Oct 11 2024 - More Beef Feet

 

As we know, our every search and click is being tracked.  We may have special filters and blocks, but that doesn't seem to matter. What more perfect and hilarious a way to have this brought home  than this picture below - an ad on Bing yesterday morning, after I sent out the photo of the day on the topic of dwindling cow numbers in the future. I hope they are padded so that people can see these clearly.  Walking around the meat department in the grocery store. I am calling these beef feet? Then I find out that beef feet are a food dish: "Rich in zinc and magnesium, cow trotters stew helps boost the immune system to fight illness. Phosphorus helps the body build healthy bones and teeth, while selenium is a powerful antioxidant that helps boost the immune system." "Cattle hoof and feet (trotters). Cow's trotters do not contain any muscles or meat; other than bones and toe hoof, it mainly consists of skin, tendons and cartilage." Do you think the ground beef socks are slightly less shocking?  And what about those moo socks at the bottom?   So on we go... crossing that bridge as we come to it.   What will Bing tell me about today on this meat theme?    It wants me to know the surprising way chefs know when stake is done cooking.  That's the beef story of the day.  No wait here's another:  "Is bringing meat to room temperature before cooking - myth or a mus..." But today's best story in the crazy category is this: the Globe and Mail has a story of a woman outside of Seattle who called 911 because her yard had been invaded by almost 100 raccoons.  She had been feeding them, and they seemed to accumulate in numbers and aggressiveness, causing her "to flee."

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June 13 2024 - Bridge over Troubled Water

 

Bridge Over Troubled Water was one of the songs our choir sang in its recent concerts. Two choirs joined voices - the sound was vast in the churches.  When you are in the choir, there is lots of sound going on.  It is when the song ends and the echo completes that choir members realize how big the sound was.   I was delighted that a PBS fundraiser had Simon and Garfunkel's Performancel in Central Park in 1981. They (really just Garfunkel) sing the song in the concert.   Composed in early 1969, there is much written on how it was performed and by whom.  Simon thought that "Garfunkel should sing it alone, the white choirboy way".  They were no longer together by 1970.  And I saw this quote "We were really best friends up until Bridge over Troubled Water", says Simon..."Afterwards it didn't have the harmony of the friendship...that was broken." Simon wrote the song with inspiration from various sources: From Wikipedia:  "The title concept was inspired by Claude Jeter's line "I'll be your bridge over deep water if you trust in my name," which Jeter sang with his group, the Swan Silvertones, in the 1959 song "Mary Don't You Weep."According to gospel producer and historian Anthony Heilbut, Simon acknowledged his debt to Jeter in person, and handed Jeter a check.Simon named Johann Sebastian Bach's "O Sacred Head, Now Wounded" as inspiration for parts of the melody."  Our choir arrangement would be considered a secular gospel song.  It is a dramatic version by Kirby Shaw and starts with just a single chord by the piano and then the choir voices launch.  It has anthem status with that arrangement.  Particularly with a very dramatic piano accompaniment. The song has been called "heart-stirring" and a "transcendent experience."  Aretha Franklin's cover version moved it into the gospel realm. When Elvis Presley sang it, his version "left the writer of the track, Paul Simon, stunned... When I first heard Elvis perform Bridge over Troubled Water it was unbelievable." Art Garfunkel's version in Central Park was heart-felt - likely a stirring experience for him 20 years after their break-up.  I wondered what he had to say about it:  there are many Paul Simon interviews and only a few with Art Garfunkel. Nothing on that song. Here's the railroad bridge in Jordan over the Twenty Mile Creek.  This is the obstacle to more train traffic to Niagara Falls as it cannot carry the load of two trains.  I guess I should look for a picture of the Rainbow Bridge in Niagara Falls.  That certainly has troubled water below.

