Feb 5 2024 - Groundhog Day for Lobsters

 

Groundhog Day came and went.  I think the lack of snow lessened the interest in whether there'd be an early spring. The groundhog who lives in Punxsutawney, PA came out as planned.  It looks like big crowds come out for the show.  This is the town where movie history started for Groundhog Day.  That was in 1993. What do they do with all the groundhog sightings?  Take an average or go with the most one way or the other?  I guess so - look at how many there are in Canada alone.  And how did a lobster get in there?  It would make one assume they don't have groundhogs in Nova Scotia. But that's not the case, there are groundhogs and Shubenacadie Sam slugs it out against Lucy the Lobster each year.   "Lucy the Lobster makes Groundhog Day predictions on February 2nd to kick off the Lobster Crawl festival in Barrington, Nova Scotia. The Municipality of Barrington says Lucy is the only prognosticating crustacean to make a prediction in Canada. Bill Murray was reported as being bemused by the idea of a lobster forecaster."   The summary headline says this:  "Canada's famous prognosticating rodents appeared to reach a consensus on Groundhog Day, as furry forecasters spanning three provinces predicted an early spring. Ontario's Wiarton Willie, Nova Scotia's Shubenacadie Sam and Quebec's Fred la Marmotte all reportedly did not see their shadows on Friday morning."

We're looking for signs of spring with this Iris Reticulate picture from last year's garden. Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

June 11 2022 - I haven't been the same since

 

I am intrigued by Frank Epperstein's elusive statement:  "And I haven't been the same since."  It sounds sad, depleted, reduced, and melancholy.  There's no indication from the definition that this might be the case.  What is of concern with the definition is whether it is inclusive or exclusive of the time before referenced.  It is inclusive.  But somehow since has become an anthem - a marker of a catastrophic event.  There are a number of songs lyrics that include  line and substantiate the idea:  I haven't been the same since I lost my bro I haven't been the same since I loved that hoe Things haven't been the same since you got back from Italy Things haven't been the same since we left (Explicit)  They all seem to extend the phrase into the realm of the "cynical absurdist".  It is the disdain rather than despair that stands out, along with the mocking quality.  Here's the sticker/t-shirt on eBay:   I haven't been the same since that house fell on my sister I had to scroll through a lot of jokes to find some to share.  I thought there would be lots but what is there is mostly demeaning sex jokes.  Here are my chosen few: The Supreme Court has changed dramatically since Justice Ginsberg died. It has become Ruth less. Ever since I became the new produce inspector I've been visiting local grocers and supermarkets; but they're always surprised to see me. It seems nobody expects the spinach inquisition Ever since the storm started, my husband won’t stop looking through the window. If it gets any worse, I will have to let him in And this one - not in the time sense of the definition, but definitely in the cynicism club: Devil: This is the lake of lava you will be spending eternity in Me: Actually, since we're underground, it would be magma Devil: You understand this is why you're here, right?   Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblog.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

May 25 2022 - The Great One

 

Is Wayne Gretzky called "The Great One" because he conquered hockey?  Like Alexander The Great who conquered everything around him. The nhl.com article had no problem finding 99 reasons why he is called the great one.  The first one is that at the age of 10, he scored 378 goals in Brantford's atom league.   And so on for a seemingly endless set of accomplishments.  Is he in fact, the greatest athlete of all time - that's now referred to as GOAT? Here's the hyperbole description - they are all like this. Athleticism and intelligence were the secrets that carried “The Great One” to unparalleled heights. From a prepubescent age, as early as age 9, Gretzky was nicknamed the next hockey messiah as he made his ascent toward a professional career in the National Hockey League. Here's how his accomplishments have been compared.   "To look at his reign another way, Gretzky notched 44 percent more points than Messier, which of course invites the following fun exercise to help put it into perspective. It would be like another ballplayer whacking 335 more home runs than all-time leader Barry Bonds’ 762. Or another basketball player scoring an additional 16,868 points more than NBA all-time leader Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s 38,337. Could you see another quarterback passing for more than 31,000 yards than Brett Favre’s 71,838? Over his 1,487 regular season games, Gretzky averaged 1.92 points per game. By comparison Sidney Crosby, largely considered the game’s best player today, has averaged 1.41 points per game through the 2012-13 season, a staggering half-point difference." The question comes up whether Michael Jordan or Wayne Gretzky hold the GOAT title.  Here's one sportswriter's summary comparing the two:    "All in all, while Michael Jordan is clearly the greatest basketball player of all time, a lethal scorer and a clutch champion, Wayne Gretzky’s combination of pure dominance during the regular season and efficiency of winning 4 Stanley Cups in 6 tries, along with having no athlete close to unseating him at the top the way Jordan has LeBron, makes him the best North American athlete this world has ever seen." Strange that the acronym is now GOAT - greatest athlete of all time. Irises are starting to bloom.  Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblog.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

