Jan 1 2021 - Recess Please

 

Recess and dismissal arrived in my mental inbox.  A recess is a period in which a group of people are temporarily dismissed from their duties.  It is interesting that this term about a group of people would have been used for children.  And that recess is common in two areas:  primary school and parliament/government breaks.  There is much written about the need for small children to have breaks or recesses - playtime, social time, physical activity.  The results of studies show that "The best way to improve children's performance in the classroom may be to take them out of it." But there is very little written about adults having recess.  A coffee break is the closest thing - and that wasn't playtime.  A bit of minor exercise. Maybe we were supposed to have recess at lunch.  But lunch turned into eating at one's desk as the decades rolled on.  Lots of work and little play during our day. My observation of adult "play" is that it is comprised of rigid sports games and social activities.  Everything has a lot of rules.  Adults reveal in difficult and harsh activities.  Lots of combat and competition. Consider this: there is no Olympic moment for swinging on a swing or sliding down a slide.   Imagine skipping.  These are not action-packed, combative and competitive activities that make for adult worlds records.  We laugh these off as simple and silly.  As an example, even my dog Millie can slide down a slide. I became aware of the fun of childrens'play activities in the high intensity interval training class at my Y.  It includes rope skipping, medicine ball throwing and rope ladder hopscotching.  I realized I hadn't done any of these things since I was a child.  They are fun to do. When and how did we stop... It may be that we rejuvenate recess for adults ass we make our way through the Pandemic.   Things like Red rover, hide-and-seek, musical chairs, leap frog, kickball, dodgeball, Simon says.  That would be an excellent New Year's Resolution: More play, less work to keep Jack on track. Between Sea and Sky - this is the seahorse at the Winterthur Pond in poised in that magic space between water and sky.

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Sep 21 2021 - School Days

 

How long is a school day for children?  In Ontario, it is generally 6 hours.  Exact school hours can vary by school board and level (elementary or secondary). There's legislation in each province covering the minimum length of a school day - in Ontario the minimum is 5 hours a day, excluding recess and scheduled intervals between classes.   There's only one difference between Grades 1 to 6 and 7 and 8 - there is no PM recess for grades 7 to 8.  Here's a sample from one of the Toronto District School Board web sites: 8:35     Supervision Begins   8:45   Entry Bell 8:50   Classes Begin 10:10-10:25   Recess 11:35     Lunch 12:30   Entry Bell 12:35   Classes Begin 1:55-2:10   Recess 3:20   School Day Ends 3:35   Supervision Ends   It looks neat and tidy, doesn't it. How long should a school day be?  There is lots of research and many articles comparing education systems around the world.  Taiwan seems to have the longest school day at 8.5 hours, down to 5 days for Finland.  It says Ontario has 6 hours in the average school day.   THIS is an article that compares Ontario's length of days, number of days, etc with other systems around the world.   There's lots of writing about the length of the adult work day.  Should we adults engage in recess in our work day?  Should there be time out for some play and physical activity? Articles say yes - adults need recess too. I guess it is something for each of us to consider. Here are some children on a Strasburg Rail Road passenger car about to enjoy a train ride.   Purchase at: FAA - marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Feb 20 2021 - Children who are "ripped"

 

Little Hercules - this is the name of a Ukrainian-born child body builder.  He became famous in the U.S. where he developed a showcase muscular physique at a very young age.   Isn't that a strange picture of him?  Born in 1992, he became famous by the age of 6 when he was able to lift 180 pounds. He held the title of the world's strongest boy and posed in many bodybuilding shows. It was said that he did up to 600 pushups and 300 squats a day. Fast forward with all that media coverage of his diet (meat, vegetables and fruits regimented by his pizza-eating father), his father's abuse of his mother and subsequent prison sentence, and finally his transition to being and looking like a normal adult.  The catch-up stories were late 2020, identifying that he now works as a stunt man.  The articles sensationalize his physique and minimize how it is that other children don't have muscles like this. Medical experts argued that such muscular development would require levels of testosterone that were simply not present in a child under 10. They speculated that steroids must have been administered, which Sandrak's mother strenuously denied.  On that theme, I wanted to find out about normal muscle development.  I found an article outlining many child body builders with these freak bodies and these extreme training regimes.  It's HERE.  So there are children training at these intense levels.  And who knows about the possibility of supplements.   We need a light-hearted image to go with our post today. This clown was at the Ringling Circus display.  The French advertising is for chicory vs coffee - with lots of milk in one's "coffee". Purchase at: FAA - marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Nov 20 2020 - Your children creeped you out

 

Christina Carol writes in the New York Times about children saying creepy things like: You're not my real mom and dad.  My first mom and dad died.  You're my second parents. Or this:  The birds look sad.  I think it's because all their parents died.  Followed by:  When am I going to die? Better yet is something like the story about James Leininger from Louisiana who had plane crash nightmares at age 2 (about 60 years ago).  He said he was killed when the Japanese shot down his plane.  All the details he gave have been corroborated.  In the last 60 years, there have been more than 2,000 children who clam to have had past lives.   The person who studies these children is Jim Tucker with his website HERE.  His book is Return to Life and offers accounts of such young children.  From his website, he offers the  Types of Statements a Child Might Make: “You’re not my mommy/daddy.” “I have another mommy/daddy.” “When I was big, I … (used to have blue eyes/had a car, etc)” “That happened before I was in mommy’s tummy.” “I have a wife/husband/children.” “I used to… (drive a truck/live in another town, etc)” “I died … (in a car accident/after I fell, etc)” “Remember when I … (lived in that other house/was your daddy, etc)” Tucker says the memories fade around 6 years of age and the children express a desire to fully embrace the life they're in now. You can read excerpts of these 2 and 3 year old statements at BuzzFeed HERE. Or go to Ranker HERE.   There's even one statement about a person who was an alien and decided to try out being a human. They are compellingly short snippets.  So curious - wouldn't that be something to investigate alongside Jim Tucker. Today's picture continues our Seasonal colours - beautiful red apples 'decoratin' the trees.  This was taken quite a few years ago at Silmaril Farm here in Grimsby.  It had been unusually warm and they hadn't picked the apples yet.

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Sep 25 2020 - And the Largest Family in the World

 There are families with more wives and children than those of us in the first world bubble can comprehend.  I admit to my own sentiments towards multiple spouses.  I an unable to see this as anything other than a relationship based on servitude, which is a few rungs up from slavery.   

That makes these stories compellingly strange to me in my first world bubble.  Here it is: a family of 181 members - the Ziona Chana family.  There are 39 wives, 94 children, 14 daughters-in-law and 33 grandchildren.

Here's the statement about him: "He’s also the leader of the Indian Christian sect called Chana páwl and believes he will soon rule the world along with Jesus."  At one point he says that he accumulates wives to grow his sect. Mr Chana told the Sun: 'Today I feel like God's special child. He's given me so many people to look after. 

"The family is organised with almost military discipline, with the oldest wife Zathiangi organising her fellow partners to perform household chores such as cleaning, washing and preparing meals. 

He even married ten women in one year, when he was at his most prolific, and enjoys his own double bed while his wives have to make do with communal dormitories.  He keeps the youngest women near to his bedroom with the older members of the family sleeping further away - and there is a rotation system for who visits Mr Chana's bedroom.  Rinkmini, one of Mr Chana's wives who is 35 years old, said: 'We stay around him as he is the most important person in the house. He is the most handsome person in the village."

So I seem to be able to rest my case of a story of poor women looking for financial stability.  And the end of the article quotes the son saying that his father looks for poor women in the village to support them.

Now onto the first world and the many children stories.

What about other families that are husband and wife?  "The Bates are an Evangelical American family from Tennessee with 19 children. Parents Gil and Kelly Jo were only 22 and 21 years old when they decided to get married in 1987. They never really wanted a big family, but after having their first baby a year later, they kept going because they loved holding babies. Since then, they’ve expanded until they had their last baby in 2012. They also have 10 grandchildren and are expecting to welcome 4 more soon.  They also have their own reality show, Bringing Up Bates."

Next is "Noel and Sue Radford who met when they were kids and didn’t wait long before starting a family. She was just 14 and he was 18 when they welcomed their first child, Christopher, into the world. They’re the biggest family in Britain with 21 children, and one more on the way. Included in their now 22 children there’s an angel, Alfie, who was a stillborn. They even have their own show, 15 Kids and Counting. The Radfords live in Morecambe, England, in a large house that used to be a nursing home and the parents own and run a successful bakery called Radford’s Pie Company."

Vineyards are full right now. Here's an example.

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Feb 25 - Take a Seat

Yesterday we found out that dogs on seats were 'out'.  What could possibly make us not want to sit next to children on seats?   Here's a response below.  I am impressed with the bare feet.      Today we find out that dogs on seats are also 'in'. This picture below comes from a performance last year of Stratford Festival's production of Billy Elliot.  It was a performance to help train dogs who will be guide dogs, typically for those with autism spectrum. The training included getting up at intermission and returning to their seats for the second half. Will there be a dog section in the future?  Or will they sit in seats next to their owner.  Not likely. Generally they will sit in the wheelchair area to give enough room for the service dog to lay comfortably by their side.  Look at those model train skies, thanks to Luminar's Skylum sky replacement.

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Dogs and Children

I got to wondering how dogs compare to children in size and weight.  I guess there are dogs that compare to adults as well - think of a male Bullmastiff at a 110 to 130 pounds.  That weight would be a female human adult at five feet four inches.  Chihuahuas weigh around 6 pounds, so that would be a newborn baby girl (of low weight as newborn weight starts at 7 lbs) and almost 20 inches tall. The average Golden Retriever is 70 lbs so that translates to a 10 year old boy.   Whatever a dog's size, they are willing partners for an outdoor walk in the woods.  We can't be sure what a 10 year old boy would want to do this Saturday. Where will we go to get the best Fall colour experience? The ontarioparks.com website has a Fall Colour Map HERE.  You can go to Algonquin Park right now and see good colour due to cool temperatures over the last few days.  The information includes the report date, dominant colour, colour change and best viewing.  Colour change looks like a percentage colour and percentage leaf fall.  So in Algonquin right now the colour change is 50% and leaf fall 10%. There were no Niagara parks included in the report. So I checked out the Fall Colour Progression Report from this SITE.  The colour change in Niagara is 0%.  Included is Beamer Conservation Area - that's Grimsby's park on the escarpment.  Also covered are Brock's Monument, Ball's Falls and Niagara Falls.  Burlington's Royal Botanical Gardens has its own entry with 0% change.  So we're not yet into the Fall colours here in Niagara. So we'll use the colours of pumpkins for our Fall image today.  This is Hildreth's on Greenlane, a fruit and vegetable stand.

Buckets and Buckets of Bucket-Lists

We are living longer - by 2030 baby boomers will swell the ranks of age 65 and older from 13 percent to 18 percent.  Genes account for one-fourth to one-third of longevity says the author of the Longevity Project, Howard Friedman.  The advice for older people involves exercise, eating well, etc.  There are lots of bucket lists too things to do before you die - 20, 50, 100, things - pick a number. There are even lists of things to do before you are 20 and before you are 12.  I found the list from the Globe and Mail for 50 things to do before you're 12. There are twenty of them. 1. Climb a tree 2. Roll down a really big hill 3. Camp out in the wild 4. Build a den 5. Skim a stone 6. Run around in the rain 7. Fly a kite 8. Catch a fish with a net 9. Eat an apple straight from a tree 10. Play conkers 11. Throw some snow 12. Hunt for treasure on the beach 13. Make a mud pie 14. Dam a stream 15. Go sledging 16. Bury someone in the sand 17. Set up a snail race 18. Balance on a fallen tree 19. Swing on a rope swing 20. Make a mud slide I enjoyed this list - it reminds me of what it was to be a child - these seem to be things that children think of doing by themselves, without any prompting from adults.  Gathered together, they make a fine summary of what children do with almost nothing, and still have fun. The list for 100 things to do before you die  seem to mostly involve spending a lot of money - e.g. see the Mona Lisa, visit Stonehenge, visit Brazil, the Grand Canyon, France, sleep in a castle, visit Machu Picchu, The Great Sphinx, and so on.  Our picture today shows an interesting and most unusual focal point on the Niagara-on-the-Lake garden tour.  I've never seen an iron cross as a focal point in a garden before.   One will occasionally see Celtic crosses - these are a traditional garden element. The close-up of this one had praying angels facing the vertical portion of the cross.

Wolf Boy and Monkey Girl

What do we know about feral children?  As long ago as Romulus and Remus suckled by a she-wolf, the long list of feral children is well documented.  Our fascination with this circumstance has always been with us. Mary-Ann Ochoa made a TV documentary series for Discovery on this topic and her article is in the Guardian here.  She summarizes: "We’re fascinated by creatures that crawl the line somewhere between human and animal, between natural/unnatural, between civilised/wild. By defining the feral, we define the normal. That’s why these stories capture our imaginations."   The Wikipedia story outlines legends, popular culture and documented cases.  Here are three: Marina Chapman - She lived with weeper capuchin monkeys in the Colombian jungle from the age of four to about nine, following a botched kidnapping in about 1954. Unusually for feral children, she went on to marry, have children and live a largely normal life with no persisting problems. Robert (1982) – The child lost his parents in the Ugandan Civil War at the age of three, when Milton Obote's looting and murdering soldiers raided their village, around 50 miles (80 km) from Kampala. Robert then survived in the wild, presumably with vervet monkeys, for three years until he was found by soldiers. The "ostrich boy" – A boy named Hadara was lost by his parents in the Sahara desert at the age of two, and was adopted by ostriches. At the age of 12, he was rescued and taken back to society and his parents. He later married and had children. The story of Hadara is often told in west Sahara. In 2000, Hadara's son Ahmedu told his father's story to the Swedish author Monica Zak, who compiled it to a book. The book is a mixture of the stories told by Ahmedu and Zak's own fantasy. The sad stories are those of children raised in isolated confinement by parents and relatives.  The most famous and documented is Genie, discovered in 1970 in Los Angeles. She became the subject of scientific investigation.  However, her life continued to have terrible circumstances continued by institutions, and her whereabouts now is unknown. Our desire to know what is human is at the root of this fascination.  Our pictures today show our question visually - the human forest with its symmetry and synchronization, and then the feral - the alignment warped and transformed.

Which Five Things?

I went looking for 'five things', and there are hundreds of 'five things' sites  Something about the expression 'five things'.  The first one on food was about five things never to say to your child.  Then the list got longer to seven things on another site, then ten things, and then even more.  There are a lot of things to not tell your children about food. So here are the first five: 1. After you’ve put away your toys you can have an ice cream 2. Don’t worry about falling over, let’s get you your favourite chocolate 3. Eat that up and then you can have dessert: no veg, no dessert 4. Eat it for Granny 5. Don’t eat too much, you’ll get chubby If you want the 10 things - here's the site. How many funky things  in the garden were on display on the Buffalo Garden Walk - here's one of them.