Marilyn's Photos - Oct 10 2026 - Copium comes of age

 

Copium - how do you serve it?  In a cup?  Here, have a cup of copium.  In a pill?  Take your copium, and you will feel better.   Copium is being described as a metaphorical drug to deal with loss, failure, or disappointment.  Irrational excuses, false hope or denial are the mechanisms.   That takes us to the Maple Leafs who have not won the Stanley Cup for 59 years.  So are we the champion country of copium?  We might be the champion country, but there are sports teams who have not won a championship for longer than the Maple Leafs.  Arizona Cardinals NFL - 78 years Cleveland Guardians - MLB - 77 years Sacramento Kings - NBA - 75 years Detroit Lions - NFL - 68 years Atlanta Haws - NBA - 68 years My case for the Maple Leafs is stronger because hockey is our beloved and national sport.  This goes straight to the heart.  It would likely have to be baseball as similar in the U.S. although it is not designated a national sport.  The Cleveland Guardians have gone 77 seasons without a title.   The most active application of the word copium is in gaming and esports.  "Viewers and players spam "copium" in Twitch Chat or Discord when a streamer, pro player, or fanbase makes excuses for losing a match, bad patch notes or a blown tournament run?" We can go down the parallel path here - "hopium" - predictably,  it is used as a blend of hope and opium in the face of contrary proof or failure.  Its application is highest in finance and crypto. Not knowing this field, I did enjoy the terminology: "It is a staple of crypto Twitter/X, Reddit, and trading forums to describe investors who hold onto failing tokens, dead coins, or crashing stocks with irrational, blind optimism ("I just know this unknown altcoin will be the next Bitcoin") despite all market evidence." I see tokens, coins, and stocks falling from the sky in this scenario as though transported by hurricane and tropical storm winds from Florida.   A pumpkin display from 2025 at the Royal Botanical Gardens.  Time to go see this year's extravaganza. Read past POTD's at my Blog: http://blog.marilyncornwell.com Purchase at: FAA - marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.com

Marilyn's Photos - Ot 9 2026 - Cinnamon Season

 

Cinnamon season is here.  It is a universally beloved spice. Cooking-wise there are two types - the true cinnamon  is Ceylon Cinnamon.  It is light brown colour, thin and papery, with a mild, sweet flavour.  The other one is Cassia cinnamon, darker and thick and stronger, with a bitter taste.   Our Clubhouse sorts of spices from the grocery store don't tell us where they are from.  They barely tell us anything about them.  But we can look up Clubhouse Spices from McCormick, and it says they use the cassia.   Let's get the good cinnamon this year.  If one wants the Ceylon cinnamon, the Real Canadian Superstore has it.  We can also count on the Peanut Mill, the organic food store in St. Catharines as it sells Ceylon cinnamon.   And even the Bulk Barn - which is now full of candies and sweets in bulk - sells Ceylon cinnamon.  Bulk Barn used to be things like flour, sugar, oatmeal, nuts.  What a lot of "stuff" now.  All manner of cake, muffin, pancake, and other mixes.  Mixes for things I don't even know what they are.   But no matter about having to wade through the Bulk Barn aisles, it is a relief to know it will be contributing to a delicious pumpkin pie!   Here's a novel use for cinnamon sticks - as an art easel.  We know what kind these would be.  Read past POTD's at my Blog: http://blog.marilyncornwell.com Purchase at: FAA - marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.com

Marilyn's Photos - Oct 8 2026 - Hoarding my useless skills

 

I saw an article on hoarding where some poor guy had to clean up his parents' house after they died.  The house was in significant disrepair and was full of stuff the parents had hoarded over the years.  From some kind of extreme nostalgia, he was repairing and cleaning up the house, and reporting it all on social media.  This was in Texas - I am never surprised about the depths that occur in Texas.  But then I got to thinking - what about all the skills that I hoard, but are no longer of any use at all?  What are they?  Shorthand/stenography - I am off the hook there as I didn't learn it. Human computation - I am a bit guilty as I like to count change, but I don't calculate anything complex by hand - excel to the rescue, mostly - where is that percent calculation function these days? Typewriter speed and error correction - I am in the bull's eye there - I've turned off error correction as it makes odd words that shouldn't be in any composition anywhere, and I like to whiz away with my fingers on the keyboard. Switchboard patching - I am younger than that so consider this a red herring. Card Catalog and Alphabetical indexing - Should I file my music titled Irving Berlin's White Christmas under Irving Berlin or White Christmas.  It should be under Irving Berlin - guilty of skill hoarding. Paper map and compass navigation - thank goodness for GPS now - that skill wasn't in good shape to start with. Have we even discussed memorization, resume writing - OK, just being able to write well, reading an analog clock, how to tie things like shoelaces.  Have we even walked into the kitchen where we sifted flour, manually defrosted the refrigerator, estimated oven temperatures, and hand-cranked the egg beater?   What do we hoard in our memories?   It is grape time - you can see the grapes hanging on the vines from the road.  Read past POTD's at my Blog: http://blog.marilyncornwell.com Purchase at: FAA - marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.com

