Life Lessons

Can you imagine turning 98 today? it's my father's birthday and he's 98. We had lunch at August restaurant yesterday with him.  I thought of it in comparison to a birthday lunch at August's a few years ago. The birthday celebrant was turning 100.  She insisted on arm-wrestling the young waiter.  She was so strong that it turned out to be an arm wrestle.  He thought he would be giving her the opportunity to win.  He got a life lesson from the old.  You can imagine how many articles there are on lessons from old people.  There are 90-year-old lessons, 93-year-old lessons, 100-year-old lessons, lessons from Harvard graduates from the class of 1963.  There's a huffington post article on a person who asked 1500+ elders for advice on living and loving. Are the lessons the same or different from the young vs the old?  There are lots of articles on 30 lessons I learned before 30, or 5 lessons I learned before 21, etc. The advice given looks the same to me. But I guess the fundamental question is: What makes us interested in life lessons? What is the payoff and the benefits we're seeking ?  I had to go to life lesson jokes to get the clearest answer.  Six lessons for life is at eBaum's World.  I chose 3 that are presentable here. A sales rep, an administration clerk, and the manager are walking to lunch when they find an antique oil lamp. They rub it and a Genie comes out. The Genie says, 'I'll give each of you just one wish.' 'Me first! Me first!' says the admin clerk. 'I want to be in the Bahamas , driving a speedboat, without a care in the world.' Puff! She's gone. 'Me next! Me next!' says the sales rep.. 'I want to be in Hawaii , relaxing on the beach with my personal masseuse, an endless supply of Pina Coladas and the love of my life.' Puff! He's gone. 'OK, you're up,' the Genie says to the manager. The manager says, 'I want those two back in the office after lunch.' Moral of the story: Always let your boss have the first say. An eagle was sitting on a tree resting, doing nothing. A small rabbit saw the eagle and asked him, 'Can I also sit like you and do nothing?' The eagle answered: 'Sure, why not.' So, the rabbit sat on the ground below the eagle and rested. All of a sudden, a fox appeared, jumped on the rabbit and ate it. Moral of the story: To be sitting and doing nothing, you must be sitting very, very high up. A little bird was flying south for the winter. It was so cold the bird froze and fell to the ground into a large field. While he was lying there, a cow came by and dropped some dung on him. As the frozen bird lay there in the pile of cow dung, he began to realize how warm he was. The dung was actually thawing him out! He lay there all warm and happy, and soon began to sing for joy. A passing cat heard the bird singing and came to investigate. Following the sound, the cat discovered the bird under the pile of cow dung, and promptly dug him out and ate him. Morals of the story: (1) Not everyone who shits on you is your enemy. (2) Not everyone who gets you out of shit is your friend. (3) And when you're in deep shit, it's best to keep your mouth shut! I wonder what the modelling lessons would be from this layout?

Read past POTD's at my Blog: http://blog.marilyncornwell.com Purchase at: FAA - marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

A Saint a Day

St. Valentine.  I began to wonder. How many saints are there in the world?  During the church's first 1,000 years, saints were proclaimed by popular demand.  Some estimates say the number exceeds 10,000.   So there's a multiple of saints for each day of the year -  27.4.  That's a lot of saints, so it is no surprise that the process got formalized with rules - one of them was they had to be 'canonized' first.  There are 810 of these saints.  So that makes 2.2 per day of the year.  The Catholic church has canonized around 3,000 people. We'd be up to 8.2 a day if every canonized person became a saint.   Do other religions have saints?  Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam have saints.  Islam particularly had a strong tradition of veneration of saints up until the twentieth century.  Other Christian religions have practices that are variations of the Roman Catholic version, or respond to what the Roman Catholic church did.  The Latter-day Saints regard saints as "all those who have entered into the Christian covenant of the baptism."  That makes all members of this church saints.  But the Roman Catholics seem to have the most prolific number of saints and practices surrounding them.  By the first half of the Middle Ages, every day of the year had at least one saint who was commemorated on that date.  To deal with this increase, some saints were moved to alternate days or completely removed. By developing levels of saints - the highest order of saint is martyrs, and ranking feast days in categories by their importance, saints got arranged into calendar days.   Who is the most important saint in the Roman Catholic church?  One site says it is Joseph - the patron saint and protector of the Catholic Church. This is according to Biographyonline.net.  The next is Mary Magdalene, and then St. Paul.  Other indications are that Blessed Virgin Mary is the most important saint.  (Mary seems to be absent from the most famous people list.)   So where does St. Valentine fit in? He doesn't fit into the calendar.  He remains a saint of the church but was removed from the General Roman Calendar in 1969 because of the "lack of reliable information about him". I didn't realize he has a few roles.  He is the patron saint of lovers, but also epileptics and beekeepers.   Here's a scene on the Sundance Layout - day and then night.

Do you want to click the screen and see what they look like now?  The heading is: Remember these celebrities?  Take a Deep Breath Before You See What They Look Like Now.   I definitely want to take a look.  Even though I don't know who this celebrity is. The picture beside the celebrity has this heading:  20 Haunting Photos Taken Just Before Tragedy Struck. The picture shows a young woman hanging handily from the other side of a cliff with the ocean far down below.  We can assume she fell off.  I definitely don't want to click on this article. There's one that got my attention a while ago and I did scroll through:  Father and Son took the same picture for 29 years, but in the last photo everything changed.  This comes from lifebuzz.com and various others - many sites picked it up. There's a fast scroll at cnn.com  It is the story of a yearly picture of Tian Li and his father starting in 1986 on his birthday.  The last photo shows three generations in 2015 with Tian Li's son Timothy.   Something to notice are the differences between the photos in the different sources.  I wonder how that happens and whether there's a bit of foolery going on.  I even admit that I wonder if these sorts of stories are true or fabricated, etc.   So I did a little more work and find that Tian Li, the son,  is now a film director.  It has a quote from him.  I found the Poitiers Film Festival listed COLOUR WATER by Tian Li. You can see the listing HERE.  I found a similar story on this theme. It comes from chinadaily.com.cn and is the story of a father and daughter posing together for 35 years.  Today's a train day with two remarkable models in the contest room at Denver last year.

Steam in Maine

One of the enjoyments of models is that they can be whimsical and creative.  So we look at some of the artistry on the model layouts in Maine this year.  The ocean theme was represented well with boats of all sizes.  In the second picture, the experimental steam works seemed a charming storyline with great detail.

Train Rides while the Great Pumpkin swings by in space

The news tells us that there is an asteroid dubbed "the Great Pumpkin" travelling through space and it will make a close flyby on Halloween.  It has been nicknamed "Spooky" because we didn't know it existed until Oct 10.  It is twice the size of the Toronto Rogers Centre. We look at a little more of the Sundance Layout today, enjoying a train day.

Train Day

Hi everyone,
It is a train day today, and these are pictures from the 2012 train convention in Seattle.  WHen we look at the photographs, it is hard to tell they are scale replicas.  Standing at the layouts, everything appears so real as though we are Gulliver travelling in a special world.