May 21 2025 - Norm then and now

 

George/Norm has passed away and his obituary says he was 76 years old.   Last week I saw an article on how much younger people look now compared to 30 or 40 years ago.  The picture used as the demonstration was Cheers' Norm.  They showed what a 34-year-old Norm looked like during the Cheers series which ran from 1982 to 1993 and how he would look today at the same age.  Today's Norm looks younger.

I found an article that showed pictures of the main characters at the beginning and then the end of the series.   "A 33-year-old George Wendt first perched himself up at the bar as Norm Peterson during season one of Cheers. Greetings of "Norm" continued each time he arrived at the bar throughout the series 11-season run until he was 44."   Doesn't he sort of look the same age at the start and the end?   And why do we seem to look younger now? Here's an answer:  "Yes, it's generally accepted that people today are looking younger than they did 50 years ago. This is due to a combination of factors, including advancements in healthcare, changes in lifestyle (like better nutrition and smoking cessation), and increased use of sunscreen and skincare." Here's another answer: "Our skin, hair and teeth are benefiting from less cigarette smoke and physical toil, as well as an ever-expanding collection of cosmetic interventions designed to make us look younger." The studies say that people of the same chronological age are also biologically younger than fifty years ago.  There are some pretty irises blooming in my garden.  Irises have a long season of bloom - there are early bloomers with the snowdrops right through to June when the bearded varieties bloom.  These beautiful bearded irises are at Royal Botanical Gardens and will bloom in a week or two.

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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

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 11 2020 - Why is Chlorophyll Green?

When I look out the window, I see a lot of green.  That's because there are a lot of plants. Why is chlorophyll green?   The answer:  green plants are green because they contain a pigment called chlorophyll.  Chlorophyll appears green to our eyes because most of the light it absorbs is blue and red, leaving behind the rest of the spectrum, which averages out to green. Why is the sky green before a tornado? One theory that 'holds water', so to speak, is that certain thunderheads filter wavelengths of light, leaving only green. Computer models verify the thickness of the cloud combined with the diameter of the water droplets can produce a green color. A powerful thunderstorm has the right size of clouds, optimal amount of water, and may produce a tornado. Why is water green? Green water lakes commonly have high concentrations of chlorophyll-containing algae which can give water a green color. Chlorophyll can be measured with sensors such as the YSI chlorophyll probe. Green lakes are often eutrophic and typically contain more harmful algal blooms than other types of lakes. Why are frogs green? Frogs are not green because they have green pigment in their skin. Instead, they use a complex arrangement of cells, a more complicated approach to be sure, but one that provides a tremendous potential for changing and adjusting their hue. In their skins they have three types of pigment cells (called chromatophores) stacked on top of each other. At the bottom are melanophores, containing a mostly dark pigment called melanin. These are the same cells that can make human skin various shades of brown. On top of the melanophores are iridophores, packed with highly reflective bundles of purine crystals, and on top of the iridophores are xanthophores, usually packed with yellowish pteridine pigments. In the typical green frog, light penetrates to the iridophores, which act like tiny mirrors to reflect mostly blue light back into the xanthophores above them. These cells act like yellow filters, so the light escaping the skin surface appears green to our eyes. Occasionally a frog is found that lacks the yellow xanthophore cells, and these are hard to miss because they are bright blue! Our first picture is the Houtby farm yesterday.  This is not a happy crop picture.  There's been a heat wave and the peonies are blooming.  This is a crop that is picked in bud, so these are a pretty show, but not a happy moment.   Our next picture is another view of the iris garden at RBG.

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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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