Marilyn's Photos - Oct 7 2026 - Frost Ahead but when

 

So far, we've had pleasant Fall weather.  No frost expected in the next week or two.  This time of year I bring the tropical plants into the greenhouse. That makes me attentive to the evening temperatures.  Here's what the advice is for predicting whether frost will happen tonight. How warm was it during the day? If the temperature reached 75ºF (in the East or North) or 80ºF (in the desert Southwest), the chance of the mercury falling below 32ºF at nighttime is slim. Is it windy? A still night allows cold air to pool near the ground; a light breeze stirs things up; a heavy, cold wind sweeps away warm air near the ground. Is it cloudy? If the Sun sets through a layer of thickening clouds, the clouds will slow radiational cooling and help stave off a frost. What is the dew point? As a rule of thumb, don’t worry about a frost if the dew point (the temperature at which water vapor condenses) is above 45 degrees on the evening weather report. How is your garden sited? Gardens on slopes or high ground often survive when the coldest air puddles down in the valleys and hollows. How far are your plants from the ground? Those plants that are close to the ground have a better chance of being protected by the warmth of the earth. Here's a sagging building.   Read past POTD's at my Blog: http://blog.marilyncornwell.com Purchase at: FAA - marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.com

Marilyn's Photos - Oct 6 2026 - What to think about

 

Is there a "question" of the day? I guess so - one can hop over to BrainyQuote or WisdomQuotes and find a question or reflection of the day.   Today's "best thought" is:  The secret of getting ahead is getting started - that comes from Mark Twain. That's one of those proverbial quotes. Not really a question, either.  Try to find a "question" of the day and they seem trite - if today had a soundtrack, what song would open it?  What small thing always makes your day better?  That's more like an icebreaker in a conversation.  Nothing thought-provoking there.  And entirely personal - no investigation and curiosity required there.  The New York Times asked 100 scientists to give them the big unanswered questions in their fields.  Things like:  What preceded the Big Ban?  Why do we sleep? Why are humans the only species with a chin?  And the all-encompassing question one asked:  What is curiosity? That last one is intriguing. A question of the morning in pursuit of building the curiosity muscle - that would be interesting.  I wonder if schools do this -  build curiosity skills.  There are standardized curiosity quizzes and scales. They seem to be directed to personal growth mostly and how people approach new information, biases, and differing opinions.  Getting to know oneself sorts of questions.  I expect that curiosity has to be at the core of research.  Here's an expression that makes sense "cognitive appetite" - it is the internal drive that surfaces questions about how the world works.   Asking the question of how to develop cognitive appetite gets a good answer - structured courses that stimulate neuroplasticity, focus and critical thinking.  Harvard has on online course titled Cognitive Fitness - eat, sleep, exercise...that quickly moves to lifestyle training. I was wanting brain skills - focus/attention, working memory, long-term memory, logic and reasoning, auditory processing, visual processing, processing speed and so on.  That seems to be offered a udemy.com and it says it is a free course.  Introductory offer, I am sure.  One of the gardens on the garden tour has a beautiful statue - I decided it would be pretty in a walled garden setting, so here it is.  Read past POTD's at my Blog: http://blog.marilyncornwell.com Purchase at: FAA - marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.com

Marilyn's Photos - Oct 5 2026 - Dolly and Freddie and Johnny

 

