and he seems to be elusive even though there are 8 sightings so far. 

"Sources tell Action News the flurry of activity was in response to the discovery of an image of Cavalcante captured on a trail camera on Longwood Gardens property. That image was captured Wednesday evening but was not viewed until Thursday afternoon by law enforcement sifting through hundreds of captured images from trail cameras throughout the perimeter."

This has national coverage in the U.S. and the latest update is just 2 hours ago.  It seems to me that we have an eerie fascination with prison escapes.  The Wikipedia entry starts in the 13th century with a Tower of London escape.  Perhaps that escape was famous because the escapee was too heavy for the rope.  It broke and he fell to his death. 

Our escape is the second last entry.  Noted is that he crab walked up to the roof of the building.  

There's a more recent entry -  September 2023 when a prisoner escaped from Wandsworth Prison in London, "apparently by strapping himself to the underside of a vehicle."  

And our fascination?  How creative the escape methods are.

 

This is an historic train station in Virginia, found on the trip to the Lily Show with Brian.  The doors are marked "colored" and "white." They were separated waiting rooms.  I find out that William du Post purchased the Montpelier Estate in 1901 and had the train depot built to bring supplies and transport him to Wilmington, Delaware, weekly. 

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Saturday, July 1, 2023

July 1 2023 - That most famous iceberg found

 

The fame of the Titanic can only be matched by the iceberg that it hit.  The iceberg was distinctive with three peaks. There are photos of the iceberg taken by the chief steward of the SS Prinz Adalbert with a streak of red paint along the iceberg's base.  That had gotten his attention along with the three peaks.

 And the history of icebergs is astonishing: "The iceberg began its slow journey to the North Atlantic over three thousand years ago. Again, we can only guess at the exact details, but the story likely began with snowfall on the western coast of Greenland somewhere around 1,000 BCE. After a few months, this snow has been turned into a more compacted form called firn, which then over subsequent decades is compressed into dense ice by the weight of newer snow on top of it.

The frozen water in these glaciers is slowly forced further westward toward the sea. When they finally reach the coast of the Arctic Ocean, the lapping tides break off chunks of the ice, and icebergs are calved from the glacier, some 30 centuries after their source water was first deposited. The iceberg that sank the Titanic began its journey as a rough contemporary of King Tutankhamun, entire civilizations rising and falling while it made its slow march to infamy."

Yesterday a CBC radio item said that it is now known that icebergs migrate north and south, living on average 100 - 200 years. And a team of scientists say that they have found the famous iceberg with paint on the side, along with a tea cup.  And sufficient compositional analysis to confirm the identity.

The tea cup got my attention. I realized that the segment might have been on the This is Thatshow - an entertainment show that fabricates the issues.  So it seems unlikely that the Titanic iceberg will get towed into Halifax any time soon. It has likely passed on.

This is the rose arch at Longwood.

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Monday, June 26, 2023

June 26 2023 - Last Day of School

 

The Ministry of Education's calendar says that Thursday June 29 is the last day of instruction for secondary and June 30 for primary school.  Not only that on June 30, students are dismissed 90 minutes early in Halton.

And what do you do on the last day of school?  Here are some highlights from WikiHow for the students:

Prepare with your friends. Before the last day of school, gather your closest friends and plan some fun stuff. You all could do something crazy, or on the other hand, you could plan to do something that is more subtle. Here are some ideas for things to do on the last day to make it really stand out.

  • Throw toilet paper around the school
  • Break out in song during class
  • Wear something that is unique to your friend group
  • Create a collaborative painting during free time.


Bring small gifts for your favorite teachers. Small gifts are a good way to say "I will miss you" to a friend or to a favorite teacher. Some good gifts for your favorite teachers include:

  • Handwritten cards
  • Home-made jewelry
  • Cute keychains
  • A candle
  • Flowers.

Give out gifts to your friends to cherish the time you all had together. Give out little candies or cute stuffed "graduation" animals in little bags. Maybe take a few snapshots with your camera of this day and send them to your friends later via Internet.
 
This is followed by saying lots of goodbyes to everyone. 

Then there are are 29 unexpected last-day-of-school activities your students will love for the teachers. Things like stage classroom Olympics, trivia tournaments, take a meaningful walk, let the students teach,  end of year bingo, and so on.  I thought the making ice cream and paper airplane contests would be fun.  I thought that creating a summer bucket list was detrimental. 

here's the rose arch entrance at Longwood Gardens.

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Wednesday, April 5, 2023

Apr 5 2023 - Rethinking Cheese

 

"Where previous plant-based meats and cheeses have been made from plant materials manipulated to resemble animal products, molecular farming uses plants as a “machine” to produce actual animal proteins."

And one of the hard parts of reproducing cheese is that distinctive stretchiness and meltiness. 

“Plants, in particular soybeans, are very efficient at making proteins,” says Richani. And they’re flexible: by modifying a plant’s protein-encoding RNA, scientists can direct it to produce any kind of protein desirable. This can include casein, the main dairy protein found in milk that gives cheese its unique properties. Once plants expressing the casein produce seeds, the protein can be harvested, and then combined with plant fats and minerals in a cheesemaking process.