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Sep 18 2021 - Equinox News

 

The actual day and night occurring 12 hours long or being equal occurs a few days after the autumnal equinox.  Doesn't the "Celestial Equator" sound romantic?  The Sun crosses the celestial equator going southward and rises exactly due east and sets exactly due west.  The northern and southern hemispheres are equally illuminated.  So much symmetry. Wikipedia tells me that there are temporary disruptions of communications satellites.  There are a few days around the equinox when the Sun goes directly behind satellites relative to Earth for a short period each day.   The Sun's immense power and broad radiation spectrum overload Earth station reception circuits with noise and, depending on antenna size and other factors, temporarily disrupt or degrade the circuit. The duration of those effects varies but can range from a few minutes to an hour. You can see articles on why your TV, radio and internet might be disrupted during an equinox.  And then you can see articles on the Chevrolet Equinox, and on the company Equinox Gold - that company is really in the news. The bridge to autumn - this is at Butchart Gardens in the Japanese Garden.  We visited in 2019.

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June 4 2020 - Horoscopes Vs Bridge

Some days I do a search on what is the daily news.  I know the news today so don't really know what made me search for   "News today June 4 2020."  The top retrieval will be coronavirus.  What was the second one?  It was the daily horoscope,  and just down the page is this surprise: Bridge: June 4, 2020 - The Mercury News.  Playing today's four spades, he ruffed West's ace of diamonds and took the A-K of trumps... Like a horse race, I wonder if bridge has made it to the front of the line. But don't underestimate the horoscope as news;  there are two more horoscope headlines.  So for today, it looks like horoscope wins by at least a head, and maybe a neck.    How popular is bridge if we compare it to horoscopes? Worldwide 200 million people play bridge.  25 million people in the U.S. are bridge players. The American Federation of Astrologers put the number of Americans who read their horoscope every day as high as 70 million, about 23 percent of the population. So wouldn't that mean that horoscopes has won by 3 lengths in the horse race of news.  Or maybe it is much more.  Secretariat won the Belmont Stakes by 31 lengths - an astonishing record that will remain for decades. It takes skill to play bridge while it only takes basic reading for a horoscope. So much easier to play at horoscopes.  And we have a lot more invested in what's going to happen to us each day.  So my bet stays with horoscopes as winning by a lot. Our pictures today are courtesy of special effects software by flaming pear  - flexifly for bending and twisting images and flood for creating wave reflections.

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The Twelve Days Tradition

Our Christmas Traditions - The Twelve Days of Christmas

I find out that the 12 days of Christmas were not the catechism in code taught to Roman Catholics in England during the time they were not permitted to practice their faith openly.

In fact, this was a well-known in nursery rhyme in the 1800's and published in books at the time.  Just the same, they are interesting and creative biblical interpretations.  Here they are: 

* The partridge in a pear tree was Jesus Christ.

* Two turtle doves were the Old and New Testaments

* Three French hens stood for faith, hope and love.

* The four calling birds were the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke & John.

* The five golden rings recalled the Torah or Law, the first five books of the Old Testament.

* The six geese a-laying stood for the six days of creation.

* Seven swans a-swimming represented the sevenfold gifts of the Holy Spirit - Prophesy, Serving, Teaching, Exhortation, Contribution, Leadership, and Mercy.

* The eight maids a-milking were the eight beatitudes.

* Nine ladies dancing were the nine fruits of the Holy Spirit-Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, and Self Control.

* The ten lords a-leaping were the ten commandments.

* The eleven pipers piping stood for the eleven faithful disciples.

* The twelve drummers drumming symbolized the twelve points of belief in the Apostles' Creed.

Our selected image today comes from the Toronto Botanical Gardens, Wilket Creek in winter 2014.

Dreaming of a Burlington Skyway View

I took this picture of the Stelco view from the Burlington Skyway from the bus while commuting a few winters ago. It is a different story this weekend.  A dump truck with its truck bed raised hit the bridge last week on the Toronto-bound side.  There were workers on the scaffolding so it could have been a tragic event.  The truck was massive and the impact significant so the bridge will be closed all weekend.  It is currently being assessed for structural damage.  

This is pretty big news for us here in the Niagara region.  It is a holiday weekend here in Ontario.  There aren't that many easy alternatives to getting around that corner of Lake Ontario.  It is one of the major routes to the US border crossings at Queenston, Niagara Falls and Buffalo.  Here's the CBC coverage of the traffic routes around the Lake for those of you in distant places.  Grimsby is the next stop after Stoney Creek.