I am currently practicing Christmas songs for the choir's Christmas concert.  They are generally nice songs to sing.  We have practice tracks for our parts and we can listen to full choir versions with the same harmonies.  Listening to the choir for one of the songs, I notice in the sidebar Dolly Parton sitting next to Freddie Mercury on the Johnny Carson sofa with a headline saying Freddie Mercury DARED Dolly Parton to sing Bohemian Rhapsody live...what happened next shocked everyone.  So I went over and took a look.  However, there was no live coverage of the event.  It was a voice-over pseudo-documentary with stills.  If they had sung that together or if Dolly Parton had ever sung Bohemian Rhapsody on Johnny Carson, we would know it.  A specific date was given for this historic musical moment, and no Dolly or Freddie was on that night. Not any night together. We can expect that Dolly Parton was on Johnny Carson - that's a definite American moment - she was on 25 times. But nothing like Bob Hope who had the most guest appearances - an estimated 131. Then comes Joan Rivers with 105, David Steinberg, with 105, Tony Randall, with 104, Charles Nelson Reilly with 97, Orson Bean with 93, and Dr. Joyce Brothers with 90.  Was Freddie Mercury ever on Johnny Carson?  No.  I can't imagine he would have been invited and it confirms he wasn't. That "DARED" video floods Facebook, TikTok, and Youtube Music - it is by far the most popular of the pairing of fake Dolly Parton and Freddie Mercury videos. There's more - "The Moment Dolly Parton Saved Freddie Mercury's Performance"  and "Freddie Mercury Challenged Dolly Parton to Perform Without Her Wig". Even the video that headlined it was exposing the fake videos is an exploitation video.  So many levels of fakes.   Here's one of my favourite Grimsby gardens - on Robinson Street.  The house was originally built in the 1800s. Maybe part of my enjoyment of the garden is their Cavalier King Charles dog. Read past POTD's at my Blog: http://blog.marilyncornwell.com Purchase at: FAA - marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.com

Marilyn's Photos - Oct 4 2026 - Oktoberfest in Grimsby

 

can't remember seeing someone wearing lederhosen for well over 60 years.  Yesterday our next door neighbours had an Oktoberfest Party and they were dressed up for the event - dirndls and lederhosen.  Being German there should have been Oktoberfest parties when I was a child.  But I don't remember any for children. It was the 1950s and the war wasn't long over.  My grandfather was one of the founders of the German Club and they would have had an Oktoberfest celebration at Club Heidelberg.  I guess then they were for adults. You can still go to Club Heidelberg for Oktoberfest - Lederhosen and Dirndls encouraged.  Here's the dress-up today - these are funny enough as pictures, so you can imagine how entertained I was yesterday to see so many people dressed up.  They looked wonderful - next time I will be prepared to compliment them as being so very pretty.  In German one would say:  "Du bist ein hübsches Mädchen."  If they knew German they could reply with "Danke, alte Dame" - which is a polite expression for thank you old lady - as I expect I was the oldest woman there yesterday.   Someone brought a great big pretzel-thing.  I don't remember seeing these ever.   But then maybe they are contemporary - to be found in ball parks or The Forty Public House, a pub in Grimsby - which is listed as selling them.  Perhaps the Dutch Shop makes them especially for the festival season.  Seems odd for a Dutch Shop, though.  They stick to sprinkles and almond cakes. Kitchener is the centre of this Oktoberfest celebrations in Ontario with its large German population that came from the 1920s through to the 50s. It goes from September 25 to October 17.  Lots of time to get your lederhosen shipped from Amazon. And here's the Autumn celebration underway right now - pumpkin season.  This is last year's display at the RBG.  I expect it to be even bigger this year.  Read past POTD's at my Blog: http://blog.marilyncornwell.com Purchase at: FAA - marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.com

Marilyn's Photos - Oct 3 2026 - A 4,000 mile rift

 

There is a four thousand mile crack in Africa.  It goes from the Red Sea down to Mozambique.  While the Nubian and Somali plates move very slowly - millimetres a year, there are occasions when giant cracks open up overnight.  THis happened in Kenya in 2018 and in Ethiopia in 2005.  What makes this news in 2026?  There is the recent discovery of a superplume, a gigantic column of superheated, molten rock rising from inside the Earth's mantle.  Studying hot springs in Zambia, scientists for ancient gases leading from deep underground.  This proved that a separate branch of the risk system is active and opening the crust far below the surface.  In about 5 to 10 million years, the gap will grow deep enough for ocean water to flood in, creating a new sea.  East Africa would become its own separate "island".   In the past, there was debate over whether the East African Rift would break, so the new research marks a significant update.  It puts Africa's "breakup" sooner than originally expected.   Here's the geologist's joke: Why is Africa taking so long to split in two? Because it's committed to a really, really long-term relationship status: "It's complicated (give it 10 million years)." Here's a picture of Brian's hybrid lily named Peaches on Chocolate. Read past POTD's at my Blog: http://blog.marilyncornwell.com Purchase at: FAA - marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.com