July 16 2021 - Electricity on the Road

 

There are many recipients of the " Darwin Award".  The recipients themselves give rise to the generosity of the disbursement.  I wondered about two things after yesterday's power lines post.  The Darwin awards for electricity and when the first Darwin award will involve an electric vehicle.   That's right, I am looking today for the future Darwin winners when it comes to electric vehicles.  How will things go with electric cars?  Where will the occurrence happen?  Will it be charging the EV, trying to reduce costs with strange replacements? Testing the range in strange ways?  No - I think that we should look to water.   Definitely water. Q: "Will I get shocked if I drive an electric car through a big puddle?" A: "There's one danger you might not expect from mixing water and electric cars together. If water comes in contact with the nickel-metal hydride in the battery cells, the resulting chemical reaction forms hydrogen. If enough hydrogen builds up, it could cause disorientation and dizziness, and it could also lead to an explosion. This is really only an issue for rescue crews who have to deal with ruptured batteries, and they can easily handle it by properly ventilating the wreck."  This extract from auto.howstuffworks.com    Q: Is it safe to drive an electric car in a flood? A: "Regardless of whether it's an electric car or one with an internal-combustion engine, it is never safe to drive on a flooded road. Electric cars have significant protections built in to reduce the chances of electrocution, and there are measures to make sure components do not become contaminated by moisture, but full submersion is a different story. Even if you drive into a flood by accident you likely won’t die from electrocution in an EV. But, just be smart and don't drive into any sort of deep water in any vehicle. This last article says it all:: "A stunning video released from a Jaguar representative has shown how effective electric machines can be wading through deep water. In the clip, a Jaguar representative cleared several metres of floodwater in his Jaguar I-Pace car with relative ease. The Jaguar representative even claimed the company’s electric I-Pace vehicle had the same wading depth as a Land Rover Defender and could easily tackle brutal winter elements. Usually, electricity and water do not mix but electric cars are the exception and are claimed to be completely safe in even the most extreme weather conditions."  That article is HERE at the UK Express.  I suggest we stay tuned, it won't be long. I bought this Iris Pseudata Yarai at Cole's this week.  Pseudata Iris are a cross between Iris pseudocorus and Iris ensata ("pseudata" is combination of both names).  I recognized right away that it was related to Japanese Iris - that's ensata.  Pseudocorus is the yellow flat bog iris.

June 24 2020 - Clean and Pure

The story of cleanliness is a long journey through history.  Religions have many rituals around hygiene and cleanliness. The religious notion seems to be more around purity - which a a physical, moral or ritual state of freedom from pollutants.  "Pure and clean" go together in various bibles/religions.  The Phoenicians used soap and the Greeks and Romans had plumbing and toilet facilities.  There is evidence of nethanderals practicing cleanliness in the caves.  Even during Medieval times, it was common practice for people to wash their hands before meals (they didn't use utensils then.)  An ordinary peasant removed the day's grime, but the aristocrat had many roles of etiquette: …and let your fingers be clean, and your fingernails well-groomed. Once a morsel has been touched, let it not be returned to the plate. Do not touch your ears or nose with your bare hands. Do not clean your teeth with a sharp iron while eating. It is ordered by regulation that you should not put a dish to your mouth. He who wishes to drink must first finish what is in his mouth. And let his lips be wiped first. Once the table is cleared, wash your hands, and have a drink. So what happened that changed things?   It is the Plague:  it is blamed for the deterioration of cleanliness. Doctors declared that bathing was dangerous and opened the skin to illness. From the mid-16th century into the 19th century a person could live a whole life without a good wash.  This is the age where people changed into fresh 'linens' to absorb dirt and grime, so that the linens could be washed rather than the body.  Nosegays were held close to the nose to cover the smells (Stench) of city and people.   So here we are today - back into a world where cleanliness is again valued and hygiene considered essential to life. More irises today - with their complicated frills and amazing colours.