Then there will be competition for the already available nut-based "cheeses" that are advertised to have the meltiness qualities. One of the luxury alternative cheese brands is SriMu.  Look at the reviews of their products:

"Founder Julie Piatt makes the Rolls Royce standard of dairy-free cheeses. It’s luxury at its most delicious. This isn’t everyday cheese—it’s an indulgence, and it’s meant to be savored. ... most of her sales are based on a subscription box service online (she ships nationwide). The flavors are intense—this is not your American-style mild cheddar—they hit you in the face and evolve as the cheese melts in your mouth. Varieties include brie (Elder), smoked gouda (Gold Alchemy), blue (Spire), camembert (Bertie), gorgonzola (Dolce Vita), red pepper cheese ball (Bonfire), and fresh mozzarella (Cloud 9). Just be warned: it’s easy to get hooked on the life of luxury cheese."

This is so amazing - to be able to create the texture and appearance of cheese with whatever flavour combinations you want.  This is food wizardry. 

This is the website HERE.   There's a location in Canada - Teas 'N' Cheese in Port Stanley.  But a mere 2 hour drive for an alternative-dairy cheese.  Or we can order online with delivery to Canada.



One of Longwood's great gardens is the Wisteria Garden.  These are vines trained as trees  in a Japanese style.
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Saturday, June 4, 2022

June 4 2022 - Jubilee? Old News

 

It looks like the Queen's Jubilee is "old news" now and it isn't even finished.  No updates.  The Live Streams are from a day ago - the view from Buckingham Palace headline says Further live coverage is expected.  I was hoping for the view from yesterday.  Too bad I didn't watch yesterday as it seems to be gone in the formerly live stream.

The "View from the Balcony" is an achievement for the masses.  We would be in "The Queen's Place".  See what it was like to have the experience.  

Here's the link to the NPR pictures of the event HERE. Seeing that mass of people from the balcony?  I guess it is OK in pictures.  It would be quite a big experience live.  I guess we've seen too many rock band concerts and sports events for this to be novel for us now.  What do you think?



Here are the fountains at Longwood.  These are definitely in line with a Royal event. 
 

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Tuesday, February 8, 2022

Feb 8 2022 - Bubbles are Bouncy

 

Bubbles are very bouncy things.  They bounce in the air, they bounce on water.  They usually burst when you try to catch them.  So elusive.  

Here's the kitchen experiment that uses sugar and gloves to bounce bubbles and catch them with your hands.  Even bubbles have enemies: They are oil, dirt and gravity.  

Ingredients
Small bowl for mixing
Spoon for stirring
Cotton or wool socks or gloves
Drinking Straw
60ml (4 Tbsp) Water
30ml (2 Tbsp) sugar
15ml (1 Tbsp) Dishwashing Liquid

Instructions

  1. Mix all the ingredients together in the bowl and stir until the sugar dissolves
  2. Dip the end of the straw into the solution until a film forms on the end
  3. Gently blow into the other end of the straw to form a bubble
  4. Cover your hand with a sock or glove and hold your palm out flat
  5. Blow a bubble in the air and use your covered hand to gently bounce the bubble without it bursting

The Science Behind Bouncing Bubbles

Bubbles are simply air trapped inside a thin film of liquid – the bigger the bubble, the more air is inside. The liquid film that makes up the outside of a bubble is mostly water. Water molecules are attracted to each other by intermolecular forces – these are electromagnetic forces which act between molecules. The intermolecular forces draw the water molecules together, creating something called surface tension.

Dishwashing liquid lowers the surface tension of the water, making it stretchy enough to stretch around a sphere of air to form a bubble. Bubbles, though, are prone to popping when the film is pierced or if too much water in the film evaporates, leaving too thin a layer. The sugar binds to the water molecules. This helps to stop the bubbles from drying out so they last longer and don’t pop as quickly.

Usually, if you touch a bubble it bursts – this is because the natural oil on your hands breaks the surface tension of the water around the bubble. By wearing gloves or socks on your hands you create a barrier between the oil and the bubble, making it possible to bounce a bubble without bursting.

All of this directly from:  The Kitchen Science Cookbook by Michelle Dickinson

See Steve Spangler's science in action with his bouncing bubble video HERE. 


 


Today's picture was taken at Longwood Gardens at the Orchid Festival a few years ago.  There is so much to admire in this beautiful tree and display.
 
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Monday, May 31, 2021

May 31 2021 - How Many Waves?

 

How many waves does it take to conclude a pandemic?

The Globe and Mail today covered the difference between 75% and 90% vaccination rates and a likely fourth wave.  There doesn't seem to be a vaccinate 90% and get out of jail card. And there seems to be an ocean of pandemic waves.  Who would guess that we shouldn't consider the Spanish Influenza three waves to be the definitive story?


I went looking for silly phrases associated with the Pandemic.  I've selected these from cheapest.com HERE


Mask hole - it applies to those folks — or, as Urban Dictionary so bluntly puts it, those "selfish idiots" — who refuse to wear a mask for any number of unenlightened reasons. 

Covidiot - a  lot like "maskhole" but less specific: A maskhole can be a covidiot, but so can the person who prematurely hoards grocery store supplies. Same for someone who insists on holding a large indoor gathering. And so on.

Moronavirus - It's the same virus as the one that starts with a "c," only this is what it's called when covidiots and maskholes test positive. Sometimes used by foreign media to describe what's happening with COVID-19 cases in the United States.  

Fattening the CurveWhat happens when you have a bunch of covidiots and maskholes catching the moronavirus. 

The 'rona. It's something you'd use, say, after sneezing in front of your neighbors: "Don't worry! It's allergies, not the 'rona!"

And I conclude the story with this:

CoronapocalypseA pandemic. Widespread civil unrest. Failing leaders. Covidiots and maskholes catching the moronavirus. 

 
The mystery water feature at Longwood Gardens, a few years ago.  
 
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