Feb 27 - Chocolate Month Completing

Our winter months' celebration days are colour-coded.  Christmas is red and green, Valentine's Day is red, St. Patrick's Day is green.  As we move into Easter, it is pastel colours, but not a dominant  colour theme.  We go on to Victoria Day - and abandon colour coding.  We pop up with the national flag of red and white on July 1st, but don't worry about colours until Christmas again.  We do sprinkle a little orange in for Thanksgiving and Halloween, as though in readiness for the darker, colder, and starker days of winter. I became aware of this at the long-term care home yesterday, where the St. Patrick Day display is up with its shiny, green hats and clover leaves replacing February's red hearts. February being the chocolate highlight month, I can let you know that February concludes with a chocolate theme - it is National Chocolate Soufflé Day tomorrow, February 28th.   And while February has a high concentration of chocolate celebration days, there are chocolate festivals, fairs and celebrations all year long, and national chocolate days throughout the entire year.  Here are two stories that popped up: What is the longest chocolate truffle?  A choo-choo. This 111-ft 8-in-long (34.05-m) chocolate choo-choo was put on display at Brussels South railroad station in Belgium on November 19, 2012. The tasty train was crafted from Belcolade chocolate by master chocolatier Andrew Farrugia (Malta) as part of Brussels Chocolate Week. A jazz band provided the musical accompaniment on the day, with the keyboard player tinkling away on a grand piano that was also made from chocolate! The Chocolate Fashion Show. This is an annual chocolate trade show in Paris in October - the link is HERE. You can see the dresses, purses, decorations on shoes - chocolate creations everywhere.  We enjoy summer skies by Skylum today with pictures from the Minneapolis Arboretum.

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Boo Is Gone

Boo was the social media sensation of a dog.  He was considered the 'world's cutest dog'. He died yesterday at 12.  He really is cute - he looks right at you with a smiley face.  Boo belonged to a San Francisco-based Facebook employee.  She created his Facebook page and posted 'cute' pictures which gathered more than 1.75 million Likes on Facebook.  Boo got a big boost when Khloe Kardashian wrote about him on her blog. Boo had his own book:  Boo:  The Life of the World's Cutest Dog. He became a celebrity for charities and the official pet liaison of Virgin America, featuring pictures of him and advice for people travelling with pets.   This is his poster picture.  Doesn't he look like a little teddy bear!   The Wikipedia entry on Boo identifies that in April 2012, Boo was the subject of a death hoax after #RIPBOO appeared on Twitter.  This is interesting in retrospect, given all the investigations of influencing in national elections of various countries.  And the increased use of social media to harass people with hoaxes and lies. It took only one post by Gizmodo writer Sam Biddle for the rumour to spread wide and be treated as fact.  Moreover, the Gizmodo writer pursued the hoax by continuing to post tweets of Boo's death in a duck pond - which the New York Times retweeted. And then Twitter followers played along with the hoax, including photoshopping a gruesome image of Boo's demise.  In retrospect now, this type of distortion and manipulation would have broadcast social media's vulnerability far and wide.  Is this different than in the past? A report by New Oxford says it is growing at a larger scale, despite efforts to combat it. Our storm story of yesterday has come about as fact. It is to continue during Sunday with blowing snow.  The Weather Network's chart is amusing.  It has the row names out of sync with the data.  So the hours of sun on Monday is 51, 23 on Tuesday, etc.  That's supposed to be the wind gust.  On the theme of white, here are some images from the Minneapolis Arboretum in September.

What I Know About Scurvy

What do we know about vitamins? What grade in school would we learn about them? Mission Nutrition has lesson plans for grades 4-5. Other sites have plans for grade 9 to 12.  The lesson plans identify the 13 essential vitamins, what their purpose is, and what foods contain them. I can imagine today that there might be common vitamin deficiencies if people eat processed rather than fresh foods and vegetables. The vitamin I am most acquainted with is Vitamin C. We  learned about scurvy in history class.  It was a problem throughout the period of exploration and settlement in Canada.   I remember the cure was drinking coniferous needles boiled in water.  The explorers didn't stay with the cure, and significant numbers of scurvy deaths continued throughout the period. In the 1950s, mass production and marketing of vitamin supplements made them readily available.  Governments mandated supplementary vitamins in staple foods - flour and milk were the two common ones. So Vitamin C came into our houses in pill bottles. Our lesson plan today is to learn about Vitamin C. You will need: 1/2 teaspoon cornstarch 1 cup water iodine More water Eye dropper Medium sized bowl Several smaller bowls Crushed vitamin C tablet dissolved in 1 cup water Various beverages orange juice, orange soda, cranberry juice, grapefruit juice, punch, etc. Mix 1/2 teaspoon cornstarch into 1 cup cold water; dissolve mixture by heating. Measure 1 cup water into a bowl add 1 teaspoon of the cornstarch mixture. Using an eye dropper add 4 drops of iodine and stir. The mixture should be a pale blue. Put 2 Tablespoons of the mixture into several small bowls. Using a clean eye dropper add the vitamin C solution to one of the blue mixtures. In another bowl add orange juice, another orange soda, etc. Make note of how many drops it takes before the blue color disappears. Discussion: Only foods with vitamin C will make the blue color disappear. The punch and orange soda do not have vitamin C.  If a food does not have vitamin C the solution will not change color. And today's picture makes me think of England with the beautiful setting of the Conservatory in Minneapolis.

Top o' the Morning

"Top o' the Morning" is considered Irish in origin but is not an expression used there.  It turns out that it is shunned by the Irish.  It is considered a stereotyping phrase  - known as Irishism.  While it occurred in literature in the late 1800's, it was already considered an affection by then.  The expression receded from Irish English and entered the American consciousness.  It is popularly used in the U.S. when imitating Irish people.  Wikipedia has an entry for Hollywood Irish - Irish people and culture as stereotypically portrayed by the movie industry, particularly from the USA. Many people can remember the Lucky Charms ads - full of Irishisms.  The expression's intent is to wish the best part of the morning to the person being greeted.  The traditional response is "And the rest of the day to you". Another idea put forth in forums is that it is a symbolic offering of morning cream that has risen to the top of the milk jug.  Both such quaint ideas and reminding us of simple times. This picture of the Minneapolis Arboretum's Herb Garden was taken from a viewing platform - makes me think of what it would be like to be Gulliver.

Ain't No Mountain High Enough

Wake Up on the Bright Side  Can you imagine naming mountains under the ocean?  Mauna Kea is the tallest mountain the measured from base to summit.  Its base is deep in the Pacific Ocean.  So its summit is 13,796 feet above see level but 19,700 feet below the sea level.  In total it is 33,500 feet.  That compares to Mount Everest at 29,035 feet.  There are 14 mountains on Earth that are at least 8,000 metres. tall. Mauna Kea, though, is located near the equator and is one excellent astronomical observation site with low humidity and clear skies.  There are 13 telescopes on Mauna Kea. For a few weeks every year, K2, in Pakistan/China is taller than Mount Everest.  How does that happen?  Snow, and lots of it! Chimborazo in Ecuador is the point on the earth's surface that is furthest away from the earth's core so by that measurement technique it is taller than Mount Everest. And at the opposite realm, "you might be interested to know that if Everest was put inside the Mariana Trench (the deepest point of the world’s oceans) it wouldn’t even reach the surface. In fact there’d still be room for more than 2,000 metres of water above it." I wonder what science class this might be taught in.  Fourth grade.  I feel like I am catching up - download lesson plans, activities, colouring pages, resources, printable, clipart, and worksheets HERE.  Here's the criss cross puzzle.  Our origami sculptures in the Minneapolis Arboretum repeat our theme for the day.

Origami in the Garden

Origami in the garden was the theme of the artwork at the Minneapolis Arboretum Garden.  This was the most beautiful of the sculptures.  Set in a pond, it was isolatable so can be admired with the hint of the garden that surrounds it.  Buddhist monks carried paper to Japan during the 6th century.  Japanese origami dates from this period and was used for religious ceremonial purposes. Origami butterflies were used during Shinto weddings to represent the bride and groom in the 1600's. Our picture today shows cranes in flight.  Cranes are the best known design.  The crane is auspicious in Japanese culture.  Legend says that anyone who folds one thousand paper cranes will have their heart's desire come true. The thousand cranes is a poignant story of the 20th century.  A young Japanese girl, Sadako Sasaki was exposed to radiation of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.  By the time she was twelve in 1955, she was dying of leukemia.  She decided to fold one thousand origami cranes so that she could live.  She saw that other children in her ward were dying, and she realized that would not survive. She wished instead for world peace and an end to suffering.  Her thousand cranes are said to have been completed after her death. There is a statue of Sadako in the Hiroshima Peace Park:  a girl standing with her hands outstretched, a paper crane flying from her fingertips.  Every year the statue is adorned with thousands of wreaths of a thousand origami cranes.