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June 13 2020 - Dawn Chorus

Which birds sing all summer long?  Robins do. They are singing this morning as though they just got back from the south.  Robins only stop singing while they are moulting.  While robins can sing all day long it is in the earliest hours, typically starting at 4:00am that they sing louder, livelier, and more frequently.  If we were to follow robins to their winter homes, they sing all winter too.  They only stop singing at night, and are one of the last to stop singing each day. Some birds sing more when it is cooler in the early mornings or after a rain.  Others prefer the hot weather - goldfinches are an example of this.   We can expect birds to go on singing into summer and to diminish around August when they are moulting or foraging widely as food is abundant. Many of us have really noticed the bird song this year.  With less traffic noise and fewer people about this year, it is easier to hear them and birds are more active. More irises today, again taken at the Royal Botanical Gardens Laking Garden.  This is a messy flower in my view.  Even if it was allowable to pick or cut off the dead flowers, there would likely be damage to the overall stem.  So it is hard to get a picture of a grouping or mass of flowers.  Mostly one takes portraits of individual flowers.

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June 10 2020 - How Many Flowers?

Irises come in every colour.  Yesterday's visit to the Laking garden at Royal Botanical Gardens was a tumultuous gathering of colours.  How many flowers were blooming?  There are over 1,000 types of irises in the collection.  There likely are least 20 stems on every planting.  Each stem has at least one flower in bloom.  So we were looking at something in the range of 20,000 flowers yesterday.  It is satisfying to see so many flowers. There are lots of theories on why humans love flowers.  One article says this: One clue is that flowers stimulate the same sensory apparatus that humans use for assessing the quality of fruits. Fruits often have colors similar to flowers, and one theory suggests that trichromatic color vision in primates has evolved to better detect and evaluate edible fruits. From an olfactory perspective, floral volatiles are chemically similar or even identical to those emitted by fruits, and thus smelling a flower may possibly bring to mind a ripe, sweet fruit. Psychology Today's article says  it more simply:  dopamine. Dopamine is triggered by the expectation of a reward. Flowers were a huge reward signal in the world our brain evolved in because they marked the coming of abundance after a hungry winter. Today we have enough to eat all year round so we don’t consciously link flowers with food. But the blossoming of a flower triggers the sense that something special is coming because it triggers dopamine. Isn't it nice to know we can look at flowers and get the same effect as a physical  fitness class. Here are two views of the Laking Garden.

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June 9 2020 - and then the Irises

I finally got to Trails End Iris Gardens this year.  This is a private garden that hybridizes and sells irises.  They are located just east of Brantford, not far from Whistling Gardens.   This is a peak season for irises, especially the bearded ones, as we see in the picture below.  There are almost 300 species of iris.  I am curious what is in the Iris family now, as the Missouri Botanical Garden has carried out DNA analysis to determine each family.  They seem to be renovating their databases, so I didn't get to see its listings for family and genus.  Trails End is interested in the rhizome irises.  These are the irises in city and country gardens that we're all familiar with.  Recent hybridizations have brought about larger flowers, rebloomers, beautiful colours, frillier flowers, etc.   The majority of Irises are found in Europe and Asia.  Our native Iris is Versicolour. It is named named Sword Lily.   In Christianity, this association of the sword means that the iris represents Our Lady of Sorrows.  Gladiolus is also known as Sword Lily.  It is those blade-like leaves again. Perhaps on the Christianity theme, I went first thing Sunday morning. I was able to visit their substantial 10 acre property with only 2 other people there.  This was the case at Whistling Gardens as well.  Darren says that Sunday mornings are extremely quiet and Sunday afternoons are their busiest time in the entire week. I actually think it is everyone having brunch - and by this coming weekend it will be brunch on the restaurant patio.   And won't some of us look better, too -  hair salons can reopen in parts of the province.  Sadly, not in Niagara. Next on the iris trail is to see Royal Botanical Gardens Iris collection - it opened its outdoor gardens this past weekend.

