Aug 13 2021 - The Famous Friday the 13ths

 

Has someone put together the list of historic Friday the 13ths?  This version comes from History.com HERE.    "On Friday, October 13, 1307, officers of King Philip IV of France arrested hundreds of the Knights Templar, a powerful religious and military order formed in the 12th century for the defense of the Holy Land. Imprisoned on charges of various illegal behaviors (but really because the king wanted access to their financial resources), many Templars were later executed. Some cite the link with the Templars as the origin of the Friday the 13th superstition, but like many legends involving the Templars and their history, the truth remains murky. In more recent times, a number of traumatic events have occurred on Friday the 13th, including the German bombing of Buckingham Palace (September 1940); the murder of Kitty Genovese in Queens, New York (March 1964); a cyclone that killed more than 300,000 people in Bangladesh (November 1970); the disappearance of a Chilean Air Force plane in the Andes (October 1972); the death of rapper Tupac Shakur (September 1996) and the crash of the Costa Concordia cruise ship off the coast of Italy, which killed 30 people (January 2012)." I more more events - but they are all very unpleasant to horrible - they are covered in Livescience.com HERE.   But I did find the famous Friday the 13th movies all be ranked by Tomatometer Here. The full name is Rotten Tomatoes - clearly ranking bad movies.  There are 12 movies to rank so this would have taken some work effort.  The titles are all over the place in terms of approach and consistency - titles like Friday the 13th Part 3 or Part V - A new Beginning.  What about The Final Chapter or the Final Friday,  And there's Freddy Vs. Jason.  The original movie is ranked #1.  It was called "quaint". Here's another image of the sculpture at the Aga Khan Museum.  I so enjoy metal reflections where lines are distorted.  I look forward to being able to visit Toronto again and all its variations of sculptures.  Such a dilemma with the pandemic - one goes directly from destination to destination, minimizing contacts.

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Aug 8 2021 - Ukulele is your friend

 

What about our relationship to musical instruments?  I was listening to CBC radio yesterday and the interviewees kept calling the ukulele their friend and your friend.  Do a search on ukulele is your friend and it definitely is considered a friend by many and there's even a store named Ukulele Friend that welcomes you with Aloha!. Now do the same for guitar and the top post is "5 Reasons My guitar might be my best friend".  Not so confident here. Now search for "banjo is your friend" and the top retrieval?  "What a friend we have in Jesus" YouTube video.   Moving on to other strings:  "My violin was my best friend.  Then I realized I needed people..." When we hit the wind instrumentsL "You've got a friend in me - Trumpet" print and download the trumpet sheet music from Toy Story.  That one does occur for every instrument, but it hits the top for trumpets. Pianos come into the mix:  "My Friend the Piano" is a novel... "As the woman endeavors to rid the house of the piano, the girl helps her friend escape to the sea."  Alternately you can impress your friends with easy piano lessons for beginners. We must turn to the drums/percussion and what is the story here?   "When your friend is a Drummer... we all have that friend that plays drums everywhere!". And to conclude what are the thoughts on "musician is your friend"?  Of course:  "There are 5 ways to support your musician friends." I was in Toronto yesterday on Wynford Drive for Brian's medical procedure.  Almost across the street was the Aga Khan Museum and garden.  These are pictures of Russian Sage against the structure's white walls.

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Autumn at the Aga Khan Park

The Aga Khan Museum and Park has been planted for an autumn show of colour.  I went to see what the display looked like.  There is a depth and height of the building on the landscape that is remarkable and is created with the reflecting infinity pools. I was looking for these reflecting pools to create magic with the orange and red leaves of the trees, and for the white building to contrast with the colours and magnify the intensity of colour. You can see the effects of the reflecting pool in the second picture. I didn't find the brilliance of colour that might have been - with the high winds of the last few weeks, there aren't many leaves on the trees.  With the multi-stemed trees, there will be many branches on the trees.  As they mature over time, the show will be something to see.

Views of Niagara

I was at a garden meeting at the Toronto Botanical Gardens yesterday and took some time to visit the Aga Khan Museum and Garden.  I wanted to see the Autumn colours as this is a key feature of the plant choices.  There was a some colour, but the leaves have been blown off the trees so there was less than I'd hoped for. This is such an astonishing building and garden.  With the infinity water pools, the white walls of the building, and the grand walk ways, everything is harmonized and serene. Coming back to Niagara, we drove around the escarpment and took a view of Niagara Falls from Megalomaniac the Winery.  Remember the posting last week  'The Great Toronto Mirage'?  Yesterday's view of Toronto was very clear and the buildings on the landscape extend from Toronto right through to Hamilton in a continuous line. At Megalomaniac, I was able to get a good picture of the Niagara Falls view, and include a cropped view so you can see the 'thumb print' stubby building in the centre.  It is Brock University in St. Catharines, and then Niagara Falls is beyond that.  The Skyline Tower is the telling shape of Niagara Falls. There are no articles (other than camera lens compression) to explain this compression phenomenon that we saw. Storms were ahead for the Niagara Falls area.  Voting is ahead for us today.

Front and Back - At the Aga Khan Museum

Today we're looking at a hanging in the Aga Khan Museum.  We were asked what it is made of.  We thought it was silk.  It isn't.  We were told to look at the back and we saw these little gold pins. The hanging is made of 1.2 million gold and silver pins, all placed by hand.  The exhibit Your Way Begins on the Other Side was commissioned by the museum and is the work of Aisha Khalid from Lahore. Her Facebook page has a March 22 post with a video on the piece. Here is the Facebook link: https://www.facebook.com/aishakhalid72?fref=photo   Facebook Twitter Website Blogs at: