Aug 22 2021 - Cornflakes Cures

 

I hadn't thought of Corn Flakes as a serious thing.  The Victorian era hit a pinnacle of prudishness. Masturbation was considered a disease - Onanism.  It required physical and mental ailment treatments and cures.  So I went looking for that reference to Corn Flakes and found a mentalfloss.com article.  Here are excerpts: John Harvey Kellogg was a physician who cataloged 39 different symptoms of a person plagued by masturbation, including general infirmity, defective development, mood swings, fickleness, bashfulness, boldness, bad posture, stiff joints, fondness for spicy foods, acne, palpitations, and epilepsy. Kellogg’s solution to all this suffering was a healthy diet. He thought that meat and certain flavorful or seasoned foods increased sexual desire, and that plainer food, especially cereals and nuts, could curb it. While working as the superintendent at Michigan’s Battle Creek Sanitarium, he hit upon a few different healthy eating ideas.  Kellogg developed a few different flaked grain breakfast cereals—including corn flakes—as healthy, ready-to-eat, anti-masturbatory morning meals. He partnered with his brother Will, the sanitarium’s bookkeeper, to make and sell them to the public. Will had less interest in dietary purity and more business sense than his brother, and worried that the products wouldn’t sell as they were. He wanted to add sugar to the flakes to make them more palatable, but John wouldn’t hear of it. Will eventually started selling the cereals through his own business, which became the Kellogg Company; the brothers continued to feud for decades after. Masturbators who enjoy cornflakes can probably attest that the sugar was a good idea, since Kellogg's cereal doesn't really have its intended effect. More happy flowers today.

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Mar 15 2021 - Which Kind of Nap?

 

It's another Women's Day today - International Women's Day.  In comparison in the US, it is National Napping Day.  I wonder if that is their answer to the stabbing of Julius Caesar on the Ides of March.  HOW TO OBSERVE #NationalNappingDay Catch some zees! Be sure to nap early enough in the day so as to not interrupt your regular sleep cycle. Take a relaxing nap and use #NationalNappingDay to post on social media. How many kinds of naps are there? There's the power nap, a snooze session, and a full-on nap. Wait!  Psychology today says there are 9 different kinds:  The CEO nap. · The Nap-A- Latte. · The New Mom nap. · The Sports nap. · The Disco · The Siesta. The Shift Work nap.  The Teen nap. The Jet Lag nap.   Full details about each nap are Here.  There's definitely different opinions on how many naps.  Here's five different kinds of naps: 1. Dysregulative Nappers · 2. Restorative Nappers · 3. Emotional Nappers · 4. Appetitive Nappers · 5. Mindful Nappers ... What to make of all this?  I have an answer:  This is also Everything you think is wrong day! This is a day where decision-making should be avoided, where nothing goes right and everything seems to go wrong.   So the clear solution is to pick a nap of your choice and take it.  Our pictures are about Gerberas today.  Purchase at: FAA - marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Feb 22 2020 - China Work or Play

How do we know people are working if we can't 'watch them'? That's the remote work question, isn't it?   I know that we can easily measure employee output these days.   We've  been doing it with great vigour for more than 20 years - and even longer if you consider Total Quality Management started in the early 1920s.  We're experts at it now. But in China, there is great worry over productivity because of the coronavirus.  I found the most hysterical quote in the front page of the business section of the Globe and Mail yesterday.  Here's an excerpt: "Some Chinese executives and managers, though, have taken a dim view of their ability to get things done with workers at home. In a country that prizes long hours at the office, companies are keeping close track of how much is getting done by employees far from the gaze of superiors who worry they can’t trust their underlings to be productive on their own. With so many working remotely, ”there’s no way for us to supervise what people are doing. We don’t know if our employees are writing code or just playing with their cats,” said Cheng Zheng, founder of DDD Online, an augmented reality company. “It’s just the opposite of the traditional Chinese work style.” The article reports that productivity levels are varying. Solitary coders are fine, but those positions requiring communications had low productivity while working remotely.   It makes me wonder how they had been working and how efficient they actually were. They couldn't have been using teleconferencing or videoconferencing to meet in groups prior to this.  Or maybe they required employees to 'check in' with managers all the time to find out how things are going - judging on time spent rather than results. And that seems to be what the article says.  The Chinese are resistant to offsite work:  the Globe reports that there have been studies that prove remote work is more productive than on site work. The crisis is showing that remote work is as productive as on site work - a surprise to the Chinese managers.   And what is this about playing with their cats.  It turns out that there are more than 67 million pet cats in China and the cat owner population are generally millennials.  So the worry is there:  these millennial employees could be playing with their pets and making videos at home right now. (Don't read the other articles about cats and dogs - makes me sadly aware of my bubblesome existence). We are enjoying some daisies today.

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A Bell Boy's Hat

There are various reasons for wearing a hat.  We had the weather reason yesterday.  But we could wear hats for ceremonial reasons, religious, safety or fashion.  Social status was an important determinant in hats in the Middle Ages.  Status increased as the height of the hat increased. Hats communicated visually - and at a distance.  They clearly indicated what status, what type of work, how important a person was, all kinds of things.  Think of the headwear of the Roman Catholic church and its complications.  Women were required to wear chapel veils to Mass while men were required to remove their headwear.  So many rules for what was on the head. I wondered about hats -  a bellboy appeared in my dream last night. Bellboy hats seem particularly demeaning to me.  Is that the case? It is part of the uniform of a 'bellhop' The bell-boy hat is based in the 19th century military drummer boy's cap.  This hat has a long history in the military. Similar to me are the forage caps - also peakless caps in the military.  They were considered undress, fatigue or working headwear. And what about sailor hats?  They seem close to bellboy hats.  I looked at pictures of them. They still have a brim, which seems to have more status.  Even the dixie cup hat of the U.S. shows a 'peaked' sort of edge. Back to our bellboy.  In comparison, doormen had peaked hats, wore special coats and  even the buttons could distinguish which hotel they worked at.  Quite a lot was said by the hotel right at the door. Let's see what our weather brings us today.  Yesterday, I cooked dinner on the stove in the dark due to a power outage.  Today's advisory has freezing drizzle, fog, wind, and rain in the evening.  Something of everything today.

New York's Newest Monument - Vessel!

Vessel is a new project in New York - intended to be a stunning experience of space.  The YouTube article is HERE.  There are two immediate visual comparisons for me - the first is the idea of Tower of Babel.  The second is Floyd Elzinga's Pinecone sculptures.  But we'll stay with the Tower of Babel today. Here's Vessel Here's the Tower of Babel The major difference is that New York's 'staircase' is an upside down structure - small at the bottom and large at the top.  The website hudsonyardsnewyork.com has a great set of pictures and story describing what they call New York City's next public landmark. Created by Thomas Heatherwick and Heatherwick Studio – Hudson Yards presents a uniquely interactive experience, a monument meant to be climbed and explored. Comprised of 154 intricately interconnecting flights of stairs—almost 2,500 individual steps— and 80 landings, the centerpiece will literally lift up the public, offering a multitude of ways to engage with New York, Hudson Yards and each other. This larger-than-life art piece will be New York City’s next public landmark.   You can read about all of the Hudson Yards projects at their website - The High Line, the Public Square and Gardens, The Shed, and more.   And what are today's photos?  The beautiful Gerbera flower in the commercial growing greenhouses in Grimsby. It came to North America in the 1920s. It was hybridized into a plant suitable for gardens and widespread commercial production in the 1970s.  Today it is a staple of the florist trade.

Daisy Chain

Wake Up on the Bright Side Aren't there such interesting colour variations on this daisy plant, Cineraria.  These are pot plants this time of year, heralding spring with their delicate little mounds of scented daisy blooms.   Daisies are one of the happy flowers of childhood. The website daisyparadise.com tells me there are over 1500 genera and 23,000 species and that the daisy family is the largest family of flowering plants. "The Daisy is pretty and versatile. Daisies are hugely popular too! There is a wide range of plants belonging tothe Daisy family or Compositae (Asteraceae). There are annuals, perennials, shrubs and even trees. Some are hardy while others are tender. In fact, everybody should be able to find a plant to their taste within the huge daisy family! Some well known plants like Osteospermum,  Chrysanthemum, Gerbera and Calendula belong to the Daisy family. Some are less common, such as Tithonia, Inula and Xeranthemum. Just use the Daisies A to Z menu at the top of this page and click on the daisy of your choice." One of the great floral plants in the Niagara greenhouse trade - the Gerbera - is included in this family.

Found at Lost Horizons

Lost Horizons is located near Acton Ontario and is an extraordinary nursery.  It also contains display gardens designed by owner and collector Larry Davidson.  For those who are looking for a garden boost in August, there is a wide variety of plant materials and types of plants for sale.  These will appeal to the specialist collector and to the average gardener alike. There is lots to choose from and the plants are in excellent condition.  

Here's a flower portrait of Echinaceas for sale at the entrance benches.