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The Frog Princess

It is time now for the Frog Princess.  I found out yesterday about the fairy tale classification system.  This is type 402 - animal bride - in the ATU Index. "The Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index (ATU Index) is a catalogue of folktale types used in folklore studies. The ATU Index is the product of a series of revisions and expansions by an international group of scholars: Originally composed in German by Finnish folklorist Antti Aarne (1910); the index was translated into English, revised, and expanded by American folklorist Stith Thompson (1928, 1961); and later further revised and expanded by German folklorist Hans-Jörg Uther (2004). The ATU Index, along with Thompson's Motif-Index of Folk-Literature (1932) (with which it is used in tandem) is an essential tool for folklorists." ~Wikipedia "The king (or an old peasant woman, in Lang's version) wants his three sons to marry. To accomplish this, he creates a test to help them find brides. The king tells each prince to shoot an arrow. According to the King's rules, each prince will find his bride where the arrow lands. The youngest son's arrow is picked up by a frog. The king assigns his three prospective daughters-in-law various tasks, such as spinning cloth and baking bread. In every task, the frog far outperforms the two other lazy brides-to-be. In some versions, the frog uses magic to accomplish the tasks, and though the other brides attempt to emulate the frog, they cannot perform the magic. Still, the young prince is ashamed of his frog bride until she is magically transformed into a human princess." Can you imagine being considered the heroine because of the ability to perform household tasks for a King.  What does he need a daughter-in-law servant for?   There's the core of fairy tale lessons:  innocence, beauty and virtue are valued as the attribute a woman should possess (and passivity is good too). Ambition is evil and possessed by witches and stepmothers. I read this article by Dr. Silima Nanda   "The Portrayal of Women in the Fary Tales" and had to admit it was discouraging to find out about social and cultural values through the centuries.  Rather than dwell on the past, the index of tales is fascinating  - I found the index HERE.  It starts with animal tales and progresses through to people tales. For example, ATU 425 - Beauty and the beast ATU 440 - The Frog King ATU 510A - Cinderella Our pictures for today are our Spring stories - what's blooming in the garden yesterday.

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Wrapping Up 2015 with a Panda Test

You can easily find the top stories in 2015 that are negative and heart-wrenching.  I found sunnyskyz.comand it has happy news, but it is Huffington Post who brings us "Find the Panda".   Call it panda-monium. On Dec. 16, Hungarian artist Gergely Dudás (also known as Dudolf) posted an illustrated puzzle to his Facebook page asking his followers to “find the panda” amongst a flurry of snowmen. That post went viral. Some people found the puzzle easy, others found it difficult, but Tracy Lynn Heightchew of Louisville, Kentucky, found it familiar. In fact, it reminded her of a picture that hangs over her kitchen sink. She decided to post her real life version of “find the panda” on Facebook. “I knew that everyone would enjoy this too.” So, can you find the panda in the picture above? Don’t worry, the panda is there, we’re not trying to bamboo-zle you. TRACY LYNN HEIGHTCHEW “It's a photo I bought at a thrift store,” Heightchew told The Huffington Post of the August 1978 picture that was originally snapped at a Junior Achievers National Conference in in Bloomington, Indiana. It includes a bunch of kids wearing silly glasses and clothes. Many of whom are holding different stuffed animals. Heightchew stared at the photo for years until one of those stuffed animals finally popped out at her -- a panda. “I love pandas, so the day that the panda jumped out at me, years after I bought the pic was a sweet day for me,” she said. [SPOILER note: Still can’t find the panda? Here is the answer] TRACY LYNN HEIGHTCHEW Even with the red circle, I can't tell what the shape is.  So I'll move on to our picture today - Finalist in the November Betterphoto Contest.  It is an Ensata (Japanese) Iris that I got for the garden this summer. As well, I've published a photo essay about the Calamus Rusty Shed at Lifeashuman.com.  It's here.